After leaving the anonymity of being lost in the African-American milieu of Harlem, Helga Crane finds that in Copenhagen, she has become “Den Sorte.” The Danes see her as an exotic, that is: “a decoration. A curio. A peacock”(160). Our class glog, Exoticism in Quicksand, attempts to draw students into Helga’s experience by providing images of the “exotic other” in the European imagination.
This assignment will guide students into using the glog to think about Helga’s time in Copenhagen. We designed the glog so that students could explore a few different aspects of the Europeans’ “exotic other” as it pertains to Helga’s sojourn in Copenhagen in Quicksand.
Exploring the glog counter-clockwise: In the left hand corner, we have a photograph showing Josephine Baker, barely covered in a sexy costume, petting her famous pet leopard, with the word “Negrophilia” emblazoned in the center of the image. This image links to Viola’s glog. Viola’s glog explains the term “negrophilia” and contains images, films, music, and articles exploring the concept.
In the right hand corner, we see a poster from the 1927 Josephine Baker film “Siren of the Tropics.” The poster links to Ryan’s glog, which focuses on the idea of Josephine Baker as the best example of the glamorous, exotic African-American in the European imagination.
Directly below Ryan’s glog, back on the main glog, we have Josephine Baker’s banana dance. “Le Baker,” as she was known in France, had debuted her unique, erotic dancing on the Champs-Elysees in 1925. The actual name of the banana dance was the “danse sauvage.” “Le Baker”’s strange, sexy, and masterful “savage dance” gives a good indication of the set of constructs with which Helga Crane, not long before an earnest school teacher in the repressed environment of Naxos, would have had to contend.
In the bottom right-hand corner, Dustin opens up our glog to focus on the exotic other in English Literature. His group of images and links explores the exotic other as it would have been familiar in literature to Nella Larsen and references Othello, Heart of Darkness, and Jane Eyre among other classics of literature in English on the racialized “other.”
Finally, in the left hand bottom corner, an image from Gauguin links to my glog which explores the exotic other in European artwork as a way of thinking specifically about Quicksand’s celebrated artist Axel Olsen and his painting of Helga. In the linking image, a Tahitian, female subject lies on her stomach, exposing her naked backside seductively to the viewer—I chose this image to link from both for its colors, which suggest Olsen’s palette, and for its subject matter, which suggests the exotic sexuality he superimposes upon Helga.
The glog contains images from Henri Rousseau, a French post-Impressionist painter who painted in the Naïve / Primitive manner which the description of Olsen’s painting suggests to me. Paul Gauguin’s painting “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” is in the middle right of the glog. Gauguin used “primitive” subjects (the colonized Tahitians) to express a personal mythology in this painting, which he believed would so fully express his artistic talent that upon it’s completion he would have served his purpose, and he vowed that when it was finished he would commit suicide. The terrible weight of expression which Gauguin expects his “primitives” to bear reminds me of the role Olsen expects Helga to play in his life.
Watch the videos of images from Rousseau and Gauguin—notice the naked, black subject of one of the last paintings from Gauguin in the series!
Now, having explored and thought about our class glog, write an analysis of the glog. Using specific images, video, and audio from the glog, connect the glog to quotes in Quicksand. Describe a few of the many aspects of the glog which I have not touched upon to comment on Quicksand. Focusing especially on one image from each person’s glog, describe how the glog comments upon Helga’s experience in Copenhagen.
