Lecture 7: The Drama of Race Passing

Lecture 7:The Drama of Race Passing Professor Michael Green Imitation of Life (1959) Directed by Douglas Sirk

Previous Lecture • What is Assimilation? • Blackface and Social Problem films • Body and Soul: Jewish Politics and Masculinity • Writing about Film: Gathering Ideas for Your Argument

This Lecture • Melodrama and the “Woman’s Film” • Passing, Subversion and Racial Masquerade • Imitation of Life • Writing About Film: Essay Structure

Melodrama and the “Woman’s Film” Lecture 7: Part I Stella Dallas (1937) Directed by King Vidor

What is Melodrama? • A genre of drama, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, sensational plot and interpersonal conflicts. • Melodrama is the opposite of realism.

Inequitable Social Circumstances Also refers to the “popular romances that depicted a virtuous individual (usually a woman) or couple (usually lovers) victimized by repressive and inequitable social circumstances.” • Thomas Schatz. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System

What is Social Melodrama? • A form that synthesizes social criticism with melodrama, giving readers the pleasure of seeing the follies of people and institutions while enjoying the triumph of virtue and the punishment of vice. • The form is usually characterized by striking reversals of fortune that reveal the conventional moral vision that a particular culture/era wishes to see affirmed.

Subversive Ideology • Critics in the 1950s often dismissed popular melodramas as trivial and campy “tearjerkers” for women. • However, critics in the 1970 began to read melodramas – and particularly those directed by Douglas Sirk – as at least partially subverting dominant ideology on such matters as the social roles of class, gender, and race. • To subvert is to overthrow or undermine an establishment such as a government.

Summary: Genre Exclusion Historically, melodrama tends to be the only genre in which women are central; it is often referred to as “the women’s film.” Women are generally excluded from the central roles in other Hollywood genres. Oedipal issues drive melodrama which features such themes as Illicit love relationships, mother/child relationships and husband/wife relationships. Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Stella Dallas. 9

Other Elements of Melodrama Women are often in conflict between career and domestic responsibilities. Emphasis on physical beauty, especially for women – clothes, jewelry, hair, make-up. Extravagant visual style/mise-en-scene that emphasizes fantasy, lush color, stylized sets that are not meant to be realistic. In a role reversal, men tend to be stock, marginalized or supporting figures.

Examples of Hollywood Melodramas from the 1950s Pinky (1949) Elia Kazan The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) Vincente Minnelli Magnificent Obsession (1954) Douglas Sirk All that Heaven Allows (1955) Sirk Imitation of Life (1959) Sirk 11

Passing, Subversion and Racial Masquerade Lecture 7: Part II Soul Man (1986) Directed by Steve Miner

Summary: What is Blackface? Blackface is a performance tradition in which white actors don black make-up to impersonate black people, usually in a negative or stereotypical manner. Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy -entertainment centered on blackface - played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. 13

Popularity of Blackface Blackfaceminstrelsy was extremely popular in the U.S. since its inception, retaining its popularity well into the 1940s. Many films from both the silent and sound era featured white actors in blackface. It was commonly featured in musicals. As blacks began to score legal and social victories against racism and to assert political power, minstrelsy lost popularity. Pause the lecture; watch the clip from The Birth of a Nation. 14

Racial Masquerade A person from one “race” attempting to pass as another through make-up and performance, often with the intent, unlike the early days of blackface, to better understand and sympathize with the “other.” Post-WWII racial masquerade became self-conscious to increase racial awareness & challenge prejudice, such as in Gentlemen's Agreement (1947). It was invariably from the white perspective. 15

Racial Masquerade is a Fantasy “Cinematic fantasies about white race switching are usually liberal and well intentioned, based on genuine ideals. They may even have a liberating effect in making Americans more tolerant. However, because of their mixed (and largely unconscious) motives, they provide a fantastic, unworkable solution to the American racial divide.” Hernán Vera, Andrew Gordon, Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness 16

Sincere Fictions A Sincere Fiction Passing is Redemptive Passing Enriches/Heals Whiteness Passing Will Lead to a Cure to Racism Fail to Illustrate Nature of Racism Institutional Basis for Racism Question but Restate White Superiority Normalize the White Male Gaze 17

Racism is Institutional “The problem, of course, is that in matters of racism, we are not dealing simply with individual feelings but with institutional structures and widespread, social ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Passing as a person for another race or ethnic group will not cure white racism any more than male cross-dressing will eliminate sexism and patriarchy.” – Hernán Vera, Andrew Gordon, Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness 18

Downward Mobility “The underlying assumption is that white passing, unlike black passing, is not upwardly but downwardly mobile. From the white point of view, such passers are temporarily giving up white privilege. Therefore, they must either be noble white liberals attempting to learn or to teach lessons of racial tolerance – the stuff of melodrama – or else comic tricksters or fools.” Hernán Vera, Andrew Gordon, Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness 19

Unequal Stakes The difference between whites passing for black and blacks passing for white is that the white passers live in no fear of being exposed, as they will simply return to the top of the racial hierarchy. Blacks passing for white, on the other hand, especially historically, have everything to lose if they are found out – not only will they return to their lower status, but they will be punished for trying to attain whiteness. Pause the lecture and watch clip #1 from Imitation of Life. 20

Soul Man Soul Man (1986) is an example of a movie in which a white man passes for black. Here the masquerade is played for comedy – blackface as a farcical, frat-boy romp – and the plot centers on the enlightenment of the white hero. Despite its liberal pretensions, the movie reinforces the reality that rich, young white men can get away with breaking social rules, but poor young black men cannot. Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Soul Man. 21

Final Point Racial passing films can also be seen to “have a subversive potential because they imply that race is not an absolute or essential quality but a matter of performance.” In other words, they serve to illuminate race as a historical, constructed ideology created to assert hegemony rather than something biological or fixed. 22

Imitation of Life Lecture 7: Part III Imitation of Life (1959) Directed by Douglas Sirk

The Movie • Released in 1959; was a a huge hit. • Stars Lana Turner and directed by Douglas Sirk, the preeminent filmmaker of the genre. • Based on a 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst; a 1934 version was directed by John M. Stahl. • Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner received Oscar nominations for supporting actress – one was black, one played a black woman. • Effectively ended the women’s picture in this form, as melodramas would move to television.

