| Description |
1 online resource (xvi, 342 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Part One. Made in America. Uncle Sammy and my Mammy ; Two declarations of independence: the contaminated origins of American national culture ; Nationalism, blackface, and the Jewish question -- Part Two. The Jolson story. Blackface, white noise: the Jewish jazz singer finds his voice ; Racial masquerade and ethnic assimilation in the transition to talking pictures. -- "Democracy and burnt cork": the end of blackface, the beginning of civil rights. New Deal blackface ; "We could cross these racial lines": Hollywood discovers civil rights ; Conclusion: Abington Township |
| Summary |
The 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 |
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Immigrant Jews inherited the blackface role in vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and Hollywood; Blackface, White Noise treats burnt cork as their rite of passage to white America. Arguing against those who subsume racial under ethnic identities, Rogin demonstrates that blackface presided over an ethnically inclusive and racially exclusionary melting pot. Juxtaposing movies like The Jazz Singer with such early civil rights films as Pinky and Gentleman's Agreement, he shows how the blackface tradition infected even those motion pictures that wished to repudiate it |
| Analysis |
Cinema Films (Motion pictures) Role of Black persons |
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United States |
| Notes |
"A Centennial book"--Page [iii] |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-315) and index |
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Filmography: pages 317-321 |
| Notes |
Michael Rogin is Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley |
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Print version record |
| Subject |
African Americans in motion pictures.
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Jews in the motion picture industry -- United States
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Jews -- Cultural assimilation -- United States
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Blackface entertainers -- United States
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Jewish entertainers -- United States
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PERFORMING ARTS -- Film & Video -- Reference.
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African Americans in motion pictures
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Blackface entertainers
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Jewish entertainers
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Jews -- Cultural assimilation
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Jews in the motion picture industry
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Person of Color
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Film
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Films.
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Joden.
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Artistes juifs -- États-Unis.
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Artistes noirs -- États-Unis.
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Juifs dans l'industrie cinématographique.
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Noirs américains -- Au cinéma.
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Juifs -- Acculturation -- Etats-Unis.
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United States
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USA
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Juden.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
95044109 |
| ISBN |
9780520921054 |
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0520921054 |
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9780585053387 |
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0585053383 |
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