Current Forum: Session 4: Ideology and Race	Read 15 times 	
Date: 30-Jan-2001 10:00:12	
Author: SURRENCY, JENEEN K. <jks5127@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: Imitation 	
 [Remove]	
		
       No matter how many times I watch Imitation of Life, which by the way, has been on many occasions, one scene from that movie seems to stay embedded in my mind, and consequently, 
to me, that scene is probably the movie’s most harrowing one. During all of my viewings of Imitation of Life, I am spellbound and outraged by the scene where the maid’s mulatto daughter’s boyfriend confronts the daughter about the daughter’s lineage. The aspect of that scene which, basically, acts as the catalyst for my outrage is the fact that the entire time the boyfriend is tormenting the daughter and ostracizing her for her “blackness,” the “whiteness” of her skin is exemplified. In other words, even though her skin is just as “light” as his, and before 
his “discovery” of her “black” blood, he enjoys spending time with her, simply because the girlfriend does have an African-American mother, the boyfriend deems the girl unworthy of his 
time, compassion, and affection.
       Many film techniques contribute to the depiction of this scene as well as this scene’s irony that the boyfriend does not want the “black” girl even though her skin is just as “white” as his. However, the most successful technique is probably the scene’s setting. For instance, the scene occurs at night and on a dark street; thus, the girl’s “white” skin can be contrasted with the darkness of the night as well as the darkness of the street she eventually falls on. Thus, the stupidity of the boyfriend’s actions and accusations are further illustrated.
       Consequently, the previously mentioned use of film technique in Imitation of Life, as well as other techniques, is significant because it aids in the movie’s depiction of the ideological construction of race. In the movie, race is not based on skin color. Instead, race is based on heritage, or as Michael Omi and Howard Winant so aptly state in “Racial Formation,” “the way in which society is organized and ruled”(80). So, even though the mulatto’s skin is just 
as “white” as Lana Turner’s and Sandra Dee’s characters’ skin and far from the “darkness” of the skin hues of the other “blacks” cast in the film, yet another film technique used in the movie to show the film’s racial formation ideology, since the girl has a traceable “black” ancestry, she is predestined to the African-American’s life of subservience, which her mother has endured. In other words, Imitation of Life, although to me a truly great movie, is still yet another example of how the dated law “which [declares] anyone with at least 1/32nd ‘Negro blood’ to be black”(79) continues to exist and of how some factions of society try to limit the aspirations of those who it 
needs to “label” as being different.