In 1955, Marty McFly inspired the song “Johnny B. Goode” at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance in Hill Valley. In reality, though, this song would not come into existence until three years later. The aforementioned performance, evidently, takes place in both Back to the Future Part I and II starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.
Similarly in the 1920s, jazz music was making its way through the roaring twenties thanks to the African Americans living in New York City, specifically Harlem. At one of Jay Gatsby’s parties in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the dancing and drinking guests heard Vladimir Tostoff’s “Jazz History of the World.”
A key word in the introductory paragraph is “inspired,” for although McFly was inspired to play that song, he inspired Marvin Berry to call his cousin, “Chuck,” who resulted in being inspired to “write” and perform “Johnny B. Goode.” In Marty McFly performing this song prior to its existence in the world, Chuck Berry’s genius is erased, and he can then be interpreted as a plagiarist rather than an inventor and innovator of early rock and roll, derived from the blues music of decades before. Indeed, Marty McFly performed Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” but he did not cite it as someone else’s, being unaware of how this event would cause a chain reaction in the space-time continuum, but enough on the topic of time travel.
Moving into Fitzgerald’s work, we see highly racist descriptions of black people, both in animalistic or derogatory terms. In this world, the 1920s, slavery has ended, but racism is as alive as the growing music and parties of the times. The music that surrounds the airwaves and the parties, as seen from Fitzgerald’s texts, is jazz. Originating from the rhythm and blues music of Louisiana – narrowing down to New Orleans – this was the music of the African Americans. While crooning about their sorrows of slavery and discrimination, as well as life itself in the sense that poets write about whatever they please, this music dominated the American South. However, what does this have to do Back to the Future and The Great Gatsby?
Before the performance of Tostoff’s song, “Jazz History of the World,” the orchestra leader announces condescendingly to the crowd at Gatsby’s party that this performance has gained some notoriety and has been a “big sensation” (Fitzgerald, 49). The condescension comes from the fact that jazz is the African American sound, and that it is only natural to be condescending and racist during the 1920s to the black people. However, Fitzgerald cleverly is anti-racist in the name he chooses as the creator of this piece: Vladimir Tostoff. This is name sounds more Russian than that of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. However, this is not a measure of how Russian a name is; rather, we see that in using a stereotypical Russian name to create a piece of jazz music is equivalent to saying that Marty McFly, a white teenaged boy, created a piece of early rock and roll music that was originally created by a black man.
In this, the 21st century now, there has been a reversal of this erasure. Whether this is good or bad is, in itself, another debate and topic of analysis. Today, it is acceptable to replace Caucasians with black people in the media. We have seen, specifically in superhero films, black actors replace white characters, such as Michael Clarke Duncan as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in Daredevil (2003), Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and, most recently and controversially, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2015). Either way, there is controversy that surrounds the replacement of the original. In sum, the evidently appropriate thing to do is to do what university professors ask their students to do: cite their work as not their own, and portray things as they are to be portrayed. Johnny B. Goode is Chuck Berry’s, as “Jazz History of the World” is not Vladirmir Tostoff’s.
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Originally, I wanted to title this post "White is the New Black: The Erasure of Chuck Berry and Jazz Founders," but I feel that it opens the gateway for a thread of posts in regards to the theme of "white as the new black." Thus, write away, my friends. I look forward to seeing your posts.
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