Mixed Race Cinemas: Multiracial Dynamics in America and France 9781501312458, 9781501312472, 9781501312465

Citation preview

Mixed Race Cinemas

ii

Mixed Race Cinemas Multiracial Dynamics in America and France

Zélie Asava

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YO R K • LO N D O N • OX F O R D • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Zélie Asava, 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Asava, Zélie, 1978- author. Title: Mixed race cinemas: multiracial dynamics in America and France / Zélie Asava. Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017006921 | ISBN 9781501312458 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501312489 (epub) | ISBN 9781501312465 (ePDF) Subjects: LCSH: Racially mixed people in motion pictures. | Motion pictures– United States–History. | Motion pictures–France–History. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.R23 A83 2017 | DDC 791.43089/05–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006921 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-1245-8 ePDF: 978-1-5013-1246-5 eBook: 978-1-5013-1248-9 Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image © Film Café au Lait 1993 / United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events, and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

For my inspiring, incredible parents, Pamela and Christopher Pour Eugene, mon âme

vi

Contents Acknowledgements  ix

Introduction  1

Race and ideology  11 American mixed-race cinema history  21 Interrogating terminology  25 Methodology and frameworks  30 Mixed-race spaces in French and American cinema  33 Franco-American narratives and Beur cinema  36 Summary of chapters  44

1 The Mixed Question  47

Language, representation and casting  47 The historical mulatta screen stereotype in America  57 The historical mulatta screen stereotype in France  60

2 Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives  69

‘Passing’ representations as ideological construct  70 The dichotomies of post-war mixed-race women onscreen  75 Gender, ‘passing’ and love  80

3 The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’  87 Imitation of Life (1934): Interrogating mixed identities  88 Casting and representation  93 Shadows and the interracial family  96  Imitation of Life (1959): Gender, difference and voiced rebellion  100 Performative identities: Sara Jane, Dandridge and Monroe  104

viii

Contents

4 Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation  109

Representing ‘mixed-race France’  109 Reimagining the nation: Mixed families  112 Questioning mixed masculinity: Les Trois frères  118 Melodrama, motherhood and masks: Métisse  121 Racial-sexual mythology and the interracial family  125

5 Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix  133

A search for identity on the road  133 Citizenship, violence and scopophilia  136 Trauma and redemption  141 Destabilizing the primary authority of the father  143 Reuniting transnational families  146

Conclusion  153

‘Post-race’ politics in America and France  159 Enduring stereotypes  163 Mixed-race sci-fi  165 Mixed representational potentials  168

Bibliography  171 Name Index  190 Subject Index  194

Acknowledgements M

y thanks go to Katie Gallof, Susan Krogulski and all at Bloomsbury Academic for their wonderful support throughout the process of bringing this project to fruition. This was in the pipeline for a while and I am so grateful to Katie for her continued dedication! Sincere thanks to those who have given feedback, support and advice on this work over many years, including Harvey O’Brien, Diane Negra, Mary Beltràn, Brendan Purcell, Krin Gabbard, Tony Fitzmaurice, Alice Feldman, Barry Monahan, Kevin Rockett and Martin McLoone. My thanks to Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Laura Kina, Camilla Fojas, Chandra Crudup, and all at CMRS and Mixed Roots Stories for giving my work a platform and providing the space to develop these ideas. I’m also grateful to Gerard (Bob) McKiernan and Adèle Commins for their support. Thanks to my friends in France and America who provided valuable recommendations, insights and support, my academic colleagues, and the writers, directors, performers and producers of these fascinating films. And finally, many thanks to People in Harmony, Intermix and all the activists and academics who opened up a public space for us.

x

Introduction

I

n May 2016, when accepting the Camera D’Or for best debut feature for Divines, a film made by and with racially diverse women, French-Moroccan director Houda Benyamina jubilantly cried: ‘Cannes est à nous aussi! (Cannes belongs to us too!)’ Later that year, actress Meghan Markle wrote an article on her experiences of growing up as a mixed-race woman in the States and highlighted the importance of diverse casting in shaping social perceptions of race: [The] dream girl in Hollywood terms has always been that quintessential blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty – that was the face that launched a thousand ships, not the mixed one. But … [by casting Markle as a ‘dream girl’ in Suits] the producers helped shift the way pop culture defines beauty. The choices made in these rooms trickle into how viewers see the world … some … may never have had a black person in their house as a guest, or someone biracial. Well, now there are a lot of us on your TV and in your home with you.1 With the increased visibility of mixed-race agents onscreen, this book sets out to examine multiracial representations in American and French cinema. It examines racial dynamics in ‘post-racial’ yet racially divided spaces, and considers the role of the mixed character in national cinemas as representative of collective identities and collective crises. ‘Black’ and ‘white’ mixed heritage in the United States and France will be the primary focus of this book, given that this is the most widely represented category of mixedness onscreen. Comparatively analysing the dominant global industry with the dominant European industry, the study explores mixed sociopolitical discourses and filmic representations from early cinema to the present day. 2016 marked a significant year in the history of mixed-race cinema, as two films celebrating interracial couples took centre stage upon their release, generating widespread debate. Loving (Nichols, UK/USA) and A United

‘Meghan Markle: I’m More Than An “Other”’, Elle magazine, 22 December 2016.  At the time, Markle was dating Prince Harry of Great Britain and so part of arguably the most high-profile interracial relationship in the West. 1

2

Mixed Race Cinemas

Kingdom (Asante,2 USA/UK, Czech Republic) both garnered rave reviews, with Loving’s Irish-Ethiopian star Ruth Negga receiving nominations for the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. The films explore the legal and social challenges faced by those in interracial marriages, where a simple act of love could lead to abuse, assault or even arrest. The 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, captured in Nichols’s film, declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional and thus legitimized Richard and Mildred Loving’s 1958 marriage.3 A United Kingdom tells the true story of Seretse Khama, the king of Bechuanaland (Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the white office worker from London, who married in 1948. Their marriage is marred by fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments (who try to force Khama’s abdication by separating the couple, exiling Ruth in Africa and Seretse in England). Despite the challenge that the marriage represented for neighbouring apartheid South Africa, Khama would go on to become the first president of an independent Botswana. These films explore how racially mixed marriages and people (such as Mildred, a physical manifestation of race mixing) formed a threat to the racial legislation, structure and ideology of America, South Africa and Britain, and ultimately changed the course of history. In France, 2016 saw the release of hit French films Divines (Beyamina), also nominated for a Golden Globe, and Bienvenue à Marly-Gomont (The African Doctor) (Rimbaldi4). In the contemporary-set Divines, Dounia (FrenchMoroccan actress Oulaya Amamra) struggles with living with an alcoholic mother in a shantytown, and tries to escape these hardships by becoming a drug dealer. In 1970s period drama The African Doctor, new medical school graduate Seyolo Zantoko (Marc Zinga) takes a job in rural France rather than returning home to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). His wife Amma Asante is also the director of the 2013 biopic Belle, which traces the journey of a young woman trying to come to terms with her double consciousness as a mixed-race aristocrat in eighteenth-century London. The film is based on the real story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the daughter of a Caribbean slave and a British Royal Navy Admiral. 3 The case is explored in works such as the 1996 showtime movie Mr. and Mrs. Loving, the 2004 book Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers, and Nancy Buirski’s 2011 documentary The Loving Story. There is also an unofficial holiday called Loving Day which is celebrated, primarily in America, on 12 June. 4 In 2006, French rapper Kamini Zantoko had a big hit in France with the song Marly-Gomont, in which he raps about his childhood as the son of a black Congolese doctor living in the titular isolated, rural village. He conceived the idea for and co-wrote the film.  Zinga also stars in 2014’s Qu’Allah Bénisse la France! (May Allah Bless France!), an autobiographical film by French-Congolese rapper Abd al Malik (adapted from his book of the same name). Zinga plays the lead, and the ciné-memoir centralizes the pivotal moments of al Malik’s youth in the Strasbourg projects; using petty crime to fund a burgeoning music career, getting into private school, followed by university, and finally converting to Islam. 2

Introduction

3

and children leave Kinshasa to join him, excited by the prospect of Parisian glamour. Instead, they are directed to Marly-Gomont, a rural village in Northern France where the locals have never seen a black person, and greet the family with hostility and fear. In order to become accepted, the family assimilate and assist the community in any way they can, gradually becoming cultural hybrids. The film co-stars French Senegalese-Gambian-Malian actress Aïssa Maïga, who also takes the lead in French-Martinican Lucien Jean-Baptiste’s Il a déjà tes yeux (He Even Has Your Eyes) (2017), a comedy about transracial adoption – here Jean-Baptiste and Maïga play a black couple who adopt a white baby boy. These comedies deal with experiences of intolerance in more recent times, and explore discourses of racial mixing across multiple boundaries, providing representations that aim to undermine stereotypes. In different ways, they also highlight the perceived threat of mixed subjects to Western ideologies.5 The movies draw attention to the range of mixed and black talent in the industry, and the relative absence of films which have to date concerned their representation. Indeed Divines’s director Benyamina describes Western cinema as a white, bourgeois, racist and exclusionary ‘caste system’ and set up 1,000 Visages in 2006 to break open the French industry.6 Earlier in 2016, the Academy Awards announcement of its nominees for the eighty-eighth ceremony created a global controversy: #OscarsSoWhite. As the second year running with only white actors nominated for awards, and few minorities nominated in other categories, debates raged about the lack of diversity. Female and LGBT creatives were similarly underrepresented, but the loudest voices objected to the disregard for African-Americans in the selection of nominees. Ricky Gervais, Whoopi Goldberg and George Clooney spoke of their concern while Jada Pinkett-Smith, Spike Lee and Michael Moore chose to boycott. This outrage reflected ongoing racial tensions sparked by an increased media focus on the police’s treatment of minorities, as well as the presidential campaign which, following terrorist attacks in Paris, saw Republican candidate Donald Trump arguing for certain minorities to be excluded from the States. Yet, the debates about diversity also revealed the fact that despite decades of change, the industry remains dominated by older white men who seem unable or unwilling to engage with the mixed-race, LGBTQIA, transcultural realities of their society. See the 2016 alt-right boycott campaigns against multicultural film Rogue One (#DumpStarWars) and Broadway musical Hamilton. 6 1,000 Visages provides training for actors and filmmakers, creating opportunities for those marginalized by the French mainstream industry. For more, see Steve Rose’s interview with the director – ‘Divines Director Houda Benyamina: “It’s Better to Make a Film Than a Bomb”’, The Guardian, Thursday 10 November 2016. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/ nov/10/divines-director-houda-benyamina-its-better-to-make-a-film-than-a-bomb. 5

4

Mixed Race Cinemas

Mixed-race novelist Danzy Senna (1998) calls this era the ‘mulatto millennium’. In 2001, Paul Spickard announced ‘multiculturalism is all the rage’ (76) while in 2008 Jane Park highlighted the popular interest in ‘multiracial chic’ (2008: 184). Since the 1990s there has been a recognition, acceptance and subsequent explosion of mixed-race discourses in the media leading to labels such as Generation E.A. (Ethnically Ambiguous)7 and Generation Mix.8 The American ‘tragic mulatto’ mixed-race template has been thoroughly transnationalized and now manifests in varying formulations across the globe, most significantly in the dominant cinematic industry of Europe, France. Mixed-race actors such as Halle Berry, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Maya Rudolph, Jesse Williams, Thandie Newton, Amandla Stenberg, Kerry Washington, Zoe Kravitz, Carmen Ejogo, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Tessa Thompson, Tia/Tamara Mowry, Tracee Ellis Ross, Trevor Noah, Ruth Negga, Kiersey Clemons, Sasha Lane, Rami Malek, Nicole Ari Parker, Norah Jones, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zendaya Coleman, Dany Boon, Joey Starr, Edouard Montoute, Fabrice Éboué, Samy Naceri, France Zobda, Noémie Lenoir, Éric Judor and Pascal Légitimus have become stars. In 2017, Johnson will take over the (formerly white) lead role in Baywatch (Gordon, USA), while in Unforgettable (Di Novi, USA) Dawson will play a new stepmother in a white family. The previously white-centrist worlds of Formula One, golf and the American presidency have been transformed by mixed agents. As Teresa Kay Williams argues, there is a new wave of actors whose interest lies in their ‘ambiguity and multiple otherness’ (1995: 91). This book is an exploration of the position of mixed cinematic characters and intersectional discourses in American and French society. It considers a problematic which crosses continents, which persists though it is often submerged in public discourse, and which is embedded in the cinematic history of the West. This problematic is that of the mixed-race figure, and his/her relationship to culture, politics and visibility. And, while recognizing that there are multiple formulations of mixedness, this book centralizes black/ white representations, given their popularity onscreen. As LeiLani Nishime says of America’s history, ‘We have always already been mixed race’ (2008: 305).9 Likewise, France has a transnational culture A phrase used in a New York Times article on the new popularity of racially ambiguous actors and models published on 28 December 2003 by Ruth La Ferla. 8 A term coined by the MAVIN Foundation, a mixed-race advocacy group, see www.mavin. foundation.org. 9 America was established by First Nations peoples, redefined by the English and French empires (as well as the Dutch, Spanish, etc.) and reshaped by the arrival of African slaves. Despite facing extreme oppression, Africans were instrumental in the cultural and artistic development of America, for example the creation of artistic forms such as tap dance, gospel, jazz music and the blues. Albert Murray (1990) describes American culture as incontestably mulatto, a composite of the various groups that have intermingled across its history. 7

Introduction

5

drawn from the exchange of peoples and cultures in (and following) its period as a colonial power, as well as its regional diversity.10 America and France lead international film culture through their strong cinematic industries and prestigious award ceremonies. The first American narrative film, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edison, 1903), marked the start of a long history of mixed-race representation onscreen. This cultural history reflects a long period of political resistance to accommodating in-between identities due to the United States’s racially polarized contexts. In France, mixed-race representations were largely absent from early cinema, as they were in public life. Yet, African-American émigré artists such as James Baldwin, Nina Mae McKinney, Josephine Baker and Melvin Van Peebles anecdotally noted their relative comfort in Paris, a relief from the strict segregation and limited opportunities of the States (as seen in 1961’s Paris Blues). Josephine Baker’s French films briefly yet explicitly celebrated mixed-race identities in the 1930s, serving as a positive contrast to the ‘tragic mulatta’11 films of contemporaneous America (which would remain the dominant vehicle for mixed-race cinema until the 1960s). Just as American directors in the 1970s and 1980s began to produce new modes of ethnic minority representation, so French directors began to centralize minoritarian politics. Since the turn of the new millennium, mixedrace dynamics have become a key element of both industries and attained a certain cultural cachet. As with the great melodramas of the first half of the twentieth century – The Birth of a Nation, the various editions of Showboat and Imitation of Life and so on – the mixed narrative remains a useful way for filmmakers to comment on broader social issues such as interculturalism, intolerance and globalization. In 2001, Naomi Zack wrote that the recognition of mixed identities would make racial identities unintelligible and epistemologically lead to the destabilizing of racial divisions. While race is an illusion it remains a lived reality, so theoretical work into mixed-race issues is an important subversive attack on the distorted collective social imaginary which remains fixated on racial taxonomies. Filmic representations of mixed-race identity can acknowledge the politics of difference and be used as a wedge against racism. A theoretical and aesthetic practice developed with and through a multicultural perspective can thus address the various issues specific to various racial groups, to give authority and visibility to their testimonies. This would provide an important

10 France is made up of many ethnic groups (Breton, Flemish, Alsatian, etc.), but this diversity was somewhat reduced by the nineteenth-century imposition of the French language on these communities. 11 This term is used throughout the book in place of ‘mulatto’ given that most mixed-race screen characters were and are female.

6

Mixed Race Cinemas

alternative to the white-centrism of much cinematic and theoretical output, and recognize the complex truth of our national and personal histories. As Song (2001, 2002), Zack (2000, 2001, 2002), and Tizard and Phoenix (2002) have argued, mixed-race people form a distinct ethnic grouping, that deserves to be defined, judged, researched and represented differently from the ethnicities of which it is a combination. The discourse of reductive terms like ‘high yellar’,12 ‘no-nation’, ‘light-skinned black’, ‘half-caste’, ‘half-black’, ‘half and half’, ‘striped’, ‘yellow nigger’ and so on denigrate while identifying the mixed individual as distinct from either black or white.13 Contemporary descriptors such as nontraditional, café au lait, hybrid African-American, racially flexible, post-black, brown – as well as skin colour descriptors such as tan, tawny, golden, caramel, honey, almond, olive, beige – highlight the inbetweenness of mixedness and the need to consider it as a third identity. Kerry Rockquemore describes mixedness as a ‘protean identity’ with the ‘capacity to move between and among several racial identities that are interchangeable. Individuals may move fluidly among black, white, and/or multiracial identities, using whichever identity may be situationally appropriate for a specific interactional context’ (2004: 129–30). Mixeds are seen to have universal appeal because of their ‘multiculti’14 features, for example Jessica Alba’s ‘transgenic’ visage (cited in Beltràn, 2008: 254); ‘ethnically ambiguous’ Meghan Markle. Advertising and trend research CEO Ron Berger notes that mixed actors’ power lies in their indefinability: ‘Today what’s ethnically neutral, diverse or ambiguous has tremendous appeal … what is perceived as good, desirable, successful is often a face whose heritage is hard to pin down.’15 Rebecca C. King-O’Riain and Stephen Small (2014) argue that mixed bodies have been commodified within global capitalism as ‘emblems of multiculturalism’ identified with cosmopolitanism, racial harmony and globality. LeiLani Nishime describes their function in mass media ‘as symbols of the declining significance of race’ (2014: 1), appealing to the most racially diverse generation in American history; hence the success of ‘off-white’16 mixed actors such as Paula Patton, Rashida Jones, Jessica Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Beals and Alexandra Shipp. Sarah Chinn (2000) argues that how we read ‘race’ is A label for ‘mixed’, drawing on the pale golden colour of the skin which is often associated with haughtiness, hence ‘high’ is taken to mean both extremely fair in colour, and high maintenance. The use of the word ‘yellar’ (as slang for yellow), links mixedness with yellowness, a colour which is associated with cowardliness, jaundice, etc. 13 As reported in The Sunday Times, Rush Limbaugh called President Obama a ‘Halfrican’. Limbaugh had the biggest talk-radio audience in America at the time (see Andrew Sullivan’s article in The News Review supplement, ‘Unleashing a Race War on Obama’, 20 September 2009). 14 See Beltràn, 2005; Nakamura, 2008. 15 See Ruth La Ferla’s article, New York Times, 28 December 2003. 16 See Negra, 2001. 12

Introduction

7

dependant less on the ambiguity of the raced body and more on our cultural understanding of it, the meanings that we learn to ascribe to it. Mixed bodies thus operate according to processes of ‘flexible racialisation’ (King-O’Riain, 2014: 278), which change depending on their geographical, cultural or historical space. Their identities ‘produc[e] and [are] produced by the convergence of multiple identity narratives’ (Nishime, 2014: xiii). Many people now identify as two or more races, a personal choice which undermines ‘existing ideas about race and other unitary social criteria used to divide people into groups’ (King-O’Riain, 2014: 264). This functions as proof that ‘race’ is a social convention, yet ‘race’ and racism continue to affect lived experience, as Eric K. Watts (2010) observes, coding institutions, social relations and political strategies. Anti-mixed-race discourses remain popular. On 15 October 2009, a Louisiana justice of the peace admitted to the Associated Press that for the past thirty-four years, he had refused to issue marriage licences to interracial couples.17 He expressed particular concern for the children of black/white couples, who he felt would have no place in society – a group who are now part of the fastest-growing demographic in America, the UK, France and beyond.18 His concerns are reflected in the absence of mixed children in American and French cinema, as well as the common depiction of interracial marriage as fraught. Markle (2016) notes the absence of a space – until relatively recently – for mixed actors in Hollywood cinema: ‘I could audition for virtually any role …. [But] I wasn’t black enough for the black roles … [or] white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn’t book a job.’19 Rainier Spencer’s work on mixed-race identities in the United States proves that this category is based on the idea of fixed black and white races, against which mixed figures are perceived as an anomaly, rather than an expression of the illogic of racial categories. Mixed bodies differ from racial ‘norms’ and so, Nishime writes, are ‘subject to debate even more than other racialised bodies’ making them a useful platform for exposing ‘the social codes which instantiate race’ (2014: xvii). Naomi Zack argues that ‘black-white race relations and black liberation have been the most problematic aspects of race in American history’ (2006: 4). The landmark case Loving v. Virginia decriminalized interracial marriage. See Mary Foster’s article ‘Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License in L.A.’, 16 October 2009. Available from: http://news. yahoo.com/s/ap/20091016/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff 18 Fifty years after Loving, and less than twenty years since the introduction of a ‘mark one or more’ census category, the number of multiracial Americans is growing three times faster than the country’s population, according to the Pew Research Center. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that the multiracial population will triple by 2060. Nishime (2014) posits that the appearance of a growth in this demographic may be due to the change in census categories and greater social tolerance of interracial dynamics. 19 This experience is captured in Vin Diesel’s 1995 directorial debut Multi-Facial. 17

8

Mixed Race Cinemas

Hence the popularity of black/white characters in cultural products like cinema. Nishime goes further to assert that ‘the black/white binary is fundamental to all racial formations in the United States’ (2014: xii).20 This explains why it is this binary which is explored in mixed cinema, rather than other formulations of interracial mixture. Ann Morning states that ‘mulattoes in the 19th-century United States straddled the all-important Black-White color line and thus were subjects of intense interest in a century during which the placement and meaning of that line was hotly debated’ (2014: 11). We can see this fascination continue into the twentieth century on film, reaching peak saturation at the height of the studio system (matched by a growing interest in African-American culture and civil rights, from the Harlem Renaissance to the peak of the civil rights movement), and re-emerging at the turn of the millennium as census recognition, predictions of the end of race, and the election of Barack Obama as US president in 2008 made the colour line a hot topic once more. Upon his election in 2008, journalist Marie Arana noted Obama’s importance as a symbol of change: ‘To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president … a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go’ (The Washington Post, 30 November 2008). So, while this book traces a dominant narrative in the history of film, and of the United States in particular, it also traces interracial dynamics in America and France through their sociopolitical histories, recognizing the impact of broader changes on screen cultures. Following on from Morning’s (2014) call for more cross-national comparative research in this area, this work explores the context and impact of different systems of racial ideology, and different approaches to conceptualizing mixed identity. As Rebecca C. King-O’Riain (2014) notes, identity declaration (self-identification) and identity differentiation (external perceptions of one’s identity) are shaped by national narratives regarding racial mixing. So, this study examines how mixed figures are read and self-identify across a range of American and French films, made in different political climates, with different understandings of ‘race’. Following Nishime, this book posits that ‘because audiences read multiracial bodies differently across contexts, those bodies are a crucial site of confrontation with our experience of race as always and transhistorically legible’ (2014: xii). In the ‘post-race’ era, the representation and reception of mixed bodies onscreen draws out the impact that ‘race’ – despite Morning (2005) notes that the 2000 census data actually showed higher rates of mixing between whites and Asians than between white and black citizens, yet the latter formulation continues to be the most referenced in popular cultural representations of mixedness.

20

Introduction

9

being intellectually dismissed as a false category – continues to have on how we see and experience the world. Catherine Squires states that ‘there is still a significant minority willing to say in opinion polls that they disapprove of interracial marriage and would be upset if a family member married “outside the race”’ (2014: 105). While symbols of ‘post-race’ societies, mixed-race subjects also embody the complex ideologies which lie at the centre of racial ideologies. Therefore, examining their screen representations is a means of deconstructing these ideologies and finding a space beyond them. By applying Homi K. Bhabha’s (1988) theory of a ‘Third Space’ to the mixed figure, and following Lisa Nakamura’s (2008) theory of ‘third identities’ and Josephine Lee’s (2003) theory of ‘third types’, this book explores the role, position and identity of the mixed film character. Bhabha writes A ‘Third Space’ may open the way to conceptualising an inter-national culture, based not on the exoticism or multi-culturalism of the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. … It makes it possible to begin envisaging national, anti-nationalist histories of the ‘people’. It is in this space that we will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. (1998: 209) This study is an attempt to enter this ‘Third Space’, to find the Others of Ourselves, to explore a new vocabulary and a new discourse around inter/ trans/liminal figures, and explore the possibility of an international model for shifting racial representations and representing the true diversity of the national body. Mixed-race women are much more visible in literature,21 cinema, television and advertising than mixed men and so will form the main focus of this study. As Ralina Joseph notes: ‘The stereotype of the tragic mulatto has, in actuality, been the tragic mulatta, whose excessive sexual appetites necessitate her use and abuse by white men’ (2014: 5). The interest in mixed-race women can be traced back to the slavery era and the ‘fancy girl’ markets where they were sold as ‘house servants with special services required’ (Genovese, 1972: 416). Many slave stories and songs referred to their ‘yellar gal’ traits, casting them as sexualized seducers (whose sexual recklessness signified their illicit origins).22 From 1848, abolitionist ‘antislavery auctions’ focused on their freedoms; audiences bid on young, attractive, light-skinned/whiteappearing female slaves in order to buy their freedom.23 This social interest

See Suzanne Bost (2003) on ‘mulatta’ literature. See Genovese, 1972. 23 See Talty, 2003. 21 22

10

Mixed Race Cinemas

was reflected in cultural products; hence ‘the representational subject of mixed-race popular culture was always overwhelmingly a woman’ (Joseph, 2013: 17). This gendered bias remains, continuing to position mixed women as the access point for integration through interracial romance. According to Squires, ‘Heterosexual interracial couples have … been a convenient device for integrating a cast and/or bringing racial controversy and difference to the … screen’ (2014: 105). Yet this almost always operates through the bodies of the white male and mixed female. Since The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, USA, 1915), mixed men have been associated with Silas Lynch’s criminality – lynched for lusting after a white woman – while mixed women have been associated with Lydia Brown’s sexual availability. These tropes have their historic roots in the period of slavery, and were reinforced in the Jim Crow era24 to legitimize both rape (of black women by white men) and lynching. Black/mixed men were positioned as predatory and untrustworthy: ‘too threatening to become part of the extended family … unable to be domesticated enough to eliminate their threatening sexuality and/or physicality’ (Squires, 2014: 131). The gendered racial stereotypes presented in The Birth of a Nation25 play on the social rejection of sexual relations between black men and white women, and the ‘black man as rapist’ myth.26 Hereafter, black/mixed men were rarely cast as anything but servants or entertainers until the 1950s (when Sidney Poitier broke into the mainstream). In the 1970s, they were afforded overtly sexual and violent roles in the Blaxploitation film movement; yet these films, largely produced by white men, subjugated women and offered caricatures of blackness. Nishime observes that ‘African American men, whether on the front pages or the sports pages, have largely been represented visually as bodies subjected to a white gaze’ (2014: 56). Therefore, they have been criminalized and fetishized, In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that an octoroon could not ride in a white railway car. Fears of ‘interracial intimacy’, as Rachel Moran (2001) puts it, resulted in the maintenance of separate public spaces. This decision legalized Jim Crow policies, a system which would remain in place until Brown v. The Board of Education in 1954. 25 Even the film’s title emphasizes its position – it relates to the first anti-miscegenation statute in America in 1661. Passed by the Maryland General Assembly, this law deemed marriage between white women and black men ‘the disgrace of the nation’ (cited in Courtney, 2005: 10). This law allowed slave masters to claim as their own any white woman who married and had children with a black man, which thus extended the property, wealth and status of the slave master.  The film also plays on more recent political discourse, which posited emancipation, equality and integration as the beginning of the end of white hegemonical power and of whiteness itself. Holland notes that the confederacy ‘was able to convince an entire nation to look toward the future for events that had already taken place in the past; to believe that emancipation would result in rampant miscegenation’ (2012: 107). 26 This myth was used to contain black men in the Jim Crow era, see Courtney, 2005: 68; Gaines, 1988, 2001. 24

Introduction

11

presented as a spectacle of hypersexuality (with an excessive lust for white women) and/or atavism. This has operated in conjunction with discrimination in social, legislative and institutional contexts. By contrast, mixed-race female characters (albeit often performed by white actresses) continued to feature prominently in the classic studio era, even as starring leads (e.g. Pinky, Kings Go Forth, Zou Zou, Princesse Tam Tam, Carmen, Island in the Sun). Although they were often reduced to the ‘tragic mulatta’ stereotype, mixed female characters experienced a degree of economic and social success onscreen. So, while both pose a threat to Eurocentric hegemonical structures, mixed women have been present in visual culture in a way that mixed men have not. In order to neutralize this power, mixed women have traditionally been positioned as titillating and dynamic but easily controlled, thus generating more fascination than fear.27 Even in contemporary cinema mixed masculinity remains predominately associated with danger, hence mixed identity is usually represented through ‘safer’ female-centred narratives. Following bell hooks, this study reads cinematic images oppositionally in order to find a space to identify with mixed-race pioneers and criticize the exclusivist ideology that made them stand for racial degeneracy. These representations tease out formulations of mixedness as both local and foreign, white and non-white, us and not-us. By employing theories from Critical Mixed Race Studies, the study explores attempts to politically categorize and visually fix figures whose role, position and identity exists in the space of the entre.28

Race and ideology Through the ‘sociology of science’ (Latour, 1993: 26) ‘race’ has been used ‘to explain individual character and temperament, the structure of social community and the fate of human societies’ (Hammonds, 2000: 305). Yet all human cultural behaviour is learnt.The nineteenth-century practice of ‘scientific’ raciology – which went on to inform the study of eugenics – characterized different races according to different physical characteristics in an attempt to make invisible cultural differences reducible to biology and justify the superiority of whiteness. Frantz Fanon called the process ‘epidermalization’; a way of making bodies meaningful only by endowing them with racial codes. Yet French director Jacques Tourner’s 1920 American film of the 1826 novel Last of the Mohicans remains the only adaptation to directly address its Caribbean-Scottish heroine Cora Munro’s mixed heritage (thus informing her romance with the Mohican). 28 See Derrida, 1991. 27

12

Mixed Race Cinemas

Theories of hybrid vigour, popular from 1864 to 1926, posited mixeds as stronger, smarter and more attractive than ‘pures’.29 Hence, mixed people were seen as superior to blacks and racial mixing was promoted in the French colonies as a form of positive assimilation/ethnic cleansing. At the same time, degeneracy theories, said to be based in biological studies, categorized mixedrace people as having the worst characteristics of each race and were used to reduce the power of mixed Americans.30 So, the contemporary contradictory celebration and fear of mixed identity is rooted in a long history. Mixeds have been subsumed into both black and white identities. Yet, as Robert Bernasconi notes, mixeds were legally defined as black due to the hypodescent or ‘one drop rule’ in America:31 ‘Historical concern for racial purity among whites … led to the rule that even a relatively small amount of ‘black blood’ would be sufficient to exclude a person from being white … [a fact which] conceals the extent to which the United States is already extraordinarily racially hybrid’ (1996: 285). As such, the identification of all people with black ancestry as black covers over the mixedness of America, and critical readings of mixed representations as black have covered over the hybridity of cinematic representation. To rectify such homogenizing efforts, this book responds to Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s call for a cross-ethnic critical agenda for the study of film, ‘one that situates difference not in a paradigm of margin and centre, but as a de-centred, polyvocal multiculturalism’ (1994: 165–6). At the turn of the twenty-first century, scientists broke the ties between biological heredity and cultural traits and proved ‘race’ to be a false notion.32 Racial categories are cultural rather than biological categories. Still, racial theories continue to have a significant impact on all aspects of everyday life, affecting access and opportunity.33 The New Racism of Hernstein and Murray (1994; following Watson and Crick) reignited false claims that black people were at the lowest stage of the evolutionary curve. And the current genomic See Zack, 1993; Carter, 2007; Bost, 2003. Anti-miscegenation discourse posited mixed-race people as barren, mentally/physically weak, sensitive to light, prone to premature death and to madness; their conflicting genes were read as two warring systems within the body. In 1871, Darwin put forward the argument that the low fertility rates of mulattas stemmed from their low, dissolute position (see White, 2001). See also Zack, 1993; Mencke, 1979; Brown, 2000. 31 The American hypodescent practice can be traced back to the 1600s: a mixed-race child was likely to have a mother who was a slave and a father who was a slave master. In order to protect property rights from slaves, the child would be classified as black (which equated to slave) and thus denied the rights of inheritance, ownership or citizenship. For more on the history of the one-drop rule, see Lopez, 1997. 32 See Omi and Winant, 1986. 33 For example, the writer and critic Anatole Broyard ‘passed’ for white until his death in 1990 in order to evade prejudice. See Gates, 1997. 29 30

Introduction

13

reworking of biology has fed new racist debates, which once again locate social and cultural difference in biological discourses.34 Yet many mixed and black figures have taken central roles in public life: for example Barack Obama; Tiger Woods; Tyler Perry;35 Condoleezza Rice; Colin Powell; Oprah Winfrey. The congressional bill to include a multiracial category on the US 2000 census was even dubbed the Tiger Woods Bill. The mixed-race group is expanding at an immense speed across the world. The mixed-race group in Britain is now the third largest ethnic minority group and is reportedly set to become the biggest over the next decade. On the 2001 census (the first to feature a mixed-race category) almost one million identified themselves as members of more than one race. On the 2000 American census (also the first to recognize mixed identity with the ‘mark one or more’ option36), nearly seven million people identified themselves as members of more than one racial group. In 2015, a Pew report on intermarriage stated that there was a significant increase in social acceptance of interracial marriage – 37 per cent of Americans agreed that having more people marrying different races was a good thing for society (in 2011, this figure stood at just 24 per cent), while only 9 per cent were against it. In France, although there is a large mixed population there are no data to document the size of this ethnic group.37 Ethnicity statistics are illegal because the notion of distinguishing ethnic minorities is deemed counter to Republican ideals of French citizenship: Based on a principle of equality, [Republican ideology] contrasts with the ‘logic of minorities’ that confers a specific status on national or ethnic minorities … [and] inspired by the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, asserts the equality of men across the diversity of their cultures. (L’intégration à la Française [report of the High Committee on Integration], 1993, cited in Kastoryano (2002: 40)) See Collins, 2004; Genetics for the Human Race, 2004; Henig, 2004; Anderson and Nickerson, 2005. 35 Tyler Perry Studios was launched by Perry on 4 October 2008. He is a playwright, screenwriter, actor, director and producer, and his studio produces film and TV work, for example Oscar winner Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Daniels, USA, 2009). 36 Activists had lobbied for a ‘multiracial’ category, but this was rejected by the government.  Early census records noted multiraciality but in these cases a person’s race was determined by the census worker. The 1860–90 censuses carried the options: black/white/mulatto. The 1890 census offered more category choices, for example Japanese, quadroon and octoroon. In 1920, census workers estimated that 75 per cent of the black population had white/native heritage (see Davis, 1991: 29). By 1930, multiracial categories had been removed from the census. 37 Following the Second World War, Germany also does not keep official ethnicity data, does not use the term ‘race’ and has no equivalent terms for ‘mixed-race’ or ‘interracial marriage’. Morning notes that ‘race as a census item is used virtually exclusively by either New World former slave societies (United States …) and/or their territories’ (2014: 6). 34

14

Mixed Race Cinemas

This model, popularly known by the motto liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity), declares that all citizens are French without differentiation. Thus, unlike America, there are no direct census questions regarding the exact ethnic, racial or religious make-up of French society on the basis that such statistics will lead to confrontation between ethnicities and enhance racism. Following the ghetto riots of 2005 and 2006, France’s umbrella organization for black groups, CRAN (Conseil Representatif des Associations Noires) (The Representative Council of Black38 Associations), began demanding the development of demographic data based on ethnicity in order to address issues of discrimination. But when the immigration minister attempted to realize this demand in 2007, his motion was rejected as unconstitutional. In February of that year, CRAN published the first French opinion poll on ‘race’ and found that 56 per cent of mixed and black French people suffered racial discrimination in their everyday lives, while 37 per cent believed that the level of racism had worsened in the last year. CRAN’s spokesperson Louis-Georges Tin stated: ‘Being black [in France] is a social handicap’ (cited in Chrisafis, The Guardian, 24 February 2007). The 2008 musical comedy Agathe Cléry (Chatiliez, France, 2008) captured this experience – like 1970’s Watermelon Man (Van Peebles, USA) – through the ‘becoming’ black of a white racist executive. When the titular character (played by Valérie Lemercier) awakes one morning to find that her skin has changed colour, she comes to discover a new life full of the same discrimination she has wrought against others. The film explores the institutional racism in France which journalist Angelique Chrisafis notes is endemic: ‘Non-white graduates with top-class degrees complain that CVs go unanswered because of the colour of their skin or nonFrench surname. The government has since moved to ban the requirement for a photo on CV applications, introducing the principle of “anonymous CVs” but the law has not yet come into effect’ (The Guardian, 24 February 2007). The 2006 law was finally brought into effect in 2014 and while this marks a positive move towards equality, it is as yet unclear what effect this will have on the hiring process as a whole. During the 2007 Presidential election, Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal said that she wanted to be president of a ‘mixed-race’ France. Her proposed anti-racism measures may well have influenced Sarkozy’s 2008 objectives for national equality.39 Discussing his campaign he announced: ‘We will no longer have young people who are foreigners in their own country’ (cited in The Washington Post, 9 February 2008). Yet evidence of this marginalization The term ‘black’ is used here as a political umbrella term for all non-whites. A campaign launched in February 2008 to eradicate racism in France and regenerate the slums (the sixteenth renewal plan in thirty-one years) with new housing, education and jobs programmes, and tougher police enforcement.

38 39

Introduction

15

remains present in many French films, for example, Bande de filles (Girlhood) (Sciamma, 2014), Samba (Nakache and Toledano, 2014), La Graine et le mulet (Couscous) (Kechiche, 2007), Entre les murs (The Class) (Cantet, 2008) and Intouchables (Nakache and Toledano, 2011) all present a racially divided society. In 2014, a racism row surrounding the Miss France beauty contest led to the resignation of its chief judge Alain Delon, a former movie star and member of the National Front. Franco-Benise winner Flora Coquerel said: ‘I am very proud to represent a cosmopolitan France. It shows that today’s France is a mixed France, where there is every culture, and I think a lot of people will see themselves in me.’ The current media focus on the problems of multiculturalism and dangers of immigration is often tempered or incensed by the prophecies of a mixedrace future. Liberal viewpoints utilize this as a positive vision of a more tolerant society. However, for conservatives following the ideological positions of Marie Le Pen,40 Rush Limbaugh41 and Enoch Powell,42 the mixed future signifies not only a loss of whiteness and power, but also the loss of local values, traditions, cultures, laws and languages.43 Miscegenation is perceived as a threat because, as Mia Mask astutely observes, ‘It breaks the biological assumptions implicit in definitions of race’ (2004: 45). Racial mixing erodes whiteness and thus the mixed figure disproves the imagined homogeneity of the nation. The SimEve experiment (a digital image created from a mix of several different races and gendered as female) supported the popular liberal idea that racial mixing would lead to a new American population, visualized as beautiful, healthy and tanned. The image was published on the cover of Time magazine (September 1993) as a positive post-racial ideal.44 But the accompanying article foregrounded the erosion of national identity due to immigration, miscegenation and the ‘browning’ of America. The text accompanying SimEve’s image reads: ‘Take a good look at this woman. She was created by a computer from a mix of several different races. What you see is a remarkable preview of … the New Face Of America. How Immigrants Are Shaping The World’s First Multicultural Society.’ Former leader of the extreme right-wing French political party Le Front National (National Front) – the party is now led by his daughter, Marine. 41 American radio-host and conservative political commentator. 42 An English politician who in 1968 made his famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, in which he declared that the introduction of foreign influences through immigration and integration was destroying Britain and thus that it would flow with the blood of the natives if the situation continued. Available from: http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol1no1/ep-rivers.html 43 Beltràn notes: ‘With respect to ethnic demographics, notions of a white majority also no longer fit the country neatly’ (2005: 55). 44 A similar digital pastiche of mixedness was used for the cover of Mirabella magazine in September 1994 – see Berlant, 1997. 40

16

Mixed Race Cinemas

Evelynn M. Hammonds (1997) draws attention to the use of the word ‘new’ here, as eradicating mixed-race history. She observes that the article seems rooted in pre-civil rights discourse even though it ‘appeared twentyeight years after the last state anti-miscegenation law was struck down … [and] forty-five years after the UNESCO document of race’ (1997: 113). As a digitally created image of racial mixing who appears more ordinarily European than exotic, SimEve projects white beauty ideals, white American identity and non-threatening, feminine passivity. She denies the diversity of racial mixing and sanitizes racial histories of difference and Otherness. The underlying discourse refutes the existence of a large mixed population in the presentpast and negates mixed politics by reducing mixed ethnicity into a futuristic, imaginary identity. Further digital mixed images which accompanied the Time magazine article (dubbed ‘morphies’) portrayed a balanced 50/50 mix of two ‘races’. The different outcomes were arranged into a chart (although this had no scientific relevance and was merely a dramatization of new technology). This was reminiscent of the charts that anthropologists kept of native peoples in earlier centuries, noting measurements, hair colour and ability. As Haraway (1997) notes, the choice to computerize mixedness can be seen as reflecting a desire to create something which only exists in a contained, alternative reality rather than to engage with the real-life complexities of ‘race’ and racialized Others. Contemporary post-racial discourses argue that SimEve’s imaginary world has been made manifest, that is, that we now exist in mixed, colour-blind societies. In films such as The Fast and The Furious (Cohen, USA/Germany, 2001), starring mixed actor Vin Diesel, few of the film’s protagonists are recognizable as one ‘race’ or another, ethnicity is not discussed, and people of different shades form familial bonds. Indeed, Diesel’s career has been shaped by this ‘post-race’ ideology; he stars as black and white characters onscreen – playing both in the short Multi-Facial (Diesel, USA, 1995)45 – while in Pitch Black, A Man Apart and xXx, his ethnicity is never referred to in the dialogue. Likewise, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has played characters who are white, Multi-Facial (made by Diesel’s production company, One Race) bears similarities to Mixing Nia. Both films have mixed directors and depict a mixed protagonist who performs different races to appeal to different audiences. In Multi-Facial, Diesel plays an actor who auditions for a series of raced roles and is therefore seen changing his look, mannerisms, attitude and accent to fit each stereotype and book a job. In Mixing Nia, the titular mixed character (Karyn Parsons) has reached a crossroads in her life and feels unsure as to where she fits or what her purpose is. In a series of dream sequences she imagines herself as different versions of blackness and whiteness. This also affects her day-to-day-life as she dates different men and experiments with different hairstyles and looks. It even affects the direction of the book she is writing, shifting the centrality of racial discourse from one extreme to another (see ‘Escaping Tragedy Through Black Transcendence in Mixing Nia’, Joseph, 2013, pp. 95–123).

45

Introduction

17

black or undefined; a 2016 article led with the headline ‘Dwayne Johnson – “Race Shifter” in a “Post-Racial” World?’46 It is crucial to look beyond the illusory discourses of ‘race’ to consider theories and histories of spectatorship, visual apparatus and optics; however, it is also important to understand how these elements operate in societies which remain racialized. Therefore this book takes the critical position that ‘race’ is still a key factor in film studies. For example, studies on black American cinema are always classified as such, while studies of white American cinema are simply defined as studies of American cinema. In France, non-white French cinema is generally labelled Maghrebi-French, beur (Arabic) or banlieue (ghetto) cinema while, again, white French cinema is simply known as French cinema. In Amandine Gay’s 2016 ‘talking heads’ documentary Ouvrir la voix (Speak Up), mixed/black French women discuss their experiences of race and gender. In a discussion on casting practices in France, they note the interest in actors who can do an ‘African’ accent and the lack of concern in understanding Africa as a continent, equitable to Europe. The participants refer to the ghettoizing of ‘black’ films as niche, and the perceived universality of mainstream ‘white’ cinema. They lament the lack of representations of blackness that go beyond banlieue stereotypes and the manner in which mixed/black women are distanced from national inclusion through this stereotyping. They also draw attention to the exclusionary impact of the attribution of Afro-Caribbean accents to African-American characters when American media is dubbed for French audiences. Like beur cinema, black American cinema is usually associated with delinquency, violence and alterity, identified primarily by a mostly male, mostly non-white cast and a visibly deprived location on the urban periphery.47 Often, films which promote such stereotypes are made by filmmakers who fetishize the ghetto, in the same way the predominately white-financed films of Blaxploitation did.48 Thus these films maintain white privilege on many levels and reflect the internalization of racist attitudes by artists, whether white or not. Films which attempt to contradict such stereotypes are theoretically and thematically segregated from mainstream cinema in their respective countries despite the efforts of non-white filmmakers such as American Spike Lee or French Zaïda Ghorab-Volta to break free of their confinement to ghetto/ arthouse screen culture.

Sergio Mims, Shadow and Act: On Film, Television and Web Content of Africa and Its Diaspora, 13 June 2016. 47 See Hargreaves, 1996; Denzin, 2002. See, for example Raï (Gilou, France, 1995). 48 See Shohat and Stam, 1994; Carter, 2008. 46

18

Mixed Race Cinemas

Since the explosion of racial studies in the 1970s many scholars, notably Donald Bogle, Jim Pines, James Snead, Jacquie Jones, Daniel Leab, Pearl Bowser, Clyde Taylor, K. Sue Jewell and Thomas Cripps, have analysed the history of black cinema. Bogle’s pioneering work of 1974, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Film, identified five dominant black stereotypes onscreen:49 Tom (who betrays the black community to whites for self-promotion); Coon (harmless clown or naive folk philosopher);50 Tragic Mulatto (mixed-race: if female, ‘passes’ for white and seduces white men; if male is devious, ambitious and demonized);51 Mammy (fat, cantankerous, sexless maid and long-suffering nurturer); Buck (menacing, hypersexual (potential rapist of white women), brutal, physically aggressive). Drawing on Bogle’s template, mixed-race women can be categorized into three types in pre-1960s cinema: Tragic Mulatta (e.g. Fredi Washington in Imitation of Life (Stahl, USA, 1934));52 Jezebel (a ferociously seductive temptress – who usually lures white men into bed – for example Dorothy Dandridge in Island in the Sun (Rossen, USA, 1957)); Sapphire (a parasitic femme fatale, e.g. Nina Mae McKinney in Hallelujah (Vidor, USA, 1929)).53 The mixed figure is tragic because she is condemned for failing to fall into a binary system of opposition, as Valerie Smith writes: ‘A more general paradox or conflict exists in the very syntax of the formation “legally black yet physically white”, for the phrase polarizes Many of these stereotypes stem from the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852) which featured Uncle Tom, ‘pickaninnies’ (black children), Mammy, Sam as the ‘happy darky’ (a lazy, carefree character or ‘coon’) and the ‘tragic mulatta’ as sex object (as seen in the characters Eliza, Cassy and Emmeline). It was a major text in early American cinema; the first of twelve films based on the text was directed by Siegmund Lubin in 1903. 50 As Stepin Fetchit, a Coon archetype, Lincoln Perry became the most famous and well-paid black actor of the 1920s and 1930s. He started a production company to make ‘race movies’ (independent all-black films for black audiences to be shown in black theatres) and enjoyed unprecedented power as a wealthy actor in demand. 51 As Naomi Zack (1993) notes, the literary ‘tragic mulatto’ became a ‘noble mulatto’ after the Civil War and was often narratively posited as a hero of the black community who gave up his/her chance to ‘pass’ in order to lead them – this did not translate positively to cinema. For more on the literary/cinematic ‘tragic mulatto’, see Raimon, 2004; Bost, 2003; Giles, 1995; Lupack, 2002. 52 See also: the ‘seditious mulatto’ or ‘tragic octoroon’.  With more positive depictions of mixedness, scholars have established new dichotomies for the mixed character, following on from the ‘savage/noble negro’ screen archetypes: degenerative multiracial/heroic multiracial (Nishime, 2014); new-millennium mulatto/exceptional multiracial (Joseph, 2013); angry/sad race girl (ibid); mixed-race transformer/post-racial healer (ibid). 53 These latter two stereotypes derive from novels depicting the mixed woman as an animalistic, unscrupulous temptress who ruins innocent white men (see Zack, 1993). This gendered attitude towards interracial unions has its roots in early anti-miscegenation legislation which only condemned black/mixed men and white women engaging in sexual acts. Hence, while white men and mixed/black women are often presented in relationships onscreen, mixed/black men and white women are rarely romantically or sexually linked. 49

Introduction

19

the two terms and invokes ostensibly stable categories of racial difference. Systems of racial oppression depend upon the notion that one can distinguish between empowered and disempowered races …. Yet the bodies of mixedrace characters defy the binarism upon which constructions of racial identity depend’ (1994: 43–53). So, the mixed figure is essentially transgressive and destabilizing to the hegemony. This is of course disorientating but also exciting, hence her seductive power over white men. While mixed women previously passed for white, with the continued interest in mixed beauty in a ‘post-racial’ climate, the dynamic of shadism54 has now shifted to an off-white ideal.55 White actors such as Angelina Jolie lay claim to a mixed ancestry, or, as Beltràn notes, adapt their looks to fit the new market: ‘“White” actors and models increasingly are modifying their appearance to promote an ethnic look, whether by increasing the size of their lips, making their eyes more almond-shaped, or adding curves by inserting implants’ (2005: 56). This shift is also visible in the popularity of tanning products, cornrows, weaves, headwraps, dreadlocks, locs and so on.56 In 2015, a new focus on this issue came about when Rachel Dolezal, the president of the NAACP Spokane chapter, was publicly ‘outed’ as white. Dolezal had entered Howard University on a scholarship for black students, and – despite going on to sue Howard for discriminating against her once they became aware of her white ethnicity – continued to imply or claim blackness in her postgraduate career, gaining academic and public-service faculty positions as a result. She worked extensively in the fields of black studies, as a lecturer, artist and civil rights activist. Her appearance changed significantly, and despite the contrast of her fair skin and hair in old photos with the richly tanned skin shade and semi-afro she sports today, she has only admitted to wearing a weave. At the time of writing, Dolezal continues to identify as black. Given the popularity of appropriating black culture, while Dolezal was criticized by black commentators for reverse racism, she was received by the mainstream media as a comically confused character rather than a dangerous ‘passer’. Shadism is a descriptor of the hierarchy of colour which privileges light-skinned mixed people – the more similar one appears to the norm/ideal of whiteness (see Dyer, 1997), the more socially acceptable one becomes. This has led to dark-skinned people bleaching their skin and those with distinctly African features having surgery in order to appear less black and gain access to social and cultural privilege. See Conrad et al., 2009; Kubrin, 2005; Dixon and Maddox, 2005; Oliver, 1994; Gaines, 2001. 55 This is satirized in A Day in Black and White (Hall, USA, 1999), a film which mocks the liberalist assumption that mixedness equates to beauty (and by extension mocks shadism). 56 See Marc Jacobs’ catwalk show at New York Fashion Week in September 2016, where a cast of exclusively white models wore dreadlocked wigs. 54

20

Mixed Race Cinemas

In the film Soul Man (Miner, USA, 1986), a white man ‘passes’ as black to get a college scholarship reserved for African-Americans. He darkens his skin and wears a wig. His white girlfriend tells him she doesn’t see black or white but shades of grey. Later in the film, she flirts with a Native American and tells him she only sees shades of pink. Her post-racial arguments continue to imply a binary view of race – she sees the men as black and red, colours which when mixed with white become grey and pink.57 In Soul Man, the idea of reframing racial discourse according to shades – thus removing it from a paradigm of assimilation/destruction – is posited but dismissed as meaningless within a binary system of black/white.58 Yet, in the Dolezal case, the Twitter hashtag ‘transracial’59 began trending, which those who share her desire to live out another racial identity employed to describe an understanding of race beyond biology or ancestry. While many saw Dolezal’s actions as hurtful to the black community, others referred to her as a symbol of liminality, a sign of our need to move beyond fixed ideas of race and identity. In recent years, criticisms of cultural appropriation in pop music and fashion have become more vocal, as key figures from Miley Cyrus to Iggy Azalea to Kylie Jenner have been lambasted for what some call code-switching and others call blackface. In a period of intense racial tension in America, these wellworn issues of cultural homage/theft60 have been highlighted as underpinning systemic racism. So, the possibility of being transracial, while benefitting from white privilege, remains contradictory. This ‘culture smudging’ as black rapper Azealia Banks puts it, has expanded the hybrid discourses of mixedness and yet also led to discussions about the lack of ownership or power in black lived experience due to the absence of reparations and the continuation of minstrelsy in popular culture. This lack, and the ways in which many feel they are mocked and excluded by white performers’ code-switching, has led ‘Pink’ was used to describe mixed-race people in nineteenth-century America (e.g. Eugene Toomer’s mixed-race grandfather P. B. S. Pinchback was known as ‘Pink’). ‘Gray’ was suggested in the early 1990s as a descriptor for ‘mixed-race’ (as when black and white colours are mixed they produce a series of shades of grey), even though it is usually used as a descriptor of a sickly complexion. Still, this context fits with anti-mixed-race discourse, for example, ‘mulatto jack’ was a term used to describe the appearance of yellow fever. In the 1869 case State v. Scott, the mixed person was described as ‘sickly and effeminate’, ‘inferior in physical development and strength’, ‘productive of evil, and evil only, without any corresponding good’ (see Saks, 1988). 58 The final scene of Volcano (Jackson, USA, 1997) shows everyone covered in grey dust, thus eradicating racial difference. However, the impermanence of dust makes this image a fruitless one in the face of existing racial divisions. 59 This is a term usually used in cases of adoption where the child and the adoptive parents are of different races. 60 See Lott, 1993. In this book Lott explores the dialectics of repulsion and attraction which underpin minstrelsy, and explores how historical ‘blackface’ shows commodified, celebrated and denigrated black cultural heritage for white audiences. 57

Introduction

21

prominent black artists and cultural commentators to publicly express serious concern, and in Banks’s case, deeply personal emotions. To understand this more fully, it is necessary to consider the historical processes of American racial representation.

American mixed-race cinema history American black/mixed representations were largely performed by white actors in blackface in early and silent cinema and based on degeneracy theories. The Production Code, as well as institutional racism, restricted opportunities for black and mixed people. This situation began to change in the 1930s when lobbying by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples), alongside the popularity of certain black stock characters with white audiences (e.g. Mantan Moreland or Stepin Fetchit) and the rise of the ‘black dollar’ (as evidenced by the success of ‘race movies’) encouraged the studios to give black/mixed characters more dramatic and significant roles in mainstream films.61 These changes led to the creation of the first blackidentifying mixed stars: Nina Mae McKinney and Fredi Washington in the 1930s, and Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge in the 1940s and 1950s.62 The mixed problematic became a recurring theme as it fitted with one of the popular cinematic genres of the 1940s post-war period, the problem picture cycle, which focused on racial discrimination and the potential for equality (drawing a clear line between fascist Germany and libertarian America). These films encouraged patriotism and promoted the universality of the American dream. In 1942, the NAACP made a pact with the Hollywood studios to move away from stereotypical depictions of blacks, integrate black actors into mainstream films and integrate black personnel into the ranks of studio technicians, but few were able to shatter the glass ceiling and become influential in the cinema industry. A series of films foregrounding mixed identities (albeit played by white actors), including Pinky (Kazan, USA, 1949) and Lost Boundaries (Werker, USA, 1949), made the miscegenation taboo, and the reality of America’s mixed population, a hot topic.63

In the broader film culture of the 1930s, there was a shift in representations of whiteness. Ambiguously white stars such as Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr and Dorothy Lamour, along with non-white actresses Anna May Wong and Lupe Velez, came to replace Hollywood’s ‘pale platinum blondes’ (Berry, 2000: 95) as icons of feminine beauty. 62 Dorothy Dandridge made history as the first mixed-race/black woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award in 1954 for her role in Carmen Jones (Preminger, USA). 63 For more on post-war changes in the media, see Wilson II and Gutiérrez, 1995; Cripps, 1993. 61

22

Mixed Race Cinemas

The civil rights movement led to greater changes along with the rejection – by the black community – of ‘inauthentic’ caricatures of blackness. Actors such as Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetchit), Mantan Moreland, Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers and Lena Horne were deemed white puppets, performing minstrelsy. This shift de-popularized stereotypical characters and all-black films (due to their reliance on stock characters), but films on mixed topics continued due to the popularity of taboo themes in fictional formats. During the 1950s, Jim Crow segregation64 was still in effect and the Production Code’s ban on miscegenation remained. Following 1967’s landmark ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which decriminalized interracial marriage, Hollywood’s first authentic images of mixed couples emerged. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Kramer, USA, 1967) captured the zeitgeist, heralding Sidney Poitier as Hollywood’s first black star. The Supreme Court ruling made black people equal as partners, parents and kin to white families, while also, by default, making the children of mixed unions legitimate and equal citizens. The 1954 Brown v. The Board of Education decision had led to the desegregation of white schools (and the closure of black schools), so society became less segregated and mixed unions were more possible.65 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought black people even closer to a point of equality. This series of legal decisions and social shifts compelled media professionals to produce fairer representations of mixedness and blackness. However, many stereotypes endured, fuelled by prevailing racism and the dominance of white writers, producers and directors. Nevertheless, the civil rights movement brought black and mixed-race people to the forefront of the public sphere and the industry began to take note, seeing the potential for profit in a new market. It would be some time before society was ready to see mixedness as normal or mixed marriages as ordinary, but they were no longer illegal categories. Racism and segregation were also no longer legally justifiable. More and more couples availed of the new laws, and the mixed baby boom had a decisive effect on the next generation – who grew up around mixed couples and mixed children – and the films they would produce or want to see.66 African-American artist Melvin Van Peebles made his name as a filmmaker in France in the 1960s, having struggled to build his career in America due to A series of laws enforcing segregation in the majority of American states from the 1880s to the 1960s which unjustly affected black people. The name Jim Crow was taken from a minstrel show. 65 Thurgood Marshall, the attorney in this case, went on to become the nation’s first black justice in the Supreme Court. 66 For more on the effect of the 1967 ruling on mixed representation, see: Gaines, 2001; Courtney, 2005; Bost, 2005. 64

Introduction

23

discrimination. In 1967 he returned to America with a French film influenced by his participation in the nouvelle vague. It had been fifteen years since a black director had made a film in America and Hollywood had still never had a black director.67 Van Peebles’ film, La Permission (The Story of a Three Day Pass), featured a romance between an African-American soldier and a white woman, a feat possible, like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, due to the decriminalization of interracial marriage. In the 1970s, black representation was revolutionized by the black power, ‘black is beautiful’ and Blaxploitation movements, all of which reessentialized the mixed-race character as black.68 The idea of peaceful racial uplift had become so unpopular that rather than representing traditional ideals (education, social mobility, etc.), the filmic heroes of the Blaxploitation era were rebels who refused to follow the tenets of dominant, that is, white, society and as such were threatening and revolutionary. Black women, however, remained subjugated and sexualized onscreen. While launched by Van Peebles’s 1971 independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Blaxploitation quickly became a Hollywood B-movie movement, funded by white men. In the 1980s, the films of Spike Lee deconstructed the idea of a unified, singular black community by exploring class, gender and shadism. They raised the issues of mixedness once more, providing platforms for mixed actors Halle Berry and Giancarlo Esposito. The development of the 1990s Hood film genre (in which Lee was a key player), however, recalled the negative stereotyping of Blaxploitation, particularly in its recreation of the Buck stereotype and negation of black feminine subjects (perhaps due to its largely white financiers interests). Still, the industrial shift towards black production crews had a lasting effect on American cinema, opening the doors for contemporary star directors such as Steve McQueen and Ava DuVernay. The focus on integrationist narratives in the 2000s (e.g. Crash) led to a greater exploration of the complexities of racially mixed spaces. And in the 2010s, civil rights narratives such as Selma have benefitted from a renewed interest in African-American history, while de-raced representations have also become more common. The ‘post-racial’ moment has been accompanied by a renewed focus on slavery and colonialism in Anglo-American cinema. This is reminiscent of the early 2000s French movement where directors engaged in la politique de la From the 1910s to late 1940s there was a strong black film industry – its most famous director being Oscar Micheaux – which made ‘race movies’ for the black communities, but the industry was gradually eroded by the introduction of sound, competition from major studios (both the all-black musicals and the problem pictures like Pinky), the Depression and finally the Second World War. 68 See Craig, 2002; Cone, 1997; Howard, 2008; Watkins, 1998. 67

24

Mixed Race Cinemas

mémoire, attempting to reveal and explore hidden histories through cinema. Works such as 12 Years a Slave explore culpability, the national past, gender and racial positionalities. As such, they call into question dominant political narratives and, through images which evoke both the past and the present, question the possibility for any society which is still consumed by racial politics, to be labelled ‘post-race’. 12 Years a Slave (McQueen, USA/UK, 2013), features a variety of forms of interracial relationships. As in Django Unchained (Tarantino, USA, 2012) there is a positive resolution for the black protagonist, yet this is dependent on individual white patronage. A particularly traumatic scene shows a woman who has been supported by her white partner – and whose sumptuous clothing suggests relative wealth – brought with her two mixed-race children to a slave auction. By contrast with the male auctions, this has a dignified air as it takes place within the confines of a grand home. Under the high ceilings and chandeliers, this woman’s family is degraded and sold off separately, with the light-skinned girl provoking such interest in the slave masters that she attracts a high price. Another black woman is the public partner of a white slave master. Mistress Shaw (Alfre Woodward) takes on the position of a white lady and, while she acknowledges the sacrifices she has made to escape violent enslavement, she seems removed from the reality of those who now wait on her. When she meets the slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), she insists that they sit down to tea. Ignoring the fact that Patsey will be whipped for arriving back at her plantation late, Shaw role-plays a fantasy of white privilege. The scene parodies the superficial gentility of the slave master, revealing the psychological damage of a period of intense physical and mental brutality. Although positive representations of black and mixed-race characters have increased, racial representations often collapse into the same old stereotypes. As a character notes in Bamboozled (Lee, USA, 2000)), ‘50 years ago people said niggers are savages who can only play drums. Now they say: “Blacks are great, they’ve got rhythm!”’ As recognition forms identity, ‘dominant groups tend to entrench their hegemony by inculcating an image of inferiority in the subjugated’ (Taylor, 1994: 66). Reflecting its history of dominant and dominated cultures,69 mainstream Western cinema continues to focus on white mediators in its tales of mixed/black historical achievements, while subjugating mixed/black characters. Mixed-race female characters in mainstream films are still largely motivated by their desire for white men, characterized as tragic and reduced to a black or white identity according to the hypodescent rule. Furthermore, the ideology of Hollywood’s ‘white See Blanc, 2000.

69

Introduction

25

lens’ (Courtney, 2005) remains, casting black communities as disordered and violent, and idealizing whiteness (see Monster’s Ball, The Blind Side).70

Interrogating terminology Harlem Renaissance71 writer Jean Toomer claimed that as a mixed person he could be seen as a new type of man or the very oldest – centuries-old terms such as creole, mulatto and mestizo prove the long history of the mixed-race community in America and are still used to describe mixed people, along with more recent ones, such as Hapa,72 MATA (mark all that apply), Blasian (Black/ Asian) and Blaxican (Black/Mexican). Mixed communities are constantly creating new terms to more accurately describe their identities, for example Tiger Woods’s self-definition as ‘Cablinasian’ (Caucasian, Black, American-Indian and Asian),73 or the descriptor ‘Blackinese’ (Black/Chinese) represented by Biker Boyz (Bythewood, USA, 2003) star Tyson Beckford. Given that the field of Critical Mixed Race Studies is constantly evolving, some problematic terms are used in this book because more appropriate language simply does not exist yet. Before continuing, it is necessary to define some points of terminology, and clarify how they are used in this study. The word ‘miscegenation’ first appeared in an anti-abolitionist political pamphlet in 1863 (see Courtney, 2005).74 Despite its objectionable history, it is Best Lead Actor Oscar nominations for black stars affirm the Academy’s interest in rewarding works which attest to mixed/black histories of extreme oppression (e.g. Precious, The Help, Monster’s Ball, The Last King of Scotland, Training Day, Beasts of the Southern Wild, 12 Years a Slave, The Hurricane and The Great White Hope). While these are clearly important films, there remains little interest from the Academy in celebrating depictions of normalized mixed/black characters. And in many of these films, the problems of the mixed/black character are resolved by a white individual – see Hughey (2014). 71 The Harlem Renaissance was a ‘black’ (largely mixed-race) literary movement in early twentiethcentury New York, whose writers produced books on race, gender, sexuality and class, with an emphasis on the inequalities their characters faced as non-whites. Its leaders argued that all mixed people should identify as black to enable lobbying for improved political rights. This movement had great success in advancing equality but, as Zack observes, ‘What was lost was the concept of mixed race as a theoretical wedge against racism and against the concept of physical race’ (1993: 97). 72 This term originates in the Pacific islands; Hapa is Hawai’ian for those who are part Hawai’ian or part Asian, part Caucasian. Hawai’i is a mixed society (which may have given the term its positive image), although in the past, hapa was used in a derogatory sense. It is now widely used in America and Australia, as an alternative to ‘mixed’ and the terminology of ‘race’, to describe people of any variation of mixed-race. 73 As LeiLani Nishime notes, the response to Woods’s public discussion of his mixedness revealed a fractured public discourse; he was ‘both promoted as a pioneer and marked as a race traitor for refusing the single label of African American’ (2008: 298). 74 Later, intermarriage was used as the ultimate argument against equality by segregationists (see Ardizzone, 2008). 70

26

Mixed Race Cinemas

used here as a signifier of the discourses regarding sexual relations between people of different ethnic backgrounds (i.e. the fears, taboos, myths, laws, etc.). The word is derived from Latin – miscere (to mix) and genus (race) – and conflates racial and sexual boundaries. These boundaries will be interrogated in the considerations of ‘passing’ in the following chapters, for which it is useful to reference Elaine Ginsberg’s definition: The genealogy of the term passing in American history associates it with the discourse of racial difference and especially with the assumption of a fraudulent ‘white’ identity by an individual culturally and legally defined as ‘Negro’ or black …. As the term metaphorically implies, such an individual crossed or passed through a racial line or boundary – indeed trespassed – to assume a new identity, escaping the subordination and oppression accompanying one identity and accessing the privileges and status of the other. (1996: 3) The act of ‘passing’ brings all racial categories into question and indeed questions the idea of an essential identity against which one may transgress. Hammonds notes that ‘in the U.S. race has always been dependent upon the visual’ (108), while, as Amy Robinson (1994) observes, ‘passing’ questions the visible as the real/truth. Therefore, the ‘passing’ narrative, through the mixed-race body, undermines concepts of physical race and presents the possibility of a ‘third’ identity. It presents racialization as malleable – ‘passing’ mixed agents perform ‘race’ simply by changing their clothing, hair, make-up, speech, expression/gestures and/or lovers. Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1986) thus refer to ‘race’ as a process; constructing the racialization of bodies, it is a process shored up by cultural representations. Mixed cinematic representations expose ‘race’ as a set of complex social meanings, which are unstable, decentred and may be transformed. The term ‘mixed-race’ has been criticized for its links to ‘race’, miscegenation and privilege.75 As Aspinall notes, it is no more useful than any of the other Those of mixed-race were deemed preferable to black people as their ‘black genes’ were ‘tempered’ by ‘white genes’, making them supposedly less aggressive and irrational, an attitude the novelist John Howard Griffin quotes in his work on racial stereotyping: ‘The lighter the skin the more trustworthy the negro’ (1962: 16). Griffin’s 1962 book Black Like Me is a diary account of his time ‘passing’ for black. He takes medication to darken his skin and travels across the States, mostly the South, in order to experience the racial climate. The quote is from a white doctor. Griffin writes in response: ‘I was astonished … [by] this cliché, and equally astonished that Negroes would advance it, for in effect it placed the dark Negro in an inferior position and fed the racist idea of judging a man by his colour’ (pp. 16–17). In the process of ending his medication and reverting to his original colour, he finds that people treat him ‘with the utmost suspicion and discourtesy’ seemingly due to their doubts over his ‘racial purity’ (160), that is, his mixed-race appearance. This highlights the contradictory repulsion and attraction of mixedness.

75

Introduction

27

terms in adequately capturing the potential diversity of people of mixed heritage (2003: 275). Jane Ifekwunigwe (2004) preferred ‘métis(se)’ as she felt it decentred ‘race’ and avoided essentialisms;76 yet she ultimately stopped using it in favour of the more sociopolitically relevant term ‘mixed race’. The ideological complexities of mixed-race identity – in-between cultures and ethnicities and yet often ascribed to one – resting on the idea of ‘race’ and racial mixture, are key to this study. So ‘mixed-race’ is used in place of dual heritage, dual ethnicity, mixed parentage, bi-/multiracial/ethnic or people of mixed descent. This term is also abbreviated to ‘mixed’ and the experience of being mixed-race is described as ‘mixedness’. These choices follow those whose work on the importance of such a category has helped to establish it in the popular imagination and in academia.77 The struggle against the paradox of mixed terminology is immense, but it is a continuous process which will in time reconstitute our vocabulary and allow us to affirm our hybridity rather than fear it. Apart from the scientific studies which have disproven the biological notion of race and its ability to define identity, the very mobility of different ‘races’ and varieties of classifications under which they are known in different contexts (e.g. Chinese workers were classified as black in pre-Civil War America) demonstrates that ‘race’ and ethnicity are social constructions linked to the specific discursive spheres within which they are used. So, where it is necessary to unpack racial divides and definitions within racist discourse, the word ‘race’ is used as a signifier for economic, political and cultural injustice (the inverted commas are used to highlight its illusionary, problematic and mythical status). As Weigman writes (following Sollors, 1989, 1998), ethnicity is a preferable descriptor of difference because it is not a term heavily coded with the assumptions of ‘race’: Where ethnicity provides the means for differentiations based on culture, language and national origins, race renders the reduction of human differences to innate biological phenomena, phenomena that circulate culturally as the visible ledger for defining and justifying economic and political hierarchies between white and non-white groups. (1998: 160)

Other English writers to use the French term include Barot, Bradley and Fenton (1999). While it is impossible to provide an exhaustive list, key Critical Mixed Race Studies scholars include Ralina Joseph, Mary Beltràn, Marcia Dawkins, Catherine Squires, Paul Gilroy, David Hollinger, Kent Ono, Paul Spickard, Caroline A. Streeter, Miri Song, Stephen Small, Naomi Zack, Joan Olumide, Jane Ifekwunigwe, Gloria Anzaldúa, Rebecca C. King-O’Riain, LeiLani Nishime, Minelle Mahtani, Camilla Fojas and Maria P. P. Root.

76 77

28

Mixed Race Cinemas

‘Ethnicity’ derives from the Greek ‘ethnos’, meaning ‘race’ or nation. In order to avoid the reductionist tendencies of the term ‘race’ and its affirmation of essentialisms, the word ethnicity is used at times in this study to describe culture and as an alternative to ‘race’. Naomi Zack writes: A new paradigm for race might begin with knowledge that there is no biological foundation for the different racial groups. As a result, what was previously thought of as race might be thought of as ethnicity. … Mixedrace realities support this reconfiguration of race as ethnicity, and so does consideration of the ways in which ideas of race have changed over time and across cultures. (2006: 115) This book uses the term – popularized by political activist Jesse Jackson in the 1980s – ‘African-American’78 because, theoretically at least, this term avoids the binaries of ‘black’ or ‘white’ to describe the hyphenated existence, dual cultures and mixed ancestry of those people defined as ‘black’ in America. Of course it is a problematic term as Africa is a continent and not all ‘black’ people in America are from there (e.g. Trinidadians have Amerindian origins) or share an affinity with African cultures. Obama’s presidency has also raised the question of whether it applies to mixed-race people, and further, whether those who are not descended from slaves can call themselves ‘AfricanAmericans’.79 The term is highly politicized and evidently generalized, but preferable to other terms available as it strives to move away from negative definitions of blackness and reaffirm a pre-slavery history in Africa. It is also the most widely used term by and for people of African descent in America. The study hyphenates African-American, Maghrebi-French, SenegaleseFrench, mixed-race and so on to emphasize the hybridity of these identities. While doing so, this work recognizes that many scholars prefer not to hyphenate mixed-race or indeed African-American – as it suggests an equality with (and assimilation into) American society which is yet to come – and that the hyphenation of Afro-European identity categories is unusual in France. Marilyn Frye defined the construct of ideological white domination by the term ‘whiteliness’ (1995).80 This term denotes the power of white privilege This term is useful as, like ‘Caucasian’, it refers to a place of origin as well as signifying a colour. It is used, with ‘black’ American, in place of other descriptors such as Afro-American, Africans in America and so on. 79 As Obama’s father is Kenyan and mother American, the illogic of the term became clear as many argued he had no right to use it (while his wife Michelle did, as her American family are descended from slaves). 80 ‘Whiteliness’ describes the metaphysical power of white hegemony and how it is defined relationally. In order to disrupt this power it is necessary to have a politics of diverse representation. This includes moving away from essentialized notions of blackness and making efforts to eradicate social borders. 78

Introduction

29

(which Frye notes, despite sexism, applies to white women who seek equality with white men). It denotes the ability to impose, control and define other ethnicities.81 Whiteness is thus constructed in relation to and exists only in opposition to blackness – which becomes a signifier for impurity, amorality and the unknowable. Black filmmaker Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer observe that ‘we are all “ethnically located”, but the cultural specificity of white ethnicity has been rendered “invisible” by the epistemic violence that has, historically, disavowed difference in western discourses. …White is not anything really … because it is everything. … Whiteness only tends to become visible when its hegemony is under contestation’ (cited in Hall, 1996: 457). The concept of whiteness can therefore be understood as a mutable cultural power – ‘a static, ahistorical, aspatial “thing”: something set outside social change, something central and permanent, something that defines the “other” but is not subject to others’ definitions’ (Bonnett cited in AlibhaiBrown, 2000: vii). Formulations of whiteness change according to the contemporaneous cultural and political climate.82 For example, as Beltràn and Fojas note, many Latinos are considered white in non-white contexts (e.g. Latin America), but non-white in white contexts (e.g. North America) (2008: 3). Furthermore, although Puerto-Ricans and Cubans are traditionally associated with blackness in the white American perspective (2008: 261),83 this has not prevented actors such as Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Lopez becoming major white-identified stars.84 As black author Ralph Ellison (1970) outlined, mixed/black Americans have long been used by new immigrants and white Americans as a marker of the Other, allowing new immigrants to claim (white) American status and reducing the mixed/black American to the status of an outsider, as well as ‘a symbol of

See Alcoff, 2006. For example, Zack (1993) argues that black Americans are more vigilant than white Americans regarding whiteness. Those who do not meet the criteria for being deemed white include Italians, Hispanics, some Jews and others who do not meet Nordic Anglo-Saxon criteria. See Diane Negra on white Irishness in Keeping It Real: Irish Film and Television, London: Wallflower Press, 2004 or whiteness in Hollywood in Off-White Hollywood, London: Routledge, 2001. See also the Daniel Bernardi-edited anthologies, The Birth of Whiteness and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema and Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness. Other scholars whose work explores whiteness, include Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Ruth Frankenberg, Theodore Allen, George Lipsitz, Peggy McIntosh, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, bell hooks, Arne Lunde, Michael Omi, Howard Winant, David Roediger, Eric Goldstein, Noel Ignatiev and Toni Morrisson. 83 Chon Noriega notes that Latinos as a whole are ‘legally white but socially black’ (2000: xxvi), which, as Beltràn (2008) finds, is evidenced in their historical and contemporary institutional treatment in America. 84 See Nakamura, 2008. 81 82

30

Mixed Race Cinemas

limits’ (i.e. the limits of law, humanity and sexuality – hence the establishment of anti-miscegenation and segregation laws).85 Ellison writes: Color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. … But this is tricky magic. Despite his racial difference and social status, something indisputably American about Negroes not only raised doubts about the white man’s value system but aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black. (cited in West, 1993: 1) Black people were crucial to the European colonization, expansion and exploitation of America. The system within which they lived as slaves produced widespread racial mixing and thus as Ellison notes, there is a cultural and physical commonality in all Americans, whether as the mixed-race product of a master’s rape, as the white man drawn to his slave mistress, or as the white body reshaped through its interaction with slaves (as in Scarlett O’Hara). This ideology is no less present in the creation of mixed star personas such as Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge; they revealed the racial mixture of America through their appearance and universal popularity (being most in demand at ‘whites only’ clubs) and thus undermined the value system which denied the existence of or desire for racial mixture. Onscreen, they were positioned as figures of racialized sexual fantasy, only interested in sex and ‘bling’ (e.g. see Cabin in the Sky (Minnelli, USA, 1943), Carmen Jones (Preminger, USA, 1954)). Given that they were legally designated black, the actresses had to use back entrances and servants’ elevators in ‘white’ hotels, at least at the start of their careers.86 Nevertheless both could ‘pass’ as white and so symbolize the black American within the white body.

Methodology and frameworks If to be mixed-race is to be post-duality, then one can define the experience in terms of Giles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari’s (1996) nomad theory, that is, that those in the interstices are in a constant state of revolution. This nomadic state is further explored in Rosi Braidotti’s (1994) framework, which privileges those between cultures and identities. Likewise, Miri Song (2002) claims that to be beyond ethnic binaries is to be beyond ethnic exclusivity. Song suggests See Jewish assimilation into white American identity made possible through ‘blackface’ in The Jazz Singer. 86 See Donald Bogle’s Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams; Mia Mask’s Divas on Screen. 85

Introduction

31

that in contemporary society rather than ‘passing’ or having an ethnicity imposed upon them, mixed-race people can choose their own ethnicity, one belonging to neither dominant group but to a third category. One can thus read the mixed character as a post-binary identity, moving freely between ‘black’ and ‘white’, revolutionizing the borderlands of ‘race’. One can also consider her in terms of Donna Haraway’s (1991) cyborg, a theoretical symbol of post-gender, post-race, post-ethnicity, post-class, postsexuality and post-age possibilities. Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1992) ‘new mestiza’ theory provides a useful framework for understanding this experience. Anzaldúa’s ‘borderlands’ refers to the homeland of most Mexican-Americans, the borderlands between the United States and Mexico (in the United States). She herself grew up in South Texas, and it is in the ‘Third Space’ of the ‘borderlands’ where she imagines a mestiza utopia leading to the end of racial divisions and the acceptance of difference. The new mestiza is multiply identitied and, therefore, beyond categorization. Her multiplicity is liberating yet threatening, leaving the subject without a clear sense of belonging and removed from established social structures. Yet it is the freedom of this uncategorizable interconnectedness that enables cross-cultural communication, understanding and unity; thus the new mestiza serves as an inclusive model for new definitions of selfhood and nation. Anzaldúa’s positive vision of a mixed future may be attributed to the Chicano/a tradition of seeing racial mixture positively, an approach which reflects the difference between the historical construction of Mexican American and North American societies.87 F. James Davis’s (2006) mixed future theory concurs in part with Anzaldúa’s, but suggests that America will follow the model of Hawai’i, a space of ethnic diversity (where Obama spent most of his youth). Davis’s ideas are, like Robert Fox’s (1997), based on the idea of the mixed utopia as a ‘post-white’ space where the white hegemony has lost its power thus leading to the end of racial hierarchies.88 The future of America in light of the universalization of this ‘new mestiza’ identity becomes utopian; there is a synthesis of differences, a commitment to flexibility, the ‘uprooting of dualistic thinking’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 80). Using the language of Darwin and the racist scientific discourse which oppressed mixed-race people, Anzaldúa sees this new mixed consciousness as an ‘evolutionary step forward’ and an event which would ultimately lead to ‘the end of rape, of violence, of war’ (1987: 81). She constructs a teleology with the ‘new mestiza’ acting as a catalyst for the resolution of social conflicts. However, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David Embrick (2006) identify shadism as still dominating most Latin American cultures. 88 See Davis, 2006; Fox, 1997; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David Embrick, ‘Black, Honorary White, White: The Future of Race in the United States?’ in Brunsma (2006). 87

32

Mixed Race Cinemas

This is a crucial idea because it subverts the tragic nature of the ‘mulatto’ popularized in fiction and film, undermines racial and gendered hierarchical power structures, and gives optimism to mixed-race subjects and mixed-race futures. In contrast to dominant discourse on the growth of mixedness as the end of monoraciality, Anzaldúa focuses on the grace of polyvocality. Her influence can be seen in the current trends in racial studies and postmodern theory which champion hybridity and the multiplication of difference (trends which Park (2008), following hooks (1992), notes have been commodified as ‘multiracial chic’ in popular culture). The ‘new mestiza’ theory is utilized in this study as a formative model, as it questions prevalent attitudes and opens up the possibility of viewing ethnic mixture as positive, and thus of representing mixed-race characters as rounded equals. To paraphrase Stuart Hall (1990), identity is constituted ‘not outside but within representation’ and can therefore help ‘us to discover who we are’. Films shape the way we relate to each other through the processes of representation and identification. However, mixed-race representation has often resulted in disidentification, particularly for spectators who felt misrepresented. The films selected in this study chart this journey to recognition, forming a microcosm of the emerging visibility of mixed-race issues over time. The films express a commonality of objectives and experiences across borders and highlight the interconnections between the two countries. They have been selected according to relevance, access, availability, popularity, iconography, centrality and number of mixed themes, star presence, and historical/cultural value. There is a wide range of films, from those which have merited little or no academic writing, to those which have been written on more extensively. In this way, the book actively creates, deciphers and reshapes criticism to accommodate and centralize a formerly marginalized mixed perspective. Established film theory saw the film text as bounded and the spectator as fixed and unitary (i.e. male and Western). In line with feminist film criticism, this study utilizes the figure of the mixed-race character to demystify such illusions using ‘the politics of location’ (see Shohat and Stam, 1994), in order to promote the heterogeneity which racialized representations often lack. Just as female spectators have, according to Laura Mulvey, been asked to make a ‘trans-sex identification’ with the male agent of desire and narrative in cinema, mixed-race spectators have been asked to make a ‘trans-ethnic identification’ with white protagonists. This practice has predominately excluded mixed-race spectators from a position of pleasurable spectatorship and the articulation of desire. The cinematic space has been full of mixed-race images but absent of mixed-race agents. This book sets out to consider if and why this situation prevails, as well as how mixed representations might develop.

Introduction

33

Mixed-race spaces in French and American cinema The geographical home of a film determines its sociopolitical outlook according to culturally specific histories. For example, in American cinema the location of a mixed-race character in a black space is a way of fixing their racial status according to the hypodescent rule. The movement from this environment is often made through ‘passing’ for white, which links the concept of ‘place’ to ethnicity, opportunity and citizenship. Even in films which challenge this historical template such as Dope (Famuyiwa, 2015), the positioning of the mixed/black character within a black space defines them as oppressed and endangered, necessitating a move to a white space (here, acceptance into Harvard). Depending on the place from which a mixed-race character originates or calls home, the label attributed to them may change from ‘black’ to ‘half-caste’ to ‘white’ and so on, shifts which absolutely change their legal status and thus their lifestyle, family histories and economic circumstances. This reflects social confusion regarding racial categories. For example, the case of Susie Guillory Phipps – Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana (1985) – was brought unsuccessfully to oppose the one-drop rule which had classified her as black (cited in Zack, 2001). Her experience mimics that of (slave) Sally Hemings and President Thomas Jefferson’s son, Eston Hemings, the recording of whose ‘race’ evidences the shifting definitions given to mixedness. He was listed as ‘black’ while a slave at Monticello, recorded on the 1850 Ohio census as ‘mulatto’ and, a decade later, listed as ‘white’ by a census taker in Wisconsin. In the UK, on 10 December 1995, The Sunday Telegraph ran the headline ‘Parent’s fury as White son is ruled Black’ referring to a British family who wished to have their mixed son reclassified as white on school records, given that he had white skin. Their protests were ignored and the child was recorded as black. In 2006, a photograph of British mixed-race twins identified as black and white went viral. The image undermined the idea of ‘race’ as an immutable essence with, as Fanon noted, an ‘epidermal scheme’.89 The biopic Skin (Fabian, South 89 In 2014, Brazil initiated a policy of racial evaluation commissions for public-service jobs in order to establish applicants’ legitimacy for affirmative-action quotas. The policy is designed to address the systemic exclusion of black and mixed-race people, yet its focus on ‘race’ as an empirical fact has led to criticism. Guidelines from the Ministry of Planning instructed panels to ‘only consider the phenotypic aspects of the candidate’. In August 2016, a chart of criteria for black physical characteristics listed elements such as ‘lips: thick’, ‘gums: pink’, ‘hair: frizzy’. The obvious parallels with the use of similar criteria in apartheid systems raised serious objections and it was withdrawn. While the policy aims to rebalance Brazilian institutions along racial lines, thus benefitting non-whites, its limited methods appear exclusionary and regressive. See Stephanie Nolen’s article ‘Black or White?’, The Globe and Mail newspaper, 5 January 2017. Available from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ black-or-white-in-brazil-a-panel-will-decide-foryou/article33295036/

34

Mixed Race Cinemas

Africa, 2009) elaborates on these issues. Sandra Laing was born to white parents in South Africa during apartheid. As she had brown skin and Afro hair, her whiteness came under question once she started school, and eventually she was reclassified as ‘coloured’ and expelled. Her family fought for her reclassification as white but disowned her when she chose a black boyfriend. Her life story highlights how the mixed character’s role, position and identity changes according to their nation’s cultural ‘mood’. Racial ideology developed differently in the French and British empires. The French empire allowed professional colonized subjects to become French citizens. Republican ideology proclaimed slavery illegal on French soil and legal documents show that many slaves claimed their freedom through the courts upon arrival.90 Mixed-race people came to be known as métisse, creole or (colloquially) as café au lait. While still popular, the latter term fetishizes racial mixing and derives from a ‘half and half’ discourse which, as noted by Laurie Mengel (2001), denies mixed people the wholeness of identity naturally afforded to mono-racial individuals. The hypodescent model of the colonies led to the issue of shadism (also known as colourism), which distinguished between non-whites, giving privilege to some and not others. And while both empires might have defined mixed people as black or as slaves, French patriarchal ideology enabled many mixed people to inherit from their white fathers while British hypodescent rules did not, leading to vast differences between the mixed communities of either nation’s American colonies. As Naomi Zack (1993) outlines, because the French Napoleonic Code demanded that children take their father’s status, mixed-race people in Louisiana were free by default. Many were prosperous and owned land and slaves, while others were professionals, artisans, trades-people and artists. The same is true of South Carolina, and historically the two states came closest to viewing mixed-race people as a ‘Third Space’ (see Mencke, 1979). But in 1832 the courts bent to Anglo-American law and the mixed children of slaves became legally defined as slaves. By 1857 the emancipation of mixed slave children was illegal. Their divergent histories resulted in France being a much freer space for black and mixed people than America (as the American/French mixed-race protagonist explains in Kings Go Forth). That is not to say that France did not harbour much of the same racism as America but that it was not as legally oppressive to non-whites due to its Republican ethos (and because it had a much smaller non-white population than America). Mixed-race actress Nina Mae McKinney found, after starring in Hallelujah (Vidor, USA, 1929), that there were few leading roles for her in Hollywood, so she went to Europe However, during the slavery era black foreigners were generally only allowed to settle in France for a maximum of three years. See Peabody, 1996.

90

Introduction

35

to perform in cabaret and theatre and became known as ‘the black Garbo’ (see Bogle, 1974). The adoration of Josephine Baker in 1930s France (and to this day) stands in complete contrast to the limited opportunities afforded to Lena Horne in America a decade later, emphasizing the importance of place in relation to language, power and ideology. Although both were American cabaret/film stars and legally black, Baker enjoyed a degree of freedom – as a performer, in her love affairs with white men, politically91 – and success in France unknown to Horne in America. Thus Baker made France her home and became a French citizen. American cinema and literature has often linked stories of racial mixing to Louisiana and the creole communities in the former French colony, or indeed to France. In the neo-noir post-war thriller Devil in a Blue Dress (Franklin, USA, 1995), the ‘tragic mulatta’ (played by mixed actress Jennifer Beals) is originally from Louisiana and adopts a French name. Angel Heart (Parker, USA, 1987) is partially set in French-speaking Louisiana, stars mixed actress Lisa Bonet, and features an interracial relationship which is also incestuous. In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fincher, USA, 2008), an epic set in Louisiana which charts life from the First World War on, interracial families are normalized and racism is mysteriously absent. The film features a mixed family consisting of a white Frenchman, creole wife and white-skinned son, while a transracial family is formed when a white baby (Button played by Brad Pitt) is raised by a black woman – the mammyesque Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) – and later inherits a black father and sister. Jefferson in Paris (Ivory, France/USA, 1995) links the true story of Jefferson’s affair with his slave (played by mixed actress Thandie Newton) to the perceived looser morals of France, and locates their affair specifically in Paris, that is, outside the confines of American racial divides. Similarly, US Marshals (Baird, USA, 1998), while set in America, reflects this idea of France as a post-racial climate. In the thriller US Marshals, Wesley Snipes’s spy Mark J. Sheridan/Warren/ Roberts plays the hero and his white French love interest Marie Bineaux (Irène Jacob92) becomes the Other, the immigrant with a foreign (French) accent, threatened with deportation when she refuses to give information on his whereabouts. None of the problems present in Snipes’s many cinematic incarnations as part of an American interethnic couple93 exist in US Marshals, Baker worked for the French resistance during the Second World War and was active in the American civil rights movement. 92 In the film Victory (Peploe, UK/France/Germany, 1996), this Swiss actress performs the role of Alma, an East Indian woman. Her casting can be seen to reflect the continued decision by white filmmakers to use white actors to play non-white roles. 93 See, for example, his conflictual and doomed relationships with white women in: Blade II (del Toro, USA/Germany, 2002); Jungle Fever (Lee, USA, 1991); One Night Stand (Figgis, USA, 1997). 91

36

Mixed Race Cinemas

and the French context seems to play a part here; Bineaux is characterized as someone who has grown up in a mixed, free culture, respectful of others and lacking American ‘hang ups’ about ‘race’. She is not imagined as part of a binaried racialized power system because she is French rather than American. There are many mixed-race films which reflect the links between French and American cinema: Gothika (Kassovitz, 2003), an American film directed by a Frenchman, starring mixed actress Halle Berry; J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (I Spit on Your Grave94) (Gast, 1959), a French film set in an imagined Francophone America with a mixed-race protagonist; Kings Go Forth (Daves, 1958) an American film set in France with a mixed-race protagonist; La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995), an expression of multicultural France using American aesthetics; Shadows (Cassavetes, 1959) an American but stylistically French film, narratively centred around a mixed family; Far From Heaven (Haynes, 2002), an American film with an interracial love story; Métisse (Kassovitz, 1993) a French film using American formal conventions, starring mixedrace actress Julie Mauduech; Lila dit ça (Doueiri, 2005), a French interracial love story peppered with references to America; Big City (Bensalah, 2007), a French film set in Francophone nineteenth-century America which utilizes the Western genre to explore racial intolerance and interracial love; Be Kind Rewind (2008) and Catwoman (2004), both multicultural American films with French directors (Gondry and Pitof, respectively). Many American films exploring interracial dynamics are Franco-American coproductions, see, for example, The Human Stain (Benton, 2003, featuring mixedrace actor Wentworth Miller); Stargate (Emmerich, 1994, with mixed actor Jaye Davidson); Broken Flowers (Jarmusch, 2005, starring multigenerational mixed actor Jeffrey Wright – who has made a career of playing multiple ethnicities); Made in America (Benjamin, 1993); Jefferson in Paris (Ivory, 1995, with mixed actress Thandie Newton). This proves the acceleration of the mixed-race grouping as a common interest of the two industries, as well as of European immigrant directors in America, from Stahl to Pitof.

Franco-American narratives and Beur cinema In order to understand how the two industries interact, it is important to think about their historical development and representation of racial issues. With the end of the populist tradition of the 1930s and the onset of the Second World This film should not be confused with the rape/revenge film of the same name, also known as Day of the Woman (Zarchi, USA, 1978).

94

Introduction

37

War Vichy régime, French cinema erased most traces of both the working class and non-whites. This changed somewhat with the nouvelle vague in the 1960s, yet a focus on white, middle-class France has endured. The displacement of the working classes in Paris started under Napoléon III when the grand boulevards were created by demolishing low-income housing. Over time, working-class people were pushed further away from the city and into the banlieues. Following the Second World War and the independence of Algeria in 1962, labourers from the Maghreb were brought to France and housed in the high-rise estates of the banlieues. This created a large immigrant population who, as working-class non-whites, were doubly negated in French cinema. Resistance to the domination of American cinema and disdain towards the indigenous cinematic focus on big-budget bourgeois melodrama provided a space for the French new wave to break through in the 1960s. Likewise, with the regression in the 1970s to a petit-bourgeois film culture (and the rise of soft-porn within that), French filmmakers in the 1980s sought to reassert their position, revive a stagnant cinema and develop a distinctly French aesthetic to combat American cultural colonization. But this time it was a beur new wave focused on representing the concerns of the young and disillusioned mixedrace, black, Arabic and white working-class French. The beur filmmaking aesthetic draws on the divide between immigrants, their French children and the state.95 It is thematically driven by generational and cultural tension between the child and the parent, symbolizing history, modernity and change. So, the movement’s key themes explore the tensions of hybridity and assimilation. While Phil Powrie (1999) identifies the social realism of English filmmaker Ken Loach as a key influence on this new wave, it was also highly influenced by black American cinematic and political discourses. Beur is verlan96 for Arabe (Arab), and was originally coined in the 1980s as political self-identification by second-generation North African youths living in the ghettos of Paris, Marseilles, Grenobles and Lyons, before being subsumed into the French language. The beur movement reframed AfricanAmerican terminology to assert an independent identity (see Bosséno, 1992). Hence ‘black is beautiful’97 was appropriated by 1984’s Marie Claire magazine as ‘beau et beur a la fois’ (beautiful and Arabic at once) in a spread on the Look Beur. As Peter Bloom notes, this was a reflection of the French appreciation of – as well as an early sign of the Western shift towards – mixed beauty as a feminine ideal: ‘Beur as a stylish ethnic look, an accultured métissage’ See Cineaste, ‘Beur Special’, Winter 2007; Naficy, 2001. A form of slang which works by inverting words. 97 See Battegay and Boubeker, 1993. 95 96

38

Mixed Race Cinemas

(2006: 138). ‘Beur’ became a dictionary listing in 1984, at which stage the term came to denote anyone of Arabic origin, reflecting their position in France as an integrated immigrant community. It has since become a negative signifier conjuring up images of oppressed women and gangsters. Once adopted by mainstream culture, beur came to symbolize that which is dangerously different and threatening to social norms (see Durmelat, 1998; Rossello, 1996). Hence those who identified as beur shifted to another slang variant, ‘les rebeus’. Others opted for ‘Maghrebi-French’, ‘French-Maghrebi’, ‘FrancoMaghrebi’, ‘Maghrebis in France’ or quite simply, ‘French’. As Carrie Tarr notes, ‘The difficulty of naming this section of the population is indicative of their ongoing problematic status within French culture’ (2007: 32). This book uses the terms ‘beur’ for its original political context, ‘FrenchMaghrebi’ to emphasize French citizenship, or ‘Maghrebi-French’. These terms are useful for illuminating the distinct experience of people of mixed cultures (e.g. ‘Franco-Maghrebi’ as a descriptor of mixed heritage), as well as the links between the Maghreb and France explored in films such as Bye Bye (directed by Franco-Tunisian Dridi, 1995), Wesh wesh, qu’est ce qui se passe? (What’s Going On?) (directed by Franco-Algerian Ameur-Zaïméch, 2002) and La graine et le mulet (Couscous) directed by Franco-Tunisian Kechiche, 2007). The term ‘beur cinema’ also requires justification. It originally referred to films made in the mid-1980s which thematically explored issues of identity and integration in the French-Maghrebi community. It was also used to refer to films made by filmmakers of that community. Beur cinema was a Francophone activist film movement, with the objectives of visualizing underrepresented and misrepresented communities, appealing for social change and addressing problems of national identity. These aims are clear in key works such as Le Thé au harem d’archiméde (Tea in the Harem) (Charef, 1985), Pierre et Djemila (Blain, 1987), La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995), La Squale (Genestal, 2000) and Ma 6-T va-cracker (This Ghetto’s Gonna Explode) (Richet, 1997). The term ‘beur cinema’ has since become negatively stereotypical; it is over-identified with le cinema de banlieue (ghetto cinema), and used as a method of dividing films made by Maghrebi-French filmmakers from other French production on the basis of ethnicity. Hence this term is virtually absent in contemporary French cinematic discourse although it remains used elsewhere (Cineaste had a special beur cinema supplement in 2007). French critics now label beur films ‘banlieue’ or attribute them to the filmmaker’s country of origin. This leaves no place for the filmmaker who self-identifies as French/Franco-Maghrebi and is focused on the French mainstream.98 Thus Tarr has noted the need for a distinct category which does not ghettoize the work of French-Maghrebi See Tarr, 2005.

98

Introduction

39

filmmakers while recognizing that they ‘still experience social inequalities and racism in ways which potentially differentiate their cinematic production from that of their white peers’ (2007: 33). In contrast to America, non-white characters were largely absent from mainstream French cinema until the beur movement. With the rise of hiphop culture and shifts towards diversity onscreen, American culture reshaped French society in the 1980s as Michael Jordan, Spike Lee and others became heroes of the beur movement and youth culture.99 Paco Rabanne opened a hip-hop centre in Paris, large hip-hop contests were organized and Joey Starr rose to fame as a rapper. A new TV show, HIP HOP became a public space for (mostly non-white, working-class) youths to meet, perform and gain respect, fame and money. The show was the first to focus on France’s ethnic minorities and did so in a positive and productive way, encouraging athletic discipline, focus and application. It also featured France’s first black TV presenter, Sidney, who was such a sensation that The New York Times carried an article on him. A strong hip-hop presence emerged both in France and within the former French colonies, inspiring a new generation of artists such as Saïan Supa Crew, Zap Mama (a mixed-race female group whose Euro-African-American music scores Métisse), Diam’s and MC Solaar, to affirm their mixed identity and interrogate their position as French and Other through cultural expression.100 Beur cinema was directly influenced by the contemporaneous success of the American hood movie genre. There were clear social and geographical similarities. The Habitation à Loyer Modéré (HLMs) created in the De Gaulle era resembled the American ‘projects’ and likewise held the highest unemployment, drug use and suicide rates in the country. As tensions between the police and ghetto communities rose, leading to rioting and curfews, racial issues resonated in both French and American cinema, most notably with the critical and commercial success of La Haine (Hate) (Kassovitz, France, 1995).101 La Haine follows the cine-vérité, experimental style of Cassavetes’ Shadows, also focusing on one white appearing and two non-white appearing youths, using the actors’ real names and a semi-improvisational style, although the subject matter of the 1959 film is more closely aligned to Kassovitz’s first feature, Métisse.102

For more information, see the documentary On n’est pas des marques de vélo (We Are Not Cheap Brands) (Thorn, France, 2002) which explores the effect of the importation of hip-hop culture on banlieue immigrant youth culture. 100 See Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World by AlainPhilippe Durand, 2002. 101 See Schroeder, 2001. 102 These films are discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 4. 99

40

Mixed Race Cinemas

La Haine, made by a white middle-class director but considered a key beur/ banlieue film for its subject matter,103 followed on from the themes of Do the Right Thing (Lee, USA, 1989). As with Lee’s film, La Haine explores how reasonable people can be driven to extreme violence, due to the pathology of racism. In contrast to American cinema’s tendency to glamourize the ghetto and centralize frenetic action sequences, La Haine’s focus is on the isolation, boredom and vulnerability of three young men who reflect, as Catherine Wihtol de Wenden writes, a ‘general feeling among these populations that they were helpless and unable to change or leave their environment’ (2006: 50). Furthermore, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza notes that this period was characterized by the ‘fires of postcolonial fury … raging across France, in the suburbs – the banlieues – of post-industrial squalor and the national psyche of racial and religious intolerance’ (2005: 1). La Haine exposes the mental insecurity and instability driven by life in an unequal society. Each character is marginalized because they signify what is undesirable to the hegemony, regardless of their personal interests and ambitions. Exceptionally, La Haine was used as a learning tool for race relations; it was formally shown to the government and the police force. The three central characters replace the bleu–blanc–rouge of the national flag with a black– blanc–beur aesthetic.104 Using strategic essentialism, Kassovitz presents the sons of the three main waves of twentieth-century immigration to France as emblems of modern polycultural France and emphasizes kinship based on empathy, psychological connectedness, environment, upbringing and compassion, rather than colour or blood. This approach was later adopted by the media in 1998 when France won the soccer World Cup and the success of the multiethnic team (which had been criticized for having too many nonwhites) was transformed into a metaphor for integration and national unity. Spike Lee’s influence on Kassovitz is evident from a number of his films. In his early work, Kassovitz mimics Lee’s 1990s aesthetic and thematic style (inserting references to Jewish-American filmmaker Woody Allen), albeit with

103 Kassovitz was however criticized for his outsider position and his centralization of white youths within multicultural casts. White female middle-class director Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (2014) has also come under fire for being a false portrayal of black working-class identity. While branded as a female version of La Haine, and critically successful in France and abroad, Bande de filles presents a series of familiar stereotypes and fails to engage with the subjectivity of its characters. This is in stark contrast to Sciamma’s earlier films on white femininity. 104 See also Le Ciel, les oiseaux et … ta mère! (The Sky, the Birds and … Yo’ Mamma!) (Bensalah, France, 1999); the Taxi franchise; Éric and Ramzy’s comedies; Fais-moi des vacances (We Need a Holiday) (Bivel, France, 2001).  Given that noir has negative connotations rooted in France’s colonial history, many people now prefer to use the term ‘black’. This term is seen as more neutral (and evidences the impact of American culture on France). The verlan slang term ‘renoir’ is also used.

Introduction

41

a focus on multicultural, working-class society rather than the black community exclusively. His approach is clearly grounded in his position as a young FrenchJewish middle-class filmmaker fascinated with hip-hop culture, just as Lee’s (also middle-class) critical position is grounded in African-American culture, history and identity. Lee has dealt explicitly with the mixed issue and/or figure in several of his films although rarely qualifying them as not-black (he takes the position that ‘people of colour’ are better united by black ancestry than divided by white ancestry). In School Daze (Lee, USA, 1988), however, a film which explores racism within a black college community and in doing so reveals its heterogeneity, the narrative gives voice to a polyphony of conflicting opinions. Lee has visualized mixedness through a range of characters: Greer in She’s Gotta Have It (USA, 1986), a mixed character who sees himself as distinct from ‘ghetto negroes’ and prefers white meat and women; Gary in Get on the Bus (USA, 1996), a character (played by mixed actor Roger Guenveur Smith) who could ‘pass’ for white but identifies as black; Malcolm X (USA, 1992), the political figure who long grappled with his sense of mixed identity only to become a black nationalist; Naturelle (played by mixed actress Rosario Dawson) who falls in love with a white man in the 25th Hour (USA, 2002). However, his films have never returned to the centralization of mixed issues in School Daze. Instead Lee has chosen to focus on the racialized stories of black characters (see Chi-Raq, 2015) and, since the 2000s, to make genre films using characters from a variety of racial backgrounds. His influence is clear in many recent works, including college campus-set comic drama Dear White People (Simien, USA, 2014) which follows a mixed protagonist’s slippage into black nationalism and her attempts to balance this with her love for her white kin and boyfriend. Just as American cinema has diversified since the turn of the century, FrenchMaghrebi cinema has attained significant critical and commercial success (most recently with Divines). This has enabled a wide range of non-white artists to occupy the mainstream and challenge established representative norms.105 Mixed issues and protagonists remain predominately ghettoized but have spilled over into films rooted in white middle-class provincial French life, where their hybridity is often centralized, for example Les Témoins (The Witnesses) (Téchiné, France, 2007) and Drôle de Félix. Similar representations of mixed cinematic characters in middle-class America tend to frame them as black, for example Seven Pounds (Muccino, USA, 2008) and Lakeview 105 For example: Beur, blanc, rouge (Beur, White, Red) (Zemmouri, France, 2006) and Il était une fois dans l’oued (Once Upon a Time in the West) (Bensalah, France, 2005) take a comical look at mixed subjectivities; Le Grand voyage (The Big Trip) (by French-Moroccan director Ferroukhi, France, 2004) explores cultural-generational differences.

42

Mixed Race Cinemas

Terrace (LaBute, USA, 2008). This hypodescent trend is slowly being broken by independent filmmakers who strive to expose the diversity within the black community. Still, films such as Dope and Dear White People remain the exception rather than the rule. Despite significant shifts towards equal representation, French mainstream cinema continues to be dominated by mid-budget films (following director Pascale Ferran, they have become known as les films du milieu), focused on white France: period dramas, adaptations and stories of middle-class, heterosexual everyday life. They either avoid the presentation of ethnic minorities completely, or further marginalize them by presenting them as disabled, homosexual, servile or mentally disturbed (e.g. Maurice Benichou as Majid and Walid Afkir as his unnamed son in Caché (Hidden) (Haneke, France/ USA, 2005), characters who are assumed to be responsible for kidnapping their young white relative). The whiteness of French cinema is aided by the refusal of the government to collect ethnicity data. This situation denies mixed identities and cultural hybridity: ‘Because the universalism of French republicanism refuses to acknowledge differences between its citizens there has been no question of adopting a hyphenated designation’ (Higbee, 2001: 32). Therefore many films evade a hyphenated image of French society. Such films ignore the need Karim Dridi and other mixed directors highlight: to articulate onscreen the complex question of identity facing those who are ‘the creation of two cultures’ (Rémy, 1995: 52). Fortunately, despite the negative stereotypes and/or evasion of non-white subjectivities in many films, French cinema is changing. The emergence of digital formats has democratized the industry by allowing films to be made on much lower budgets (as in Wesh, wesh…). The French government maintains an interest in Francophone-African cinema both in Africa and at home, funding film schools, festivals and filmmakers. While there are often criticisms of this practice, particularly in terms of neocolonialism, propaganda and censorship, it has been hugely beneficial in many respects. In particular, this support has enabled a wider range of opinions and (especially non-white/ diasporic) filmmakers to rise up the ranks of the industry than in America (where mainstream cinema remains dominated by big-budget studio films). Many French-Maghrebis (both mixed-race and not) have become stars as actors and directors: Maurice Benichou, Samy Naceri,106 Jamel Debbouze, Gad Elmaleh, Roschdy Zem, Djamel Bensalah, Houda Benyamina, Sami Bouajila, Saïd Taghmaoui (the latter two have also had starring roles in American films), etc. Directors including Ameur-Zaïméch, Charef, Kechiche, Ghorab-Volta Whose starring role in the Taxi films was remodelled for Queen Latifah in the American remake.

106

Introduction

43

(whose Jeunesse dorée (Gilded Youth) (France, 2001) is the first film by a Maghrebi-French woman) and Bouchareb have made a significant impact.107 Black/white mixed-race actors such as Pascal Légitimus, Noémie Lenoir and Éric Judor have become household names. Yet, although many black actors are popular (e.g. Isaach de Bankolé, Hubert Koundé, Félicité Wouassi, Stéphane Soo Mongo, Firmine Richard, Lydia Ewande, Aïssa Maïga, Marc Zinga, Noom Diawara, Lucien Jean-Baptiste (also a successful director)), with the exception of Omar Sy, they do not often command central roles. In comparison with American cinema, the French industry has significantly fewer non-white stars. Mainstream French cinema has not yet engaged fully with intercultural casting practices and come to portray the ‘mixed-race France’ of which Royale dreamed. However, the beur movement, like the hood movie movement, produced many successful mixed films, personnel and artists who have moved into the mainstream. In its transcendence of binaried discourses, it has led French cinema to become more balanced in its representation of minorities. At the same time, American screen culture has reached a new moment in progressive casting generated in part by the #oscarssowhite controversy but also by the colour-blind casting practices of showrunners like Shonda Rhimes.108 However, it continues to code its mixed stars as black and continues to overproduce racial stereotypes in its mainstream cinema (e.g. see Coraci’s films Blended, 2014 and The Ridiculous 6, 2015). Still, American cinema may present important lessons for French cinema, as the latter continues to favour a whitewashed view (e.g Amélie (Jeunet, 2001), one of the most successful French films globally was strongly criticized for its relative absence of non-white characters).109 This situation has led black and mixed French actors such as Isaach de Bankolé, Aïssa Maïga 107 In 2007, Bouchareb’s Indigènes (Days of Glory) (France, 2006), won the Best Actor award at Cannes for its protagonists, a César for its screenplay, and an Oscar nomination. The film was nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar as an Algerian film, even though according to the Centre national de la cinematographie (National Centre for Cinema), it is a French film. 108 The Black Lives Matter movement has also had an impact on representational schemas and led to transmedial debates on the position of blackness within white supremacist structures – see Amandla Stenberg’s Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows and Jesse Williams’s 2016 BET awards acceptance speech/2016 documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement. 2017’s Oscars announcement showed a new commitment to diversity: a record six black/ mixed actors nominated; a record three black-centred films nominated for Best Picture; four of the five nominated documentaries by non-white directors, including the first nomination for a black female director; the second nomination for a non-white person for producing, for editing, for cinematography and for writing–directing; the fourth Best Director black nominee. 109 The film features one minor Maghrebi-French character Lucien (Jamel Debbouze), who appears to be both mentally and physically handicapped. It was famously berated for its visual ethnic cleansing, as it presents an image of an almost exclusively white Paris. In an interview on the DVD extras, the director claims that there was no intention to present France as monocultural and admits that non-whites were overlooked in the casting process.

44

Mixed Race Cinemas

and Noémi Lenoir to look to America for key roles in mainstream films, having tired of their frequent relegation to minor roles and smaller films in France. The next chapters will explore the impact of these political and cinematic issues on the representation of mixed characters, with the objective of discovering how the sociological elements we have discussed here manifest and reconverge in various films to depict the role, position and identity of the mixed-race character.

Summary of chapters Beginning with an outline of the methodologies employed in the study, and an overview of mixed-race representations in cinema, this book considers alternatives to stereotypical racial paradigms. It deconstructs the symbolic matrix of the mixed figure by exploring its visualized ‘imago’ and the codes which can be read into its symbolization (i.e. the historico-cultural roots of its stereotypes). The book argues for a recognition of the multiplicity of mixedrace identity and highlights the cinematic techniques which reflect that multifaceted positionality. Issues key to mixed film are explored in detail in the early chapters (e.g. the ‘tragic mulatto’ stereotype and ‘passing’ as a cultural meta-narrative). The binaries of early cinema, classic Hollywood narrative and mainstream cinematic ideologies are contrasted with a more multiplicitous perspective in case studies of films from America and France. The chapters which follow decode mixed-race framing in cinema, source the roots of modern American and French narratives, provide a summary of historico-social traditions regarding mixedness and look for alternative models of mixed-race representation. The first chapter locates the stereotype of the ‘tragic mulatta’ in early silent and sound cinema and examines films which sought to challenge this model. This chapter also explores the role of blackface in this period, as the ‘mulatta’ stars of mixed-race studio films were usually played by white actresses ‘passing’ for ‘black’. The second chapter considers classical Hollywood filmmaking and uses socio-historical data to explain why the mixed figure became more restricted onscreen. It considers the practice of ‘passing’ in film, a subject which raises issues regarding authenticity, ethnic belonging, family loyalty, legal status and so on. The third chapter builds on this work to explore issues of identity facing the mixed individual and cinematic character in later cinema from the 1960s to 1990s, focusing on the 1934 and 1959 films Imitation of Life. In the post-Loving era, the mixed filmic character is often positioned within the white family construct as an equal, and yet elements

Introduction

45

of the ‘tragic mulatta’ narrative persist. The fourth chapter considers the representation of mixedness in key French films from the contemporary period. The fifth chapter further unpacks these codes to consider transnational families onscreen, focusing on Drôle de Félix. Films which have been able to transcend prejudicial conventions (perhaps due to transnational casts, crews and funding) are used to illustrate new models for racial representations. Finally, the conclusion examines how earlier mixed film templates continue to shape contemporary depictions of interracial dynamics onscreen. This chapter evaluates the position of mixed recognition within the ‘post-race’ politics of America and France, the potential of the mixed cinematic character as a tool to deconstruct fixed ideas of ‘race’ and contemporary trends in the two national cinemas. The chapter brings together the main findings of the book to direct the reader to different positions on the future of mixed-race representation onscreen and draws attention to new work in the field. As Mark Christian notes, while acknowledging the impact of differing historical discourses on the mixed experience, it is important to ‘analyze the links and similarities of international multiracial experiences’ (2000: 112). This book interrogates and analyses the process of varied representations of mixedness at the intersections of gender, sexuality, nation and class in American and French cinema. It traces the production of racial meaning onscreen to understand how mixed-race bodies are positioned, and so deepen understanding of the issues shaping debates on culture, identity and ‘race’.

46

1 The Mixed Question Language, representation and casting

A

isha D. Bastiaans discusses representation as a process which operates ‘in the absence or displaced presence, of racial and gendered subjects’ (2008: 232). Cinematic racialization is achieved through the repetition of certain codes, especially in the case of mixed characters who are not visibly raced as Other but must be marked as such. Gwendolyn Audrey Foster notes: ‘The [Hollywood] cinema is … the garment center of white fabrication’ (2003: 2). Cinema, along with other cultural products, reinforces the concept of race while at the same time highlighting its position as illusionary. J. E. Smyth notes that mixed protagonists in classical Hollywood Westerns Ramona (King, USA, 1936) and Call Her Savage (Dillon, USA, 1932) ‘simply dressed the part. Race was therefore something to be performed through costume, and is presented as an essentially unstable visual and historical construct’ (2008: 31). In Jezebel (Wyler, USA, 1938), costume becomes the primary signifier of race onscreen; Julie’s (Betty Davis) mixedness is signified in a scene where she wears white while singing with slave children. These films both deny and recognize the notion of race as visible, which Courtney (2005) identifies as a notion intensified by filmmakers and expressed through film and visual media technology. Shohat and Stam (1994) note that mixed-race and black representations are distorted by techniques such as shooting them in groups, at long distance, making them absent or decentred in the framing of scenes, and rarely individualizing them in the narrative through spoken lines. In this way, both visually and narratologically, film codes determine the non-white as inferior to whites who are shot alone and in close-up, present in most scenes and given large amounts of dialogue. Although the contemporary industry is promoted as colour-blind, creating multicultural blockbusters like The Fast and The Furious (Cohen, USA/Germany,

48

Mixed Race Cinemas

2001), cinematic codes continue to reflect certain colour-conscious attitudes. Mary Beltràn reads this film as one of a series of ‘multiculti’ hybrid-genre action films which reflect ‘contemporary shifts in U.S. ethnic demographics and ethnic identity, while subtly reinforcing notions of white centrism that are the legacy of the urban action movie. … The new ethnically ambiguous protagonist embodies concerns regarding ethnicity and race-relations with respect to the nation’s burgeoning cultural creolization and multiethnic population’ (2005: 50). While The Fast and The Furious presents a racially harmonious society on the surface (and is set in the first state to decriminalize miscegenation, with the third highest rate of interracial marriage), its narrative is infused with lawlessness and the breakdown of the normative family unit. The mixed hero (Diesel) is both a symbol of transculturalism – exhibiting a ‘cultural mastery’ over all ‘racialized’ worlds1 – and of the tragedy of multiculturalism. Jim Pines finds the contemporary colour-blind aesthetic perplexing: Historically, it has been relatively straightforward identifying and analysing racist imagery in media portrayals. But it has been somewhat more difficult getting to grips with current trends. In particular it is hard to analyse the apparent contradictions between the stated aims and objectives that (some) media institutions evince on the one hand, and the obvious deficiencies or ‘failures’ that pertain on the ground. (http://www.channel4. com/life/microsites/R/racism/big_question/jim_pines.html) Despite the increased visibility of black/mixed agents onscreen, there is an ‘inability or unwillingness of writers and casting directors to utilize black actors in a much wider range of roles’ and this acts as ‘a major stumbling block for radical change’ (ibid.). For example, while no black actors were nominated for Academy Awards in 2015 or 2016, black-led box-office hits Creed (Coogler, USA, 2015) and Straight Outta Compton (Gray, USA, 2015) were recognized, receiving nominations for their white writers and co-stars. Both films are rooted in the all-too familiar tropes of ghettoized black masculinity and offer little innovation in terms of character studies. S. Craig Watkins argues that Hollywood cinema ‘frames a highly particularised racial gaze – that is, a representational system that positions blacks as image and whites as the bearer of the image’ (1998: 154–5). He suggests that black filmmakers have the power to shift mixed/black representations from a passive to a dynamic position where such characters become active agents who frame the look. Therefore, as the industry See Beltràn, 2005: 50–67.

1

The Mixed Question

49

becomes more diverse, it must also develop a new cinematic language. The work of Ava Duvernay, Steve McQueen, Rick Famuyiwa, Justin Simien, Biyi Bandele, Houda Benyamina, Sarah Bouyain, Alain Gomis, Amma Asante and Barry Jenkins may prove instructive as cinema evolves to meet these demands. A 2006 study by the UCLA School of Law and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Centre found that Latino, black (/mixed), Asian-American and Native American actors have few acting opportunities available to them.2 The findings (based on a 2006 survey of casting announcements) found that 69 per cent of roles were reserved for white actors and another 8.5 per cent were open to white actors as well as non-white actors. Non-white actors were limited to between 0.5 per cent and about 8 per cent of the roles, depending on their racial background. Thus non-white actors are generally marginalized and cast according to race (e.g. black man as con/ex-con) and American cinema remains a white-centrist cinema. According to its analysis of major films in 2005, the UCLA study found that men were almost three times as likely as women to work in the first-billed lead role. Women made up 44 per cent of second-billed roles and 40 per cent of third-billed roles, but they were outnumbered by men in each category. Due to institutional sexism, filmmakers continued to privilege male characters and limit female roles. Therefore non-white female actors are the most marginalized within the system. For example, in her early career, mixed-race English actress Thandie Newton played a slave three times in American films, while Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o has to date, following her debut in 12 Years a Slave, only acted in major films as a CGI character. These cases highlight the lack of roles for young mixed/black female actors entering the industry and the need for greater change. A 2016 report from the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism showed that little has changed on screen or behind the camera regarding inequality in Hollywood.3 The figure for female speaking characters across the top 100 films from 2015 remained at 31.5 per cent, unchanged since 2007. Just 26.3 per cent of all film characters were from ethnic minorities. Of the top 100 films of 2015, forty-nine included no Asian/Asian-American characters and seventeen featured no black/African-American characters. Additionally, only three of the films featured a female ethnic minority co-/lead character. From a sample of 800 films, 5.5 per cent were directed by black/African-Americans and 2.8 per cent by Asian/Asian-Americans. Ethnic minority female directors See Robinson, 2006, http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/briefs/current.asp The study examined 800 films from 2007 to 2015 (excluding 2011), analysing 35,205 characters for gender, race/ethnicity, LGBT status and for the first time, the presence of disability, see Smith (2016).

2 3

50

Mixed Race Cinemas

accounted for 4.1 per cent (three were black/African-American and only one was Asian). The UCLA and USC studies demonstrate that the problems of inequality in Hollywood are pervasive and systemic. Even films which appear to challenge dominant representations of identity ‘do not successfully confront the implicit whiteness of U.S. cinema’ (Scherr, 2008: 3) or, as Courtney wrote, challenge its ‘history of white vision’ (2005: 4). While some mixed actors, directors and films achieve isolated success, the industry always reverts to a normative discourse of ‘“whiteness” or “white vision” as the dominant film lens’ (Scherr, 2008: 11).4 For example, while Bridesmaids (Feig, USA, 2011) is superficially centred on a mixed-race woman (played by mixed actress Maya Rudolph) marrying her white fiancée, the film’s focus is actually on her white best friend (Kristen Wiig). And, while Django Unchained (Tarantino, USA, 2012) was marketed as a film about the adventures of a former slave (played by Jamie Foxx), the film’s focus is again on his white friend (Christophe Waltz). These works are sold as progressively multicultural, yet only use the mixed/black character as a foil for the white hero. Hollywood remains highly criticized for its practice of ‘race-bending’, which is often more accurately described as ‘white-washing’. In recent years, white actors have been cast in roles originally written as Asian (The Last Airbender, Ghost in the Shell, 21, Doctor Strange, Edge of Tomorrow, Star Trek), MiddleEastern (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Batman Begins, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Noah), black (World Trade Centre, Stuck, Pay it Forward) or mixedrace (The Hunger Games, Aloha, Argo, The Martian). Yet Halle Berry has also played roles traditionally reserved for white women, for example as Jinx in Die Another Day, Tamahori5 (USA/UK, 2002); as Audrey Burke in Things We Lost in the Fire, a role written for a white woman.6 And, in the proposed Class Act – a film based on the true story of a white teacher who in 2000, at the behest of her pupils, ran for Congress – Berry was set to play Tierney When African-American child star Ernest Morrisson (known as Sunshine Sammy) began making films for Hal Roach through Pathé in the 1920s, he discovered that the device film technicians used for darker shading or dimming the lighting in a scene was called ‘The Nigger Light’ (Bogle, 2005: 32). 5 The director is a mixed-race Maori-British New Zealander who also directed xXx: State of the Union, a film which also focused on non-white subjectivity. Given that the Bond films are part of a mainstream mass-media franchise, it is hard to know how much directorial control Tamahori had or to assess what part his ethnic background played. But it is notable that Berry was the first mixed/black female to co-star in a Bond film and that her ethnicity went unmentioned in the film. (Multigenerational mixed actress Gloria Hendry had a minor part – including a tryst with Bond – in Live and Let Die (Hamilton, UK, 1973).) Likewise, there was no attempt to restrict her love scenes with Bond (played by white actor Pierce Brosnan). Perhaps Tamahori’s input created the impetus for this film to push past the racial boundaries and stereotypes of earlier films. 6 See Berry’s interview with Michelle Nichols, available from: http://news.yahoo.com/nm/20071011/ people_nm/berry 4

The Mixed Question

51

Cahill, the protagonist.7 In recent years, black and mixed actors have taken starring (formerly white) roles in sci-fi/fantasy franchises Thor, Spider-man and Ironman. But while ‘race-bending’ may sometimes benefit non-white actors cast in white roles, the predominant effect has been to reduce the roles open to non-whites. Discriminating roles on the basis of race and sex violates Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination. Nevertheless, the casting breakdowns prove that the cinema industry remains subject to racial and sexual discrimination. As Shohat and Stam note, fictional identities exist in the realm of the imagination and so casting can be seen as unimportant. But casting must be seen ‘in contingent terms, in relation to the role, the political and esthetic intention, and to the historical moment’ (1994: 191). The absence of realistic casting denies minoritarian groups adequate representation and reduces their voice in the public arena. In addition to casting practices, mixed-race actors’ opportunities are further limited when white actors use racial ambiguity to claim authenticity in a wider selection of roles. For example, Angelina Jolie – who has long claimed Iroquois heritage – was cast as a mixed-race woman in A Mighty Heart (Winterbottom, USA, 2007). Concerns were raised about her ‘blacking up’ for the film, and many argued that the role should have gone to a mixed actress. Beltràn enquires: ‘Are we witnessing the beginning of a more racially egalitarian perspective or merely a bronzing of whiteness, repackaged to emphasize the aesthetic trappings of cultural creolization?’ (2005: 56). A similar trend in 1930s Hollywood – where white bodies began to appear more tanned and curvaceous – coincided with new opportunities for mixed actors to achieve visibility,8 so perhaps these contemporary shifts will contribute to broader beauty ideals and more access for non-white actors. Yet we can also argue that the contemporary interest in black beauty is merely another form of cultural appropriation. As mixed actress Amandla Stenberg noted in her 2015 viral video Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows, loving black culture and loving black people are distinct categories of experience.

