The Little Soldier Who Became a God (1908)

• 52%
• 1908
• Animation
• Comedy
• Émile Cohl

The same mysterious ring of Émile Cohl's THE MAGIC HOOP reappears here to bring to life a case of toy soldiers (ninety years ahead of TOY STORY). When one is left behind, a strange course of events leads him to a distant tribe. THE LITTLE SOLDIER WHO BECAME A GOD is easily one of the most surreal of Cohl's live action/stop motion hybrids. This film features actors performing in blackface. Fandor does not condone racist stereotyping, but blackface is nonetheless a significant aspect of American history in general and film history specifically. Early cinema was deeply rooted in vaudeville, where blackface was a popular staple. As film critic Ty Burr wrote in a recent assessment of Al Jolson's THE JAZZ SINGER, "Minstrelsy was the then-accepted cultural mechanism by which the governing white culture could appropriate and tame various representations of black people." The history of blackface is complex (even African American performers donned burnt cork to appear onstage in the early 1900s), and its legacy is far from being resolved. While blackface iconography appears offensive today, it remains deeply telling of the culture from which it emerged.