What does the relationship between Pinky and Tom in relation to Rena and George say about a person’s agency in their relationship with passing? While Rena fears being noticed by George, Pinky’s confrontation with her heritage and her white boy friend is much more unannounced. Pinky therefore has less time to deny her heritage in fear that it will ruin her relationship. When confronted by Tom as to why she is in a black section of town, Pinky does not hesitate to say that this black town is her home. Clearly Pinky makes an active choice to embrace her black heritage, while Rena is forced to embrace her black heritage. My question however is was Rena and Pink in the same or were they in very different positions. When George found out who Rena really was, he felt betrayed and disgusted and when Tom found out about Pinky’s true heritage he is shocked but none the less we see that he still accepts Pinky.

 

Although Pinky and Rena seemed to be in similar positions, George’s relationship to blacks and the south and Tom’s relationship to blacks and the north placed Rena and Pinky in two drastically different positions. Did Pinky’s relationship with a white Northerner as opposed to a white southerner allow her to more easily accept her black heritage?  

Intentional Omissions

I’ve noticed a pattern in The House Behind the Cedars, Pinky and Imitation of Life. Whenever there is a mulatto child there is only one parent (or gaurdian in the case of Pinky who grew up with her grandmother) portrayed. In The House Behind the Cedars, the narrative is conscientious enough to inform us that Miss Molly had been married to a white man and that he passed away, but the two films offer no explanation as to where Pinky’s parents are or what became of Sarah Jane’s father who was so admirably “practically white.” I think this is an intentional character omission because the parent missing, or parents in the case of Pinky, is the one from who the mulatto child gets his/her light complexion and white features . I think that these narratives are consciously afraid to depict such an adult; a person who is either fully white or looks white who has black offspring. Furthermore, I think these narratives are at a loss as to how to represent such a person, a white person who willingly couples with a black person. What would such a daft person with such a skewed sense of right and wrong even look like? Imagine if we had known Miss Molly’s husband in The House Behind the Cedars, wouldn’t his presence complicate the plot? Is it possible that his intentions were completely admirable toward Miss Molly, a black woman, when the prevailing sentiment at that time was racism and racism was gospel? He did marry her, which shows respect on his part, but it was an extraordinary thing for a white man to marry a black woman in such a time, and I can’t help but wonder who this man was who so blatantly disregarded convention.

Research and Authorship: Black Like Me and Griffin’s Conceit

In Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin raises troubling questions about representation and authorship that fundamentally bring into question his ability to remain un-biased as a researcher and commentator.  For a White man to undertake the type of sociological and cultural study that Griffin embarks upon, although he never presents his endeavour as a scientific text, one would justifiably expect a greater degree of self-consciousness and self-analysis in the author.  Yet from the very beginning, the author seems beholden and bound by many of the same racialized essentialist dogma that he understands himself as combating. The blackness that he had merely expected to perceive as a new physical trait is instead expressed in “the face and shoulders of a stranger – a fierce, bald, very dark negro,” who in “no way resembled” him is what he finds instead.  While, I believe it is a necessary goal of the book for the author to also portray the emotional and psychological experience of his experiment, Griffin becomes lost in his own lie and from the scene in the first hotel bathroom onward, were he describes the “courtesies we felt impelled to extend to one another,” the author’s first “we” moment, the author becomes wholly convinced of his transformation and identification with the “negro,” though for him it is always a transitory state in which he is voluntarily living for a short period of time.  The real danger in this vital act of forgetting is his inability to constantly dialogue discursively between the two worlds he is experiencing.  The same prejudices and ideas that he had about Black people his entire life as a white person will not just disappear because his skin is now dark, and do reveal themselves in the oftentimes crude generalizations the author makes about Blacks in the South.  By denying his White consciousness and pretending to wholly take on a new Black one, the author misses many opportunities for criticism and insight into white culture and the ways in which oppression works.  The insights the book does offer often remain shrouded in opaque terms that talk about the “cruelty” of the “human race” and usually shy from directly inculpating white people.  The unfair power dynamic is also very problematic as the author, although convinced of his blackness, is always safe in the knowledge that after the experiment he will be able to return to the life of privilege he experienced beforehand, a fact that constantly shapes his interactions with the people around him and his mood.

