{"id":2749,"date":"2009-11-03T00:28:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T00:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=2749"},"modified":"2011-06-25T20:08:31","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T20:08:31","slug":"the-ineffaceable-curse-of-cain-racial-marking-and-embodiment-in-pinky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=2749","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Ineffaceable Curse of Cain&#8221;: Racial Marking and Embodiment in Pinky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/camera_obscura\/summary\/v015\/15.1kydd.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Ineffaceable Curse of Cain&#8221;: Racial Marking and Embodiment in Pinky<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Camera Obscura<br \/>\n43 (Volume 15, Number 1),<br \/>\n2000<br \/>\npp. 94-121<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elspeth Kydd<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Look at my fingers, are not the nails of a bluish tinge . . . that is the ineffaceable curse of Cain . . .<\/em><br \/>\nDion Boucicault, <em>The Octoroon<\/em>, or<em> Life in Louisiana<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The 1949 film <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pinky_(film)\" target=\"_blank\">Pinky<\/a> presents a central mulatto character as a method for focusing attention on issues of race and racism. \u00a0As one of a series of liberal films released shortly after the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/World_war_ii\" target=\"_blank\">Second World War<\/a>, Pinky approaches issues of race and racism as &#8220;social problems.&#8221; <strong>Yet this film, as do others of this movement, demonstrates more ambiguities around racial categorizations than it offers solutions for dealing with postwar racial tensions.<\/strong> \u00a0Made during the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hayes_code\" target=\"_blank\">Hays Code<\/a>&#8216;s ban on the representation of miscegenation, Pinky confronts the issue of interracial relations more overtly than many other films of its time by focusing its narrative on the difficulties experienced by a mixed-race woman. The character of Pinky faces crises over passing, as she is torn between her &#8220;birthright&#8221; and the &#8220;mess of pottage&#8221;\u00a0 that she would gain by identifying as white.<\/p>\n<p>Pinky uses the mulatto character to gain audience sympathies, exploring the effects of Southern racism by subjecting the almost-white main character to racially motivated degradations. \u00a0Significantly, the film embodies the mulatto through a white actress, producing an ambiguous interplay of audience identifications.\u00a0 The film engages multiple deployments of the mulatto character: Through the actress, through the social context of the Hays Code, through the visual conventions it deploys, and through its narrative, which draws on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/camera_obscura\/v015\/15.1kydd.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The Ineffaceable Curse of Cain&#8221;: Racial Marking and Embodiment in Pinky Camera Obscura 43 (Volume 15, Number 1), 2000 pp. 94-121 Elspeth Kydd Look at my fingers, are not the nails of a bluish tinge . . . that is the ineffaceable curse of Cain . . . Dion Boucicault, The Octoroon, or Life in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,8,6462,394,20],"tags":[940,938,939,30,31],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-camera-obscura","tag-elspeth-kydd","tag-hays-code","tag-miscegenation","tag-pinky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}