Signifying Deviance and Transgression: Jazz in the Popular Imagination

This article analyzes a jazz trope that appeared in literature, film, and journalism from the 1930s to the early 1960s. It shows how the distinct symbolic order and moral boundaries of these cultural fields shaped a “story of jazz” that acted as a metaphor for class, race, and urban America. The jazz trope represented a double consciousness of romantic rebellion and dangerous deviancy in which the story of jazz almost always ended in tragic consequences. The ultimate tragedy of the jazz life in the popular imagination acted to reaffirm dominant norms against a rebellious and deviant world in urban America.