Looking at the last few Broadway seasons, you’ll notice that the Great White Way is as diverse as ever. An unprecedented amount of original and revival productions have been helmed by Black and Brown women. While on paper, this seems to be a victory for racial equity, we must remember that prejudices don’t disappear. The beast of white supremacy is wily and will evolve to achieve its goal: the depersonalization of non-white bodies. Knowing this, I use a more critical eye when examining this image of diversity in casting, and I've noticed a trend to cast “powerful, Black female leads.” In these narratives, they all play the part of “the muse.” Lempicka spectacularly illustrates the muse archetype with the character Rafaela. In the Broadway production, Rafaela, a white woman in history, is portrayed by Black actress Amber Iman.
Lempicka tells the true story of Tamara de Lempicka, a bisexual Polish Jewish artist who struggles to create a sustainable future for herself amidst a misogynist society and political unrest. Studying in Paris, she discovers Rafaela, a woman who does “a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” Rafalea’s beauty immediately enraptures Lempicka, and she vows to paint her. Rafaela becomes a staple in Lempicka’s artistic repertoire, earning her the acclaim she’s sought for years. However, when challenged to acknowledge their relationship in the public eye, Lempicka shrinks, causing Rafaela to end their affair. With the loss of her muse and the growing Fascist influence in France, Lempicka must remake herself.
The “muse” archetype has a few crucial characteristics in this context.
The muse must be of a poorer socioeconomic background than the protagonist, for most of her purpose is to give the protagonist perspective. The muse must also have a chip on her shoulder that prevents her from being vulnerable with someone, for the protagonist must show their devotion by convincing the muse to trust them—often by providing the muse with a comfort she cannot provide herself (see characteristic 1.) Lastly and most importantly, the muse must possess a certain je nais se quois: a beauty that resists qualification but must be possessed, for it will be the protagonist’s journey to possess this beauty. Think Eurydice in Hadestown. Francine Evans in New York, New York. Maybe even Whatshername in American Idiot if your memory goes back that far. To this end, Rafaela possesses all of these qualities in spades.
An indescribable beauty? Sounds great to me! What’s the problem? Well, I’ll tell you, me. Though it seems that “indescribable beauty” has begun to become synonymous with Black women (a win since, most times, Black women are masculinized), there is an insidious history behind this adoration. The act of adoration, though seemingly complimentary, is still dehumanizing. In establishing black women as “muse,” we are stripping them of their individuality and experiencing them solely in the context of someone else’s perspective. Viewing Black women in this way follows a rich tradition. In her 2021 book, Blackface[1], Ayanna Thompson provides a brief history of the performance of Blackness in the Western world. She explains that in medieval times, one of the primary modes of Blackness was exhibitionism. The English aristocracy delighted in exhibiting Black bodies, for in juxtaposition with darkness, their whiteness shone brighter. “Whiteness looks more beautiful, rich, and luminous when placed in juxtaposition with the small, poor, and dullness of Black servitude.” Often, the aristocracy would display captives from faraway lands in public spaces for passersby to gain a more worldly perspective. One famous example is Sarah Baartman, the Venus Hottentot. [2] Baartman was born in what is now Eastern Cape, South Africa, where an English doctor, fascinated by her anatomy (namely, her pronounced buttocks), took Baartman to England.
In London, the doctor set up an exhibition for the public to pay to say Baartman in little to no clothing. She was a popular exhibition, but Baartman received very little money. She was an international celebrity yet was no more than an object. A thing to be looked at. Thompson describes the disempowering experience of exhibition in Blackface. “Exhibition, in fact, disempowers the person on display because all of the power resides with the viewer. Think about it: no one is praised for their skill or prowess at exhibiting themselves.”
More than 200 years into the future, this exhibitionism continues. Though Black women are no longer legally property, our stories treat them as such. The “muse” archetype perpetuates this dehumanization because the muse character can only be understood through the perspective of the often-white protagonist, as we can only perceive Baartman’s legacy through the lens of the doctor who discovered her and the white audiences that paid to see her.