Pop culture, Sarah Jane and Pinky

In Thursday’s class, I thought it was a really good point about connecting the films to popular thought (or pop culture) of the day.  Though the films, particularly Imitation of Life, could have have been progressive for the time it was made, someone pointed out that one could interpret the film as suggesting that the product of interracial relationships is a child with serious identity problems or “issues.”  I also thought it was interesting to learn that both (white) actresses from Pinky and Imitation of Life who played black girls who could pass for white  were unable to secure (steady) work after these films were released.  So passing–at least in some forms–is not only seen as transgressive in reality, but in film, too.  These actresses were simply performing a role–which is their job–and apparently, they were subsequently penalized for doing so.   

Like many others, I found the character of Sarah Jane incredibly annoying.  After thinking about it, I don’t think the fact that she wanted to pass bothered me as much as the fact that she wanted to deny her black racial identity (but then again, if she doesn’t accept her black identity, can we say that she has one at all?).  There are people who pass on occassion to gain some benefit (such as Irene from Passing) and some who choose to pass due to what appears to be self-hatred (Sarah Jane), so although passing is a common denominator, I think the reasons for choosing to pass distinguishes these two characters to some degree.  Someone pointed out that Sarah Jane wasn’t passing for any particular purpose (such as gaining entrance into a better school), but simply for the sake of not wanting to be black, which is in part why I find her an unsympathetic character.

On another note, a scene from Pinky in which the protagonist and Miss Em converse about the former’s racial passing reminded me of the SNL with Eddie Murphy that we viewed earlier this semester.  Pinky claims that whites hate her because she looks like them; later, Miss Em’s cousin remarks that it gives her the creeps to see that Pinky looks as white as any other “real” white person–the possibility of Pinky being mistaken for a white person (which does happen in the movie) creates a sense of fear in Miss Em’s racist cousin. 

Lastly, and not directly related to anything mentioned above, Pinky when pursuing the court case to maintain the property that Miss Em bequeathed her, is referred to as “Pinky Johnson, colored” which just reminded me of the invisibility of whiteness, because no white person in the film is referred to as “So-and-so, white.” 

Pinky’s role

I wanted to point out that the fact that they casted a white woman to play Pinky says something in itself. They did not want a black woman play Pinky’s role because they wanted to avoid the controversy of having a love scene between a black woman and a white man. Doesnt that move somewhat defeat the meaning in the movie  that black people  deserve the same treatment as whites? Way to cater to the white audience and confirm white attitudes of that time…

loving Rena

Okay, so I was thinking about my comment the other day in class. When I had more time to sit with it, I think I realized that the way I said it seemed to be blaming Frank. That wasn’t my intention at all. I wanted to come at the problem from the angle of how the character of Rena was acted upon by everyone else. And I don’t mean to come off as cynical or untouched by Chesnutt’s portrayal of Frank. In fact, I thought that Frank was a kind character and some of his innermonologue was moving. However, I don’t think Rena had enough agency to be loved. Okay, that sounds weird. What I mean is that it seems like Rena is acting out an identiy that was given to her by the situations of her physical person and her town. For example, she looks white but everyone in the town thinks of her as black. And she is extraordinarily beautiful. Because of these traits, she is looked at by older white men as a lust object. (an object of lust because she is black and white men wouldn’t consider her to be of marriageable standards) As a result of these circumstances Rena must always be careful of her beauty. She walks timidly (John tells us this in the beginning of the book) and doesn’t leave the house behind the cedars frequently but it’s hard not to think that in any other circumstances Rena might be a precocious girl. But I guess the point of all of this was to say that Frank doesn’t really know Rena. He only knows an oppressed young woman who has learned to live in a post-Civil War, racist world.

thinking about the uncanny in puddnhead and hbtc

Prof. Parham made a comment in class today that really brought some themes together for me. She said that Tryon hearing Rena’s voice as he slept and dreamt of Rena was an example of the uncanny, of realizing that what we think we know is actually completely unknown or unfamiliar. I was thinking about this before (for my paper) and this brought up an new set of ideas. I had been thinking of the idea of the uncanny as the ability to pass (because you’re physical appearance enables you to be seen as the same). I don’t know if that makes sense but to restate it, I understood the ability to pass as what was uncanny and not the revelation that one has been passing. To push this idea further, in Puddnhead, I interpreted Puddnhead Wilson’s thoughts about Roxy’s appearance (“to all intents and purposes, Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro”) as a moment in which he looks at her and sees something familiar but in the same thought understands her unfamiliarity.
However, after Prof. Parham’s remark in class today, I’m beginning to understand that revelation is key to the uncanny. Because without the revelation, there is no disruption of what was previously believed to be true.

