Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting PotThe founding Hollywood movie, Birth of a Nation, celebrated the Ku Klux Klan. The first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, was a blackface film. Gone With the Wind remains the all-time box-office success. From their beginnings, Michael Rogin claims, motion pictures created a national culture by taking possession of African Americans. Blackface, White Noise investigates Hollywood's roots in the most popular original form of American mass culture, blackface minstrelsy. Through its use in films from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Birth of a Nation to Forrest Gump, motion picture blackface becomes an aperture opening onto major issues of American national identity: the meanings of whiteness, the role race has played in turning settlers and immigrants into Americans, and the tangled connections that have bound Jews to African Americans in popular culture and liberal politics. |
Contents
Nationalism Blackface | 45 |
PART TWO THE JOLSON STORY | 66 |
Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation | 121 |
The Singing Fool | 149 |
7 | 176 |
Abington Township | 251 |
NOTES | 269 |
LIST OF FILMS CITED | 317 |
Other editions - View all
Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot Michael Rogin Limited preview - 1996 |
Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot Michael Paul Rogin No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
African Americans Al Jolson Amer American Film Amos n anti-Semitism audience Berkeley Birth blackface blackface musical Blues Body and Soul Brave burnt cork Cantor Charley Cinema civil rights Commentary Crisis cross-dressing culture Dixie entertainment ethnic father Film Stills Archive film's genre Gentleman's Agreement Hollywood Home ican identity immigrant Indian interracial Irish Jack Jazz Age Jazz Singer Jewish Jewish/black Jews Jolson Sings Jolson Story Jud Süss Judge Priest King of Jazz Larry Parks Lott Love and Theft mammy masquerade mass melting pot minstrel minstrelsy Moss mother motion picture movie Moynihan Museum of Modern NAACP Negro Old San Francisco Parks performance Pinky plantation play political popular produced quoted race racial racism Rogin role scene screen sexual Singin Singing Fool slavery slaves social soldiers Sollors song southern star Swanee talking picture Theater tion turn United urban vaudeville Vitaphone voice Warner Bros Whoopee women World York