A Taste for Excess

Reading The Escape Artist by Daphne Brooks, I was struck by the repeated mentions of Henry Box Brown’s body. Repeatedly, in newspaper articles of the time, he is referred to as “‘bejewelled, “portly,” and “overdressed”‘ or as “a bejewelled and oily negro.”” For critics, his bodily presentation went along with the “excesses of the panoramic exhibition.” Some critics felt his panorama was inauthentic in it’s excess, as though the intensity of story Brown told was too much to be true. Brown’s bodily presentation was also one of excess, with ostentatious jewelry and weight presumably from excessive consumption. Because of his race, and because his story of escape is so intertwined with physicality, critics presumably felt the right to incorporate his body into their review of the panorama. They made him apart of the show, assuming his personal vices correlated to fallacies in the presentation.

Rather than representative of the panorama, Brown’s presentation is representative of his personal taste. In the second edition of his narrative in 1851, Brown specifically inserts a line about a potential escape needing to be in line with his “taste.” In the midst of the dehumanizing machine of slavery, personal taste represents one way to define yourself and your identity. Therefore, I think Brown’s presentation has more to do with exercising his right to taste.