Last week in class we mentioned the influence that modernism may have had on specific films in the genre of Jazz, and I begin to think about modernism from a literary and philosophical perspective. Therefore, when I watched the movie for this week, “Check and Double Check” I was intrigued to find a lot of modernist themes throughout the movie. Therefore, for my blog this week I thought that I would mention some of the reoccurring themes that are relevant to modernism and then point out instances in the movie where modernist motifs are present.
The entire concept of modernism or what constitutes modernism is debatable. And I have discovered that often when individuals begin to define modernism rigidly it becomes prescriptive instead of descriptive. However, there are some big or frequent themes in modernism that can be helpful in analyzing the movie. For example, one problem that modernist dealt with is the isolation and fragmentation of the self in the modern city and the ache of the nostalgic. Or metropolitan values in conflict with rural values or ideologies. It is in the city where individualism becomes erased through isolation and the fragmentation of the self because consumerism, industrialism, and big business rules supreme.
The application of that modernist motif to the movie opens up a nice dialogue about the influence of the city on the characters in the movie. The first scene of the movie opens to the modern day city. There are shots of sky scrapers, cars, and most importantly people. Tons of people. The shot zooms in on the ideal middle class couple, with a man dressed for corporate America, complaining about the traffic jam. The traffic Jam, as the audience later discovers is caused by Amos and Andy. Because their Taxi, of a cheaper quality than the other cars present, has broken down in the middle of a busy intersection. Amos and Andy are surrounded by people, dressed in business suits and other nice attire, while they are dressed in overalls. This scene is screaming modernist imagery. Amos and Andy are obvious representations of the simple rural life of the south. Their speech, clothes, and interactions with others all represent a time long gone. They represent the nostalgia that many modernist authors longed for during the 1900’s.
But Amos and Andy clearly do not fit in the city; they are ostracized not only by the people who laugh at them as they try to move their car, but by the city itself. Because a city is something that is always moving always busy, it is through the traffic jam that it rejects Amos and Andy. (the City as it acts as a space, not just a place where people live, but a place where the people live for the city, they are consumed by the city.) . Because Amos and Andy do not fit in the metropolitan city they cause the traffic jam. And literally stop the progression of the city itself as well as the people who stop to laugh at them. The city cannot consume Amos and Andy, because they do not fit or belong there. It is through this interaction with Amos and Andy, the city, and the modern people where the tension of the rural juxtaposed to the modern industrial city is revealed.
In conclusion, as many can see I am slightly consumed by modernism, mostly because it has influenced postmodernism. I just hope that I was able to clearly articulate some of the modernist influences revealed in the film. Of course there are many more examples of modernism in the film, but that would make my blog entirely too long. Perhaps tomorrow in class we can continue the discussion.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Reader Response: The King of Jazz
The movie that we viewed this week was The King of Jazz, and instead of a continuous movie with some type of foundational plot it was actually a series of short skits. Which by the end of the movie I was immensely tired of viewing. The theme I did perceive in the movie was only the idea of music, dancing, by a guy who supposedly ‘thought’ he was The King of Jazz. Ironically, I did not see any actually Jazz being performed in the movie.
What I am sure is the big ‘ah ha’ moment of the film was that a movie, which was released in the 1930’s, proposing to be about Jazz, really did not have a Jazz motif or music until the last scene. Where the movie advocates the American value of ‘woo hoo’ the melting pot, but in reality I really felt that I could have seen an edited version of this movie if the biggest point, theoretically or critically was the irony of a guy proclaiming to be the King of Jazz when obviously he was not.
Arguably, even in the last scene Jazz was not present. But in all fairness, I think the film, at the end, was articulating that Jazz was a legacy from many different cultures. Even though the obvious culture I was looking for was not present. Therefore, I am sure tomorrow in class the question of why a film proposing to support the premise that Jazz was the cultural mingling of different types of people then proceed to exclude or ignore the influence of African-Americans or other blacks in the Diaspora will be forthcoming.
On a brighter note, I thought some of the dancing in the movie was great and interesting. But by the last scene of the movie, I was definitely tired of the hundreds of people on the set and the line of women in their short skirts kicking their legs in the air.
What I am sure is the big ‘ah ha’ moment of the film was that a movie, which was released in the 1930’s, proposing to be about Jazz, really did not have a Jazz motif or music until the last scene. Where the movie advocates the American value of ‘woo hoo’ the melting pot, but in reality I really felt that I could have seen an edited version of this movie if the biggest point, theoretically or critically was the irony of a guy proclaiming to be the King of Jazz when obviously he was not.
Arguably, even in the last scene Jazz was not present. But in all fairness, I think the film, at the end, was articulating that Jazz was a legacy from many different cultures. Even though the obvious culture I was looking for was not present. Therefore, I am sure tomorrow in class the question of why a film proposing to support the premise that Jazz was the cultural mingling of different types of people then proceed to exclude or ignore the influence of African-Americans or other blacks in the Diaspora will be forthcoming.
