Comparative analysis: Larsen and Cabin in the Sky

James Naremore mentions in his article the influence of, “four conflicting discourses about blackness,” which influenced the film Cabin in the Sky. What was really interesting, that the article briefly mentioned, was the social propaganda behind the idea of “The Negro Problem.” But Naremore does not go into detail about the critical or theoretical writings that have influenced the population at the time. For example, I know that influential scholars such as Frazier and Mydal actually conducted case studies that researched, “The Negro Problem.” And of course Dubois discusses his position on race dynamics in the United States, and explained in “The Souls of Black Folks” how he viewed the Negro problem.

Understanding the theoretically or sociological discourses surrounding race dynamics is important because a lot of those case studies reaffirmed racial stereotypes about blacks and other racial or ethnic minorities at the time. It becomes especially difficult to change the ideology about a group of people when there is scientific research “supposedly” proving that a certain group of people are intellectually and culturally inferior. Therefore, I then began to become even more interested in the connections between literature, film, and theoretically research. And how all of those mediums work to influence or construct popular culture in the United States.

But for this blog I think that I will just stick to some basic comparative analysis and pull out segments from different modernist novels and a passage from the bible to show how those discourses have influenced certain aspects of Jazz and the “space” of the Jazz club.

There are a lot of things that I became fascinated with in Cabin in the Sky but what I began to analyze in the film is the juxtaposition of the secular to religion, and Jazz music to Gospel music. It was obvious that the film was clearly making the distinction that Jazz music, as something originating from low sinful blacks in the city, was something that corrupted rural blacks and it would send them to hell. Gospel music or biblical hymns are sung in the church and Petunia and Little Joe’s house. The audience does not begin to see Jazz music, in the form of a trumpet player, until Lucifer Jr. is plotting with his idea men
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In addition, I can usually analyze these movies through disassociation and depersonalization, but when Lucifer Jr said, “ I am stuck with a bunch of B idea men all the A idea men over there in Europe" to his idea man, it screams Eurocentrism. I was irritated at the ludicrousness of the statement.

Nevertheless, what I really want to write about is the jazz club and what the film, in its depictions of the club, is demonstrating and why it becomes problematic. Naremore has already pointed out the modernist juxtaposition of the Jazz club, as a social and cultural problem in the city, to the poor rural south. But it is the last scene with Petunia in the Jazz club that caught my interests.

In this scene, Petunia enters the Jazz club and is transformed into this seductress that drinks alcohol, dances and flirts openly with men. Petunia is not only sexually available but she is also singing Jazz songs, and has fallen to the lowest denominator of sin. (according to the movie) This scene comes to a climax when Petunia is caught in the middle of the dance floor surrounding by dancing, gyrating bodies. Everyone is rubbing against each other, toughing, feeling, and the scene is presented as an orgy. Sexuality in the space of the Jazz club is not regulated or restrained. The Jazz club is a place where people loose morality, and sexual restraint. But Petunia, the religious mammy, does not fit in that space. This is why she begins to scream for Little Joe to save her from Dominoe and the primitive dancing.

In one chapter of Nella Larsen’s novel, Quicksand, she depicts an all black jazz club where her main character Helga Crane becomes lost, emotionally, mentally, and bodily in not only the music but the club itself: “ A glare of light struck her eye, a blare of jazz split her ears…they danced , ambling lazily to a crooning melody, or violently twisting their bodies…to a sudden streaming rhythm, or shaking themselves ecstatically…For the while Helga was oblivious of other gyrating pairs…the noise, and the childlessness” (italics mine 88)

I wanted to obviously parallel Larsen’s depiction of a jazz club in Harlem to the films similar depiction of the jazz club to say three things. First, it is important to understand that even through race and racism is something that is fluid or changing, the stereotypically ideologies of jazz and a jazz club are still being depicted as a place of sin, unbridled sexuality and primitive taboo sex. Larsen’s novel was published in 1928 and the film released in 1943. Almost a twenty year difference yet the specific way in which jazz is linked to blackness is still similar. (at least it does so in this film, as Knee explains in his article) Secondly, the discourse surrounding the jazz club as a space and jazz across genres, (i.e film, poetry, literature) with its link with primitiveness and sexuality is also discussed similarly regardless of race. We cannot assume that only white middle class Americans had these assumptions or stereotypes about jazz and the jazz club. Thirdly, the jazz club as a space (either in the film or in Larsen’s novel), is presented as a place of unbridled and unregulated sexuality. Jazz therefore represented in this context is something that is so hypnotic that it acts like a drug to the dancers in the jazz club as Larsen reiterates as she writes: “She (Helga Crane) was drugged, lifted, sustained, by the extraordinary music, blown out, ripped out, beaten out, by the joyous wild, murky orchestra.” (89)

Furthermore, I was very interested when Petunia offers up her prayer to God in the Jazz club, “to destroy this wicked place.” That scene screamed biblical illusion, specifically in the Old Testament, Genesis chapter 19 when God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with brimstone and fire for their “wickedness.” Yes, I do realize that the Jazz club was destroyed by a tornado not fire and brimstone, but I wanted to focus on the idea of both places being so wicked that God is needed to destroy them.

In conclusion, there is so much more that I wanted to point out in the movie. For example, the juxtaposition of Petunia, the motherly savior of Little Joe (the mammy stereotype), to Georgia, the promiscrous woman out to steal everyone’s man (the jezebel stereotype.) I also wanted to mention the color hierarchy in the film. Did anyone notice that the devil was darker than the General considerably in skin color? But Georgia was much lighter than Petunia. Or that both Petunia and Georgia can both read but Little Joe does not even know how to sign his own name. Or was anyone else suspicious that Louis Armstrong was in accomplice with the devil as an idea man, but Duke Ellington was the handsome talented piano player?