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39 Chapter 2 Containing Contradictions The Cultural Logic of Interracial Intimacy IN 1934 JOHN STAHL’S remarkable film Imitation of Life engaged the politics of interracial intimacy through its exploration of a light-skinned black woman’s attempt to pass as white. But in order to do so, Peola (Fredi Washington) had to reject her dark-skinned black mother, Delilah (Louise Beavers). Stahl’s adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel concludes with Delilah’s death, attributed in part to her anguish over Peola’s rejection. Peola, by the end of the film, feels guilty for rejecting her mother. Yet the film leaves open the question of Peola’s future. Will she now freely pass as white, or will she continue to be confused? The film does not offer narrative closure. Peola is racially ambiguous and confused as a result. Imitation of Life is also about women’s economic independence. Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert) is a single mother who employs Delilah as a live-in domestic. A widower who is looking for employment, Beatrice decides to open a chain of pancake restaurants featuring Delilah’s secret recipe. Although Beatrice gets rich and moves from an apartment to a mansion , Delilah never leaves her role as domestic. Beatrice’s ideal life, however, is undermined by misdirected love. At the end of the film, Beatrice breaks off her impending engagement to a man because her daughter has romantic feelings for him. In this drama, viewers witness a failed nuclear family, unable to form because of misdirected desires. Both of these plots are concerned with “unnatural” desires. First, Peola’s ability to pass as white suggests a hidden history of interracial sexuality and violence. Because the black actress Fredi Washington plays the role of Peola, audiences are asked to consider race mixing, passing, and the limits of racial categories. The film’s lack of narrative closure with regard to 40 The Cultural Logic of Interracial Intimacy Peola’s future avoided containing this history of interracial sex and left audiences to wonder about the meaning of race if a black woman could be “mistaken” for white. Second, the film presents the unnatural desires of a child toward her mother’s fiancé. Thus the film concludes with a mother and daughter left to work out their complex relationship. What is clear, however, is that neither of them needs a man to complete their family. Marriage, in Stahl’s film, was not a requirement for family bonding. In this way, the film is remarkable for its narrative ambiguity. The film is able to probe the meaning of racial mixture and of women’s economic independence without fixing these issues within the boundaries of the nuclear family. Although the film is not without its racist assumptions—after all, Delilah is a mammy figure throughout the film—it examined the complexities of racial identity in ways that were unavailable just two decades later. If, in 1934, Stahl’s Imitation could end without much narrative closure, by 1959 such indecisiveness in matters of race and sex was not possible; the family had emerged as an ideological space that contained the possibilities of women’s economic freedom and the politics of interracial sexuality. In 1959 Douglas Sirk remade Stahl’s Imitation of Life. Sirk’s version maintained the theme of the tragic mulatta, while ignoring the drama of women’s independence . Yet two production choices severely limited the kind of political message Sirk’s film could make about race. First, Sirk cast the white actress Susan Kohner in the role of the mulatta, Sarah Jane. This casting decision showed Sirk’s assumption that audiences would feel more sympathy for a white tragic mulatta. Second, Sirk added a new conclusion to the film that answered the audience’s questions about Sarah Jane’s future after her mother dies. In the conclusion of Sirk’s film, the misdirected desires of the white daughter are ignored, and the white couple decides to marry. Sarah Jane is included in this family, suggesting that now that her mother is dead, she can fully pass for white and live a “whole” life. Sirk’s narrative choice to conclude his film with the successful formation of the white nuclear family, and Sarah Jane’s inclusion in this family, fixed Sarah Jane’s racial confusion as white. In doing so, Sirk’s film turned the drama of racial passing into a story of white assimilation. The film ignored the legacy of interracial sexual relationships that was central in...

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