On a brighter note, I thought some of the dancing in the movie was great and interesting. But by the last scene of the movie, I was definitely tired of the hundreds of people on the set and the line of women in their short skirts kicking their legs in the air.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
whatever
In general, I thought the short movies required for viewing this week were interesting. The first short movie, with Duke Ellington in the jungle motif singing, was of course an exaggeration of black masculinity. But what I found interesting was Louis Armstrong was really dressed in a lion costume. He had a tail and everything. I was not uncomfortable with his performance or I guess ethically disturbed by it as much as I was by Bessie Smith’s performance in another short movie. I did think that Armstrong’s facial mannerisms were awkward, and I would have to see other regular musical performances by Ellington in order to decide if his performance in the movie was unique or specific to the jungle theme.
I guess the main representation that I focused on the most in the movies was the representation of black women. Specifically, the different color hierarchies linked with black women’s sexuality. For example, in the movie Hi-de-ho where Cab Calloway is singing with the dancers in the fan dance, most of the women were either interracial, white, or with very light complexions. The women are mostly skinny and they are presented in a sexualized manner.
Those women are in control of their sexuality because they get to decide who they will be with or the women are sexually autonomous. But in another movie with Bessie Smith, who is darker and a larger woman, she is presented as this emotional distraught woman who defines herself through her relationships with her “old man” (who is a light skinned man). Jimmy, not only cheats on Bessie, (with a lighter woman) but then he begins to manipulate her only for the money. Their relationship is completely materialistic.
The movie itself becomes a spectacle where the movie manipulates different stereotypical images of Bessie that contradict each other. At the beginning of the movie, when Bessie catches Jimmy in bed with another love, Bessie becomes the stereotype of the “angry black woman.” This is the black woman who will tell anybody anything and beat anyone down who gets in the way. This point is supported brilliantly by the film when Bessie begins to beat the light colored girl down. (the girl by the way does nothing to defend herself.) Then when the landlord comes in to break up the fight and to evict Bessie for the ruckus she is making, Bessie proceeds to tell him off and throw things at him.
When I first viewed this scene I automatically thought here is another black woman gone mad in the movie, which of course influences more controlling images of black femininity. But when Bessie then proceeds to throw herself on the floor to beg Jimmy not to leave her, I was completely confused. Bessie just beat down a girl and kicked the landlord out of her apartment, now she was begging a man to stay with her.
In conclusion, the importance of Bessie’s performance juxtaposed to the other black woman in different movies and to the lighter woman that Jimmy cheats with is that Bessie is not desirable not only because of her size but because she is darker. In fact Bessie becomes so undesirable that she has to beg a man, who has cheated on her and taken her money, to stay with her.
I guess the main representation that I focused on the most in the movies was the representation of black women. Specifically, the different color hierarchies linked with black women’s sexuality. For example, in the movie Hi-de-ho where Cab Calloway is singing with the dancers in the fan dance, most of the women were either interracial, white, or with very light complexions. The women are mostly skinny and they are presented in a sexualized manner.
Those women are in control of their sexuality because they get to decide who they will be with or the women are sexually autonomous. But in another movie with Bessie Smith, who is darker and a larger woman, she is presented as this emotional distraught woman who defines herself through her relationships with her “old man” (who is a light skinned man). Jimmy, not only cheats on Bessie, (with a lighter woman) but then he begins to manipulate her only for the money. Their relationship is completely materialistic.
The movie itself becomes a spectacle where the movie manipulates different stereotypical images of Bessie that contradict each other. At the beginning of the movie, when Bessie catches Jimmy in bed with another love, Bessie becomes the stereotype of the “angry black woman.” This is the black woman who will tell anybody anything and beat anyone down who gets in the way. This point is supported brilliantly by the film when Bessie begins to beat the light colored girl down. (the girl by the way does nothing to defend herself.) Then when the landlord comes in to break up the fight and to evict Bessie for the ruckus she is making, Bessie proceeds to tell him off and throw things at him.
When I first viewed this scene I automatically thought here is another black woman gone mad in the movie, which of course influences more controlling images of black femininity. But when Bessie then proceeds to throw herself on the floor to beg Jimmy not to leave her, I was completely confused. Bessie just beat down a girl and kicked the landlord out of her apartment, now she was begging a man to stay with her.
In conclusion, the importance of Bessie’s performance juxtaposed to the other black woman in different movies and to the lighter woman that Jimmy cheats with is that Bessie is not desirable not only because of her size but because she is darker. In fact Bessie becomes so undesirable that she has to beg a man, who has cheated on her and taken her money, to stay with her.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Language and "The Jazz Singer": Reader Response
When I was reading the article “Ragging and slanging” I stumbled over the idea of language and slang as forms of resistance against power. I then began to make links between some ideas within Post Colonial discourse and Aimé Césaire. I also found some interesting things that I wanted to discuss in the short film, “The Jazz Singer.” So for this blog I will do two things. For the first part of the blog I will explore how the idea of language in blackface could be used by some performers as a type of resistance to white colonialism in America. And for the second part of the blog I will discuss my opinions about the movie.
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.
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.
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