The Jazz Singer has a legendary place in movie history as the very first talkie. But watching it, it is actually less "talkie" and more "singie" as almost every word in the film is in musical form. Most of the film is in the silent picture speech card style. The real promise of the medium is only revealed in a brief song break when Jackie has a short conversation with is mother. A real conversation with rapid back in forth banter and not flapping lips followed by a card. All the intonation of actual speech is there. There are no missing lines as is common in the speech card format. For just a few seconds, The Jazz Singer feels like a truly modern movie.
The plot of the film follows a young man who is thrown out of his traditional Jewish home because of his love of jazz. He travels to London, changes his name, meets a girl and gets his big break back in New York. (As we all know, no new musical form can receive a widespread American audience unless it is stolen from black people and sung by a white guy from the British Isles.) The climax of the film comes on the night of his big debut on Broadway when Jackie must chose if he will be a jazz signer or a cantor. Unfortunately, this scene takes place as Jackie is applying black-face.
I think old-timey racism is hilarious. Not real, damaging racism, like the denial of rights and property and the treatment of minorities as second-class citizens, but blatant in-your-face racism that serves no purpose other than to insult, like black-face, is pretty funny in retrospect. It's funny because it highlights the stupidity of bigotry and winds up being more insulting to the bigot than their intended target in hindsight. Of course, these racist caricatures are still around today (For an example, see Nacho Libre. On second thought, don't.) and it is my sincere hope that one day we can all come together in a spirit of friendship and laugh at how ignorant we were now.
All that is to say that when Jackie, covered in black shoe polish, exclaimed, "I feel the call of my race!", I literally laughed out loud, but then I started thinking about the symbolism of the scene. I realized that the black-face was not specifically black-face, but represented the make-up and masks of the theater, the appeal of becoming someone else, and the joy of acting and singing. The scene was about who he wanted to be the tradition-bound cantor's son, Jackie Rabinowitz, or the jazz singer, represented by his theatrical make-up, Jack Robin. The black-face representing his false self covering who he truly was.
Eventually, Jackie chooses to sing at the synagogue, winning back his father's love, and shunning the theater. If only, the exit music started with the hand of the Cantor's ghost on his son's back. But there was one more scene, one where Jack Robin is back in black-face singing about his mammy on stage headlining a brand new production and completely ruining the ending. First of all, this is a significant plot-hole as his producer had made it perfectly clear that if Jackie skipped the opening night of his staring role on Broadway, that he would never be given another chance in the theater and the producer would have been totally in the right for ruining him. Secondly, after making a great sacrifice to finally earn back his father's love, Jackie has chosen to spit on his father's grave by once again defying his wishes. This also leaves us with an unanswered question of what happened to the congregation who are apparently once again without a cantor. And finally, the use of black-face here, without the symbolism of the previous scene and with the additional racism of singing about mammy, makes me think I gave The Jazz Singer too much credit in the previous paragraph.
And now in No Spoiler Tags, I don't have an ending tradition...AC/DC!
