| Concurrent with the earliest days of American radio, film, and comic strips, three dimensional carnival chalk figures were won as prizes at carnivals throughout the United States (1915-1940s). These gaudy, tantalizingly tasteless doll-sized fantasy figures were used to symbolize, idolize, and replicate the first Hollywood stars, radio personalities, and cartoon characters from the Sunday comics. People of all ages would stream to local carnivals, a longed-for form of entertainment, to play games of chance hoping to win a carnival chalk prize of their choice to take home. Harmless as this seemed, the evocative qualities in these stereotypical figures only reinforced the American population's deepest roots toward gender roles for women, men, race bias, and fantasy. It is culturally significant that these were the earliest replicas of the first media personalities. Placed on a shelf at home, these chalk figures of much loved radio, film or comic strip personalities, with their implied psychological gender and race roles, exerted tremendous influence onto a mostly white adoring American population. Carnival chalk figures were easily manufactured, at least 300 varieties of the media figures were available, countless millions were won as prizes.
The white female figures represented either early Hollywood sex idols (like Mae West, Jean Harlow, or Betty Grable), or well-endowed, clothed and unclothed Miss America and Nude Miss America, the fan-dancer Sally Rand, and the flamenco dancer/actress Camen Amaya. Baby girl figures like I Love Me Girl, often naked, had the same flirty eyes and coy looks as the adult female sex stars. The child star Shirley Temple was always shown suggestively holding the edges of her skirt. When women began smoking cigarettes in Hollywood films (around 1935) and in real life, the suave smoking Apache Babe chalk figure became the most popular chalk prize. As a group, female figures suggested a woman's role in life connects to her coyness, beauty, well proportioned figure, and sexuality.
The white male figures were usually muscular and ready-to-fight-evil as gun-toting western cowboys (like Lone Ranger or Hopalong Cassidy), or they were enlisted men, glorified as our hero force in World Wars I and II as pilots, sailors, soldiers, or even as a Baby Riding a Bullet. America, represented by the Uncle Sam figure, is the paternalistic father eager to roll up his sleeves and save the world. For those who needed to own the WWII enemy in person, there were several prizes of Hitler, one with his eyes bulged out and another with Hitler's face on the body of a skunk (Hitler Skunk).
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Then there were the male comic book Super Heroes, fantasy-oriented, endowed with abilities well beyond human (like Captain Marvel, Superman or Batman). As a group, male figures suggested a man's role in life connects to his handsomeness, muscular strength, and protective abilities.
Racially, carnival chalk prizes were overtly demeaning. African-Americans were symbolized
as the laughably ugly couple Amos n' Andy (who were in actuality two white men on the radio), or as a scared young Black boy Eating Watermelon, or as a grotesquely huge-breasted African woman known as African Eve. For the white supremist, a Ku Klux Klanman figure could be selected as the prize. Native Americans fared no better in their characterizations; they looked hopelessly downtrodden wearing phony carnival type headresses or they were goofy little boys playing the tom-tom. Mexicans were characterized by Sleeping Worker or the shifty, sexy Mexican Girl Begging.
Cartoon characters and fairy tale heroines and heroes such as Betty Boop, Popeye, and Cinderella Kissing Prince Charming glorified the feminine-sexual or male-macho archetypes into a heightened fantasy realm. Countless anthropomorphic cartoon creations (like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat, and Donald Duck) similarly exploited gender roles and excessively displayed quirky or pesky human personality traits.
By embellishing an individual film star's look and gesture or exaggerating a specific radio personality's attitude, carnival chalk figures were caricatures. They were more than a mirror image of each media star. This explains why these carnival chalk prizes had such tantalizing powers.
Cultural descendants from these first symbolic idols are evidenced well into the 21st century. They live on. As do the fantasies.
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My pinhole images are made with a "normal" 8x10 onto Polaroid 809 film, with exposure times around 20 minutes. This series started in 2000.
All images © Eric Renner
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