{"id":39005,"date":"2014-12-20T17:59:27","date_gmt":"2014-12-20T17:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39005"},"modified":"2014-12-21T16:46:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-21T16:46:57","slug":"ming-wongs-imitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39005","title":{"rendered":"Ming Wong\u2019s Imitations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ming Wong\u2019s <\/strong><\/em>Imitations<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World<\/a>
\nVolume 9, Number 2<\/a> (2014) Special Topic: Contemporary Remediations of Race and Ethnicity in German Visual Cultures
\n32 pages<\/p>\n

Barbara Mennel<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English
\nUniversity of Florida<\/em><\/p>\n

The article \u201cMing Wong\u2019s Imitations\u201d analyzes the installation Life of Imitation<\/em>, created by visual artist Ming Wong<\/a> for the Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale<\/a> in 2009. Life of Imitation<\/em> restages a key scene from Douglas Sirk\u2019s<\/a> 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a>, in which the African American character Annie visits her daughter Sarah Jane who is passing as white<\/a>. In Wong\u2019s restaging three male actors from different ethnic groups in Singapore<\/a> reenact the scene, but switch roles at every cut. The article traces the shifts from the original literary source, Fannie Hurst\u2019s<\/a> 1933 Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a> to John M. Stahl\u2019s<\/a> 1934 film of the same title<\/a> to Sirk\u2019s version. Emphasizing melodrama\u2019s organizing structure of \u201ctoo late,\u201d I show how Sirk shifted the melodramatic emphasis from the white mother\/daughter pair\u2019s romantic conflict to the African American mother\/daughter pair\u2019s racial conflict. Addressing the question whether such a shift implies a progressive politics, I turn to the contentious discussion of Sirk\u2019s earlier film work in Weimar<\/a> and Nazi Germany<\/a>, pointing to ideological and formal continuities.<\/p>\n

In contrast to these significant shifts in the different instantiations of the text, I propose that the different versions share the subordination and disavowal of ethnic difference in order to construct a racial binary, which then becomes the setting of the passing narrative organized around the \u2018tragic mulatta<\/a>\u2019. I illustrate my argument with the instances of ethnic passing of the writers, directors, and actors involved in the different versions of the text. However, I also show the appeal of racial passing narratives can have for a gay camp imagination, identification, and appropriation. I conclude the article with a discussion of Wong\u2019s double move in Life of Imitation<\/em> of returning ethnic bodies that have been excised from the original diegesis to their significance and appropriating the gendered melodrama through cross-dressing. After a survey of the term \u201cremediation\u201d as it emerged from the discussion of new media, I show that Wong\u2019s piece belongs to a group of works by visual artists who remake film in digital media in the environment of the art space. I conclude with reading the effect of rotating the actors at each cut, which does not subvert spatial and temporal continuity, but challenges spectators\u2019 perception of ethnicity and gender, and produces unstable identities.<\/p>\n