Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice

"The Jazz Singer," a film famous for being the first motion picture with sound, is discussed. The film gives equal weight to three stories: the conversion to sound, the conversion of the Jews and the conversion by blackface. As mass culture, the film announced old-world, patriarchal defeat to obfuscate new world power and appropriated an imaginary blackness to Americanize the immigrant son.