{"id":56781,"date":"2018-08-22T00:48:45","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T00:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56781"},"modified":"2018-08-22T01:00:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T01:00:20","slug":"passing-for-white-how-a-taboo-film-genre-is-being-revived-to-expose-racial-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56781","title":{"rendered":"‘Passing for white’: how a taboo film genre is being revived to expose racial privilege"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Passing for white’: how a taboo film genre is being revived to expose racial privilege<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2018-08-20<\/p>\n

Janine Bradbury<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Literature; School Learning and Teaching Lead
\nSchool of Humanities, Religion & Philosophy
\nYork St John University, York, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"SUSAN<\/a>
\nCrossing the colour line \u2026 Susan Kohner<\/a> and Juanita Moore<\/a> as daughter and mother in Douglas Sirk\u2019s<\/a> Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a> (1959). Photograph: www.ronaldgrantarchive.com<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Rebecca Hall\u2019s<\/a>directorial debut<\/a> is an adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> 1929 novel <\/em>Passing<\/a>, a theme little seen since the likes of <\/em>Show Boat<\/a> and <\/em>Pinky<\/a><\/p>\n

Hollywood<\/a> once loved films about passing<\/a>. The genre was popular in the 1940s and 50s, when segregation was rife and the \u201cone-drop rule<\/a>\u201d \u2013 which deemed anybody with even a trace of African ancestry to be black \u2013 prevailed. Box-office hits included Elia Kazan\u2019s<\/a> Pinky<\/em> <\/a>(1949) and George Sidney\u2019s<\/a> musical Show Boat<\/em><\/a> (1951), which featured light-skinned, mixed-race characters who passed for white<\/a> in the hopes of enjoying the privileges whiteness confers. The secrets, the scandal and the sheer sensationalism of it all made for excellent melodrama.<\/p>\n

Now Rebecca Hall<\/a>, the star of Vicky Cristina Barcelona<\/em><\/a> and Red Riding<\/em><\/a>, is revisiting the genre with her directorial debut<\/a>, an adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> seminal 1929 novel Passing<\/em><\/a>. Tessa Thompson<\/a> and Ruth Negga<\/a> will feature in the project, which tells the story of childhood friends, Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, who are both light-skinned enough to pass for white but choose to live on opposite sides of the colour line…<\/p>\n

…How will Hall negotiate the tricky history of the genre? Even though it was a real-life phenomenon, most films about passing, including Pinky<\/em> and Show Boat<\/em>, have literary roots. William Wells Brown\u2019s<\/a> 1853 anti-slavery novel Clotel<\/em><\/a>, which imagines the fate of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s<\/a> mixed race progeny, is perhaps the first American passing novel. Brown used passing to expose the arbitrary nature of white privilege. His mixed-race characters were a manifest symbol of the reality that many powerful, supposedly God-fearing white slaveholding men were coercing and raping enslaved black women and condemning their own children to a life in bondage (although, as Beyonc\u00e9 recently revealed<\/a>, not all unions were of this nature)…<\/p>\n

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

Rebecca Hall\u2019s directorial debut is an adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s 1929 novel “Passing,” a theme little seen since the likes of “Show Boat” and “Pinky”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,6462,20],"tags":[28934,87,28879,827,19672,2103],"class_list":["post-56781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-janine-bradbury","tag-nella-larsen","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-ruth-negga","tag-tessa-thompson","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56781","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=56781"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56785,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56781\/revisions\/56785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}