“Singin’ in the Rain" and "Illusions": the Segregated Reality of Film Production

Both Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and "Illusions" (1982) are meta-texts on the technological manipulation behind sound film and particularly film musical. Not only are they about the synchronization of sound and image into an illusory whole, but they also draw subtle attention to their own use of this device. In Gene Kelly's film, the final shot shows us a billboard of the new feature that Don and Kathy will be starring in – Singin' in the Rain - ironically reminding viewers that the production of the film they have just watched involved the same technical manipulation and manufacturing of illusions that are foregrounded in the film's narrative. Just as Kathy is dubbing Lina’s voice in the story, the actress who plays Kathy, Debbie Reynolds, is not the one actually singing. The voice of “Would You” and “Good Morning” belongs to Betty Noyes.

Meanwhile, it is the opening shot of Dash’s short that is important because it shows us a coil of filmstrip with the word illusions written on it. What we are about to see is precisely that: a synchronization of onscreen presence and behind-the-scenes voice (which we learn from the credits is actually Ella Fitzgerald’s.) That the actress playing Esther (Rosanne Katon) is not really singing is hinted at in the scene where she records the song – as her voice fades out at certain moments and we see only her lips moving. This detail, however, can easily be overlooked; the film credits thus become essential in bringing our attention to the real identity of this voice.

In Singin’ in the Rain, we see how the credits become an issue of dispute as Lina vehemently protests the inclusion of Kathy’s name, despite the fact that she is the real voice behind the production. The film unfolds in the era of Hollywood’s transition to sound, when the previous stars of the silent years suddenly found themselves complete amateurs. There is an amusing scene in Kelly's film, where the director endlessly tries positioning Lina’s microphone to reduce external noise and make the performance realistic, but to no avail. When Lina taps Don on the shoulder with the fan, we hear a clunk, and every time she grabs her pearls, a loud clatter.

The reason these moments strike the audience as egregious is that, as scholar John Belton puts it, “Sound is always perceived through the image.” In other words, one would have simply imagined sound while watching a silent film; there was nothing that could conflict with the viewer’s imagination as it filled in the gaps. It is really the “sound in one’s head” that sound film aims to duplicate, and which it fails to do in the production starring Lina. The result is that she looks hopelessly untalented with the arrival of this new technology. She is what Slavoj Zižek describes as “a ridiculous, impotent figure destroyed by the advent of the Word in cinema – gesticulating and striving desperately for the lost balance of the silent era.”

Julie Dash’s "Illusions" also reflects on the practice of sound mixing and how it is “the sound of the image that Hollywood strives to recreate” (Belton). Esther Jeeter, the un-credited black singer whose voice is used for the studio’s production, talks with African American studio producer, Mignon Dupree, explaining that her voice would normally be recorded beforehand and that this was the first time she was going to match her voice to the white actress’s lips. The recording of image and sound constitute two separate events requiring two separate presences, but it is the latter that is always phased out in the final product – made through technology to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The studio’s “seamless” projections emerge from what is actually a segregated syncing process where Esther must disembody herself to bring the white figure onscreen to life. This in turn parallels the reality of segregation belying American society’s "wartime unity" (the mythicized image propagated by the studios during this time.) The war drew heavily on the black demographic, only to overlook its contribution and its calls for equality during the post-war years. It also exposes the racist reality of Hollywood production in the much later decade when Dash was making her film: the drastic underrepresentation of African Americans onscreen in Hollywood, despite their prevalence and centrality behind the scenes and in the films’ soundtracks.

As Zižek would explain it, Esther is treated as “an object excluded from the symbolic order” of society. The only way she can occupy a place within this order is by becoming a vehicle for its illusions. In the film industry, this means playing the role of an unseen intermediary between the audience and the stars onscreen. In Singin’ in the Rain, Kathy occupies a similar position as the disembodied voice that ensures Lina’s charismatic persona. Kathy is both conduit and obstacle, sustaining yet threatening Don and Lina’s relationship, ensuring yet jeopardizing the seamlessness of the film musical’s final product. As the voice – the force of rupture – she is a double-edged sword. “Cinema,” as Zizek writes, “never quite succeeds in masking the work that produces it.”

The obvious difference between the two films lies in the reaction that this rupture elicits. The audience in Singin’ in the Rain comes to adore Kathy. Following her performance, she becomes a star, visibly incorporated into the symbolic order. Esther, meanwhile, is met with disdain and discomfort when she enters the studio’s offices to sign her contract. Now that her voice is no longer unobtrusively attached to “the proper object” (a white actress) – now that she is a visible presence – the studio treats her as a threat to the seamless product of its segregated production.

While Singin’ in the Rain might certainly lend itself as much to a gender studies analysis as to a sound-production one, "Illusions" is clearly a more politically charged and daring film. It exposes the technological apparatus of film in order to develop it as a metaphor for the enduring reality of racial inequality when the film was released – including the almost total absence of African Americans in the entertainment industry. At the same time, however, it suggests, that social revolution cannot take place but through this very apparatus of oppression.

Mignon, in her conversation with the Lieutenant, reflects aloud how she belongs to the studios that mask social realities, but then asserts her goal of one day using her position of influence to make films that will rupture these illusions and speak to other experiences. The film’s drama, it should be noted, is set during WWII, when it was extremely rare for a woman of any race to hold an executive position in a studio. WWII was also the period in which Hollywood – controlled by the Office of War Information – sought to keep the home front unified by avoiding the reality of racial tensions. This meant that much of what was coming out of the studios was propaganda, or illusions – another meaning evoked by Dash’s clever title.

It is Mignon’s encounter with Esther that awakens her to the fact that she has not yet used her position to make films through which African American voices can be heard and through which the studio’s illusions of racial equality and freedom can be challenged. At least as of now, she has adopted society’s mentality of denial and dissimulation, rising through the studio by concealing her identity as a black woman. During her phone conversation with her mom, when she expresses doubt that she will be able to come home for the holidays, we see a patriotic poster behind her that reads, “I am so American,” a reminder of this blatant denial/disconnect in which she lives just to play a role that society would not otherwise accept her in. Esther, who also retains her role in the studio through self-effacement, holds up a mirror to the truth of Mignon’s condition.

It is also through Esther’s performance that Mignon grasps anew the incredible technological power of cinema to produce the illusions that fundamentally shape, if not dictate, the way an entire society thinks. At the end, she tells the Lieutenant that he “occupies a very powerful position because he gets to decide what version of events goes down as ‘History’ and what version of reality people see and believe in.” Cinema’s central role in mythicizing history is evoked throughout "Illusions," particularly during the opening montage of combat clips that precedes the diegetic story. Before the story begins, the characters are thus inscribed in a historical context that shapes them. Mignon’s character arc involves taking on this awareness of her cultural rootedness, which belies her attempt to be a radically self-determined woman able to transcend her social realities. Her freedom from illusions means “accepting this chain” (Paul Gilroy) that tethers and entwines her personal identity to a broader socio-cultural one.