Planning - 1940's Soundies

1940's

1940's are considered the birth of the music video, these first music videos were referred to as 'soundies'. This was the first time where black and white people appeared on the screen together, this was seen as a controversial topic as people had never seen this before and black and whites were separated for the majority of their lives due to racial discrimination. 

This is an image of a black and white couple together, which at the time was controversial because of the racial segregation.




This video shows the controversy within the 1940's. Instead of actually having a black man come on the screen, they would rather show a man with black face paint and exaggerated lips to immitate a black man. This was a very racist thing to do however it was not seen as racist because at the time there was lots of racism within America.