who are you?: Dear MGM

Dear MGM Grand,

Why did you choose the picture you choose for the cover of your VHS copy of The Jazz Singer? Why did you choose the promotional picture of Al Jolson in blackface rather than the photo of Jakie Rabinowitz at the piano, singing to his mother? Why do you emphasize such a small part of the film? Why, decades after it was originally released, did you reaffirm the importance of blackface in the movie?

This decision seems to have a lot to do with the concept of blackface generally. Though blackface has been historically significant for a number of reasons, the blackface in this film seemed so important particularly because it allows one to transform identities (Rogin 434). For Jakie, being someone else is vital for being who he wants to be. Blackface gives him one pathway into this dream. The film is all about the tension between what one is expected to do and what wants to do. Blackface apparently helped Jakie get famous (though, I am not entirely convinced of this point because he had such success performing at the beginning of the film without wearing blackface). So, why is blackface necessary to the movie? The surprise introduction of blackface into the end of The Jazz Singer is one of the most telling aspects of the film. The casual yet expert way Jakie dons his blackface, joyously while preoccuppied, reveals how common blackface was for performs to put on. This is why having Al Jolson in blackface on the cover is so confusing. By being so forward about the blackface in the film, it seems as if the whole film is about a performer in blackface. But Jolson is in blackface for less than a tenth of the movie. The brief times he is in it take the audience by surprise. The way it is inserted so naturally, as if it needed no explanation, suggests how normalized blackface was into American culture. Its emphasis suggests how popular it was with the the American public and how entertaining many white Americans found it.

There is an another issue in the film that makes the use of blackface even more questionable: the changing of text on the text cards after the film was made. In his article about the Jazz Singer, Michael Rogin discusses how the studio decided to change the n-word to things like "his shadow," in the film (431). Though he does not discuss the reasons for this, it seems likely that the offensiveness of the word is part of their decision. While watching the film, it became very evident that phrases like "his shadow" fit awkwardly, giving me the sense that this was not the original language used even without having the academic insight of Rogin. Their changes were not natural, yet they did them anyway. It is interesting that your studio decided to self-edit the language, but kept the blackface. This example could also be seen as a way that Hollywood and popular culture accepted and normalized blackface. Though the n-word had extremely negative connotations at this point, the studio's willingness to keep blackface as such a prominent part of the film (at least in promotional materials) suggests that blackface was more socially acceptable to have in the media.

I was pretty shocked after the film when I saw the VHS cover. After seeing how little a part of the film blackface was and how disjointed it seemed from the rest of the film, your emphasis seemed incredibly strange and unsettling. With it, it seemed as if the movie was supposed to have a different intention than I saw - the importance of blackface in being able to transform one's identity. I felt like Jakie was doing that fine without the blackface in the first half of the movie, but I guess it wasn't enough for Hollywood.

Very best,

Bianca

Sources: 1st photo: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~asi/musi212/brandi/images/jazz.jpg