Comments on: Imitation of Life

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:24:35 +0000

Slightly OT – but I’m fascinated by this and I can’t help linking it wherever it seems even vaguely appropriate:

The Federal writers project has some fascinating stuff from cross section of Americans in the 30s, talking about their own lives.

To try and make it a little more on topic, there’s some really interesting stuff from women, about their working and home lives – it’s just an amazing insight into the period, I think.

By: Justine

Justine — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:53:07 +0000

Sara Z: I love Far From Heaven! Watching it immediately after All That Heaven Allows is deeply pleasurable. i, too, am an old movie fanatic—ever since I was a littlie.

By: sara z

sara z — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:22:39 +0000

I used to own the later version on VHS(as for you Troy Donahue I know what YOU wanna do…wow I really hope that reference makes sense to you). I was pretty young (early 20s) and did not have a lot of deep thoughts about it – it was more about my love of old movies and melodrama. Now I want to watch it again as well as the earlier.

did you ever see Todd Haynes’ homage to Sirk – Far From Heaven?

By: simmone

simmone — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:11:12 +0000

i have only seen the sirk – i saw it when I was about 13 and remember having a strong emotional response to it – i’ll def have to seek out the others – to ACMI I go!

By: Veronica

Veronica — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:14:10 +0000

I teach both versions of this movie in my course on mother-daughter relationships in twentieth-century literature, because I find the differences so intriguing. The black mother in the first movie is such a buffoonish character–a racist cariacature of the “mammy”–but she is in fact, as you note, the driving force of the pancake empire. Without her pancakes, there’s no recipe; without her recipe, there’s no empire. In the second version of the movie, her character is afforded much more dignity–but at the cost of removing her from any economic power at all. In the second movie, the families’ economic rise is due entirely to Lana Turner’s character’s acting. It’s almost as though the black woman can have economic power as long as she is an idiot, or she can be a powerful character as long as she is completely dependent economically, for her to be economically powerful and thoughtful would be simply too threatening to white Hollywood.

At the same time, in the earlier version, Claudette Colbert’s character is never punished for being ambitious and successful. Lana Turner is abandoned by her boyfriend for refusing to give up her acting ambitions, and when he does return to her it’s only at the cost of her successful career. But Colbert is allowed to be both professionally successful and romantically successful (this last is delayed at the end of the movie, but there’s no suggestion that she and her lover won’t get back together after a little while). And unlike Turner, Colbert is never victimized sexually.

Also, the love interest in the earlier movie is an icthyologist! How cool is that? How many leading men nowadays are icthyologists?

But as you say, the most disturbing part of each film is how they’re intent on ignoring the instituationalized racism of the US, so that Peola and Mary Jane’s actions are made personal pathology rather than part of a larger racist system. I find this especially unforgiveable in the later version because by using the trope of the black and white dolls, it is very clearly referencing the Brown v. Board of Ed. case that had been decided four years earlier, but it is refusuing not only to acknowledge what that case had been about, but also to acknowledge any of the civil rights organizations and movements that were active in the late 1950s.

By: Justine

Justine — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:59:24 +0000

Yup, the list is long and depressing.

By: Camille

Camille — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:33:53 +0000

Or pretty much anything with Djimon Hounsou or Morgan Freeman in it. Not to mention “Darjeeling Limited.”

By: Justine

Justine — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:23:07 +0000

Veronica: Have you read the book? I finally got hold of a copy but haven’t read it yet. I’m very curious.

You’re exactly right in all your points. (Those films are so sticky. Ever since I first saw the Lana Turner one when I was a kid I can’t get them out of my head.) Especially how egregious the later one is given that it takes place right smack in the middle of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King is already a public figure! Rosa Parks had already refused to give up her seat on the bus! It’s like the film is taking place in a whole other world. (Er, that would be because the film is taking place in a whole other world: fantasy Hollywood land.)

It must be great fun teaching them together.

By: Justine

Justine — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:11:49 +0000

I fear that you are right.

By: Diane

Diane — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:05:42 +0000

If they made it today, I would give excellent odds the story would *still* focus on the white woman, because Hollywood still feels more comfortable having a white character at the center of the story, even if it’s primarily the non-white character’s story. (Cf. Gene Hackman and Willen Dafoe in “Mississippi Burning”, Kevin Kline in “Cry Freedom”, or Nicolas Cage in “Windtalkers.”)