{"id":61618,"date":"2021-09-23T22:16:39","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T22:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61618"},"modified":"2021-09-23T22:16:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-23T22:16:40","slug":"why-didnt-movies-about-passing-cast-black-actors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61618","title":{"rendered":"Why Didn\u2019t Movies about Passing Cast Black Actors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Didn\u2019t Movies about Passing Cast Black Actors?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

JSTOR Daily: Where News Meets Its Scholarly Match<\/a>
\n2021-02-03<\/p>\n

Matthew Wills<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nFredi Washington<\/a> and Louise Beavers<\/a> in a scene from Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a> via New York Public Library<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u201cSocial problem\u201d films were all the rage after World War II<\/a>. So how could movies about racism be so conservative?<\/em><\/p>\n

After World War II<\/a>, Hollywood<\/a> tried something new: realism, tackling social problems like mental illness, drug addiction, anti-Semitism, and racism. But as media-studies scholar Karen M. Bowdre<\/a> argues, films \u201cabout\u201d race and racism \u201coften focused on the concept of passing<\/a>, a Black character claiming his or her White heritage while denying any African ancestry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Passing movies also tended to cast white actors in the roles of mixed-race characters who passed as white. But that wasn\u2019t the case with the original version of Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a>, made in 1934. Fredi Washington<\/a> made history by being the first Black actress to play a character (\u201cPeola\u201d) who passes as white. Even more unusually, two Black children were cast to play the part of Peola at ages three and seven.<\/p>\n

The Production Code Administration<\/a> (PCA), the industry\u2019s self-censorship office, was roiled by director John Stahl\u2019s<\/a> casting choices. The PCA\u2019s \u201cvoluminous\u201d file on the film is filled with references to miscegenation<\/a>, which isn\u2019t a topic of the movie, but presumably would be raised by white viewers who would want to know why Washington looked so \u201cwhite.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

\u201cSocial problem\u201d films were all the rage after World War II. So how could movies about racism be so conservative?<\/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":[9041,9754,234,31970,27480,31968,28327,31971,31969],"class_list":["post-61618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-douglas-sirk","tag-fredi-washington","tag-imitation-of-life","tag-john-stahl-2","tag-jstor-daily","tag-karen-m-bowdre","tag-matthew-wills","tag-monte-hawley","tag-production-code-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61618","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=61618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61620,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61618\/revisions\/61620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}