The unmade film project was reported on by The Guardian, 10 October 2006. Available from: http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1891958,00.html. See also The Washington Post, 23 June 2007. Available from: http://wwww.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/ AR2007062202029.html 8 Following the First World War, Hollywood began to offer mixed/black performers more central sequences onscreen (albeit ones that could readily be cut for Southern audiences) and deal with racial dynamics in more complex ways, even using a mixed-race actress for a lead role in Imitation of Life. The 1930s saw Nina Mae McKinney, Josephine Baker and Fredi Washington become international stars, while white women began to associate sun tanning with luxury (i.e. exotic holidays) rather than poverty (i.e. field work). See Berry, 2000; Bogle, 2005. 7

52

Mixed Race Cinemas

In an era where so many white performers appropriate black culture, ‘blackface’ has become a hot topic. While generally considered politically incorrect, it is a tradition which has never fully left visual culture. ‘Blackface’ was a major element in American entertainment from the 1700s on. Black and white actors donned burnt cork – often accompanied by enlarged white lips – and acted the fool onstage and onscreen. The first commercially successful sound film The Jazz Singer (1927) features a ‘blackface’ performer, who loses his Jewish Otherness by performing minstrelsy onstage. As Rogin (1996) notes, following Ellison, by the end of the film he has been assimilated into American whiteness; through promoting the cultural production of segregationist racial politics, he is validated as an equal. The minstrel act that accompanied ‘blackface’ make-up – the performance of jolly stupidity – was also often read into the work of popular black actors. McDaniel’s ‘Mammy’ roles (read as depictions of the ‘happy slave’), Fetchit’s slow-witted servants, and even Poitier’s leading roles (read as the ‘magical/ noble negro’ who aids whites), were thus decried by 1970s black film critics as extensions of this tradition.9 Lipsitz (1998) observes that following civil rights lobbying, the end of the studio system and the rise of the black dollar, the 1970s was a pivotal moment when black representations began to shift, yet ‘blackface’ continues to re-emerge in different formulations. In a TV trailer for BBC 2’s White season (UK, 2008) – exploring race and racism in Britain – a white face was inked black implying the disappearance of whiteness in the multicultural era. In the reality TV show Black.White. (USA, 2006), white and black families, respectively, ‘blacked’ and ‘whited’ up for a week to experience life on the other side of the ‘colour line’. Other visualizations have been more conventional. In 2009, the talent show Hey Hey, It’s Saturday (Australia) featured an act performing a Jackson Five song in blackface, who seemed surprised when guest judge Robert Downey Jr expressed disgust. In the same year the 1960s-set Mad Men (USA) featured a ‘blackface’ performance. UK sketch shows Little Britain (2003–6), The League of Gentlemen (1999–2002), Bo’Selecta (2002–4), Da Ali G Show (2003–4), The Kevin Bishop Show (2008) and The Charlotte Church Show (2006) have all featured white actors ‘blacked’ up for comedic roles. The trend can also be seen in advertising; for example, in 2008 the Lynx ‘Darkman’ ad featured a chocolate man whose body parts were eaten by white women; in 2012 the Popchips ad featured Ashton Kutcher as a ‘brownface’ Indian caricature. ‘Blackface’ parodies such as Dave Chappelle’s racial pixie sketches (Comedy Central, None of these actors wore ‘blackface’ and all could be read as subversive in their performed assertion of independent thought, as well as in their lived positions as leaders of a newly wealthy, black Hollywood elite – see Bogle (2005).

9

The Mixed Question

53

2003–6) – designed to educate and challenge racism – have a significant function in undermining such reductive representations. These also feature in satirical films such as Ali G Indahouse (Mylod, France/UK/Germany, 2002), Bamboozled (Lee, USA, 2000) and Tropic Thunder (Stiller, USA, 2008). In the latter film, Robert Downey Jr performs what might be called, ironic ‘blackface’, that is, that makes fun of the white man underneath, resulting in the reverse effect of the racist comedy he witnessed on ‘Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday’. The 2006 ‘I AM AFRICAN’ charity campaign (featuring American celebrities in semi-tribal get-up to assert a common genomic identity) used a colourfocused approach to assert colour-blindness and the singularity of the human race. However, racial and other differences continue to divide us despite being counterfactual. ‘Blackface’ continues to function as a cultural code which positions blackness as subhuman, maintains the cultural exclusion of the black community, masks an underlying fear of black power and reveals a fascination with black beauty. This was highlighted in the 2009 ‘Supermodels’ edition of French Vogue which featured no black models but included a series of photos of Dutch model Lara Stone in blackface. It was also evident in the choice to use Kate Moss in ‘blackface’ – rather than a black model – on the cover of The Independent in September 2006 (a special issue to raise awareness for the RED charity campaign for Africa). Of course, we can also point to examples of ‘whiteface’ in films such as Watermelon Man (which inspired Agathe Clèry), White Chicks and the film within a film Rebirth of a Nation (seen in Dear White People), but it is clear that ‘blackface’, like cultural appropriation and ‘racebending’, remains a predominately white enterprise. Nevertheless, mixed actors have benefitted from ‘race-bending’ in that they are often hired to play black characters onscreen, a trend Gregory T. Carter (2008) describes as ‘Mixploitation’.10 As with Blaxploitation, in this new era a form of shadism continues to dominate. The black female stars of the 1990s – Queen Latifah (best supporting actress nominee at the 2003 Oscars), Angela Bassett (best actress Oscar nominee in 1994) and so on11 – have been replaced by mixed stars in the new millennium – Halle Berry (won best actress Oscar in 2002), Sophie Okonedo (nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar in 2005) and Thandie Newton (star of Crash (Haggis, USA, 2004), best picture at the 2006 Oscars). In 2016 when Nina (Mort, UK) was released, serious concerns were raised about the decision to cast Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone by the late singer’s family and fans who objected to the use of ‘blackface’ in the film. Beltràn argues: ‘When multicultural actors replace Carter, 2008: 203–20. Black actress Hattie McDaniel was the first mixed/black actor to win an Oscar when she won Best Supporting Actress in 1940.

10 11

54

Mixed Race Cinemas

monocultural actors of color, perhaps for easier consumption by audiences, they erase darker bodies in the process’ (2005: 64). Hence black bodies are marginalized and whiteness retains its position as an ideal. As Ed Guerrero observes, mainstream American films ‘continue to use modes of presenting non-white characters which soothe white cultural fears regarding blackness and thus are reassuring to white audiences’ (1995: 162). Halle Berry often plays women who, like the stereotypical mixed ‘passer’, are troubled by their past but surviving by any means necessary. These regressive characterizations could be read as reflecting the 1990s backlash against civil rights, affirmative action and so on.12 Her breakthrough came with Jungle Fever, where she played a homeless drug addict. In Losing Isaiah (Gyllenhaal, USA, 1995), her character’s crack addiction leads to her son being adopted by a white family. She brings them to court and is awarded custody but ultimately realizes that she is incapable. In Gothika and Perfect Stranger her character suffers from psychosis, while in both Monster’s Ball and Things We Lost in the Fire (Bier, UK/USA, 2007), she plays a recent widow struggling to deal with grief, loneliness and single parenthood. Berry’s characters’ love affairs are usually with white men and usually brief, falling into the ‘jezebel’ stereotype, for example Warren Beatty (Bulworth, USA, 1998), Hugh Jackman13 (Swordfish, Sena, USA, 2001) and Pierce Brosnan (Die Another Day, Tamahori, USA, 2002). But unlike the positioning of the ‘tragic mulatta’, her characters’ troubles are rarely explicitly linked to ethnicity and she is rarely decentralized in the narrative (despite many negative reviews of her work, particularly Catwoman, she continues to occupy a key place on the American star system). Thus, she can be read as an evolved ‘tragic mulatta’; a ‘biracial beauty’, that is, a signifier of marketable multiculturalism. As Mask notes, Berry’s mixed ‘complexion is an enabler, making the onscreen fleshiness of her characters acceptable to both white and black spectators. … [It] occupies an interstitial, albeit relatively privileged, position on the American racial hierarchy’ (2004: 53). So, mixed actors may be used both for their visual similarity to blackness and for their familiar whitelikeness, further limiting the roles open to black actors. In 2016, mixed actress Tessa Thompson thus came under fire for profiting from this system because of her roles as a black man’s love interest in Creed and as a Norse warrior goddess in Thor: Ragnarok. In response she tweeted: ‘Colorism in Hollywood is real. Privilege & merit can co-exist. One can work in a system & be wary of its trappings.’ As seen in the segregationist politics of Devil in a Blue Dress, see Aisha Baastians, 2008. A sub-story featuring a romance between her character Storm and Jackman’s character Wolverine was cut from X-Men: Days of Future Past (Singer, USA/UK/Canada, 2014).

12 13

The Mixed Question

55

Jane Gaines observes that ‘a black female is either all woman and tinted black or mostly black and scarcely woman’ (1988: 324). Mixed women are afforded a humanity onscreen denied to black women, as mixed women appear closer to white beauty standards. Mixed female characters are often presented as sexy, sophisticated and integrated, in opposition to aggressive, ignorant and abusive black women (further Othered by linguistics, dress and so on). The norm of whiteness continues to operate in cinema on a global level, often reducing black subjects to atavistic, animalistic stereotypes. This ideology, as Julien and Mercer explain, was founded in ‘the contextual discourses of race that placed the black woman in the “paradox of nonbeing” … the period in Afro-American history when the black female did not signify “woman” on account of the racial ideology that made the black subject less than human’ (cited in Hall, 1996: 458). These discourses are most evident in Monster’s Ball (Forster, USA/Canada, 2001), where Halle Berry plays Leticia, a role originally offered to Angela Bassett. Bassett turned it down because she found the characterization of black femininity and interracial sex demeaning. Through Leticia, the film denotes blackness as unstable, dangerous and impotent. As is common in American cinema, the problems common to society as a whole – for example unemployment, crime and obesity – are associated here with ‘Black America’ solely (Reed, 1989: 229). As such, whiteness is presented as the only route for Leticia out of primitive deprivation and into (semi-)civilized comfort. Leticia Musgrove is an angry, violent woman who shows no compassion to her repentant husband Lawrence (Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs), or their son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun). She drinks and smokes too much and is particularly abusive to Tyrell, who she beats for overeating. Lawrence is on death row where he is eventually executed, shortly followed by Tyrell, who is killed in a hit and run. Leticia finds security with Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton), a white prison guard working on death row. The title of the film, while a reference to the prison officers’ pre-execution party, also alludes to the monstrosity of the characters depicted: an abusive mother, an executioner, a racist misogynist and a child-killer. Historically miscegenation was believed to create monsters, and black women were ‘viewed as sexual animals by the society as a whole’ (Smith, 1983: xiv). Eva Saks writes that scientific, legal and popular discourse cast the mixed-race individual as ‘a monster ultimately deviant and inferior … the mulatto monster was … the other of the other … virtually an infection’ (1988: 63). In Monster’s Ball, Berry enacts monstrous animalism through her performance as Leticia, a woman for whom opportunism is the only means of survival. Mia Mask reads Leticia as ‘a reproduction of the myth of excessive black sexuality; another caricature of black women as wanton … a conflation

56

Mixed Race Cinemas

of the sexual siren and welfare queen’ (2004: 46). In fact the film’s racialized depiction of Leticia was so controversial that there was talk of a boycott upon its release. In particular, commentators found it extremely questionable that Berry was to be rewarded with an Oscar for performing such an unusually graphic (for a mainstream film) display of nudity and carnal intensity in the film’s visceral sex scene.14 Leticia’s stereotypical positioning as irrational and hypersexual leads her to get drunk and seduce a stranger, Hank, shortly following the death of her son and husband (who Hank executed). The association of sex and death positions her as a vamp, a metaphorical figure uniting the bodily fluids and passion of sex with the dissipation of fluid and passion in death. It also posits her as an abject wife and mother. Leticia controls the sex act by straddling Hank, thus displacing the power of the white male, a challenge which could be read as either monstrous or empowering. Yet a key flaw in the film’s production is that spectators are aligned with Hank’s perspective, and that, as Mask notes, the sex scenes reproduce ‘the pornographic gaze at the black female body, thereby re-stigmatising black feminine sexuality’ (2004: 54). Leticia’s sexual wildness, her mood swings and her unkempt appearance recall earlier representations of the primitivism of the mixed/black female, particularly Lydia, the archetypal ‘tragic mulatta’ in The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, USA, 1915). John Fiske writes that whiteness lives in fear: ‘Fear of the other, fear of retribution for its history of domination’ (1994: 46). Fiske continues: ‘Whiteness is not an essence but a power whose techniques differ according to the conditions of its application’ (1994: 42). It is a system of controlling power and constructing one position from which to view the world in order to make all others lesser and opposite. As a signifier of blackness as monstrosity, Leticia is punished and fetishized onscreen, until her threat is neutralized through her containment by white patriarchy. As their relationship develops, Hank creates a domestic space for her and buys her a business. He provides a space in which she cannot erupt as she has before, managing her through sexual and fiscal gratification, thus protecting white patriarchy from the dangers ever present in the film’s racially tense Southern backdrop. Here individual white patronage is favoured over wider social justice, with Hank’s act of reparations clearly incapable of healing the inequities of the past. Berry’s performance as an instinctual, primal creature who invites exploitation and is driven by

This also reflects the general misogyny in filmmaking and film reception which has made female nudity a common element of many films for adults (it is also a common element of Berry’s films), and which led to Demi Moore receiving the highest fee ever paid to an actress for Striptease (Bergman, USA, 1996), in which she plays a stripper.

14

The Mixed Question

57

uncontrolled desires is a summation of the stereotypes that originate from racist mythologies of black women.

The historical mulatta screen stereotype in America Suzanne Bost observes that ‘throughout popular culture and literature, debates about the nature of mixed-race identity are mapped out on the body of a woman because thinking about racial mixing inevitably leads to questions of sex and reproduction’ (2003: 2). Furthermore, Smyth (2008) notes that, in this way, women embody the past, present and future of race relations. In the post–First World War period, Hollywood adapted several white female-authored novels featuring mixed-race female protagonists for the screen, for example Cimarron (Ruggles, USA, 1931), Showboat (Whale, USA, 1936), Ramona (King, USA, 1936) and Gone With the Wind (Fleming, USA, 1939).15 Smyth (2008) argues that these novels differ from those of white male authors by presenting the mixed figures as active survivors rather than doomed protagonists. They do not, however, digress sufficiently from the ‘tragic mulatto’ template, first identified in 1937 by African-American literary critic Sterling Brown, for their protagonists to form a new type of mixed heroine. In the screen versions, each mixed figure is still sexualized, pacified and doomed, and in Showboat the mixed figure fulfils ‘hybrid degeneracy’ theories by being drunk, lazy, incapable of commitment, deceitful and unstable. These narratives also position mixedness as rooted in the South – a geographical signifier which remains embedded in mixed American cinema (Angel Heart, Pinky, Monster’s Ball, etc.). The ‘tragic mulatta’ is the most enduring mixed stereotype and was long the only cinematic representation of mixed femininity.16 In this sub-genre of melodrama, the mixed woman was represented as either the ‘haughty light-skinned girl’ or the ‘passer’. There were three characteristic elements: the ‘mulatta’s’ hypersexuality; her confused, conniving/psychopathic mindframe; and a cycle of punishment and repentance. Following melodramatic conventions, the protagonist is driven by a Lacanian sense of the manque The Wind Done Gone, a 2001 novel by Alice Randall, offers an oppositional reading of the racial dynamics in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Randall’s book takes the form of a series of diary entries by the illegitimate, enslaved half-sister of Scarlett, offering an alternative mixed perspective as a corrective to Mitchell’s mythic fantasy. The author was initially sued by Mitchell’s estate, but the decision was later overturned. Mitchell’s book continues to enjoy enormous popularity, as does its screen adaptation, and is now the subject of a theme park. 16 See Giles, 1995. 15

58

Mixed Race Cinemas

à être; her access to collective memories of blacks being designated ‘3/5ths a human being’ motivates her desire for whiteness. The mulatta’s socially deviant behaviour leads to her re-containment, here through the return ‘home’ to the black community. This repression of excessive transgression was deemed necessary for maintaining social order under segregation. In The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, USA, 1915), the mulatta’s sexual power over white men is described by an intertitle as ‘the great leader’s weakness that is to blight a nation’.17 Imitation of Life (1934) focuses on the mental instability of the mulatta and how this manifests itself physically in the death of her mother. The hypersexuality of the ‘mulatta’ is represented in Hallelujah (Vidor, USA, 1929) and Carmen Jones (Preminger, USA, 1954) as a power which destroys heroic black men. The mulatta’s repentance in these films is marked by a return to Christian morality and an acceptance of her place within a Eurocentric patriarchal ideology. In each film, her relinquishing of sexuality and individualism is a relinquishing of autonomy and an acceptance of subjugation, yet this is necessary to sustain the safety of the nation. In The Birth of a Nation, the mixed-race character Lydia Brown (played by white actress Mary Alden) is one of the leading ladies of the drama. Lydia has an affair with her master, the white abolitionist, Senator Stoneman, whose weakness for her threatens the white hegemony. This characterization marks her as an individual – in contrast to the black characters in the film who are represented as part of a collective. She is slim and sexy while they are desexualized ‘mammy’ caricatures. She is spatially distanced from these women and never placed in the same scene as them. This unconventionally decontextualizes Lydia as black and as such stands in contrast to more modern representations of mixedness such as Pinky which, in their use of cinematic language, visually define the mixed character as black through framing with other black characters. The Birth of a Nation also individualizes Lydia as a sexual agent in contrast to the white women of the film who are subject to their male relatives’ will. Racinda Landwear (1995) argues that The Birth of a Nation works on a tripartite system of race, in contradiction to the traditional black/white dichotomy. A new community is represented by Lydia, who identifies with neither the black nor the white women. By setting her apart, the film defines multiraciality as a separate ethnic group. However, it also posits her as a race-traitor and anti-feminist who is a maniacal, selfish loner.

Fears regarding integration meant that the cost paid by movie characters who attempted interracial configurations was always represented as extremely high, for example, see: The Indian Squaw’s Sacrifice (1910); The Kentuckian (1908); The Squaw Man (1914); Broken Arrow (1950); The Savage (1953); Imitation of Life (1934/1959); West Side Story (1961); A Man Called Horse (1970); Jungle Fever (1991).

17

The Mixed Question

59

Cynthia Nakashima elaborates on how the mulatta’s instability is related to her multiraciality: First of all, multiracial people are racial minorities … and have been labelled as immoral and uncivilised in the same way that racial and ethnic minorities are often characterised by the dominant racial and ethnic group. Second, in social orders that promote in-group sex and marriage, any person who engages in a relationship with an outsider is considered to be … immoral, sexually defiant, and/or sexual in an uncontrolled, illicit way. … A third possible factor in this stereotype is that multi-racial people are physical reminders of the biological nature of sex and love. … And finally, multi-racial females are especially likely targets for sexual objectification because of their real and perceived vulnerability as a group. (1992: 168–9) While Lydia represents a third racial identity, she suffers the same representational discrimination as other ethnic minorities do. Her indulgence in miscegenation (and that of her parents) must be punished, and her position as part of a mixed-race minority makes this punishment easier. Her madness stems from her perceived physical and mental vulnerability as a mixed-race person as well as her isolation. Robert Park’s (1928) and Everett Stonequist’s (1937) theories on marginality explained the position of Othered social figures in American society, and seem most pertinent when applied to mixed figures: ‘The marginal person is poised in the psychological uncertainty between two (or more) social worlds; reflecting in his soul the discords and harmonies, repulsions and attractions of these worlds … within which membership is implicitly if not explicitly based upon birth or ancestry … and where exclusion removes the individual from a system of group relations’ (Stonequist, 1937: 8).18 In the film The Black Network (Mack, USA, 1936), Nina Mae McKinney performs a song which inadvertently describes the source of the ‘tragic mulatto’s’ anguish: ‘One minute I’m singing Hallelujah, the next I’m ready to go to town. … Half of me wants to be good. Only half of me wants to be good.’ The concept of being torn between two racial identities is reformulated in the song as a battle between the excitement of Harlem’s nightlife and the salvation of the church. She struggles between the two sides of her personality: the child and the woman, the hysterical and the moral, the irrational and the rational.

18 Other scholars to explore mixed identity prior to the 1990s Multiracial Movement include E. Franklin Frazier (1939), Edward Reuter (1918), John G. Mencke (1979) and Joel Williamson (1980).

60

Mixed Race Cinemas

As Nakashima observes, the historical mulatta stereotype is rooted in racist science: [the] hybrid degeneracy theory … that multiracial people exhibit psychological and emotional problems stemming from their ‘unnatural blend’. They were (and to some extent, still are) characterised as depressive, moody, discontent, irrational, impulsive, fickle, criminal, chronically confused, emotionally unstable, constantly nervous, and ruled by their passions – all ­because of an internal disharmony between the genetically determined characters of their two ‘parents’. (1992: 167) This is most evident in Hallelujah (1929), another early example of the ‘tragic mulatta’ sub-genre. Chick (Nina Mae McKinney) is described as a ‘high yellar’, ‘cinnamon coloured gal’ and conniving ‘yella hussy’. Chick appears to have a form of schizophrenia, as seen in her drastic mood swings; she joyfully praises the Lord one minute and bitterly curses anyone and everyone in the next. Her performance is fitful – she is always moving, sometimes sensually, often wildly. She nearly destroys a black family with her uncontrolled sexuality and infantile selfish greed. In the end she is forced to repent. Her confused state between identities is not a positive liberatory quality but rather, a dangerous instability which is harmful to herself and others. Indeed she is as much the black man’s downfall as Lydia was the white Senator’s, implying that mixedness threatens all ‘pure’ races and is ‘the morbid personification of integration’ (Jones, 1994: 54). These characters posed a social problem because they subverted the racial classification system and questioned the purity of the nation.

The historical mulatta screen stereotype in France American entertainer Josephine Baker was the first multigenerational mixed actress to grace French cinema screens in the 1920s and quickly became a star. Baker’s life and art reflected her multiplicity.19 She started off in vaudeville in New York where she achieved success but faced limitations as a designated black woman. Having left the States to pursue a career in Paris, she became Baker grew up in Kansas and lived in France from the age of 19 on. She continued to campaign for civil rights in America and performed only at integrated venues. She adopted twelve children from all over the world, exemplifying the potential of racial harmony. For more information on Josephine Baker’s position in French culture, see Ezra, 2000.

19

The Mixed Question

61

famous as a dancer at the Folies Bergère, often playing the seductive African savage; one famous routine saw her perform in bananas and strip. Later, as an actress and singer, she was known for walking her cheetah around the city, lived in a château on the Dordogne and socialized with the European élite. Her lovers were usually white and she adopted children of all ‘races’. Although she embraced a French nationality, she maintained her links to America and continued to spend time there. Baker’s films both exoticize her as a colonial servant and naturalize her as a recognizable citizen. Her sympathetic onscreen portrayals can be located in the sexualization of and clandestine white desire for the mixed female, but are also rooted in the French idealization of mixedrace beauty.20 The 1937 World’s Fair in Paris was the first to host a mixed-race beauty pageant. Miss France D’Autre Mer (Miss Overseas France) was a competition for the daughters of white French male colonials and black women. As Elizabeth Ezra notes, in contrast to earlier exhibitions (e.g. human zoos21), this event ‘appeared to stress the assimilationist potential of the colonised’ (2000: 16). The event championed integration but also illustrated contemporary debates on the potential worth of hybrids, deriving from the new interest in eugenics and racial engineering.22 The pageant’s name celebrates the imperial national concept: ‘La plus grande France [Greater France] … [made up of] “100 million Frenchmen” from all corners of the globe’ (Ezra, 2000: 110). This expansive vision might help explain the contemporaneous fascination with Baker. Alberto Capatti describes Baker as a floating signifier of difference: ‘She represents black beauty, Yankee freedom, and New Orleans blues; she’s a jungle girl from the wilds of Casino de Paris and, in her own special way, a cordon-bleu chef’ (1989: 206). The reference to New Orleans roots her in African-American culture but also associates her with the former French colony of Louisiana. Antebellum New Orleans was a unique space for mixed people in America due to the tradition of plaçage (placing), which legitimized sexual relations between white men and non-white women (treated as common law wives). As Zack explains, this tradition supported a mixed-race élite, and was The French anthropologist Paul Broca (1864) endorsed procreation between black women and white men as he claimed their offspring would inherit more of the father’s racial superiority, thus elevating the perceived inferior races. 21 Usually consisting of ‘primitives’ put on display in huts at public exhibitions, for example the ‘cannibal village’ (cited in Ezra, 2000: 13) at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale (International Colonial Exhibition) held in Paris. This phenomenon is referenced in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fincher, USA, 2008). One of Benjamin’s friends in the 1920s–30s is described as an African pygmy who was kept in a cage with gorillas in Philadelphia zoo. This may be based on the true story of Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy who was exhibited with the apes in the Monkey House at the Bronx zoo for two weeks in 1906. 22 For more on colonial perceptions of mixed women and their sexuality, see Stoler, 1995, 2002. 20

62

Mixed Race Cinemas

of particular benefit to the mixed women’s brothers, who ‘were either set up in business among the respectable gens du couleur in the city or sent to France, where they could study or reside without stigma due to race’ (1993: 114). Ezra (2000) notes that Baker was one of the first stars to market herself as a brand and use her image to sell a variety of cultural products. As a transnational polyglot, she evoked American modernity, Parisian chic and AfroCaribbean cultures. Thus, like the multicultural Diesel, in different films she performed different races, even claiming in a 1935 interview with Pour Vous magazine that her next role would be playing a white woman. Baker made three silent films: La Folie du jour (The Day’s Folly) (1927), La Revue des revues (The Review of Reviews) (1927), both featuring footage of her stage shows, and La Sirène des tropiques (The Siren of the Tropics) (1927), a feature film set in the colonies. She acted and sang in French, Spanish, German and Italian productions until the mid-1960s. Her most popular talkies were Zouzou (Allegret, France, 1934) and Princesse Tam Tam (Gréville, France, 1935), both written for her and made by the same production unit. In Zouzou she plays the titular character, a woman who grew up in an adoptive transracial circus family. Her brother Jean (Jean Gabin) and father Papa Melé (Pierre Larquey) are white. The idea of family is reimagined through this loving and cohesive unit, albeit within the non-normative space of the circus. Her name (now rebranded as the more French Joséphine Baker) appears first on the credits, a feat rarely achieved by a mixed/black performer in an otherwise white film even now (though ironically Zouzou was dismissed by the critics as a Hollywood knockoff). Following the plot conventions of American hit musicals like 42nd Street (Bacon, 1933), the narrative centres on a hopeful unknown who is given a shot at fame after the star of a major theatre show quits. It is a traditional ‘rags to riches’ melodramatic narrative but with a twist – a non-white woman becomes the star attraction of a major (all-white) show and ends the film as a successful artist. The film opens with Zouzou and Jean onstage, playing twins as part of a freak show.23 They are contextualized, like Alwina in Baker’s next film, as oddities, on the periphery of humanity. Yet the circus MC insists ‘Where would we be without them?’ and calls them ‘one of nature’s miracles’. Later, in a rare exposition of a happy mixed family, little Zouzou is shown smiling, In 1899, African-American albino brothers, George and Willie Muse, were kidnapped to be exhibited as a freak show in the circus. Their mother spent twenty-eight years looking for them. Known as ‘Eko and Iko’, they were unpaid and promoted as ‘sheep-headed freaks’, ‘ambassadors from Mars’ and ‘white Ecuadorian cannibals’. The Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. See Beth Macy’s 2016 book Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company).

