Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice
@article{Rogin1992BlackfaceWN,
title={Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice},
author={Michael Paul Rogin},
journal={Critical Inquiry},
year={1992},
volume={18},
pages={417 - 453}
}Each transformative moment in the history of American film has founded itself on the surplus symbolic value of blacks, the power to make African Americans stand for something besides themselves. There have been four such moments. Edwin S. Porter's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903), bringing the most performed theatrical spectacle of the late nineteenth century into the movies, marked the transition from popular theater to motion pictures that characterized the prehistory of classic Hollywood cinema. The…
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