Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot.

Abstract

tangled connections that have bound Jews to African Americans in popular culture and liberal politics are at the heart of Michael Rogin's arresting and unnerving new book. Looking at films from Birth of a Nation to Forrest Gump, Rogin explores blackface in Hollywood films as an aperture to broader issues: the nature of white identity in America, the role of race in transforming immigrants into Americans, and the social importance of popular culture. From their very beginnings, Rogin claims, motion pictures created a national culture by taking possession of African Americans. Immigrant Jews inherited the blackface role in vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and Hollywood, and blackface, either literal or figurative, became a rite of passage to white America. Rogin shows how blackface representations were ethnically inclusive and racially exclusionary, and he argues against those who reduce race to simply one more ethnic identity. Juxtaposing movies like the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, with such early civil rights movies as Pinky and Gentleman's Agreement, he demonstrates how the blackface tradition infected even those films that he wished to repudiate it. Rogin discusses the common experiences of Jews and African Americans that made Jews key supporters in the fight for racial equality. But his book also looks at the Jewish stake in whiteness, challenging us to confront the harsh truths behind the popularity of racial masquerade. Accompanied by over fifty compelling illustrations, Rogin's forcefully argued study illuminates the commercial, cultural, and social reach of mass entertainment.