Throughout my studies with Post Colonial literature and theory, there is a re-occurring problem with language. Especially the idea of resisting the colonial power within your country, psychological or culturally, by still using the colonizers’ language that has been used to systematically erase or marginalize a specific culture or race. One important question was how was it possible to critique a colonial power and regain an autonomous consciousness within your own culture or race? Or as many thought, such as Césaire theorized, would it even be possible. For Césaire, the colonial language was French. Césaire’s native language however was a creolized version of French that was not respected by Europe or France. It was viewed as inferior, lower class, and less civil than proper French. Those same cultural values can be paralleled to the United States in reference to African-Americans and the idea of black slang as an inferior mode of language to Standard English. Ann Douglas centralizes this argument effectively in her article, "Raging and Slanging" when she states,
“Negro dialect was nonetheless a high-spirited attack on the Standard English it Mangled. Just as ragtime was at one level nothing but a parody of the classic music tradition, Negro dialect, precisely because it had no self-conscious linguistic identity of its own, was at some level nothing but black comic ignorance or dislike of white middle-class speech.(369-370)
As I read Douglas’ opinion about language, which situated her argument around ragtime music, I begin to think how language influenced the politics of blackface. How many African-Americans understood that using an exaggerated black dialect in blackface could be a tool or device to critique white middle class values and speech, even though using an exaggerated black dialect eventually became a tradition in blackface? I especially like the idea that some black people could use the idea of blackface as a type of resistance. Not only to have blacks perform blackface, but to extend the resistance even further by using an exaggerated black dialect in the performance. Even more, how many blacks, without the political power to express their opinions about the government, were able to gain a voice through language and its performance in blackface? Could there have been socio-economic disadvantage white Americans, which understood black dialect as a social critique, who utilized the idea of language in blackface as well?
{my thoughts on the movie}
When I first began to view the movie I assumed, wrongly, that blackface would appear almost immediately and its racial ties would be linked easily throughout the movie. However, as the movie progressed, I soon realized that I was going to have to focus, pay attention and make those links for myself.
First, what this movie does not obviously or immediately portray is the ingrained links between music and race. When I began watching the movie, I did not associate the idea of a, “jazz singer” as something that was unique or specific to a certain race. Even at the opening scene when the protagonist character, Jackie, gets in trouble for singing rag-time at a bar, I did not associate that with blackness. It is not until Jack is putting on his blackface where I had a crazy question. Why is it that in order for Jack to sing Jazz or to become the Jazz singer, he has to be in blackface? Could Jack not perform Jazz without blackface? More specifically, why did this movie combine the idea of blackface and Jazz together so much that when they are portrayed in the movie they become inseparable?
In the article, “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice” there is a quote that states, “The Jazz Singer’s protagonist adopts a black mask that kills his father.” (79) When first reading this line almost immediately after viewing the movie, it could be perceived as an exaggeration. I thought Jazz or the fact that the son decides to sing Jazz is what kills his father, not blackface. But as I began to think about it more, I realized that the movie never makes a distinction between blackface and Jazz. For the protagonist character, to sing Jazz is to dress in blackface. To dress in blackface would be to sing songs like ragtime or Jazz. The movie automatically makes the cultural assumption that Jazz is an African-American art form.
Furthermore, another thing that I found interesting in the movie was the lack of any racial tension with the protagonist and other white performers. At the time of the movie Jews were hated just about as much as African-Americans along with other immigrant groups. I thought it was very interesting that the protagonist character was able to find success through Jazz and blackface. Or specifically the protagonist was able to find successes through his performance of Jazz which leads to blackface.
I also thought that the protagonist had some serious erotic complexes happening with his mother throughout the movie. At the very beginning of the movie, when the son is about to leave and he hugs his mother, she practically caresses him as a lover. Then when the son returns before he leaves the house, Jackie does not stare at a picture with his father, but with the one of his mother, obviously demonstrating who the protagonist loves more. I thought that I may have been analyzing the movie too much. But when the protagonist is grown up and comes home, Jack kisses the mother on the lips. Not once, not twice, but quite a few times. Then as the protagonist is playing on the piano, he tells the mother to close her eyes, so that he can “steal” a kiss. The entire scene is screaming oedipal complexes with psychoanalytical baggage; I wonder what Freud or Jung would have to say.
In conclusion, I had some other things that I wanted to write about, but my blog is entirely too long already and I am tired. So hopefully tomorrow in class we will really begin deconstructing the articles and the movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment