With regards to the Legal system of the United States, the concept of vocal appropriation has often been misunderstood. Russell A. Stamets makes note of this in his essay “Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing, Baby: The Right of Publicity and the Singing Voice.” Despite the plethora of Legalese used, he examines the problems associated with a citizen’s Right of Publicity. While it is intended to protect people (especially celebrities) from the unauthorized use of their image and writing (eg., distinctive catch-phrases), the misuse of a person’s voice is often vaguely defined. Stamets emphasizes this by referring to specific court cases from the mid-1980s and early-1990s involving the vocal misappropriation of popular singers Bette Midler (Midler v. Ford) and Tom Waits (Waits v. Frito-Lay Inc.), among others. Despite the fact that both of these singers won their cases, Stamets argues that the plaintiffs associated their voice with their identity. Furthermore, they both perceived singing for commercials as degrading. Yet, the significance of the voice in the Right of Publicity produces confusion because it does not consider the musical aspects of the voice.
Freya Jarman-Ivens also discusses vocal impersonation in the second chapter of her book Queer Voices: Technologies, Vocalities, and the Musical Flaw. In “Identification: We Go to the Opera to Eat Voice,” Jarman-Ivens explores the sense of detachment associated with the imitation of voices, albeit from the perspective of a “queer space” (meaning “strange”). In order to describe aspects of vocal imitation, such as the power of deception, she author frequently refers to Stephen Connor’s essay on ventriloquism (“What I Say Goes”) and Sigmund Freud’s methods of Psychoanalysis (particularly his perception of the “uncanny”). In terms of music, Jarman-Ivens presents and discusses a list of her favorite songs which contain possibilities for vocal imitation, such as the chorus to Sade’s “Smooth Operator (pp. 39). She additionally discusses the impact of visual and aural impersonation in the United Kingdom and United States in her examination of the British television show Stars in Their Eyes (1990-2006) and the comedy album The First Family (1962). At certain points in this chapter (pp.49, 51, 51, and 54), she also provides various diagrams for observing characteristics of vocal impersonation: noting their potential for overlapping information.
Vocal impersonation has also played a significant part in film: particularly with the concept of dubbing. In this case, as Michal Grover-Friedlander points out, dubbing tends to provide viewers with an aura of inauthenticity. Such is the case with the author’s critique of the 2002 movie Callas Forever (“The Afterlife of Maria Callas’s Voice.”). The author acknowledges that film in itself provides a fictionalized account of the opera singer Maria Callas: concentrating specifically on her last years when she destroyed her voice. Grover-Friedlander, however, primarily discusses how the director of this movie (Franco Zeffirelli) sought to utilize Callas’s original voice for the production. Zeffirelli achieved this by using older recordings of Callas’s voice in Puccini’s Tosca. This was, then, dubbed (lip-synched) by Fanny Ardant (the actress portraying Callas in Callas Forever). It is evident upon reading this article that the author frequently takes issue with the director’s approach. He notes the supposed ineffectiveness of dubbing, in part because the voice of Maria Callas is apparently well-known: at least, in operatic circles.
Mikhail Yampolsky and Larry P. Joseph raise similar concerns in “Voice Devoured: Artaud and Borges on Dubbing.” This particular article (translated from Russian to English) focuses on the writings of Antonin Artaud and Jorge Luis Borges from the 1920s to 1940s. According to the author and translator, both Artaud and Borges perceived dubbing in movies with negativity and a certain degree of paranoia. Perhaps because of the mismatch between the audio and visual elements of early cinema Artaud and Borges saw dubbing as unnatural and sinister.