YMMV / I Love to Singa

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Fritz changes his Fantasy-Forbidding Father attitude and lets Owl Jolson sing jazz... but only after he impresses the judges on a radio program. Some commenters point out that his change of heart may not be genuine kindness, but rather him realizing that he can make more money off his son by letting him sing popular music. Though to some, Fritz did have a bit of change when he immediately regrets kicking his son out of the house and being very worried about him just as much as Owl Jolson's mom is.
• Awesome Music: I love to Sing-a, 'bout the moon-a and the June-a and the Spring-a... The fact Tex Avery managed to fit the song, which was mandated to be included in the cartoon^note  The Merrie Melodies series required each cartoon to be based around a song in the Warner Bros. library from 1931 to early 1937 , in a manner that did not interfere with the humor of the cartoon, makes it even better.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • I Love to Singa features a talent competition, winner-take-all top prize, and a gong (well, a bell, actually) that eliminates subpar acts. While probably meant as a Shout-Out to the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, all those features also happen to describe The Gong Show 40 years before it came into existence. Not only that, but the radio station's call letters are GONG.
  • The father having the same sort of reaction to this cute, rather tame jazz song that parents would later reserve for rock and roll, Heavy Metal, hard Rap music, or whatever other moral panic has arisen in the years since now comes off as even more of an overreaction than originally intended.
• Parody Displacement:
  • It's one of the most notable early Merrie Melodies, as well as early examples of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones's work. The short was popular in its time and continued to get fair amounts of exposure decades later through home video compilations and Cartoon Network playing at least the radio show segment as filler. All despite that the characters didn't become Looney Tunes regulars. Yet this is largely academic/historical now, so some people know it first from the audio sample used in the pilot episode of South Park. Another factor of awareness may come from a Running Gag in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, where snippets of the cartoon appears as the Chairman of Acme repeatedly attempts to get his crazy TV setup working.
  • This short was a parody of the then-popular film The Jazz Singer. The animated short has lived on as a classic, but The Jazz Singer has not. It's largely a silent film (though it is known as "the first sound film" due to the singing), it is not in color, and even most damaging to even classic film fans is the infamous blackface scene. I Love To Singa has received Values Resonance while the film it parodies is a product of its time.
• Values Dissonance: Owl Jolson's father disapproves of jazz. Considering Owl is a kid, the song he's forced to sing, "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes", isn't that much better.

---