# Mammy? Offensive? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 27, 2006, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447 "2006-05-27T14:31:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447/21 "2006-05-27T21:02:47Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] **The Jazz Singer** – or, to be precise – the massive popular success of the film, which brought Warner Brothers back from the brink of bankruptcy – is the first talking film that _mattered_. Others were experiments; **The Jazz Singer** transformed movies. No matter how much you nitpick, it is the film that made talkies possible and put an end to the silent cinema. [/QUOTE] Like I said. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447/22 "2006-05-28T08:14:10Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] Me, I consider _Sunrise_–a far, far greater movie than the nearly unwatchable _Jazz Singer_–as the first feature sound film. No dialogue, but synchronized score and sounde effects. [/QUOTE] The first Vitaphone feature was _Don Juan_ (1926), with a synchronized music score and sound effects — a year before _Sunrise_ or _The Jazz Singer_. I enjoy _The Jazz Singer_\*, by the way, and have seen it several times. Of course Al Jolson is hammy and over the top sometimes, but that was a big part of his appeal. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447/23 "2006-05-28T08:17:19Z")
[QUOTE=priapus] Mammy is an offensive word, like squaw.noun [/QUOTE] You’ve been the victim of a [false etymology](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000317.html). ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447/24 "2006-05-28T10:57:35Z")
[QUOTE=Rodgers01] Even if he hadn’t sung it in blackface, I think the song would still be uncomfortably un-PC today. I think the mammy character (basically, think of Mammy in Gone With the Wind) is associated with old stereotyped caricatures of African-Americans along the lines of Uncle Toms and “pickaninnies”. If a white kid today had a black nanny, he would never be taught to call her his “mammy.” \*\*A quick google search indicates that the lyrics of the song may have originally meant to refer to the singer’s birth _mother_, not his “mammy.” Even so, I think most people today would not hear it that way. [/QUOTE] A hijack on this re: “pickaninnies”: When I first moved to NW NJ from Florida (daughter of a Southern belle from NC), imagine my horror when I picked up the newspaper and read a headline that said “Picatinny History”. I had to do a double-take and was of course embarrassed when it was explained to me that “Picatinny” was a military arsenal in NJ. :wally VCNJ~ ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447/25 "2006-05-28T18:39:26Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon] The first Vitaphone feature was _Don Juan_ (1926), with a synchronized music score and sound effects — a year before _Sunrise_ or _The Jazz Singer_. I enjoy _The Jazz Singer_\*, by the way, and have seen it several times. Of course Al Jolson is hammy and over the top sometimes, but that was a big part of his appeal. [/QUOTE] I’d forgotten about \*Don Juan, \*which, while a hoot, can you blame me? \*Sunrise \*is one of the great masterpieces of movie history, so it’s \*my \*first. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mammy-offensive/358447.md?page=1)