23

The Mixed Question

63

playing and being cuddled by Papa Melé. She is confident and fearless, as seen in her sibling rivalry with Jean. As an adult, when men grab her she bites them. Although this results in her being called a ‘savage’ or ‘cannibal’, Zouzou does not bend to anyone’s will but her own. This treatment alludes to the contemporaneous racism which is otherwise absent, while also highlighting the savagery of the ‘civilized’ white men who seek to control and seduce/ violate Zouzou (which later culminates in a shooting). The film mocks racist and sexist ideas such as the natural rhythm of blacks and male superiority. Zouzou’s colour is only mentioned once when she is referred to as Creole; she is defined as being from Martinique even though she is framed as French.24 She is presented as an integrated member of French society, with friends, neighbours, family, a job, a love interest and a social life. Her love interest is, however, her brother, a plot device which draws on historical associations of miscegenation and incest. Although the loss of her love interest and her father makes her tragic, she is also a successful career woman whose posters adorn the public spaces of Paris. Here the multiplication of her image reinforces the idea of Zouzou/Baker as a multiply read and multiply identitied individual, isolated and perhaps inassimilable. Costume and score emphasize her in-between identity. Although she sings about Haiti, while caged and dressed in a bird-like tutu, in one stage-show scene (associating her with the foreign and uncolonizable25), in another she is featured in glamorous satins, silks, diamonds and furs commanding the attention of tuxedoed white men and outshining beautiful white women. In contrast to gendered ideas, the film narratively presents Jean and Zouzou as equals. He goes shopping with her and helps her find work, and it is she who provides the money and proof which releases him from jail when he is wrongly accused of murder. She is one of several women in the film who take control of their own lives yet, while the other women are sexually liberated (often with foreign, non-white men), she is not granted a lover herself. And while she is integrated – first in the working-class female community, then in the theatrical world – she sings and dances for whites, not with them, and so is always positioned as somewhat separate. Her marginality leads to a form of exclusion from intimate relations. Her name evokes the zouave (native colonial soldier) and as a narrative figure she represents the postcolonial; colonies lost (America, Haiti) but still yoked to France, and those soon to be liberated (Martinique, the African The French overseas departments and territories (Overseas France) are known as the DOMTOMs (Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer). These territories – including Martinique – became classed as départments in 1946 and remain part of France (with representation in the French parliament). 25 Haiti was officially liberated from colonial rule in 1804, following a slave revolt, becoming the first independent black Republic. 24

64

Mixed Race Cinemas

nations). For contemporary spectators her name also evokes Zinedane Zidane, the French-Maghrebi star football player known as Zizou, whose ‘race’ caused much controversy on the pitch and off.26 To quote Bhabha, Zouzou like Zidane, responds to colonial nostalgia for a reformed subject of difference which is: ‘Almost the same but not quite. … Almost the same but not white’ (1994: 322). This idea is reaffirmed in Bhabha’s term ‘resemblance’, meaning an uncertain familiarity and similarity between colonizer and colonized which is ‘terrifying to the West’ (1994: 88–90). Zouzou diminishes the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in her recognizability and identifiability and yet remains differenced narratively and visually. In Princesse Tam Tam, Baker plays Alwina, an African shepherdess who undergoes a Pygmalionesque exercise to make her an aristocrat fit for French high society (the racetrack scene – among others – serves as a template for My Fair Lady (Cukor, USA, 1964)). Alwina is discovered by French writer Max de Mirecourt (Albert Préjean) in Tunisia, a space depicted by key tropes: the ruins of the Roman Empire in Dougga; the rural wilderness; idle children. He decides to use her as fodder for a new novel and introduce her to Paris as an Indo-Caribbean princess. This experiment mimics the civilizing ethic and sexual power dynamic of colonialism, as signified by the ruins and Max’s desire for her. As a writer, he takes control of her visual, vocal and formal language. At the same time, his childless wife, who is perennially unfaithful and élitist, has begun dating actual foreign royalty (a Maharajah played by Jean Galland, a white actor in ‘blackface’). By enabling interracial unions for both sexes, the film differs from American movies of the same period. As Max’s puppet, Alwina plays out Bhabha’s (1994) theory of ‘colonial mimicry’, that is, the postcolonial moment where the formerly colonized start to imitate their former masters. Yet, unlike Bhabha’s writings on the colonial subject – constructed as ‘partial’, ‘incomplete’ and ‘virtual’ in a colonialist discourse – Alwina is constructed as a full subject, worthy of spectatorship. She eventually rejects the language of the colonizer for her own value systems, language, dress, song and movements. Once in France, Alwina successfully passes for a princess. Yet, in a telling scene she rejects high society for common bars where she dances and drinks with black and white men. As in her last film, here racial discourse collapses into class discourse revealing the film’s political ideology.27 Nevertheless, her positioning against a sea of white/artificially blackened faces in the working-class bars of the city highlights the uniqueness of Baker’s position. A French sporting hero, Zidane is the son of Kabyle parents who grew up in a housing project in northern Marseilles. 27 The film reflects France’s brief socialist shift in the 1930s which led to the election of The Popular Front political party. 26

The Mixed Question

65

Although her name – meaning ‘little source/stream’ – and often childlike behaviour construct her as infantile, the soft primitivism of the film idealizes this pastoral innocence as superior to the decadence of Parisian life where values mean little and ‘true’ stories like Max’s book – ghost written and based in the false racial discourses of Orientalism – are mere fantasy. While Princesse Tam Tam stereotypes its servants – Dar (Georges Péclet, a white actor in ‘blackface’) is portrayed as a scheming Arab – it does not rely solely on negative caricatures – Dar is also a romantic hero. Baker’s French cinematic career stalled in the late 1930s and she went back to being a singer. Her limited success as an actress can be attributed to the fact that under the Second World War – Vichy régime there was a concerted effort to rid the French film industry of Jews and foreigners. Baker was both, having married a French Jew in 1937. Under different circumstances Baker’s influence might have radicalized the industry and yet, despite the challenges she faced, she remains a French icon. Ana M. Lopez critiques the historical misrepresentation of non-whites in American cinema: ‘Thinking of Hollywood as ethnographer, as co-producer in power of cultural texts allows us to reformulate its relationship to ethnicity. Hollywood does not represent ethnics and minorities: it creates them and provides its audience with an experience of them’ (1993: 68). By contrast with Hollywood, Baker’s French films acknowledge and celebrate ethnic minorities while mocking ideologies of white supremacy. For example at the start of Princesse Tam Tam, when Alwina is offended by a group of racist white tourists, she gets her own back by putting sand in their salt cellar. Spectators are encouraged to empathize with her – though this is mediated by Max who is in on the joke. Like Imitation of Life (Stahl, USA, 1934), the whites in Princesse Tam Tam are presented as greedy, selfserving and manipulative, but unlike Imitation of Life they are not redeemed by love. And, if we compare the mixed leads, although Peola (played by mixed actress Fredi Washington) is a well-dramatized character, she lacks the screen presence or multifaceted portrayal afforded to Alwina or Zouzou. Princesse Tam Tam subjectivizes its mixed/black characters – servants are shown enjoying themselves away from work and, in the scene where Dar takes Alwina out on his boat, we see them falling in love (after Max has rejected her advances). Here the camera frames Alwina without any white agent to mediate between spectator and non-white actor as she relaxes into song, idealized in soft close-ups. And, unlike most American or French films, the site of métissage is the capital city, the symbolic locus of the nation. The film ends with images of Alwina, Dar and their baby as the new inhabitants of Max’s expansive Tunisian villa. No longer the playground of the idle colonial rich, the villa now houses a local family and their farm animals.

66

Mixed Race Cinemas

A donkey is seen eating the cover page of Max’s book Civilisation. The artificial and exploitative elements of the colonial are contrasted with the acceptance and cooperation of the liberated. While the scene acts as a critique of the privileging of one civilization over another, it might also be read as a critique of capitalism and communicates nostalgia for Republican values. Both films parallel Baker’s own ‘rags to riches’ story; her grandmother was born into slavery, and, following an own impoverished upbringing, Baker became a star. In each narrative, people try to control her and she is visually encaged in/by: a birdcage, a spotlight, a poster, a sculpture, a portrait, a caricature. But she refuses to let her agency be suppressed and ultimately enacts her will, thus acting as the central identificatory point for the spectator. Baker’s part in French film history evidences the potential for mixed subjectivities in what Danielle Haase-Dubosc calls ‘this third place which is France [where] questions of multiple identity seem to be lived out in positive ways’ (1993 cited in Braidotti, 1994: 12). Yet, Baker’s success was not matched by other mixed/black actors of her time. Isolated mixed/black figures were used in the nouvelle vague as symbols of outsider culture – for example see Chronique d’un été (Morin and Rouch, 1961) or 2 ou 3 Choses que je sais d’elle (Godard, 1967) – but would not be centralized again in French cinema until the success of the 1980s beur cinema movement. J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (I Spit on Your Grave) (Gast, 1959, adapted from Boris Vian’s 1946 novel) is a rare exception. The film follows the adventures of Joe, a white-skinned mixed-race young man in an imagined Francophone America whose black brother is lynched. To get revenge he ‘passes’ for white (becoming the manager of a store and bedding several white women), and finds the men who killed his brother. Joe is eventually gunned down with the white woman he loves. While he ends the film tragically, the film refutes Hollywood norms; Joe is not dysfunctional, degenerate or mentally/physically weak. He does not repent and his punishment for ‘passing’ and miscegenation is mitigated by his position as the film’s romantic hero. Diva (Beineix, France, 1981) is another rarity in that it features real-life African-American opera singer Wilhelmenia Fernandez.28 Awarded four Césars, the film is a classic of the cinéma du look, a postmodern movement focused on stylish, sensual visuals, thrilling spectacle and marginalized youth. The romantic suspense-thriller follows a young postman who becomes embroiled in a gangster plot. Jules (Frédéric Andréi) is a huge fan of Cynthia’s (Fernandez) music but is frustrated by her refusal to make any recordings. So, when she tours Paris he clandestinely records her (and is witnessed doing Fernandez was cast in the film following the filmmakers’ attendance of her performance as Carmen in Paris.

28

The Mixed Question

67

so by two Taiwanese bootleggers who want the recording). Soon after (and unbeknownst to him), a woman slips a tape recording into his bag implicating a senior policeman in a drug/sex trafficking ring. Following this, Jules is hunted down by police officers, the senior officials’ henchmen and the bootleggers. With his life under threat, he is only able to rely on a few friends for help – Cynthia, French-Vietnamese Alba (Thuy An Luu) and white Gorodish (Richard Bohringer). Diva celebrates cultural sophistication in bodies usually associated with cultural inferiority onscreen. Here white working-class men and black/Asian women are the primary producers/consumers of classical music, opera and modern art.29 Yet the film has its limitations. Although Fernandez forms the axis of the plot, she is a mysterious character who acts as the white French protagonist’s muse and has little dialogue or screen time. Alba is stereotypically presented as immoral, disloyal and unstable, while her seemingly sexual relationship with Gorodish, a much older white man, is left undefined. Nevertheless, the film is pioneering for its representation of multicultural Paris and for its narrative centralization of complex, articulate, non-white characters. The next chapter will consider further how mixed identity is framed onscreen and the effect that living multiply has on characters locked into boundaried worlds. We will explore a range of films from America in order to comprehensively evaluate the dominant representation of mixed characters as ‘tragic mulattas’ and to question the historical ways in which films have challenged this role, position and identity while seeming to endorse it.

29 There are similarities here to the comedy Six Degrees of Separation (Schepisi, USA, 1993), in which a gay black man (Will Smith) ‘passes’ for Sidney Poitier’s son and gains access to the upper echelons of New York society. His presence both shocks and excites its exclusively white patrons who are mystified by this exotic creature.

68

2 Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

I

n ‘passing’ narratives, characters designated ‘black’ according to the hypodescent or ‘one drop rule’ ‘pass’ for white. The ‘passing’ female in American film dates from 1911 and was often used as an anti-miscegenation tool to link incest/madness/degeneration with racial mixing.1 Bogle (2001) notes that the post-war ‘passer’ was redefined as a signifier of America’s struggle for survival and of its insecurity and instability as a nation seeking a new identity and sense of belonging. The ‘passer’ reveals the constructedness of race and representation. But the ‘passer’ was usually played by a white actress and thus, it can be argued, contributed to the marginalization of blackness. However, as Smyth (2006, 2010) argues, the indistinguishability between the ‘passer’ and their white friends also undermined ideas of racial superiority supporting segregation. ‘Passing’ narratives were titillating and often involved a taboo love affair (a form of hubris soon punished in the tragic cycle) but also allowed directors to explore injustice. On the rare occasions where the ‘passer’ was male, he often had more success than his female counterparts, reflecting gender inequities. ‘Passing’ can be read as a signifier of the arbitrary nature of postmodern life: it is a disruption, a discontinuity of self which is against normativity; it is a move beyond the geography of the body, a transgressive act that questions the idea of ‘race’ itself. As Aisha D. Bastiaans notes: ‘The mulatta typifies the body’s vexed relationship with race … [highlighting its unreliability and deceptive potential and thus is] a fascinating vehicle for exploring race as a

In The Debt (USA, 1912), a couple fall in love not realizing that they are in fact siblings – she is the result of his father’s affair with his ‘octoroon’ slave. In ‘race movie’ director Oscar Micheaux’s Veiled Aristocrats (USA, 1932) ‘passing’ for white is conflated with incest, and in God’s Stepchildren (USA, 1938) ‘passing’ leads to suicide. In King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (USA, 1946) interracial love is punished with death.

1

70

Mixed Race Cinemas

mode of perception and ideology of difference with a mutable discourse that obscures its contradictions and contingencies’ (2008: 236). Between the 1930s and 1960s a record number of mixed films were produced in Hollywood. This chapter will explore the history of ‘passing’ through a series of films, including pre-Loving v. Virginia works such as Lost Boundaries (Werker, 1949), Pinky (Kazan, 1949), Kings Go Forth (Daves, 1958) and I Passed for White (Wilcox, 1960); and post-1967 films The Human Stain (Benton, 2003), Devil in a Blue Dress (Franklin, 1995), Jefferson in Paris (Ivory, 1995) and Illusions (Dash, 1982). The mixed-race leads of these movies emphasize mutability in their performance of various identities, transgressing racial and sexual boundaries.

‘Passing’ representations as ideological construct ‘Passing’ narratives question fixed social categorizations and prove the possibility of self-determination, which is why they are such a popular literary and cinematic trope. Anzaldúa writes: ‘Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us and them’ (1987: 3). ‘Passing’ is the act of crossing these racial/geographical/cultural borderlands.2 The ‘passing’ character also highlights the paradox of ‘race’; Song notes that ‘people of so-called mixed-race reflect the arbitrary and contested logic of racial distinctions’ (2003: 63). The mixed-race figure is a symbol of the franchised and disenfranchised, a rupture and a synthesis, a symbol of national identity and of the rejection of national law. Hence stories about racial ‘passing’ are incompatible with hegemonical binaries and as such are usually categorized as narratives of failure. ‘Passing’ acts as a cultural meta-narrative in films involving themes such as family history,3 social acceptance, secrecy, mystery and (in)visibility. ‘Passing’ narratives cut across axes of difference, including ‘passing’ for white, for black (Soul Man (Miner, USA, 1986)), (Agathe Cléry (Chatiliez, France, 2008)), for feminine (The Crying Game, (Jordan, UK, 1992)), Transamerica (Tucker, USA, 2005)), for masculine (Male and Female (DeMille, USA, 1919)), Boys Don’t

Dawkins (2012) provides a thorough investigation of this subject.  For more on the historical event of ‘passing’, see Piper, 1996. 3 The legacy of ‘passing’ continues to be crucial to the study of black history, from revealing the African ancestry of European royalty (e.g. Queen Philippa, Queen Charlotte) to uncovering the ‘shadow families’ and secret histories of American leaders (e.g. President Jefferson’s mixed-race children, J. Edgar Hoover’s hidden mixed identity (see Summers, A. (1993) Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover). 2

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

71

Cry (Peirce, USA, 1999)), for disabled (The Ringer (Blaustein, USA, 2005)), or for other identity categories (Perfect Stranger (Foley, USA, 2007)), (Allouache, France, 2003), I’m Not There (Haynes, USA/Germany, 2007), The Usual Suspects (Singer, USA/Germany, 1995), The Departed (Scorsese, USA, 2006)). The earliest known instances of the ‘passing’ for white theme in American film narratives centralize mixed women: In Humanity’s Cause (director unknown, 1911); In Slavery Days (Turner, 1913); The Octoroon (Young, 1912; Olcott, 1913); The White Slave; or, The Octoroon (Young, 1913). Surprisingly, these characters are dealt with sympathetically in their narratives, presumably, as Bogle notes, due to their ‘white blood’. This allows them to be seen as tarnished white women (‘all woman and tinted black’ as Gaines noted) rather than alienated blacks (‘scarcely woman’, ibid). This is of course aided by the fact that they are played by white actresses. The title of Young’s 1913 film, The White Slave; or, The Octoroon, points to the contradictory and multiple position of mixedness. As Bogle observes, this title, like the themes of these films, conveys to the spectator that the mixed female’s life ‘could have been productive and happy had she not been a “victim of divided racial inheritance”’ (1974: 9). Her mixed identity (caused by her parents’ sexual folly) is her downfall. These films upheld the antimiscegenation ideology of their day in a way that appeared humanist; they encouraged empathy in the spectators for the mixed female as a victim of her parents’ sexual crime. 1949’s Lost Boundaries is an exception in the mixed-race cinema canon as it celebrates hybridity and chooses not to focus on the female or the individual, but on the attempts of an entire mixed-race family to ‘pass’. Based on a true story and adapted from William L. White’s 1948 novel, its protagonist is Dr Scott Carter (Mel Ferrer). Given that he is white skinned, Scott cannot find work in a black hospital. So, with his wife Marcia (Beatrice Pearson) – who incidentally grew up ‘passing’ – he ‘passes’ for white to find work (with the support of his black friends). As they await the birth of their first child, they settle in as part of the white affluent community of a small town in New England. What was supposed to be a temporary pretence becomes a life-changing decision. They have their baby at home in case he is born dark. Their children Howie (Richard Hylton) and Shelly (Susan Douglas Rubes) grow up believing they are white. Once a week, in the mode of a border crosser or ‘trespasser’, as Ginsberg put it, Scott relaxes back into his mixed-race identity at the black clinic he has founded in Boston. Moving between his white and black professional practices, he exhibits the ‘cultural mastery’ of the mixed figure, inhabiting a ‘protean identity’.4 When the family’s real ethnicity is finally revealed to the (now adult) children and publicized in their community, the See Roquemore, 2004.

4

72

Mixed Race Cinemas

Carters’ potential ‘Third Space’ is destroyed and they are forced to deal with racial injustice and the consequences of their transgression. Like Devil in a Blue Dress (Franklin, USA, 1995), the film provides a political critique of racial dynamics in post-war American society. The Carters are the invisible mixed/black family made visible, wealthy and professional. They are not the aliens next door but those at the heart of the white community – quite literally, as the father is the community doctor. While their ‘lost boundaries’ might seem fairly innocuous, his actions are criminal; violating the social and medicinal segregation of bodies and blood. Yet by portraying the mixed family as white-skinned middle-class Americans, the film undermines the science that affirmed essentialist differences between the ‘races’. Gina Marchetti observes that the destabilization of racial categories in this and other postwar mixed films conveyed to audiences that ‘racial differences are not “natural” but culturally constructed and subject to historical change’ (1993: 176). But Lost Boundaries, like Pinky, emphasizes the idea that the mixed protagonist’s real home lies in the black community. Both films also focus on black opportunities in the medical profession, perhaps reflecting the need for (physical/psychological) healing in post-war America. And both, as with the films we have considered so far, emphasize the ‘in-between isolation of the Negro who tries to “pass” as white’ (Besley Crowther, New York Times, 19495). As Bogle notes, by using white actors and ‘tragic mulatto’ themes, Lost Boundaries ‘like most Hollywood productions, had created a dream situation, an isolated fantasy no more real than those of the all-black musicals’ (1974: 211). The film’s aesthetic tendencies towards realism highlight the implausibility of its dream-like scenarios, particularly when in its closing scenes (as in Monster’s Ball) the white locals abandon their racist policies and accept the Carters as equal social members. Lost Boundaries could be read as reinforcing the ‘noble Negro’ concept; encouraging white audiences to identify only with those who are part of the black élite, whose difference is neutralized by their professional, financial and, in this case, ‘off-white’ status. Ultimately the narrative conclusion denies structural racism and its impact, thus undermining the film’s ability to raise awareness of social tensions or encourage empathy for non-white mixed-race individuals. Harryette Mullen (1994: 92) argues that the ‘mechanism of passing’ can be seen as a further marginalization of blackness, an ongoing operation which produces whiteness. Given that ‘passing’ requires a denial of black identity, the ‘passer’ and their children eventually become ideologically ‘white’. As Western Cited in Bogle, 1974: 210.

5

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

73

national élites remain mostly white, the act of ‘passing’ into a white identity becomes a contribution to nation-building and delivers access to a national identity. The white identity is thus strengthened as a political power and the black identity is subjugated and excluded. Lost Boundaries operates within this binary and therefore privileges the family’s whiteness at the expense of their blackness. As the civil rights movement progressed, ‘passing’ for white narratives more or less disappeared from the screen. A similar timeline can be traced in literary narratives. Popular from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, peaking with the event of the Harlem Renaissance,6 literary ‘passing’ only reappeared in the late twentieth century. Recent examples include The Human Stain (2000) and Trumpet (Kay, 2000), with the former being adapted for the screen in 2003. The Human Stain (Benton, USA/Germany/France, 2003) reveals a sustained fascination with the taboos of ‘passing’ and miscegenation (as seen in the media’s coverage of the Dolezal case). Its protagonist Coleman Silk ‘passes’ as a white man only to be sacked from his academic post in old age for inadvertently making a racist comment. He is played as a young man by mixed actor Wentworth Miller, and in his later years by white actor Anthony Hopkins (hence removing any hint of miscegenation for the latter’s love scenes with Nicole Kidman). Following controversy over the casting of white actors for mixed roles in the film, Miller revealed his ethnic heritage and was publicly lambasted for not having discussed it earlier in his career. He was accused of ‘passing’, but the real issue, the fact that a white actor (Hopkins) played the protagonist for most of the film, denying opportunities to mixed actors, was overlooked.7 With rare exceptions, blame for the act of miscegenation is placed on the mixed woman. Despite her white lover’s greater social power, she is positioned as a seductress and he as an innocent bystander, spellbound by her mysterious, erotic, exoticism. In Jefferson in Paris (Ivory, France/USA, 1995), the mixed-race slave Sally Hemings (mixed actress Thandie Newton) is coded as a mischievous child. She is often seen hiding idly in corners, framed by See novels such as Charles W. Chestnutt, The House Behind the Cedars, 1900 (adapted for cinema by Micheaux in 1927, and again as Veiled Aristocrats in 1932); James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, 1927; Nella Larsen, Passing, 1929; Jessie Faucet, Plum Bun, 1929. 7 This is not the first time Hopkins has ‘blacked up’ for a role. In 1980 he was at the centre of a racial controversy when the BBC cast him as Othello in a television production. The BBC claimed that they were using a white actor because there were no suitable black British actors (American actor James Earl Jones was considered). Othello was played by black British actor Rudolph Walker at the London Vic in 1984, the first time since 1963 (when Errol John took the lead) that a black actor had played the role on the London stage. 6

74

Mixed Race Cinemas

shadows. Her innocent playfulness, revealing dresses and taboo Otherness spark her master’s sexual interest. The attraction of the child-woman is her non-castrating appeal and subservience to the adult male, along with her ability to perform womanly duties. As a slave, her appeal stretches even further; she becomes a passive sex toy whose only purpose is to satisfy his whims. The real-life backstory reveals that this sexual exchange may have been an economic transaction of sorts as Jefferson provided for the family they produced, and allowed them to advance to free status in adulthood.8 So, one might view their relationship as reciprocal rather than rape. Yet Lisa Ze Winters argues that ‘the economy of interracial concubinage is neither liberating nor romantic, but rather entrenched in the brutal violence of slavery’ (2009: 469). As F. James Davis (1991) notes, during the slavery era the ‘mulatta concubine’ was a white male luxury. In the film, Sally’s will is consistently suppressed and, rather than express love for her, Jefferson reminds her that she is his slave (i.e. his property). The audience is encouraged to see their interaction as a dalliance, while the narration reveals that his true love was his white on/off girlfriend. In neo-noir classic, Devil in a Blue Dress (Franklin, USA, 1995), sexual and racial issues are again conflated. The film is set in L.A. in 1948 and follows private detective Easy Rawlins’s (Denzel Washington) search for wanted woman Daphne Monet (mixed actress Jennifer Beals). Daphne is the girlfriend of rich, white mayoral candidate, Todd Carter, and has gone missing. Easy gains multiple clues as to why this might be – her interest in certain foods, people and juke joints, his recent abrupt exit from the mayoral race, her association with a black gangster (as well as her French surname, linking her with Louisiana) – but, having seen her picture, reads her as white. She is known to be hiding in the black community and Easy suspects that she has been targeted due to Carter’s position. As Easy searches for her, several people are killed. Daphne’s attempts to hide her mixed-race identity – as well as her involvement in political corruption – have led her into a criminal underworld. Although she has very little screen time, her story and secret dominate proceedings, showing the wide ramifications of ‘passing’. Daphne has photos which prove that Carter’s political rival is a paedophile, but before she can share them she is hunted down by his henchmen and tortured. Her captor demands: ‘What part of you is nigger, huh? You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna burn it out of you!’ His language supports the blood-quantum

Known as ‘shadow families’, the mixed-race offspring of similar relationships across America and the colonies constituted secret, secondary families to the father’s official white family unit, and were publicly (and often privately) denied. Hence the Jefferson family’s continued refusal to acknowledge Hemings’ descendants as their kin.

8

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

75

terms of racialization,9 along with the idea of racial markers as visible, and lynching as a resolution. The camera takes the black detective’s point of view, as Easy peers through a crack in the window, witnessing the man pick up a red-hot poker and kick up Daphne’s legs. As with The Crying Game (Jordan, UK, 1992), the locus of mixed sexuality is a source of horror, and in both cases is identified as the source of the need to ‘pass’. This recalls I Passed for White, Lost Boundaries and Isolation (O’Brien, Ireland, 2005), where the reproductive capabilities of miscegenation become horrifying for the mixed mothers-to-be. In many ways Daphne recalls Ro (Halle Berry) in Perfect Stranger, a ‘passer’ who kills for her secret. Unlike earlier femme fatales who seemed to act without reason, Ro and Daphne are driven by a survivalist ethic which inevitably leads to pain. Ruby B. Rich calls Devil in a Blue Dress ‘revisionist noir’ (1995: 11), as it deconstructs classic conventions in order to centralize the marginalized. It focuses on the black town next door, revealing the hidden lives of the butlers and drivers glimpsed only for a second in classic noir. Devil in a Blue Dress also reveals the underbelly of white society; the corruption and racism present at the highest levels. It exposes the effects of a segregationist policy which turned Los Angeles into ‘a virtually apartheid’ (Rich, 1995: 11) state, but which also created a thriving middle-class black metropolis. While set in the past, the film can be seen as a direct comment on the contemporaneous racial problem highlighted in the L.A. riots of 1992, and the legacy of segregation.

The dichotomies of post-war mixed-race women onscreen Pinky (Kazan, USA, 1949) is a landmark in mixed-race film history. It was a critical and commercial success, generated widespread debate and was the second highest-grossing film of its year. While being one of the first sound films to feature a mixed protagonist who engages in an interracial romance,10 Pinky also made headlines for generating the second Oscar nomination for a black actor. Ethel Waters, Ethel Barrymore and the film’s lead, Jeanne Crain, were all nominated for awards. The big-budget film, adapted from the 1946 novel Quality by Cid Ricketts Sumner, explores the dilemmas of Patricia ‘Pinky’ Johnson (Jeanne Crain), whose nickname is a signifier of her mixed-race roots. Pinky attempts to balance her desire to ‘pass’ with her white boyfriend Dr Thomas Adams See Mengel, 2001. Bogle (1974) lists it as featuring the first interracial kiss, although the miscegenation is fictional as both actors are white. 9

10

76

Mixed Race Cinemas

(William Lundigan) in the North, with the duty she feels to stay close to her black grandmother Aunt Dicey (Ethel Waters) in the South. Her transgressive representation is emphasized by her visualization; she is not ‘blacked up’ and, despite the use of dark lighting, appears as white as anyone else, making her an invisible threat to white society. As Samira Kawash observes: ‘In the figure of the passing body, the signifiers of race are unloosed from the signifieds; the seeming stable relation between representation and the real collapses, and representation is suddenly dangerous and untrustworthy’ (1997: 131–2). ‘Passing’ characters like Pinky bring into question the reality of ‘race’, as well as the authenticity of the ‘scopic rule’.11 Pinky often appears as a shadowy, isolated figure, barred from society by windows and doors. The claustrophobia she feels is expressed by the tight enclosed interiors, which externalize her narrow choices. The framing devices and chiaroscuro lighting emphasize her difference as well as her despair. The screen shadows created by this dark palette mimic her state of mind as she spirals deeper into an existential crisis, trying to choose between love and desire, black and white. In this way, Pinky dramatizes the psychological element of the ‘tragic mulatta’ sub-genre. Yet in contrast to Hollywood norms, Pinky has a reasonably happy ending; the tragedy of her mixedness is resolved by acceptance of her blackness and the start of a new career. Having completed her studies as a nurse, Pinky visits her grandmother in the South. Rather than let her return to her ‘passing’ life in Boston (which she condemns), Dicey asks her to stay and look after the sickly, elderly Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore). Dicey lives in a shack and works constantly to survive, as well as looking after Miss Em without recompense, while Miss Em lives in an ante-bellum mansion. Pinky initially rejects Miss Em as an ungrateful racist (her family presumably once owned Pinky’s), but she turns out to be a benevolent patron. In some ways this kindness, as well as the special relationship between Pinky’s grandmother and Miss Em, seems to affirm nostalgia for the old order, and to refuse the need for mass reparations in favour of personal acts of generosity (an ideology also present in Monster’s Ball). Pinky is fated to carry on this legacy but does so from a mixed perspective; she replaces her grandmother as Miss Em’s unpaid nurse and eventually inherits her mansion. While Aunt Dicey is Pinky’s only relative, the unification between her and Miss Em creates a form of interracial matriarchy which guides Pinky. While Miss Em has her own, albeit unlikeable relatives, her decision to leave the property to Pinky in her will implies that she may be her second grandmother. However, by absenting the middle generation and any discussion of family history, the film contextualizes Pinky as black and denies the act of miscegenation. This racial classification according to visual observation was in legal use from 1806 in America.

