about two different types of music: liturgical sacred music and modern American popular song (under the catch‐all term “jazz”). Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson) has been trained by his father to follow in his profession: all the men in the Rabinowitz family have been cantors, men who lead a synagogue’s congregation in sung prayer. Jakie, however, as a second‐generation American Jew exposed to the American melting pot’s wealth of new rhythms and melodies, prefers to sing jazz. His father becomes angry that his son is seemingly forsaking the music of his Jewish heritage for American jazz. (In one inventive sequence, while Jakie is singing “Blue Skies,” his father comes in and shouts “Stop!”; just at that point, the film switches from a sound sequence back into a silent film.) Forced to choose between the two types of music and the cultures they represent, Jakie runs away from home and tries his luck singing on stage. Jakie’s interest in leaving behind his heritage in favor of American popular music indicates his aptitude for assimilation. As part of that trend, Jakie Rabinowitz changes his name to Jack Robin – in effect erasing his Jewish identity (his minority‐ethnic‐sounding name) for a more nondescript white‐sounding name, just as many other Jewish actors in show business were being encouraged to do.
Jolson in blackface as Jake Rabinowitz/Jack Robin in his most famous role, The Jazz Singer (1927).
The Jazz Singer, copyright © 1927, Warner Bros.
Intriguingly, the person who guides Jack to stardom is fellow stage performer Mary Dale. Mary actively attempts to usher Jack into the inner circle of assimilated whiteness, by helping him move up the ladder of theatrical success. The character of Mary Dale is enacted by “real‐life” Irish American actress May McAvoy, who played the Colleen type in many 1920s movies. While she kept her Irish‐sounding name, McAvoy was accepted as white, and in playing this role, she embodies a successful example of Irish American assimilation. Most audiences today would probably not even think of her character as Irish. Mary Dale/May McAvoy literally personifies the whiteness that Jack is moving toward. During the one moment in the film in which we see May perform on stage, she is wearing a fluffy white tutu and a peroxide wig that makes her hair appear to be gleaming white, literally a vision of whiteness.
On the other hand, Jack’s big chance on Broadway is tied to his performing in blackface, simultaneously emphasizing his difference from African Americans and the similarities in their marginal racial/ethnic status. Star Al Jolson was himself renowned for his blackface act. Yet the film does not introduce blackface until a key point in the story. Jack is just about to perform his final dress rehearsal before opening night on Broadway when he finds out that his father is dying and wants his son to take his place as cantor. The film draws out the emotional tug‐of‐war going on in Jack as he grapples with the lure of stardom/assimilation and his love of and sense of obligation to his Jewish upbringing. It is at this moment, as Jack is suffering through this turmoil, that he puts on blackface. The sadness and sense of difference he feels become linked to his transformation into an African American stereotype. In one shot, Jack/Jakie looks sadly in the mirror at himself in blackface, and his reflection dissolves to a vision of his father as cantor. The superimposition of the two images further strengthens the sense of Jewish blackface performance as somehow expressive of an outsider status.
The film resolves these tensions when Jakie decides to sing for his father instead of appearing on opening night – yet by the next season Jack Robin has nonetheless become a star on Broadway. The film does not bother to explain how this came to be, even though Mary and the show’s producer had told Jack that he would be finished in show business if he opted for his father instead of the play. Yet, in typical Hollywood “happy‐ending” style, Jack has been able to hold onto his Jewish heritage and still assimilate. A more consistent motif of the film that expresses the same idea is, again, tied to sound. Many people tell Jack that, unlike the average jazz singer, he sings “with a tear in his voice,” a description of his singing that associates his uniqueness directly with his training as a Jewish cantor. Jack is a better singer because of his ethnic heritage, even as he must assimilate to some degree in order to find acceptance. Produced by American Jews in Hollywood, The Jazz Singer endorses Jewish assimilation into whiteness, but not by necessarily denying Jewish identity in the process.
Veiled and Reviled: Arabs on Film in America
Like all of the cultural groups discussed throughout this book, the five million people of Arab descent living in America today are a highly diverse group of people. They can trace their national heritages to over 20 nations that stretch across Northern Africa (such as Morocco, Libya, Egypt) and onto the Arabian Peninsula (including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq). The Arab world overlaps with the Middle East, which also includes Israel, Turkey, and Iran. Often what seems to define the idea of the Middle East in Western thinking is the Arabic language and/or the Muslim religion, although there are many different languages spoken and religions practiced throughout the entire region. In fact, there are more African American Muslims in the United States than Arab American Muslims, and most Lebanese Americans identify as Christians.
Much of the current strife in the Middle East is a continuation of centuries‐long struggles between religions, tribes, and nations. During the Middle Ages, Christian Europeans waged war against Muslims (and others) in an attempt to claim and colonize the Holy Lands. These so‐called Crusades eventually gave way to more modern forms of colonialism, wherein various European powers controlled the region, extracting material wealth and strategic advantages. The situation was exacerbated by the creation of the Jewish state of Israel by the United Nations in 1948. Israel was created by dividing the former British territory of Palestine; Palestine was mostly inhabited by Arabs, and they vehemently rejected the partitioning. Wars and armed conflict between Israel, Palestine, and Palestine’s Arab supporters immediately resulted and continue to this day. In yet other parts of the Middle East, corruption and greed for the area’s wealth and strategic location allowed for the rise of brutal dictators (Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Bashar al‐Assad in Syria), and most recently anti‐Western religious extremists such as the Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Much of the Middle East continues to be an unstable region filled with violent struggle, fueled by highly diverse and opposing nations, religions, cultures, and ideologies. As such, Americans of Middle Eastern descent are themselves a highly diverse group of individuals.
Intriguingly, one of the most significant things about Arab Americans onscreen in America is their relative scarcity: Hollywood has much more regularly depicted images of Middle Eastern Arabs while nearly ignoring the presence of Arab Americans. In classical Hollywood cinema, Middle Eastern Arabs could sometimes be found interacting with British or French protagonists (as soldiers, explorers, archaeologists, or tourists), images that reflected the history of European colonialism in the region. In films such as Beau Geste (1926 and 1939) and The Four Feathers (1915, 1929, 1939, and 2002), European armies battle scores of Arab tribesmen, and the films somehow make it seems as though the Arabs rather than the colonizing nations are the villainous invaders. Sultans are shown sending their armies to lay siege to the white soldiers’ fortresses, scimitars blazing and ululations rending the air to make them seem strange and terrifying. Some critics have referred to these films as “Easterns,” because their narrative tropes seem almost identical to those of the Hollywood Western, replacing bloodthirsty Indian savages with bloodthirsty Arab ones.
In other films, Arabs were sexualized figures who either enticed or otherwise served the lusts of white lead characters. Intriguingly, a number of Hollywood films show Europeans “going native” – being personally transformed by participating in Arabic culture – one aspect of Orientalist desire. As discussed more fully in chapter 6,
