Abstract
A comparative analysis of the 1934 John M. Stahl film Imitation of Life and émigré director Douglas Sirk’s 1959 version allows for a more precise definition of how visible and invisible whiteness can be defined and represented in the cinema. The chapter argues that by looking at Stahl’s decisions concerning the generic structures he uses throughout the film, the visibility of whiteness that dominates in the first half of the film is rendered invisible by changing the guiding genre of the film from melodrama to romantic comedy halfway through the film. The chapter equally argues that Sirk’s focus on “the colored angle” allows for a different perspective on cinematic representations of white supremacy.
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- 1.
Sirk’s comment on his filmmaking choices in Imitation of Life, quoted in Jon Halliday , Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (London: Faber and Faber, 2010/1971), Kindle edition. A similar reference to this quote is given in Paul Willemen’s seminal article, “Distantiation and Douglas Sirk,” Screen 12, no. 2 (Summer 1971): 63–67.
- 2.
Christine Gledhill Ed., Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, (London: British Film Institute), 1987.
- 3.
Thomas Elsaesser , “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,” in Christine Geldhill, ed., Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film (London: British Film Institute, 1987), 43–69. Gledhill’s echoing argument is in pages 1–5 of her introduction.
- 4.
As pointed out by Daniel Iztkovitz in his introduction of the 2004 reprint of the novel (critical response to the novel surprised Fannie Hurst because it signaled a shift in her thinking and writing from a simple appeal to women readers towards a politics of race. Due to her popularity, this shift proved to be unsettling to her critics. Fannie Hurst , Imitation of Life, ed. Daniel Itzkovitz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), vii–xlv).
- 5.
Notable but certainly not exhaustive treatments of the 1934 film include Sterling A. Brown’s seminal review “Once a Pancake” in A Son’s Return: Selected Essays of Sterling A. Brown, ed. Richard Yarborough. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996), 287–290; Susan Courtney , “Picturizing Race: On Visibility, Racial Knowledge, and Cinematic Belief” in Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903–1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 142–169; Richard Dyer, “Four Films of Lana Turner,” in Lucy Fischer, ed., Imitation of Life (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 186–206; Anna Everett , Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); bell hooks , “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 115–131; Tom Ryan , “Obsession, Imitations and Subversiveness, Part Two: Imitation of Life,” Senses of Cinema 77 (December 2015). http://sensesofcinema.com/2015/feature-articles/imitation-of-life-adaptations/; and Miriam Thaggert, “Divided Images: Black Female Spectatorship and John Stahl’s Imitation of Life,” African American Review 32, no. 3 (1998): 481–491.
- 6.
Notable contributions here would be the article by Willemen , “Distantiation and Douglas Sirk,” 63–67; Laura Mulvey , “Notes on Sirk and Melodrama” in Gledhill , ed., Home Is Where the Heart Is, 75–82; and the Cahiers du cinéma special issue on Douglas Sirk, Cahiers du cinéma: Douglas Sirk, Jacques Demy, Ruy Guerra, (avril 1967), 189.
- 7.
Fanny Hurst, Imitation of Life, Ed. Daniel Itzkovitz, (Durham: Duke University Press), 2004. Henry Louis Gates’ comment on the back cover of the reprint notes that “Although it is a ‘white novel’ Imitation of Life is certainly a part of the African American canon.”
- 8.
Susan B. Courtney , Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Race and Gender, 1903–1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 145.
- 9.
Hortense E. Simmons, “ Sterling A. Brown’s Literary Chronicles,” African American Review 31, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 443–447.
- 10.
Donald Bogle , Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks (New York: Viking Press, 1973), 82.
- 11.
Dyer , “Lana: Four Films of Lana Turner,” 203. Dyer also emphasizes that her change in living quarters is accompanied by a change in wardrobe, making the character Lora more and more like the real-life star, Lana Turner.
- 12.
Halliday , Sirk on Sirk. Location 2612.
- 13.
Jeremy G. Butler, “Imitation of Life: Stahl and Sirk”, JumpCut: A Review of Contemporary Media 32 (April 1987): 25–28. 26. https:www.ejumpcut.org.
- 14.
Halliday , Sirk on Sirk. Location 2681.
- 15.
Halliday , Sirk on Sirk. Location 2599. The following quotes from Sirk in his conversations with Halliday are in sequence starting from location 2599 to 2625.
- 16.
Itzkovitz, Imitation of Life, xxxiii.
- 17.
“Distantiation and Douglas Sirk”, Screen, Volume 12, July 1971, 63–67, 64.
- 18.
Halliday , Sirk on Sirk. Location 2606.
- 19.
In “Art Cinema as Institution Redux: Art Houses, Film Festivals and Film Studies,” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television, October 18, 2010, David Andrews specifies in his opening that one distinction between Bordwell’s and Neale’s treatment of art cinema concerns whether it should be considered as strictly linked to narrative or also to genre.
- 20.
Dyer , “Lana: Four Films of Lana Turner,” 203.
- 21.
Hurst , Imitation of Life. Both quotes in this section are on page 75.
- 22.
E. Ann Kaplan, “Mothering, Feminism and Representation: The Maternal in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film 1910–1940,” in Gledhill , ed., Home Is Where the Heart Is, 131.
- 23.
Hurst , Imitation of Life, 219.
- 24.
It is interesting to note that Diana of the Crossways, the protagonist of the 1885 George Meredith novel of the same title, was a fiercely motivated woman who was determined to live independently after failing to get her husband to follow her in her ambitious efforts to succeed in the world of society.
- 25.
Halliday , Sirk on Sirk. Location 2606.
- 26.
R. W. Fassbender, “Six Films of Douglas Sirk,” in Fischer, ed., Imitation of Life, 244–250.
- 27.
Elsaesser , “Tales of Sound and Fury,” 62.
- 28.
Elsaesser , “Tales of Sound and Fury,” 51.
- 29.
Hurst , Imitation of Life, 247.
- 30.
Dyer , “Four Films of Lana Turner,” 205.
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Craven, A.M. (2018). “The Colored Angle”: Contending Visions of Imitation of Life. In: Visible and Invisible Whiteness. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76777-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76777-2_4
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