Current Forum: Session 4: Ideology and Race	Read 18 times 	
Date: 03-Feb-2001 16:30:49	
Author: SIMMONS, DAVID C. <dcs7316@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: Notions of Race in Imitation of Life 	
 [Remove]	
		
       In this post, I will discuss notions of race, particularly those from the readings, and then show how they apply to Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959). One of the undergraduate students in my HUM 3321 class posted the following comment to our class listserv: “Today in discussion I had so many things to say about race. As to the system of race being essential, I feel it is somewhat essential. My roommate is taking a class on race and ethnicity. She shared 
something with me from her textbook. It said that we as humans first recognize someone's race then proceed to communicate. If we are unable to recognize that race immediately, we don't know how to react. I found that statement to be true in the sense that I first recognize a Person's skin color. As sad as it is, I adjust my thinking and responses to that observation. As a white child, I have been brought up with slight prejudices of a Missouri family. As I have matured, I have taken efforts to combat those thoughts and feelings that were passed to me.
I guess that's all I can do, then to teach my children to be color blind, and to continue the endless cycle of thought and ideology.” 
The textbook of her roommate could be seen as being part of the school ISA. It functions to make race look like something that is essential: something that just is, always has been and always will continue to be. It also makes race look like something that is easily recognizable. 
       Race can’t be something that just is, always has been, and always will continue to be. We know that notions of race change throughout time. Omi and Winant point out that race used to be interpreted in the context of religion. It wasn’t until the Europeans arrived in America that the notion of race as outward physical characteristics such as skin color and hair texture 
began to be disseminated (81). Then, in the 18th and 19th centuries, these outward notions of race were “science-ized.” As Omi and Winant explain: “Race was conceived as a biological 
concept, a matter of species” (82) where certain groups, because of something like skin color, were seen as being mentally and morally inferior. Today, Omi and Winant explain, “we have now reached the point of fairly general agreement that race is not a biologically given but rather a socially constructed way of differentiating human beings” (83). 
       Notions of race also change from location to location. My friend Maricarmen (who used to teach HUM 3321 at FSU) was from Puerto Rico. She explained that the system of race in the 
United States is very different from the system of race in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, she said, race is designated by hair texture, not skin color. She also explained that this U.S. 
notion of “Hispanic” to encompass all of Mexico, South and Central America, the Caribbean, and Spain is a ridiculous notion (how can all of these diverse places share anything in 
common with each other?) that is unknown in Puerto Rico. Race is not something that is stable, that just is.
       Race thus can’t be something that is self evident, or easily recognizable. Let’s use the particularly Euro-centric notion of race as skin color as our guide for the moment. The student’s ISA textbook mentioned that “we as humans first recognize someone’s skin color and then proceed to communicate.” (Even Omi and Winant fall into this trap [80] and I think it sabotages a bit of the power of their argument.) How is this “recogniz[ing] someone’s skin color” done? If we lined up all of the human beings in the world in order from lightest to darkest skin, where would we put the dividing lines between say “white” and “black?” There are no such dividing lines to be found. Yet ideology has told us that race is easily recognizable. Even more than this, film as a whole has participated in this ideological construction of race. Film tells us that we can easily recognize these “foundational” categories of “white” and “black.” To aid in our thinking of 
race as easily identifiable, film traditionally has done something called “marking.” Snead, in Reading 24 of our reader, explains this quite well: “As if the blackness of black skin itself were not enough, we seem to find the color black repeatedly overdetermined, marked redundantly, almost as if to force to viewer to register the image’s difference from the white images . . . black skin has been overmarked in order to eliminate ambiguity” (Reader 181). Snead explains that such things as make-up and lighting were used to make black faces “blacker” and white faces “whiter” so that the spectator would see race as being very self-evident. (Film theorists such as Brian Winston and Richard Dyer have also shown how film stocks and other technological aspects were constructed so that the “white” face would be established as “normal.” Anything 
else would be seen as a “problem” or a “deviation from the norm.”) Thus, film has become an ISA, which has taught 20th-Century United States audiences a way to see race as being 
something that is self-evident, something that is easy to recognize. As I wrote in my introduction to the reader, “it isn’t a matter of identifying ‘good images’ and ‘bad images’ in film [i.e. seeing groups of people getting along vs. seeing a bigot put down someone because of race], but more a matter of recognizing that film gives the subject the only categories he or she has to
understand him or herself and the world, and then asks the subject to perform the mandatory scripts that go along with these categories” (3). Film constructs race as a category, tells us that it is essential and a very important way of sorting people, and then reinforces how this is to be done. Trying to be “color-blind,” which Omi and Winant explain as being a “neo-conservative” project (79), just won’t solve the inequities created by the ideology of race in the present social 
system (80). 
       Douglas Sirk’s film Imitation of Life gives an essentialist view of race. It depicts race as something which just is, something which doesn’t change through time and place, and which is easily recognizable. For example, in the opening scene, Lora is confused when she learns that Sara Jane is Annie’s daughter. Ideology has taught her that race (arbitrarily designated in 
this time and place by skin color) is easy to recognize. Once the strict American binary of race is applied to Annie and Sara Jane, then Annie can come into to Lora’s family and just naturally becomes the maid. There’s no discussion about this; it just happens. 
       The film language reinforces this. Through lighting, casting (blonde hair), film stock decisions, and make-up, Lora looks especially “white.” Also, the camera tends to identify with Lora more than with Annie (similar to what we noticed in Battle at Elderbush Gulch.) For example, in the scene where Lora gets a call from agency to do an ad with a dog (L: “I’ve got a job modeling.” A: “Isn’t that fine”), Annie is standing and Lora is sitting. The camera stays on Lora’s level during both the shot and the reverse shot. The camera here identifies with Lora, not with Annie.
       The film makes it appear as though race (arbitrarily defined in contemporary America as “skin color”) is “in the blood.” For example, Sara Jane wanted to compare her blood with Suzie’s 
because a girl said, “Negro blood is different.” Ideology provides two racial systems of classification: one that makes race “blood” or “biology” and the other that makes race “behavior” or “habit.” Both are seen in this film. The previous example is one of making race “blood.” An example of making race “behavior” is when Sara Jane brings in crawdads with 
an accent: “I learned it from my mammy and she belonged to you.”
       Even Annie sees race as being something that is rigid, not fluid. She says: “It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are. Sara Jane needs to learn that the Lord must have had his reasons 
for making some of us white and some of us black.” The film can’t raise the problem of race without also re-inscribing rigid racial categories.
       Race comes by ideology, interpolating individuals as subjects, and passing as common sense. Racism is more than just “prejudice,” it’s an institutionalized system of sorting people and then allotting power and privilege to certain groups and not others. When Sara Jane asks: “Was Jesus black or white?” and then answers: “He was like me... white,” we can see how she herself realizes that race is an organizing principle. Her desire to “pass” comes from this recognition.
       Although Imitation of Life was seen in its time as raising some bold questions about race, the film as a whole continues to serve the dominant ideology by making race essential, easy to 
recognize, and a proper way of sorting people and then allotting power accordingly.