11

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

77

Margaret T. McGehee (2006) writes that upon Pinky’s release, the censor in Atlanta only passed the film on the condition that several scenes would be cut, including: the interracial kiss; the attempted interracial rape; and the second violent moment of interracial contact – a white policeman slapping an African-American girl. These cuts were necessary for the film to adhere to the tenets of the Production Code (which forbade depictions of graphic violence and interracial sex).12 Yet despite its controversial content, the film was a huge success, both with and without cuts. It’s interesting to compare this with Island in the Sun (Rossen, USA, 1957), which, almost ten years later, provoked mass protests for its depictions of interracial love, black leaders and mixed-race protagonists. Producer of both films, Darryl F. Zanuck, refused to allow cuts to Island in the Sun despite widespread objections. As with Pinky, Island in the Sun features an interracial kiss, and so broke with the conventions of the Code. Perhaps in order to allay the fears generated by such subject matter, the publicity materials pictured blacks/mixeds and whites separately (in contrast to Pinky). But, Island in the Sun remained hugely controversial, generating hate mail for actors and violent protests at drive-ins (a burning cross in North Carolina; armed men blocking the entrance gates in Alabama). The Memphis censor board banned the film, there was a proposed bill in South Carolina to impose a $5,000 fine for screenings, boycott campaigns ensued in Minneapolis, and committees tried (but failed) to halt its release in New Orleans. Many Southern theatres refused to show the film and those that did cut any scenes they deemed offensive.13 Despite – and perhaps because of – its infamy, Island in the Sun was a box-office hit. Island in the Sun is an adaptation of Alec Waugh’s 1955 novel, set on a Caribbean island under British rule. White plantation-owner Maxwell Fleury (James Mason) stands for political office but faces strong opposition from black union leader David Boyeur (Harry Belafonte). While Maxwell is a selfish drunk prone to violence, David is rational, respectable and inspiring. Former colonial power structures are destabilized on a macro and micro level; as Maxwell learns that his family may be mixed-race,14 his electoral campaign For more on the legal issues which surrounded Pinky’s distribution and censorship, see Jowett, 1976; Black, 1989: 167–89; Wartenberg, 1999; Kydd, 2000. 13 For more on this, see Bogle (1998). 14 This plot twist is also present in Raintree County (Dmytryk, USA, 1957), where Elizabeth Taylor plays a Civil War Southern belle who fears that she might be mixed-race. Uncertainty over her racial heritage leads to a breakdown and she is taken to a mental institution. Later she is found dead under a raintree. Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. In Island in the Sun, Jocelyn Fleury (Joan Collins) is rejected by her lover until her whiteness is officially confirmed. They then marry and move to England, as do the interracial couple Margot (Dorothy Dandridge) and Denis (John Justin). 12

78

Mixed Race Cinemas

is challenged by David – the son of one of his family’s slaves – and Maxwell’s sister falls pregnant after being seduced by the governor’s son. Interracial love stories permeate the narrative; David begins a relationship with Mavis Norman (Maxwell’s white sister-in-law, played by Joan Fontaine), and the governor’s white aide falls in love with mixed-race Margot Seaton (mixed actress Dorothy Dandridge). By comparison, Pinky may seem more conservative, but both narratives endorse mono-racial unions by showing that ‘racial uplift’ is only possible if the mixed/black protagonist – Pinky/David – abandons their white lover. In Pinky, once Thomas learns that Pinky is ‘black’, he finds her at Miss Em’s house and vows to marry her. He has already planned their married life, and expects her to ‘pass’ so that they can live in the North as a white couple. The freedom his offer represents is communicated by the score’s return to the fairy-tale music that accompanied their earlier idyllic walks. But this quickly fades away. Their tense conversation brings them to the top of the grand staircase. As expected, this melodramatic site of rupture is where she ends their relationship, saying: ‘I’m a Negro. I can’t forget it. I can’t deny it …. You can’t love without pride.’ Thomas leaves and Pinky returns to her duties, caring for Miss Em. Her refusal of marriage is based on a need for full recognition, and her knowledge that without this one is never really free. Following Miss Em’s death, her family contest the will and bring Pinky to court, arguing that she drugged and manipulated a vulnerable old woman in order to con her out of her estate. However, their lies are quickly exposed. When she inherits Miss Em’s home, Pinky turns it into a school, medical training centre and hospital for African-Americans. As The Daily Worker noted upon its release, Pinky suggests that ‘the solution to … [black social] problems will come from the white ruling class and that they [blacks] will be rewarded individually by the measure of simple goodness’ (cited in Bogle, 1974: 213). This ideology is also present in the Imitation of Life films, and can be seen more recently in films including Monster’s Ball, The Blind Side, Samba and The Help. The final scenes show the repurposed mansion now inhabited by black children and doctors. Pinky walks out into the grounds and hoists the American flag while gazing up at the sky as the camera ascends into the blue, literally visualizing ‘racial uplift’. However, her grandmother – remaining the ‘happy slave’ – refuses to adapt and continues to work as a washer-woman, keeping the hospital whites white. Conversely, Sumner’s novel ends with the Ku Klux Klan burning the building down in retaliation for Pinky winning the court case. This resolution

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

79

more authentically represents the Jim Crow period in the South.15 But ending the film with this kind of social realism would obviously not fit with classical Hollywood narrative codes. Still, Pinky’s happy ending is not so traditional; here there is no heterosexual (re)union, no conventional family unit, no male hero. It endorses both the importance of separatism – reassuring white audiences – and mixed/ black empowerment. In this way the film mimics the contradictory politics of Gentleman’s Agreement (Kazan, USA, 1947), another ‘passing’ movie produced by Zanuck) and Crossfire (Dmytryk, USA, 1947), where ‘race’ is reimagined as a trope with the power to unite America through the ‘separate but equal’ policy. Similar contradictions are present in Kings Go Forth (Daves, 1958), an adaptation of Joe David Brown’s 1956 novel. Set in France during the Second World War, it follows two American soldiers, Cpl Britt Harris (Tony Curtis) and Lt Sam Loggins (Frank Sinatra), who fall in love with Monique Blair (Natalie Wood). Upon discovering that Monique is mixed-race, Sam abandons her and Britt tricks her into sex with the false hope of marriage. Monique attempts suicide. In the end, like Pinky, she finds happiness in her career – transforming her family’s villa into a hostel for war orphans. Kings Go Forth is radical in its representation of the interracial family as empathetic. Monique claims that her American parents raised her in France, a place with a ‘beautiful blindness to colour’, to avoid problems facing interracial families back home such as the politicization of language: ‘nigger, one of the first words you learn in America’. Monique’s family are multilingual, middle class, wealthy, charitable and well liked. They have not only survived the transition to France, but also prospered there. Through interacting with them, Sam – a representor of patriarchal white America – overcomes his racial prejudice. To paraphrase Ed Guerrero, Kings Go Forth, like Pinky, uses certain modes of presenting non-white characters to diminish cultural fears and reassure white audiences. For example, the parents’ miscegenated romance is absent as Monique’s African-American father is dead. When she tells Sam his life story she presents him as a paradigm of the ‘noble negro’. His white wife and white-skinned daughter are beautiful, sophisticated and well educated, making them, like the family of Lost Boundaries, more identifiable through In addition, restrictive covenants prevented black people living in certain areas. Local associations often lobbied against black residents moving into a white community, brought lawsuits against them and resorted to threats and/or vandalized the property. The Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants in 1948, but local practices of maintaining segregation continued and de facto segregation still exists at times today in the United States. See Bogle (2005).

15

80

Mixed Race Cinemas

adherence to Eurocentric frameworks. When Sam returns to Monique in the final scene it is unclear whether or not he will commit to her (the fact that he only has three weeks leave suggests not). And, following classical Hollywood narrative form, the film’s focus is on its white male protagonists, so Monique is often decentred and her character arc is limited. In Pinky, the titular character’s decision to reject marriage for a career could be seen as subversive; she is able to train others and thus improve the education and health systems in the black community (and potentially get rich in the process). However, it is not as subversive to Hollywood’s racial codes as the ending of Kings Go Forth which shows Monique caring for, educating and housing mostly white children. Nevertheless, both films signify the changes the next decades would bring for both female and non-white agency. In these films, the spectator is encouraged to empathize with the mixed figure as a mediator despite their disruptive politics (a process aided by the use of white actors). In Pinky, the spectator is encouraged to identify with the protagonist through close-ups of her as a determined subject, shot angles which direct our gaze towards her iconic stance, shot/reverse-shot sequences revealing her unjust treatment by the local whites and so on. Through these visualizations, the spectator is directed to identify with the mixed figure as a symbol of tolerance beyond the black/white binary (i.e. a ‘post-racial’ signifier). Pinky, Aunt Dicey and Miss Em form a cross-generational bond that surpasses ethnic and class boundaries and presents an image of America as a unified nation of black, white and mixed women (although this, like the Imitation of Life narratives, oversimplifies inequalities). This shows that empathy can surpass the ‘sameness’ Marrin claimed was central to national identity, and allow individuals to bond with others despite difference.

Gender, ‘passing’ and love The classical Hollywood mixed female ‘passer’ is generally male-dependent and gripped by fear that her lover/boss/maid will discover her secret and ruin her. The endurance of this template is evidenced by the deadly desperation of mixed protagonists in Perfect Stranger, The Crying Game and Devil in a Blue Dress. In I Passed for White (Wilcox, USA, 1960, adapted from Reba Lee’s 1955 memoir), mixed ‘passer’ Bernice (Sonya Wilde) is so preoccupied that her pregnancy will reveal her ‘race’ that she eventually brings about her own downfall. Bernice begins the film having decided to run away to the North and ‘pass’ for white, despite her black grandmother’s (parents are again absent) pleas. Bernice’s narrative is mapped out when her granny expresses her own

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

81

regret for marrying a white man: ‘Having children of mixed blood … there’s where the trouble is.’ The interracial family – and by extension mixed-race character – is presented as inherently tragic. Once in Chicago, Bernice changes her name to Lila Brownwell (a name which implies the source of her mixedness and recalls the Harlem Renaissance writers’ positive use of ‘brown’ as a mixed-race descriptor). She finds work and then falls in love with Frederick Layton (James Franciscus). He is white and from a wealthy, well-established New England family. Frederick unwittingly notes her mixed identity when he exclaims: ‘I’ve never known anyone like you.’ In contrast to typical ‘passing’ narratives, Bernice shares her secret with a white colleague, Sally (Patricia Michon), who confirms the mixed character’s right to claim a white identity: ‘You’re as much a white as a Negro. … You’re as white as I am.’ Racism is classed in the film; those with nothing to lose (Sally) recognize the illusion of ‘race’ but those with wealth (the Laytons) enforce segregation to protect their inheritance. So, when Frederick proposes, Bernice invents a family story of white wealth and privilege, and they marry. The horror of his family finding out that she is mixed torments her. This theme is also central to Night of the Quarter Moon (Haas, USA, 1959), for which Julie London ‘tanned up’ to play a mixed-race woman. In this melodrama, Ginny meets her future high-society husband Chuck (John Barrymore) in her native Mexico, a space used in the Western genre to signify conquest, assimilation and the threat of miscegenation.16 The film is loosely based on a true story and, as Heidi Ardizzone (2008) notes, was the first filmic exposition of interracial marriage as a democratic right (it would take another eight years for the Supreme Court to declare all remaining state laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional).17 It was also the first to show a white man who follows through on his marriage proposal despite knowing that his fiancé is mixed (to recap on other instances: Pinky and her fiancé never marry; Bernice’s husband never knows she is mixed; Britt tells Monique that he could never marry a non-white). However, Chuck’s family take her to court, arguing that she lied about her ‘race’ and that the marriage is invalid. As in the real case, the ‘scopic rule’ is used to determine her ‘race’ and she is asked to remove her clothing. Seeing her black lawyer (Nat King Cole) grow impatient with her slow disrobing and finally tear her top, her husband rises to her defence. Here, in an unusual twist, the white hand displaces the black claim By contrast with most mixed cinema’s fixation on the black/white binary, Ginny’s mixedness is multiply Other – Irish, Portuguese Angolan, Spanish. See Camilla Fojas, ‘Mixed Race Frontiers: Border Westerns and the Limits of “America”’ in Beltràn and Fojas (2008: 45–63). 17 For more on this film and the real-life case, see Ardizzone, ‘Catching Up with History: Night of the Quarter Moon, the Rhinelander Case, and Interracial Marriage in 1959’ in Beltràn and Fojas (2008: 87–112); Madigan, 1998; Lewis and Ardizzone, 2001. 16

82

Mixed Race Cinemas

to her identity. This brings resolution and she is reunited with her husband, a narrative which asserts her place within hegemonical whiteness (mimicking Sally’s recognition of Bernice’s whiteness). The 1925 Rhinelander case on which the film is based ended with the marriage being dissolved by the New York courts. The film’s positive reimagining of events can be read as a classical Hollywood strategy, but the film’s shift from New York (the site of the true story) to California may also be interpreted as an oblique reference to the latter’s softer laws; California’s landmark 1948 decision to overturn its anti-miscegenation laws set a precedent for the rest of America.18 However, as Ardizzone notes, this film and the empathy it evokes for mixed womanhood and interracial marriage (explicated in the court scene) did not reflect actual social realities. Gallup polls in 1959 showed that 97 per cent of white Americans were opposed to interracial marriage. In both Night of the Quarter Moon and I Passed for White, it is the matriarch who targets the non-white penetrator of the white family unit. While most critics note Hollywood’s focus on protecting white women from black male sexuality, here we see an equal emphasis on protecting white men from ‘black’ female sexuality. In I Passed for White, Bernice faces strong opposition from Frederick’s mother, who says: ‘She’s not natural, she’s like a cat in a strange attic.’ The imagery evokes Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre where Mr Rochester keeps his first wife Bertha – often read as mixed-race – in the attic of his English mansion.19 The comment draws attention to the implied animalism of Bernice’s ‘race’, the impossibility of her position and her ultimate desire for escape. When Bernice attends a dance with Frederick she flies into a frenzy on the dance floor, performing to ‘raced’ music such as jazz, salsa and Africanesque drumming, attracting numerous men to her side. Her wild movements and trance-like state affirm ideas of the mixed/black woman as overtly sexual, uncivilized and unbalanced. She behaves not like a New England wife but like Alwina in Princesse Tam Tam (who, when her drink is spiked at a society ball, reverts to racially marked samba dancing). Both performances position the mixed characters – in contrast to the conservatism of their all-white, black tie settings – as spectacles of Otherness. The fact that some of Bernice’s ‘relatives’ (white strangers to whom she has sent out invitations as a distant cousin) attend her wedding, comically 18 Mixed marriages were not criminalized and if licensed in other states were legally valid in California. See Romano, 2003. 19 Fears of female sexuality are said to have created the literary tradition of ‘the woman in the attic’ as a metaphor for its containment: ‘Fluid and unbounded female sexuality cannot be conceptualised within masculine parameters’ (Flax, 1990: 171). Brontë’s ‘woman in the attic’ is innately disturbed and thus must be restrained – but not sexually engaged with – by white patriarchal order.

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

83

reveals the constructedness of family. Once married, she successfully avoids the suspicions of her mixed-race maid Bertha (Isabelle Cooley; whose similar name also draws attention to Bernice’s true ‘race’). Following a difficult pregnancy, Bernice becomes distraught after the birth and asks if it is black. Frederick assumes she has had an affair, the baby dies and she leaves him. The ease with which she gives up her lifestyle with Frederick (and her best friend, Sally) is implausible unless read as a metaphor in support of segregationist politics. In the final scene, Bernice walks off to start a new life with a smile on her face, embodying feminist independence. Yet she remains trapped – able to be only black or white rather than both. In Julie Dash’s 1982 short film Illusions, Mignon Dupree (mixed actress Lonette McKee) ‘passes’ for white to secure a high-powered job in the Hollywood studios during the Second World War. The title refers to the illusions created in the ‘dream factory’, and illuminates the fact that the eyeto eye reciprocity of the film screen is a deceit. In the same way, race and other forms of representation are revealed through the film’s codes to be an illusion. Dash’s film stands apart from typical ‘passing’ films because it positions the mixed character’s goals as career driven rather than motivated by a sexualized desire for whiteness. Mignon acts as a signifier of the black/mixed women who opened doors for others in the industry.20 This unique story of success highlights the absence of non-white/female directorial perspectives in the industry21 and yet it adheres to American racial binaries. The film contextualizes Dupree as black by representing her relation to whites as civil and to blacks as intimate. This is reinforced through the casting of McKee (whose character in A Day in Black and White argues in favour of all mixed people being called black because of a shared history). Likewise as a filmmaker, although Dash engages with the mixed ability to move between white and black culture, she locates mixedness within black culture.

For example, actress Madame Sul-Te-Wan (1910s+), film company founder/actor Noble Johnson (1910s+), national booking organization for race films/newspaper/news organization founder George P. Johnson (1910s+), musical arrangers/composers Phil Moore (1930s+) and Benny Carter (1940s+), musician Hazel Scott (1940s+), ballerina Carmen de Lavallade (1950s+), choreographers and dance teachers Carolynne Snowden (1920s+), the Nicholas Brothers (1930s+), Marie Bryant and Katherine Dunham (1940s+), casting directors/agents Charles Butler (1920s+) and Ben Carter (1930s+), MGM’s first licensed black hairstylist Hazel Washington (former actress and sister to Fredi) (1940s+). 21 Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (USA, 1991) was the first feature by an African-American female director to receive a general theatrical release. The first feature by an African-American female director was Losing Ground (Collins, 1982), but this was only circulated at festivals. 20

84

Mixed Race Cinemas

Given the relationship between language and power, it is useful here to consider how the linguistic aspects of the character’s naming frame her as mixed. Like Daphne Monet in Devil in a Blue Dress, Mignon’s French name removes her somewhat from an Anglo-American context and signifies her status. ‘Mignon’ is French for ‘cute’ or ‘sweet’, while ‘Dupree’, a phonetic version of ‘du pris/prix’ literally meaning ‘taken’ or ‘price’, suggests her stolen and commodified status as the daughter of slaves (it is also the name of a black character in Devil in a Blue Dress). Therefore, translating her name as ‘sweet taken’ or ‘sweet price’ clarifies her historical status in America, and her position as a ‘black’ woman seen as a sexual commodity. But, the use of the genitive is also common in aristocratic French surnames – to suggest that someone is from ‘the house of …’ – and implies her white ancestral history. So her name draws attention to the history of racial mixing and of FrancoAmerican relations. The film begins with a typical day at the office, which, with the exception of Mignon, is an all-white, all-male space. One of her colleagues is infuriated by her sexual rebuttals and becomes obsessed by her. (Her secret black husband is a soldier and thus absent throughout the film). A young black female singer is employed to overdub a white star (a common practice which further outlined ‘the colour line’ in Hollywood – private black voices screened behind public white faces). She is the only one who can read Mignon’s multiracial body, which confirms Hill’s thesis that blacks are able to recognize mixedness better than whites. But Mignon’s admirer does discover her ‘race’. He threatens to ‘out’ her and she uses her mediation skills to overcome his anger. Mignon’s pioneering position in Hollywood is mirrored by her husband’s involvement in the war (as well as the aspirations of the singer), while the 1940s setting clearly demarcates a changing point in American race and gender relations. Just as her husband is experiencing life beyond America’s racial/ geographical boundaries for the first time, she is breaking these boundaries down. Both absent and present non-white characters are part of a process of change, and yet, the filmmaker’s approach belies the fact that real change is yet to come. A similar interrogation of the present through the past shapes Indigènes (Bouchareb, France, 2006), a film about Algerian soldiers in the Second World War. One scene shows a mixed-race ‘passer’22 explaining to his superior that he should not refer to the men as indigènes (natives) or Muslims, but as men. As Ali Jaafar notes, ‘It is as if Bouchareb were speaking directly to his audience, urging us to drop divisive compartments’ (2007: 33). Like Dash, the

He ‘passes’ for a pied noir (a white Frenchman born in Algeria).

22

Hollywood’s ‘Passing’ Narratives

85

director is multicultural – a Frenchman of Algerian heritage – and uses film as a tool to expose forgotten histories.23 In the next chapter, we will continue to examine paradigmatic models of mixed-race American cinema through an in-depth analysis of two versions of the classic melodrama Imitation of Life. These films, like many of those explored here, feature ‘passing’, black/white matriarchy, career-driven women, interracial desire and the quest for self-determination.

23 The Mouvement des Indigènes de la République (a minority anti-racism group) argue that members of banlieue ‘are treated like colonial natives and relegated to the margins of society’ (cited in Martin, 2013: 198). Sadri Khiari, one of its founders, further posits that ‘the regime of the indigénat still haunts institutions, practices and ideologies’ (ibid.).

86

3 The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

T

he groundbreaking melodrama Imitation of Life was directed by John M. Stahl in 1934 and remade by Douglas Sirk in 1959.1 As Linda Williams (1990) notes is unique to the ‘woman’s film’, these melodramas privilege female protagonists, use the family as a source of tension and make an effort to engage with the concerns of women. Both films centralize black, white and mixed-race female subjectivities to explore ‘race’, love and status. These star vehicles had major box-office cross-cultural appeal and enjoyed critical and commercial success. The 1934 film marked a significant shift in Hollywood by featuring an actual mixed-race actress in a lead role exploring mixedness, and made Fredi Washington a star. As popular melodramas, mimetically representing lived experience (i.e. imitations of life), the films are escapist but also reveal their society’s contradictions. They focus on the dichotomies of fantasy and reality through their exploration of women’s hopes and dreams. Each film explores cross-generational conflicts as white and black mothers struggle to raise their children without fathers. This is complicated by the fact that the black mother’s daughter is white-skinned and so resists her own mother’s limited social position, desiring instead the independence of the

Like Sirk, Stahl worked almost exclusively in melodrama. In America, Sirk remade three of Stahl’s films: Imitation of Life (1934/1959), Magnificent Obsession (1935/1954) and When Tomorrow Comes (1939) as Interlude (1957).  Stahl was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and gave Carolynne Snowden, a mixed-race actress, a unique opportunity in the late 1920s – a five-year contract with his production company. Snowden did not become a big star but was featured as servant girl Lily May in Stahl’s 1927 film In Old Kentucky. This film also featured the newcomer Lincoln Perry who went on, as servile stereotype Stepin Fetchit, to become the first black screen star.  Douglas Sirk (Detlef Sierck) began his career as a theatre director. He left Germany in 1937 and made his last European film, Boefie, in Holland in 1939. He arrived in America two years later, where he began working as a studio director. Sirk’s background in theatre and painting is evident in the colourful, vibrant visuals of his films. He was an active opponent of fascism and his Hollywood films reflect a continued distaste for divisive social structures based on race, class, gender and so on. 1

88

Mixed Race Cinemas

white mother. The ‘passing’ of the mixed character eventually breaks her own mother’s heart, leading to her death. Both films are screen translations of Fannie Hart’s 1933 novel2 but differ from the source text in a crucial way. In Hart’s narrative, a mixed-race girl decides to ‘pass’ for white, marries a white man and breaks all contact with her family. The film narratives offer no such freedom. Both deny her a romantic life, classify her as black and punish her refusal to return home with matricide. The threat the mixed figure poses to the state is explored within the family. In both films, the mixed character blames her mother for the discrimination she suffers as a black woman, rather than the state, and her mother (as a signifier of the state) is victimized.3 In Sirk’s 1959 film, the mixed character’s culpability is stated explicitly: ‘I’m sorry I killed my mother.’ This chapter explores how the Imitation of Life films set the standard for mixed-race representation, both in terms of endorsing and challenging essentialist visual and narrative politics. Laura Mulvey sums up the dual psychoanalytic forces of the cinema as such: ‘Obsession and imitation: these two ideas evoke psychic processes. First, the irrational, obsessive, psychic energy that activates the unconscious; second, the imitations, substitutions and masquerades that characterise the language of the unconscious’ (1996: 38). So cinema speaks to our unconscious through its focus on energies that activate and translate our innermost desires. From Mulvey’s argument we can extrapolate what drives the protagonists of these films to ‘pass’ and to seek fame as actresses (and why this ends tragically). Mulvey’s ideas on obsession, imitation and articulation may also be applied to the representation of gendered and racialized dialectics in Imitation of Life: the mixed female’s maniacal obsession with whiteness; 1959’s Steve Archer as photographer/ bearer of the male gaze; the white female’s association with imitation and ‘whiteliness’; the black female as signifier of the natural/immaterial.

Imitation of Life (1934): Interrogating mixed identities Stahl’s 1934 Imitation of Life follows two single mothers – black Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers), white Beatrice ‘Bea’ Pullman (Claudette Colbert), and their two daughters. In one another, they find a mutual solution to their financial problems. The black woman comes to work for the white woman in

Sirk also adapted Hart’s 1931 novel Back Street for the cinema in 1932. See Lauren Berlant, 1993.

2 3

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

89

return for lodgings and then gives her a secret family pancake recipe (for free), which makes her mistress a millionaire. As the film’s protagonist, there is a love interest for Bea (Steve Archer played by Warren William) but no one else. Delilah’s daughter Peola (mixed-race actress Fredi Washington) is whiteskinned. Her problems are marginal in the narrative and yet overwhelm the tone of the film. Even when she leaves ‘home’ (her mistress’s house, which serves as a microcosm of white society in its containment/denial of her mixedness) to ‘pass’ for white, the repetition of her name ‘peola’, meaning ‘fair-skinned designated black’ (Zack, 1993: 37), draws attention to her multiplicitous political identity. Stahl was unique in his decision to cast a mixed-race actress to play Peola.4 This long search for a ‘white Negro girl’ (cited in Bogle, 2005: 129) was described by black newspaper The California Eagle as ‘the strangest casting mission on record’ (cited in Bogle, 2005: 128). But, this casting was key to the film’s success. Anna Everett notes that Washington ‘imbues the character with an authenticating aura unavailable to a Caucasian actress attempting to pass for a black attempting to pass for a white’ (2001: 221). As the miscegenation topic was condemned by the Production Code,5 the censors described Peola as ‘extremely dangerous … [to the] industry as a whole … [a girl from] a line of definitely negro strain … the negro girl appearing as white’ (Berry: 2000, 98). To appease them, the studio described Peola’s pale skin as a symptom of an albino-like condition. By the 1950s, the Code had been relaxed to meet with new post-war attitudes. It was accepted that, if a taboo topic presented a moral conflict and did so within a legitimate frame of reference, a Code-approved film could deal with virtually any topic except homosexuality.6 So, in the 1959 version, Sara Jane’s mixedness was transferred back a generation on to her ‘almost white’ but legally black father. The role of the mixed-race character Julie in Whale’s 1936 Showboat was given to white actress Helen Morgan, just as Ava Gardner would be cast in Sidney’s 1951 remake. This film features a significant miscegenation sub-plot; a mixed-race woman married to a white man is ‘outed’ as black by a jilted suitor. In order to save her, her husband cuts her finger and sucks it in front of the other performers on the showboat. When the police arrive to arrest them he tells them: ‘I’ve got negro blood in me’ and the others confirm it. They are asked to leave (for ‘passing’) but not arrested. 5 In 1927 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America’s ‘Don’ts and Be Carefuls’ guide addressed a series of issues which the industry decided were worthy of censorship. Censorship was more stringently enforced with the announcement of the official Production Code (also known as the Hays Code) in 1930. 6 1959’s Some Like It Hot (Wilder, USA), like Imitation of Life and Shadows benefitted from the weakened authority of the Code. It was released without a certificate of approval and broke many cinematic taboos by presenting gambling, nudity, racketeering, drunkenness, women acting lewdly, cross-dressing and multiple references to sex, both heterosexual and homosexual. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Nichols, USA, 1966) was a Code-breaker which heralded the end of this period of cinematic censorship. 4

90

Mixed Race Cinemas

Still, given that Sara Jane was played by a mixed Latina actress who audiences read as white, the miscegenation topic appeared to be fictional. Variety’s 1934 review of Imitation of Life claimed that the subject of the mixed-race individual or the ‘race problem’ had never been explored in cinema before.7 In fact the ‘tragic mulatta’ character was popularized in 1915’s The Birth of A Nation, where Lydia Brown embodies the ‘best and worst of the races’ (Bogle, 1980: 80). And the earliest surviving film by an African-American director, Within Our Gates (Micheaux, USA, 1919), was the first film to deal extensively with mixed womanhood, as well as the interracial family, but during segregation would only have been screened in black theatres.8 The release of Imitation of Life impacted on both the white and black communities of 1930s America. Of the latter Bogle writes: ‘Ministers preached about it. Intellectuals wrote articles about it. Everyone seemed caught up in its fever, the focal point of which was daughter Peola’ (1980: 79). It was one of the few Hollywood films to challenge the established racial system in its presentation of the mental and physical harm caused by discrimination. Stahl’s construction of images critiques the processes of white racial domination, while somewhat conforming to its rules: Peola/Delilah have no lovers, friends, extended family – the black community has failed to support them and left them isolated; narrative closure comes with the death of Delilah, equating Peola’s racial transgression with matricide. Yet, the elaborate manner in which Stahl visualizes Delilah’s funeral suggests a deep respect for one of society’s most oppressed figures then or now – the single, black mother. As Bogle argues, Stahl’s decision to blame Peola for the death of her mother is not merely a melodramatic convention but an exposition of culturally embedded attitudes to mixedness: ‘The popular imagination always simplifies complex experiences. And for Depression audiences, white as well as black, anxious to point the finger at someone or something responsible for the loss of order, she would remain an ideal target: the guilt-ridden, troubled, anguished mulatto’ (Bogle, 1980: 80). The mulatta was defined as melancholic because of her illicit origins, cursed blood and position between two worlds.9 As such, Peola is beautifully shot yet mostly seen looking clinically depressed as she gazes longingly at the white neighbourhood from the containment of her black servant’s quarters in the basement of Bea’s house. Illustrating Cixous’ work on the unheard voices of women in a patriarchal system, Washington’s performance See Variety, 27 November 1934. For more on Micheaux, see: McGilligan, 2007; Manchel, 2007; Green, 2000; Bowser and Spence, 2000. 9 See Barbara Christian, 1980. 7 8

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

91

of Peola’s pain is communicated in the language of ‘dreams, embodied but deadly silent, in silences, in voiceless rebellions’ (1992: 155). This positionality as pre-linguistic, as ‘what-comes-before-language’ (Cixous, 1992: 151) and is beyond articulation, is imposed on Peola because of her femininity and her mixedness. The character is thus constructed through the ‘grammar of acting’, as Stanislavski (1938) put it, as well as the shot/reverse-shot sequences picturing her trapped behind windows while Bea moves freely in and out. Her mother Delilah’s experience is also limited by her position on the racial hierarchy. She plays the ‘happy slave’, a stock black character in early Hollywood who accepts inferior subjecthood without question. Delilah not only refuses to accept payment for the pancake recipe which makes Bea a millionaire, but also refuses to give up her position as Bea’s maid. As well as submitting to this exploitative relationship, she allows her image to be commodified as a trademark and so become company property. Miriam Thaggert observes that ‘the film reproduces a patronising attitude and relationship commonly recognised in accounts of slavery’ (1998: 485). Delilah’s passive acceptance of a lowly position infuriates her daughter who recognizes this acquired helplessness as rooted in centuries of oppression. Thus, in her existential questioning, Peola stands in stark contrast to the contemporaneous mainstream images of black characters like Delilah who, as Bogle observed, left little impact on screen narratives or audiences: ‘Smiling as they carried a tray or sang a tune’ (1998: 163). Delilah is infantilized and locked into a colonized mindset; her pain comes not from being a victim of inequality but from her daughter refusing to submit to the same limitations. Yet it could be argued that, while resigned to her own fate, Delilah does see a different future for Peola. She works hard to enable Peola to become a teacher (the profession of many members of the Harlem Renaissance and other leaders of the black community). The psychological and physical rupture of their relationship can be read as rooted in the divisions of civil rights discourses, split between deferring and taking action to force social change. In contrast to the challenge that Peola’s actions pose to the system, Delilah’s actions (to prevent her ‘passing’) work to support the judgements of white patriarchy.10 Following Lydia’s framing in The Birth of a Nation, the film emphasizes Peola’s difference from black women visually: ‘Mother and daughter often glance at each other through windows, separated by glass, by a color line Peola tries hard to enforce’ (Thaggert, 1998: 486). Peola is an isolated figure and ultimately unreachable – as signified by her ‘family’s’ continuously failed attempts to reintegrate her into their unit. Each time Delilah breaks the See Kaplan, 1990.

10

92

Mixed Race Cinemas

‘colour line’ by entering a white space where Peola is ‘passing’ – exposing her mixedness – Peola is newly motivated to abandon her mother’s space and reinstate her whiteness. The ‘passer’ is reflected doubly, as both criminal and ambitious. This dichotomy allows the spectator to judge two positions at once11 and thematically reflects Peola’s hybridity. As Thaggert astutely observes: ‘We identify with the divided Peola precisely because she herself perceives contradictions; we identify because this character personifies cinematic double consciousness’ (1998: 489). Peola spends much of her time onscreen in the shadows, sidelined in the frame, decentred visually just as she is physically in 1930s America. Her beauty is subdued, hidden and obscured from our vision until she ‘becomes’ white – that is, until she ‘passes’ and becomes a shop girl – at which point she takes centre-frame, only to be ‘outed’ by her mother as black and once again relegated to the sidelines. LeiLani Nishime draws attention to the slippery nature of race, and the dilemmas faced by those who, like Peola, look white but cannot claim whiteness without ‘passing’: ‘If race is biological, a matter of hair and skin, then what happens when one’s physical characteristics most closely resemble those of the members of another race? Of course, if race is some unalterable essence, then how is passing possible at all? What then is that essence?’ (2005: 39). When Peola looks in the mirror, she experiences a rupture between what she is, what she is designated and how she appears: ‘I want to be white like I look. … Isn’t that a white girl there?’ In I Passed for White (Wilcox, USA, 1960), mixed-race Bernice expresses her desire to ‘pass’ in similar terms: ‘I’m different, I’m not really a Negro and I’m not a white. Why can’t I be what I look to be, what people take me for? … I am white, like my grandfather.’ In these films, the politics of the visual contradicts the racial system.12 In the 1959 Imitation of Life, mixed-race Sara Jane states: ‘I’m white too. And I want to have a choice in life.’ This clarifies Peola’s latent desire to claim the freedom associated with whiteness. As Bogle notes of Peola’s characterization: ‘Much of the ambivalence was due to the slipshod way the character had been written. Imitation of Life had failed to deal squarely with a woman who does not want to be white as much as she wants white opportunities’ (1980: 80). Read in this way, Peola, Bernice and Sara Jane cross the ‘colour line’ not due to their hatred of blackness but in order to have more choices in life. See Williams, 1990. See also Zebrowitz, 1997.