Where Baartman was exoticized based on her racial difference, the muse is exoticized based on her beauty: a beauty like no other. She is a being that cannot be understood, so the audience is not meant to understand her. She is merely a tool for us to better understand the protagonist. In Lempicka, we meet Rafaela as she blows the roof off the theater with her song “Don’t Bet Your Heart.” The piece gives the audience no context about who she is other than a seductress who toys with the affections of men. This is a conscious omission because the muse’s air of mystery is vital to the protagonist’s journey, as evidenced by Lempicka’s following song, “I Will Paint Her.” In this song, Lempicka, full of a new lust for understanding and life and…well…Rafaela…divulges just how affected she is by the singer’s beauty. She does not sing about how much she wants to know or understand Rafaela. She doesn’t sing about her curiosities about the woman beneath the bravado. She’s intoxicated by Rafaela’s beauty and sings only of how her beauty can serve the art and artist.
Following in the muse's legacy, Rafaela resists Lempicka’s advances. She doesn’t want to allow herself to be vulnerable. Of course not. She’s a muse. She has to be scrappy. She fends for herself. Yet, as we spend more time with their relationship, we see Rafaela begin to let her walls down. She almost starts to accept that Lempicka’s love for her is true and that she is safe to love her artist in return. Then, inevitability strikes. The relationship crumbles when the muse demands her rightful place as equal to the protagonist. This demand shakes the protagonist because it often puts the relationship into perspective, and they realize how they’ve been treating their paramour. This reality contradicts the protagonist’s view of themselves, so they lash out. In Eurydice’s case, she demands that her need for shelter be as high a priority as Orpheus’ music, and he ignores her. In New York, New York, Francine demands that her career goals and those involved in making those dreams come true be equally important to Jimmy’s. The two get into a huge fight that ends in a rushed proposal. In Lempicka, Rafaela demands to attend Lempicka’s art show, reaping just some of the praise that the exhibition of her body awards Lempicka daily. When Rafaela surprises Lempicka at the art show, Lempicka snaps at her viciously. Rafaela asks her lover to choose her, but Lempicka cannot give up her access to normalcy, access that Rafaela does not possess. With that refusal, Lempicka loses Rafaela forever, and without the protagonist as an anchor, Rafaela’s story is lost to time. At the end of the musical, Lempicka even muses about what could have happened to Rafaela, but Rafaela's spirit reminds us that we will never know.
I don’t intend here to disempower my subject further. Amber Iman is a powerhouse with extraordinary talent. My jaw rarely left the floor whenever she was on the stage. I’m not arguing that Iman’s race played any predominant role in her casting. However, I am saying that her casting in a typically white role follows a tradition. This tradition masquerades itself as “diversity and inclusion,” when in reality, it is an evolved form of dehumanization that has been present in our society since its birth. What is there to do? So much of our culture is founded on archetypes. We can trace almost everything back to an offensive inspiration. I think that there is space for more deliberate shirking of understood stereotypes. Since the creative team wasn’t afraid to cast Rafaela outside of her historical race, why not the other characters? Lempicka’s Jewishness and ability to pass for white (non-Jewish) is essential to her story, so Eden Espinoza, as a white Spanish Jew, embodies that experience. However, why couldn’t a Black actress play The Baroness or any of the other women of means? Women whose archetypes are protected and shielded who get to experience comfort. I will always champion Black women in theatre, and the diversification of the theatrical canon is one of my main goals. However, I think that we should challenge ourselves as creatives to resist the urge to fall in line with our white supremacist predecessors and avoid creating work that further disempowers Black bodies, both in content and structure.
[1] Thomspon, Ayanna. Blackface. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2021.
[2] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Sarah Baartman". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sarah-Baartman. Accessed 23 April 2024.