Abstract

Before popular culture became a term, the invention of the motion picture and ability to record music established how entertainment could become a popular medium. Along with this widening popularity, newly arrived immigrants and their offspring sought personal expression along with fortune through early forms of mass media. In addition, these artists also used their art to express a distinct place for them as citizens of a democratic American republic. By looking at two specific songs in two films, this paper will examine the "imagining" of America from an ethnic perspective, and in a medium that comprises two forms of media: music and film. In examining Al Jolson's song "My Mammy" (from the film The Jazz Singer) and Frank Sinatra's song "The House I Live In" (from the film short of the same name) we can see how still marginalized ethnic groups were trying to establish themselves in America, along with trying to imagine a place for themselves as Americans. Such establishment and imagining will also take place through what were then fresh mediums: film and recorded music. The popular aspirations of Jolson trying to assert his Jewishness through "blackface" and Sinatra trying to broker a peace between tribal ethnic rivalry will take place through the popular culture that their communities would listen to on the phonograph or see each week at the movies.