Progressive/subversive Elements • Strong female protagonist at the movie’s center who imposes her will on all the men in the movie. • Strong friendship/family bonds between white and black characters. • Prominent black character – Annie – who achieves some agency and financial success and who carries the moral weight of the film. • Overtly criticizes the cruelty and unfairness of white racism.

Traditional Representation • Equates female success and desirability with whiteness and traditional beauty. • Upholds men as the controllers of social and business institutions. • Upholds racial hierarchy and perpetuates an ideology of whiteness. • Criticizes working women by inferring that Lora’s success has made her a bad mother. • Links black femininity with sexual deviance. Pause the lecture and watch clip #2 from Imitation of Life.

Equating race and Sexuality “Yet in each film’s representation of the transgressive woman – the black daughter who looks white, and who, because of the contradiction between being and seeming which defines her, can fit comfortably into neither culture – there is a correspondence between feminine sexuality and alterity which results in a sexualization of the radical ‘otherness’ of the black woman.” • Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Imitation(s) of Life: The Black Woman’s Double Determination as Troubling “Other”

The Double Cultural Other “In each version . . . [the black daughter] is expressing both the racial self-hatred of the mulatto and the sexual self-hatred of the female in patriarchal culture. Race and sex forever doom these characters to alien status in patriarchal society. [They are] doubly determined by an existence as cultural other” • Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Imitation(s) of Life: The Black Woman’s Double Determination as Troubling “Other”

The Place of the Black Daughter The movie suggests passing is socially disastrous and even deviant, since in Sara Jane can only find work as a sex worker. In the end, the movie makes it clear that the only place for Sara Jane is in her mother’s role as a servant to white women, thus reinforcing whiteness and racial hierarchy - and perpetuating a long cinematic tradition (Gone with the Wind, Blonde Venus, etc.) Pause the lecture and watch clip #3 from Imitation of Life. 29

Intrinsically Alien “ Although her appearance and her upbringing may give her the desire and the ability to pass for white, she must not forget who and what she is . . . Sara Jane’s mistake is to insist that adoption means assimilation; her transgression is to resist her own contingent status . . . Annie and Sara Jane can remain as adopted members of the American family: invited, appreciated, but intrinsically alien.” • Marina Heung, What’s the Matter with Sara Jane?: Daughters and Mothers in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life

Writing About Film: Essay Structure Imitation of Life (1934) Directed by John M. Stahl Lecture 6: Part IV

Summary of Interpretive Writing • An interpretive claim presents an argument about a film’s meaning and significance. • These kind of claims address a film’s themes and abstract ideas, its social relevance, its historical context, and its influence, among other topics. • But they do more than identify themes; they go further, making an argument about what a film does with those themes.

Summary: The Thesis Statement • A thesis statement is the central claim of your paper - an assertion or argument that you try to prove through evidence. You must support the thesis statement in every paragraph and section of your paper.

Summary: Noting Outstanding Formal Techniques • As you watch a film, you should also jot down brief, accurate descriptions of the various film techniques used. • Once you have determined the overall organizational structure of the film, you can identify salient techniques, trace out patterns of techniques across the whole film, and propose functions for them.

Structure of your Essay • Broadly speaking, an argumentative essay has this underlying structure: • Introduction: Which can be background information (context) or a vivid example of your topic leading up to your thesis. • Body: Reasons to believe your thesis – evidence and examples in support of it. • Conclusion: Restatement of your thesis and discussion of its broader implications.

The Introduction Critical papers must include a short introduction that concludes with your thesis statement. The introduction seeks to lead the reader into the argument to come. They usually include some contextual information. Sometimes introductions can be longer than one paragraph, but not usually in a short paper (2-5 pages).

Paragraphs Your paper must be organized into paragraphs—the building blocks of any piece of writing. The introduction is 1-2 paragraphs; the body several, depending on length; and the conclusion 1-2 paragraphs. Do not double space between paragraphs. Do not write your entire paper as one paragraph!

The Body Normally, the introduction does not include concrete evidence in support of the thesis. It is in the body, that the writer begins to offer reasons to believe the thesis. The reasons are backed up by evidence and examples from the movie and extra-textual sources such as other films, scholarly readings, books and interviews.

Example In Annie’s death scene in Imitation of Life, aesthetic elements serve once again to empower whiteness and weaken racial minorities. For instance, in strategic low-angle shots, white characters tower over Annie as she dies; meanwhile deep focus photography allows us to clearly see a photo of Sara Jane, Annie’s fallen daughter and the implicit cause of her death.

Film Language As in the previous slide, be sure to use technical film language when analyzing shots, scenes and sequences. This includes how cinematography, editing, narrative, sound and mise-en-scene serve to convey meaning and support your thesis. Remember, form and content are always linked.

The Conclusion The conclusion of your argumentative essay should restate your thesis – skillfully, not repetitively – and remind your reader of its value. The ending is also an opportunity for you to try for some eloquence, a telling quotation, historical context, etc. In other words, you should make your conclusion memorable.

End of Lecture 7 Next Lecture: How Whiteness Won the Western

Lecture 7: The Drama of Race Passing