{"id":41143,"date":"2015-05-17T23:22:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T23:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41143"},"modified":"2015-05-18T15:24:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T15:24:30","slug":"two-takes-on-imitation-of-life-exploitation-in-eastmancolor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41143","title":{"rendered":"Two Takes on \u2018Imitation of Life\u2019: Exploitation in Eastmancolor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Takes on \u2018Imitation of Life\u2019: Exploitation in Eastmancolor<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2015-05-14<\/p>\n

J. Hoberman<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI would have made the picture just for the title,\u201d Douglas Sirk<\/a> said of his last Hollywood production, \u201cImitation of Life<\/a>\u201d (1959). But, newly released on Blu-ray<\/a> by Universal, along with its original version<\/a>, directed in 1934 by John M. Stahl<\/a>, the movie is far more than an evocative turn of phrase.<\/p>\n

This tale of two single mothers, one black and the other white \u2014 and of maternal love, exploitation and crossing the color line \u2014 is a magnificent social symptom. Both versions were taken from the 1933 best seller<\/a> by Fannie Hurst<\/a>, a generally maligned popular writer if one whose novels, the historian Ann Douglas<\/a> notes in \u201cTerrible Honesty<\/a>,\u201d her study of Jazz Age<\/a> culture, constitute \u201ca neglected source on the emergence of modern feminine sexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Stahl\u2019s \u201cImitation of Life\u201d movie was certainly the \u201cshameless tear-jerker\u201d that the New York Times reviewer Andre Sennwald<\/a> called it, as well as a prime example of the melodramatic mode known in the Yiddish theater<\/a> as \u201cmama-drama.\u201d But it was not without progressive intent and, released during the second year of the New Deal<\/a>, addressed issues of race, class and gender almost head-on.<\/p>\n

The white protagonist, Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert<\/a>), is a not-quite-self-made businesswoman; the most complex and sympathetic character, Peola Johnson (Fredi Washington<\/a>), is a casualty of American racism, both institutionalized and internalized. Behind both is the self-effacing powerhouse known as Aunt Delilah (Louise Beavers<\/a>), who is the light-skinned Peola\u2019s black mother and the source of the secret recipe on which Bea founds her pancake empire \u2014 not to mention its smiling trademark.<\/p>\n

Happily ripped off by her white partner for the rest of her life, Beavers embodies exploited African-American labor, something the movie acknowledges by giving her a funeral on the level of a state occasion. The real martyr, however, is Washington\u2019s Peola. The film historian Donald Bogle<\/a> called her \u201ca character in search of a movie\u201d \u2014 but the tragic mulatto<\/a> is the only part Hollywood would allow this accomplished and politically aware actress to play. In effect, she dramatizes her own segregated condition on screen…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Takes on \u2018Imitation of Life\u2019: Exploitation in Eastmancolor The New York Times 2015-05-14 J. Hoberman \u201cI would have made the picture just for the title,\u201d Douglas Sirk said of his last Hollywood production, \u201cImitation of Life\u201d (1959). But, newly released on Blu-ray by Universal, along with its original version, directed in 1934 by John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[234,20091,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-41143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-imitation-of-life","tag-j-hoberman","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41143","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=41143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}