Nature vs. Nurture

 

We all agree that society (well the dominant forces in society) socially constructed race. I hope we all can agree that this racial construction is not permanent; instead, it develops as society grows changes and adapts to its current situation. This social construction of race makes passing a possibility because if race is a definition rather than an actuality then one could easily move from one race to the next using the current definition of that race. Society bases these definitions off stereotypes and then stereotypes work to validate these definitions keeping the social construction of race up to date with changes made in society. Keeping this in mind what is more important, Nature vs. Nurture when defining a person’s identity?

 

Roxy, knowing the hardships of slavery and not wanting her son to be sold down the river switched her son Chambers, with her master’s son Tom. Despite the fact that this switching of the children proves that:

 

1)      race is obviously socially constructed

2)      the one drop rule is stupid

It also spoke to the bigger question of Nature vs. Nurture. While the new Tom, born “black” but grew up thinking he was white became a product of his environment. There was nothing biological that made him a docile, sub-servant type person due to his “black” genes, but there was something external that made him aggressive, and vicious due to his upbringing. Tom’s became a product of his environment and Nurture proved to be more important than Nature.

Panopticon and Passing

Foucault’s descriptions of the Panopticon and, in particular, the manner in which constant visibility causes a subject to assimilate the rules and rituals of his/her subjection within an almost unconscious routine (therefore incorporating that within the physical and ideological conception of the ego) clearly ties in with earlier discussions about the cultural gaze, identity formation, and the practice of passing:

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (66).

This brings up a number of questions, however. First, how complete is the Panopticon of our current culture? Certainly we live in a world of public and (to an extent) private surveillance, and surely the capabilites of that ubiquitous visibility are only growing stronger with time. I’m curious about how and if we make distinctions between our cultural gaze and the holder of power in this Panoptical relationship. On one hand, Foucault often paints the jailer in the Panopticon as a centralized and organized source of oppression, but at the same time, he stresses that “Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up.” For the moment, I’m going to assume that, functioning under an ideology that has conditionedus (through the gaze and instruction of others) since conception, we are all both our own and each other’s jailers, both our own and each other’s subjects. Seems a little glib to say at first, but maybe we’ll address it at greater length in class.

And then, finally, don’t incidents of passing today undermine these systems of constant accountability? Even if we agree that enacting the patterns, rituals, and demands of a culture generates a true belief in the ideology that fuels them (the process of consciously passing for economic or opportunistic purposes, for example, engendering a genuine preference for whiteness over blackness), like Pascal noted, doesn’t the success of a passer still undermine the ability of one culture (with its governing ideology and omnipresent gaze) to surveil itself effectively? Does the history of unacknowledged and successful passing in the United States uphold or undermine the binary system that’s being enacted by the one-drop rule? I suppose that depends largely on the goals of the system, and whether or not the intent of the binary is actually to separate black from white, or merely to keep the fear of hybridity in place.

Lacan to Passing

Throughout the entire class, I was really trying to figure out what this piece had to do with the point of the class. I mean, it all made sense to me. I was thinking about my little cousin (who is 2 and a half) and how that same stuff happened to him, like recognizing himself and bugging out in the mirror. Whenever we take pictures, we tell him to say cheese and he immediately turns to the camera and smiles. That’s a learned habit. It didn’t just happen, like with the professor’s son and the letter M. (Hilarious, by the way.) I guess the entire talk about babies and cognition led me back to the very beginning of the lecture where we talked about the way we think about ourselves in relation to social structure. With passing, one has to really be aware of where they are and who they are within that specific setting. “I think therefore I am.” Well, the question I’m grappling with is if a person is black and thinks that they are white, then are they really white, according to that creed? Or is that just society and the way it makes one question their own identity?