{"id":47686,"date":"2016-06-16T18:26:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T18:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47686"},"modified":"2016-06-16T18:26:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T18:26:38","slug":"imitation-of-life-melodrama-and-race-in-the-21st-century-exhibition-home-reviewed-by-sima-imsir-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47686","title":{"rendered":"Imitation of Life: Melodrama and Race in the 21st Century exhibition, HOME, reviewed by \u015eima \u0130m\u015fir Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imitation of Life: Melodrama and Race in the 21st Century exhibition, HOME, reviewed by \u015eima \u0130m\u015fir Parker<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Manchester Review<\/a>
\nManchester, England
\nMay 2016<\/p>\n

\u015eima \u0130m\u015fir Parker<\/strong><\/a>, Graduate Teaching Assistant
\nUniversity of Manchester<\/em><\/p>\n

Imitation of Life: Melodrama and Race in the 21st Century<\/a><\/em>, Home, 30 April 2016 \u2013 3 July 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe melodramatic body is a body seized with meaning\u201d writes Peter Brooks<\/a> in \u201cMelodrama, Body, Revolution.\u201d Body is not only a sight branded with meanings and symbolism, but also a sight where resistance becomes possible through the gestures and mimics where what is repressed comes back to life. Melodramatic bodies are sights of both stigma as well as expression and resistance, something that the new Home exhibition Imitation of Life: Melodrama and Race in the 21st Century<\/em> successfully brings forth by revealing the politics on and of the body, more specifically through the representations of race, gender and sexuality in the post-digital world in which we live.<\/p>\n

The exhibition opens with Sophia Al-Maria\u2019s<\/a> new work, Scarce New Flowers<\/em>, a photographic series of real products, \u201cfacial whitening creams\u201d sold in South Asia<\/a>, the Middle East<\/a> and Africa<\/a> with instructions only in Mandarin<\/a> and Arabic<\/a>. With the images of real boxes with women\u2019s faces on them growing, being repeated and distorted, the product itself becomes melodramatic and hyperbolic, acting as a stark reminder of on-going racial stereotypes (and passing<\/a>) that exist within a cross-cultural spectrum.<\/p>\n

Passing as white is a subject widely discussed around Fanny Hurst\u2019s<\/a> novel Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a> and its later movie adaptations, the work that gives its title to the exhibition. The novel was published in 1933. Almost immediately after its publication, in 1934, its first movie adaptation<\/a>, directed by John Stahl<\/a>, made it to the big screen. The life of the story however was not limited to one adaptation. In 1959, an iconic name for melodramas, Douglas Sirk<\/a>, made another adaptation<\/a> of the novel. This version, although not as loyal to the original story as John Stahl\u2019s version, gained far greater popularity. The story, narrating two women\u2019s struggle to take care of themselves and their daughters, was revealing of racial and gender stereotypes by portraying the black maid (Delilah\/Annie) as the caregiving \u201cmama\u201d whose daughter (Peola\/Sarah Jane) passes as white and the white single mother (Bae\/Lora) who chooses a successful career at the cost of not providing care for her daughter and not uniting with her loved one. In 2002 Todd Haynes<\/a> remade the movie<\/a>, this time shifting the focus from race to homosexuality…<\/p>\n