11 12

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

93

Casting and representation Washington’s life, like Peola’s, was dominated by her mixed identity, as a contemporary critic noted: ‘You would never know she was Negro or considered herself such to look at her. She can “pass” whenever it is necessary or convenient, but she makes no attempt to “pass”: in fact she feels herself to be entirely identified with the Negro group. Yet, Fredi, in a white environment, would be considered white’ (Earl Conrad, The Chicago Defender, cited in Bogle, 1980: 76). Washington was so pale that she was often rejected or, like Bert Williams, Lena Horne and Nina Mae McKinney, ‘blacked up’ for screen roles. During her time at MGM, Horne was encouraged to ‘pass’ for white and because she refused, her job usually consisted of performing ‘self-contained numbers dropped into the films and easily cut out for Southern exhibition’ (Dyer, 1995: 28). Other mixed-race white-skinned actresses, such as Evelyn Preer (who like Eve Mason starred in many of Micheaux’s films), were banned from acting in Hollywood’s white films. Preer looked too identifiably white and according to James Snead, ‘black’ actors’ skin had to be ‘as black as possible to eliminate ambiguity’ (1994: 145). Due to her uncategorizable ‘race’, Washington’s career faulted, as did that of many mixed actors. In her obituary in The Guardian newspaper, Ronald Bergan considered the racial limitations placed on actors in this era: In the lunatic logic of pigmentocracy, Washington was too beautiful and not dark enough to play maids, but rather too light to act in all-black movies. This dilemma was illustrated in The Emperor Jones (1933) starring the great actor/singer Paul Robeson, making his screen debut. Washington was cast as Ondine, but when the producers saw the rushes they were scared that audiences might think Robeson was making love to a white woman. So they darkened her with heavy pancake and re-shot the scenes. … After helping to found the Negro Actors Guild, she continued to perform spasmodically on the stage. … However, this lovely actress was born too soon and neither Hollywood nor Broadway offered her challenging roles. … As with so many other black actors and actresses of the past there hovers the nagging question of what might have been. (9 July 1994) Following Imitation of Life, her most famous role, Washington’s diegetic and extra-diegetic worlds collapsed and she came to be seen as a real-life ‘tragic mulatta’: a mystery, a lovely quiet woman seemingly given to melancholy. … For a number of very prominent people, perhaps most particularly white

94

Mixed Race Cinemas

men, they [Fredi and her sister Isabel] represented the ultimate taboo: miscegenated beauties ‘cursed’ by that drop of ‘negra’ blood, which somehow, so the myth said, made them more exciting and passionate than your ordinary white lady … they were viewed as objects. (Bogle, 1980: 76) The celebrity image of her as a mysterious, melancholic, lost girl bears little relation to the real Washington as described by her friends and contemporaries.13 Despite her work as a civil rights activist, many came to believe that she had ‘passed’ for white to achieve her success. Indeed her star persona and typecasting as a ‘passer’ were so interconnected that ‘for the mass audience, under the power of film and print media that had established a Washington persona, Fredi and Peola were one and the same’ (Bogle, 1980: 80). Peola acted as the signifier, ‘image … the physical imprint’ (Derrida, 1992: 114) of Fredi as ‘tragic mulatta’. And yet, as Shane Vogel noted of Horne, she might also be read as ‘an as-yet-unrealised “sound-image” of black womanhood’ (2008: 23). In her autobiography Horne identifies the absence of ordinary roles for black/ mixed dramatic actresses in an industry where ‘nobody (and certainly not myself) had any sound image to give a woman who stood between the two conventional ideas of Negro womanhood: the “good”, quiet Negro woman who scrubbed and cooked and was a respectable servant – and the whore’ (1966: 2–3). Through her dramatic expression of Peola as a multilayered subjectivity, Washington tried to realize that in-between ‘sound-image’ and yet it went unrecognized by many. It wasn’t until 1949 that new American releases such as Pinky (Kazan) and Lost Boundaries (Werker) gave mixed roles depth (albeit played by white actors), and Home of the Brave (Robson) and Intruder in the Dust (Brown) signalled new representations of black identities due to changes brought about by pressure from the NAACP, SAG and Office of War Information Motion Picture Bureau.14 Bogle observes, like Bergan, that Hollywood believed Washington to be ‘far too sleek and sophisticated … to ever be cast as a “realistic” black woman on film, she was a scary problem they chose to do without’ (1980: 80). She wouldn’t play stereotypical servile roles and demanded fair pay, pioneering actions that would benefit later actors. By contrast, Beavers’ Delilah fitted with Hollywood’s idea of a ‘good Negro’ woman. In order to portray an authentic ‘mammy’, she was forceSee Bogle, 2005. This institution encouraged Hollywood to promote the idea of America as a free and open society during the Second World War, for example, see Casablanca (Curtiz, USA, 1942), or In This Our Life (Huston, USA, 1942), films where blacks and women are given relative prominence thus displacing the dominant white male hero.

13 14

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

95

fed, her costume was padded out and she had to learn the ‘slow-and-easy backwoods accent compulsory for every black servant’ (Bogle, 1974: 87). Beavers was well known as one of the queens of black Hollywood and so her performance may have been more contrived than actors who actually worked part-time as servants (e.g. Freddie Clarke), making it easier for black audiences to read her oppositionally. Likewise black audiences would no doubt have been aware of her political stance as stories circulated of the humiliations she suffered on set and of her fight to remove ‘nigger’ from the script – which she achieved with the support of the NACCP. Like Washington, Beavers represented different things to people on either side of the ‘veil’.15 Imitation of Life’s non-white characters, like many films of its time, are limited in scope: the dark-skinned, asexual, jolly, dim-witted ‘mammy’ versus the white-skinned, desexualized, solemn, intelligent ‘tragic mulatta’. Washington wouldn’t play the former, tired of playing the latter and was left with no further choices. Contemporary journalist Arthur Pollock wrote of the casting restrictions she faced in The Daily Compass newspaper: Fredi Washington, well known on the New York stages … [is] not on them so frequently as she would be if skin colour were not of such surprising importance. … Fredi is one of those people who find color a special problem in this country for the odd reason that she has little of it. You could describe her in two ways. She is a white girl who could ‘pass’ as a Negro girl or a Negro girl who could ‘pass’ as white. Elsewhere there might be no question of being either, but here in this democracy Americans are supposed to be one or another and they have to make a choice. Fredi Washington made it when she was a kid. (cited in Bogle, 1980: 76) Pollock’s description of Washington as both black and white, or a ‘white negro’ as Stahl put it, captures the liminality which made her such a problem for Hollywood. Peola’s dream of self-realization is only possible through pain and isolation, and ultimately fails. bell hooks writes about the effect that this had on black female spectators: You were different. There was something scary in his image of young sexual sensual black beauty betrayed – that daughter who did not want to be confined by blackness, the ‘tragic mulatto’ who did not want to be The writer and political activist W. E. B. Du Bois (himself a mixed-race man) claimed that the black community essentially lived behind a veil because they went unnoticed by the white community. He also wrote that during slavery they had lived as ‘shadows’ in society (seen but not heard). In 1900 he stated that the main problem of the twentieth century would be the ‘colour line’.

15

96

Mixed Race Cinemas

negated. ‘Just let me escape this image forever’ she could have said. I will always remember that image. I remembered how we cried for her, for our unrealised desiring selves. She was tragic because there was no place in the cinema for her, no loving pictures. She too was absent image. It was better then that we were absent, for when we were there it was humiliating, strange, sad. We cried all night for you, for the cinema that had no place for you. And like you, we stopped thinking it would one day be different. (1999: 313) hooks’ comments contextualize Peola (and by extension, Washington) within the black female gaze as a defiant and deferred subject, challenging yet ‘humiliating, strange, sad’. Peola/Washington illuminates the absence of black women on screen and in the public/private sphere, through her presence. She is the absent image of Delilah and other mixed/black women who, at work and at home, often went unseen and unheard because of racism and sexism. And in terms of a melodramatic figure, her almost silent performance is a paradigm of the ‘hysteria bubbling all the time just below the surface … a feeling that there is always more to tell than can be said’ (Elsaesser, 1972: 7). Steve Neale notes that melodrama focuses on the problems of living within a society with set legal and social conventions which impact on the individual, suggesting not ‘a crisis of that order, but a crisis within it, an “in-house” rearrangement’ (1980: 22). Peola might thus be read as Stahl’s attempt to create a sound-image of the personal harm caused by the public denial of civil rights.

Shadows and the interracial family 1959 saw the release of two race-centred American films whose popularity endures to this day: Sirk’s studio spectacle Imitation of Life and John Cassavetes’s independent film essay Shadows. Both films centralize young mixed-race women played by actresses read as white (a necessary device given that Imitation of Life features an interracial kiss and Shadows features interracial sex). According to Ray Carney, this casting practice posits ‘race’ as ‘cinematically indeterminate’ and ‘violates conventional cinematic forms of representation’ (1994: 48). Carney writes that a ‘black’ would normally be played by ‘someone with clearly Negroid features and a white by a Caucasian’ (ibid.). But ‘black’ roles have often been performed by mixed actors, and the practice of ‘passing’ required to get leading roles means that

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

97

some ‘white’ roles were surely not played by Caucasians.16 Furthermore, mixed roles were usually played by white actors: ‘When Imitation of Life was remade in 1959, a white actress, Susan Kohner, was cast in the part originated by Washington. But no black actress was given this kind of freedom’ (Bogle, 1980: 80).17 Susan Kohner was the daughter of Mexican film star Lupita Tovar and Czech-Jewish-American film agent Paul Kohner. Though Mexicans were not officially labelled non-white in 1950s America, they have typically been read as such in the popular imagination.18 And while inter-religious marriages were not illegal they were considered unusual. Insider knowledge of Kohner’s racial ambiguity may have led to her casting in a series of mysterious, sexualized non-white roles, but her lack of racial markers led audiences to read her as white. The mixed character in Shadows was played by Lelia Goldoni. She is widely read as Italian-American but has refused to elaborate on her ‘race’. Coinciding with the birth of the nouvelle vague, Shadows was part of the Beat Cinema movement19 and uses a stream-of-consciousness dialogue style and freewheeling camera movements. Like many of Cassavetes’s films, it casts a social mirror on marginalized figures to examine identity, family and sex.20 Cassavetes said that the film’s focus is its ‘human problems’,21 that is, establishing a sense of selfhood, finding a purpose in life, navigating relationships. But despite this humanist ethic, racial identity is a key factor in many of these ‘problems’ for the three designated black protagonists living in a racially divided New York. For example, Michelle Wallace (1993) has written about the understanding in black society that Joan Crawford was mixed-race.  Mixeds continued to be played by whites for many years after this film, for example, see Invitation to a Gunfight (Wilson, USA, 1964), Biloxi Blues (Nichols, USA, 1988). 17 Frank Silvera, Noble Johnson and a few other mixed actors played other ethnicities onscreen from the 1910s to 1960s, but they were exceptions to the rule. Light-skinned mixed actor Ron O’Neal was cast in non-black roles in the 1980s, for example as Arabic, Mexican or Malaysian. More recently multigenerational mixed actor Jeffrey Wright has been cast in a variety of ethnic and sexual identities in supporting film roles, but always as non-whites: a deranged African-American soldier in The Manchurian Candidate (Demme, USA, 2004); an Asian in Broken Flowers (Jarmusch, USA/France, 2005); a Latino in Shaft (Singleton, USA/Germany, 2000); a gay African-American in Angels in America (TV, USA, 2003); a drug-addicted mixed-race artist in the title role of Basquiat (Schnabel, USA, 1996). 18 In earlier decades Mexican Americans were at times categorized as of the ‘Mexican race’ or as ‘colored’ on the US Census. 19 This cinematic form was inspired by the Beats (a collection of writers and poets including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs).  Kerouac wrote a semi-autobiographical novel centred on interracial love which was remade by MGM as The Subterraneans (MacDougall, USA, 1960) with the mixed-race woman replaced by a Frenchwoman, equating the exoticism of mixedness and Frenchness. 20 See Carney, 1994. 21 Ibid. 16

98

Mixed Race Cinemas

Shadows, as Carney observes, ‘focuses on the minority position in both the sociological and the imaginative sense of the term’ (1994: 33). The experimental film explores mixed-race identity through the white-skinned siblings Benny (Ben Carruthers) and Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), and yet does not liberate mixed consciousness from the essentialisms that deny its multiplicitous identity, on both sides of the ‘veil’. Carney notes that the film is an explorative comparison of the ‘“masks” we wear in public with the “faces” we hide beneath them’ (1994: 36). While the siblings perform other racial identities outside their home, with Hugh (Hugh Hurd), their black brother, they reveal the true face of their confusion. It is Hugh who convinces Lelia to forget her sexual relationship with a white man, and accept her blackness by accepting a more restrained black suitor. As the ‘tragic mulatta’ stereotype, she is defined by her sexuality, and her transgression is resolved through romantic reintegration into the black community. Like the 1922 film of the same name – which features a Chinese subject constructed as a mysterious Oriental22 – the title ‘Shadows’ suggests a mystery about mixedness which posits the subject as a mythical, magical figure rather than an ordinary American.23 This title also recalls the ‘shadow’ families embodied by mixed-race characters, and the marginalized shadow spaces which mixed and black people often occupy in Eurocentric societies. As with Imitation of Life, the title suggests a doubling; a mimetic representation of life which is reinforced by its docu-drama quality and extended mask metaphor. The issues of mixedness in Shadows (1959) are primarily explored through the female body, following the ‘tragic mulatta’ template. Yet Lelia is a new protagonist for her time, a symbol of integration and feminism, equally at home with her non-white family and the white world at large. She is an artist and a fiercely independent, arrogant, selfish woman, with a personality akin to Scarlett O’Hara. As both she and her brother are reliant on Hugh to run the household there is a visual sense of their light-skinned privilege, yet Hugh is also the eldest and so, in the absence of any other family, takes on the parental role. She never discusses her ‘race’, seeing such things as unimportant, and lets others draw their own conclusions. So she ends up inadvertently ‘passing’ for white. Her brothers are jazz musicians24 and, while racism limits their options, they have a comfortable, middle-class bohemian lifestyle. See Maurice, 2008: 66–89. See also the stereotyping of blacks as the ‘magic/spiritual/noble negro’ as documented by Bogle, 2005; Shohat and Stam, 1994; Courtney, 2005; Gaines, 2001; Vejvoda, 2007. As reported in The Sunday Times, Rush Limbaugh regularly played a ditty during his radio broadcasts entitled ‘Barack, the Magic Negro’ (see Andrew Sullivan’s article in The News Review supplement, ‘Unleashing a Race War on Obama’, 20 September 2009). 24 The film’s jazz score features music by Charles Mingus, a multigenerational mixed musician. 22 23

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

99

Lelia begins the film as a carefree girl about town. As her social circle widens, there is a sense of impending doom, based on the inevitable discovery of her true ‘race’. When she chooses to have sex with her white lover Tony (Anthony Ray), her joy is quickly followed by pain when he learns that she is not white and rejects her. Despite his liberal outlook and forced apology, he will not cross the ‘colour line’. She is left emotionally broken, retreats from public life and reassesses her choices. As part of her recovery, she accepts a date with a black man. Yet, this is also marked by pain; she keeps her black suitor waiting interminably, humiliates him and only begins to soften at the dancehall when he keeps her locked in a tight embrace while informing her that her sense of superiority is misplaced – they are both black to the ‘white lens’ and thus equally open to discrimination. Like her white lover, he forces her to accept her containment as a black woman through physical restraint. The dichotomous semiotics of this scene – romance and entrapment – suggest that her path to acceptance is also a form of punishment, necessitated by her hubris. Through its black and white visuals and focus on the internal, Shadows evokes Stahl’s 1934 Imitation of Life. Peola and Benny are similarly characterized as silent, depressive and tragic (as is Lelia after the break-up). In terms of rhythm, pace and politics, however, Shadows is a sister project to Sirk’s 1959 Imitation of Life (despite the formal contrasts of the latter’s studio-shot technicolour). Sara Jane and Lelia are both headstrong characters protected from the realities of racism by their black relatives, only to be violently exposed to it by their white lovers. They both are artistic, sexual and spontaneous. Yet, unlike either version of Imitation of Life, Shadows is shot in a ciné vérité style using long takes, visible editing, handheld cameras, unpredictable camera movement, unconventional shots, unknown actors, real locations and naturalistic lighting and acting. All three films both endorse and challenge social norms such as the hypodescent rule; segregated lifestyles; domestic femininity; mixed identity as painful and untenable. However, Shadows also presents middle-class, educated, professional and talented mixed/black characters, with an emotional and intellectual range. These characters go beyond the binaries of blackness as savage/noble. While not widely distributed at the time, Shadows enabled white audiences to see ‘them’ as ‘us’. Along with Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), it captured a moment on the cusp of the revolutionary 1960s and enormous change.25 Another film which follows the Beat generation’s jazz musicians is Ritt’s 1961 film Paris Blues. Interracial desire is vocalized here but not made manifest. The film stars multigenerational mixed actress Diahann Carroll, who initially entices Paul Newman’s character but rejects him for Sidney Poitier’s Eddie Cook. She then convinces Eddie to abandon his bohemian, carefree (and free of racism) lifestyle in Paris and return to America to work towards ‘racial uplift’.  Carroll became the first black woman to star in her own TV show and be first billed with Julia (USA, 1968–71). Carroll also played Blake Carrington’s secret mixed-race sister in Dynasty (USA, 1981–9), a wealthy woman who has her own secret daughter by a white man. 25

100

Mixed Race Cinemas

Imitation of Life (1959): Gender, difference and voiced rebellion Like its 1934 predecessor, Sirk’s Imitation of Life was a landmark in racial representation and garnered huge critical acclaim and popularity.26 Once again, the film follows the lives of four women: mothers (black) Annie Johnson and (white) Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) and their respective daughters (mixedrace) Sara Jane and (white) Susie (Sandra Dee). As in the original, they all live together, the black/mixed pair acting as servants for the white pair. In contrast to Delilah’s ‘mammy’ stereotype, this film offered a modern representation of the black mother – she is dark but slim, educated, well-mannered and reasoned. She is also conventionally attractive and could form the object of a spectator’s desire. Her daughter is vocal, extroverted and openly defiant, in contrast to Peola’s introversion. And unlike Peola, little Sara Jane is often seen in Lora’s arms and identifies with her as a mother-figure. As such the two women symbolize her interracial parents; Lora as the career-driven, but fun, white father-figure and Annie as the subservient, cautious, black mother. If read in terms of contemporary ideas of mixed identity as self-selected,27 the 1959 version appears to justify Sara Jane’s claims to whiteness as natural; framing her as both black and white through her familial bonds. While Peola only crosses the ‘colour line’ as an adult, Sara Jane grows up ‘passing’, always convinced of her right to choose her social place. As a child she questions the translation of segregationist policy to the racial-geographical divisions of the home, complaining about having to live behind the kitchen and use backdoors because of her black designation. Where Peola’s rebellion is voiceless and private, Sara Jane’s is expressly vocal and public. Her refusal to acquiesce is repeatedly punished by the violence of the social system embodied by her mother, her white bosses and her white boyfriend. As is typical of 1950s melodrama, Sirk utilizes Freudian themes in his narrative: the Oedipal complex, generational conflict, sibling rivalry, the containment and repression of sexuality. The family is represented as a source of deviance and psychosis. The film suggests that rather than being born a ‘tragic mulatta’, the mixed-race female is driven to despair by her family, which serves as a microcosm of a dysfunctional society. Hazel Carby argues that the ‘tragic mulatta’ was used as a vehicle to express ‘the relationship between white privilege and the black lack of While none of the 1934 players were nominated for Academy Awards, Variety praised Beavers and Washington. The 1959 version was nominated for two Oscars for its non-white leads signalling, a shift in American attitudes. 27 See Song, 2003. 26

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

101

privilege’ (1987: 89). Sirk relates racial politics to class politics when Sara Jane refuses her mother’s encouragement to attend a dance: ‘Bus boys, cooks, chauffeurs! … No thank you, I’ve seen your nice young folks.’ In this way, he exposes the socio-economic aspects of institutional racism. It is important to note, however, that within the social strata, as mixed female teachers (the mother’s desired profession for her daughter in both films), Peola/Sara Jane would be part of the black middle class and unlikely to marry the servants they are encouraged to date in the film. They would also have more freedom than most women their age; with a profession they would not be tied to housewifery and would be financially self-sufficient. Peola/Sara Jane would thus have more in common with Micheaux’s middle classes than the uneducated bus boys played by Stepin Fetchit. However, only the latter are presented to Sara Jane as potential husbands. By not representing an alternative mixed/black middle class, Imitation of Life reinscribes its absence onscreen. Yet, as Zack outlines, given that ‘middle-class blacks might not have more successful demographics than lower-class whites’ (1993: 44), Sara Jane and Peola choose to benefit from their ‘whiteliness’. It is for this reason that Nishime identified the act of return to the black community in ‘passing’ narratives, as a ‘critique of white racist America’ (2005: 44). These films explicate the mutable nature of ‘race’ while showing the permanent damage caused by racial inequality. As a young adult at home, Sara Jane is, like Peola, marginalized in the frame. She is usually seen on the edges of the screen, either blocked by obstacles (such as kitchen units) or glanced near points of exit (doors, windows, stairs – the latter often a locus of expressed tension in the melodrama). The visual metaphors convey her limited opportunities and foreground her desire to escape. At a party for Lora in the family home, Sara Jane’s social positioning is clarified. The scene begins with Lora’s glamorous guests entering the house and then cuts to the kitchen, where Annie and Sara Jane are informally segregated. Annie prepares the food and asks Sara Jane to serve but she is reluctant. When Susie and Lora come in to have a friendly chat with Annie, Sara Jane moves towards them (and away from her mother and the servitude she represents). As they leave she attempts to follow them back to the party but suddenly stops, as though having come up against an invisible wall. She says nothing; the expression on her face and her arrested motion reveal her fear of crossing the ‘colour line’ between the kitchen and the living room. The house is a segregated space in both films, but as a teenager Sara Jane takes a bedroom in the main house, next to her mother’s. Their bedrooms are upstairs on the left, separated from Lora and Susie’s by a landing. So, the borders are reduced. However, while the home’s main downstairs spaces are used by Lora and Susie, Sara Jane and Annie are confined to their rooms

102

Mixed Race Cinemas

and the kitchen. As is typical of Sirk’s melodramas, the mise en scène communicates the underlying tensions of the house, creating an ‘aesthetics of the domestic’, as Elsaesser put it, and illuminating the ‘pressure generated by things crowding in on the characters … by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the bourgeois home and/or small town setting’ (1972: 13).28 Several scenes highlight the racial power dynamic in the house, revealing its projection of a happy ‘family’ to be a masquerade. The contrast between the two girls’ experience of life is made explicit when Sara Jane says to Susie: ‘You don’t know what it is to be … different.’ Despite the gendered limitations placed on her, Susie is not acutely aware of the gap between oppression and opportunity. When Sara Jane meets her clandestine white boyfriend for a date, he attacks her for not telling him about her ‘race’, calling her mother a ‘nigger’ and her an ‘animal’. Here the film ironically uses jazz, the music of integration, to score her downfall. She is left lying in the gutter, bruised and bleeding, her yellow dress stained by the muddy water. The visceral scene is a visualization of race hate and its violent social reality. It marks a total break with the cathartic genre conventions of melodrama and the glamourization of ‘passing’ in other films. Sara Jane plays with perceptions of ‘race’, in one scene performing a caricature of blackness; when her mother asks her to serve Lora and her guests, she enters the room carrying a serving dish on her head, puts on a Southern patois and talks about belonging to her ‘masser’.29 The scene is a fantasy moment in the film, which allows for the dominant social politic to be decentred and for marginalized voices to be heard. Jackson posits that the fantastic traces ‘the unsaid and the unseen of culture: that which has been silenced, made invisible, covered over and made “absent”’ (cited in Hollinger, 1997: 200). While she is chastised for it, Sara Jane’s satirical performance critiques popular representations of blackness, highlights her family’s legacy of enslavement and exposes the racial dialectic which shapes the lives of her two mother-figures. In contrast to the more respectable Peola, Sara Jane leaves home to work as a showgirl. Like Lora, who becomes an actress, and indeed Veda in Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, USA, 1945),30 Sara Jane seeks out a theatrical space where For more on mise en scène theory and melodrama, see Elsaesser, 1972; Kleinhans, 1978; French, 1978; Schatz, 1981. 29 Here the film’s narratological use of the term ‘masser’ as a signifier for slave history evokes Showboat (Whale, USA, 1936), where Julie’s mixedness is revealed through her knowledge of a slave song. Her understanding of this Southern reference is the only sign of her otherness and so acts as a racial marker linking her to African-American history. 30 The film also features black actress Butterfly McQueen (actress in Gone With the Wind (Fleming, USA, 1939), etc.) as Lottie, a stereotypically lazy servant, who is the butt of jokes. She is uncredited but has the most prominent non-white role. 28

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

103

she can rewrite her story. Onstage, she performs an ideal of alluring – albeit debauched – white femininity. She becomes a tainted mirror image of Lora; stained or cursed, as Bogle put it, by blackness. Luce Irigaray emphasizes the role of mimesis in female empowerment: To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be reduced by it. It means to resubmit herself – inasmuch as she is on the side of the ‘perceptible’, of ‘matter’ to ‘ideas’, in particular to ideas about herself, that are elaborated in/by a masculine logic, but so as to make ‘visible’, by an effect of playful repetition, that which was supposed to remain invisible: the cover up of a possible operation of the feminine in language. (1985: 76) As an actress imitating life at home and on stage, Lora assumes a position of power. However, Sara Jane’s play with mimesis is less fruitful; she is reduced by exploitation and becomes visible only by making her difference (i.e. mother) invisible. In the glare of a Moulin Rouge-style nightclub, Sara Jane is distanced from the audience and becomes a static signifier. She sits on one of a series of chairs all occupied by indistinguishable white women in identical underwear repeating the same slow, seductive motions of drinking, reclining – with legs in the air – and turning their heads to smile at the audience as the stage revolves. The disruption of ‘race’ as a valid visual category here follows on from a common trope in American literature where mixed-race heroines were, according to Smyth, ‘frequently indistinguishable from their white sisters’ (2008: 25). The women are presented as sex toys on a conveyor belt; each is ultimately insignificant, disposable and replaceable. While the ‘doll routine’ scenes reveal whiteness to be a relational category, they also illuminate the enduring sexism which Sara Jane cannot evade by ‘passing’. Yet she is willing to pose as a commodity as long as she is well paid by her white male audience (all potential sugar daddies/ husbands31). Society can be blamed for these limitations, but as Jane Flax argues, women also engage in ‘distinctively female acts of repression and displacement’ (1990: 227). Sara Jane demands independence yet continues to perpetuate stereotypes, seeking to seduce signifiers of the man who violated her mother and abandoned her. Given that the ‘mulatta’ is defined by sexuality, sex is Sara Jane’s solution to the problems of the self – she dismisses asexual servitude for explicit sexual performance and Fanon (1967) writes that ‘deracialization’ was widely assumed to be the principal motivation for interracial marriage.

31

104

Mixed Race Cinemas

asserts equality through individual, sexual integration. Susan Bordo notes that women ‘contribute to the perpetuation of female subordination (for example, by embracing, taking pleasure in, and even feeling empowered by the cultural objectification and sexualisation of the female body)’ (1995: 262).32 In pursuing her belief that she can only find happiness by becoming a sexual object for white male pleasure, Sara Jane reveals and supports a neo-liberal, Eurocentric, phallocentric system which does not recognize racial or gender equality. Just as the female body has often been used to signify nation,33 Sara Jane’s reveals the truth of ethnically mixed America. She begins the film as a black girl, asserts her mixedness as she grows up, performs a white identity, and finally with the death of her mother, as Judith Butler (1990) notes, becomes part of the white family. Yet the closing shot semiotically points to her multiraciality – she is shown being held by Lora, as Susie looks on, within the confines of a black funeral car. Still, as Kohner was read as white, she is ‘“passing” for “black” “passing” for “white”’ (Mulvey, 1996: 36). Kohner’s performance highlights the historically changeable nature of racial definitions in America, as well as the common habit of ‘passing’ in the industry. However, as A.D. Powell (2005) observes, in contrast to the performative ‘passing’ required to embody a theatrical role, when black/white mixed individuals ‘pass’ for white, they ‘pass’ for who they really are, having an equal right to claim either side of their heritage.

Performative identities: Sara Jane, Dandridge and Monroe Sara Jane’s narrative evokes that of real-life mixed screen sirens (and former chorus girls) such as Nina Mae McKinney, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. Dandridge is an important figure in considering the real-life backdrop of the film (and as an actress who could have played Sara Jane). Like Baker she was ‘multigenerational mixed’; her grandfathers were African-American, her maternal grandmother is said to have been Mexican, and her paternal grandmother was white-skinned.34 In 1954, she made history by becoming the first mixed/black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for a leading role for her titular performance in Carmen Jones This can be seen in a contemporary setting in the so-called empowerment of pop stars such as Katy Perry, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus whose performances often portray women as strippers, sexual objects and (quite literally) as dolls. 33 See Anne McClintock, 1993; Nira Yuval-Davis, 1997; Shelley Feldman, 1999. 34 See Bogle, 1988. 32

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

105

(Preminger, USA). She also became the first mixed/black actor to present an award at the ceremony. The role of Carmen was a huge step forward in mixed-race characterizations at the time the movie was released (though flawed in its stereotypical construction), and seems to have inspired Sara Jane’s characterization. Carmen is sexy, feisty and fiercely independent. This non-conformist representation of femininity remains rare, as hooks notes: ‘[It is] not seen much in American cinema … the feminine energy [of a] … strong woman who’s not a victim, who’s making choices’ (1996: 138). Bogle called her ‘Hollywood’s first distinctive modern heroine’ (1998: 293). In contrast to the dominant tradition of evading and denying female sexual desire, Dandridge’s Carmen conveys what Bogle calls ‘a very adult depiction of female sexuality … she was securely up-front about her desires’ (1998: 293–4). This representation challenges established frameworks of identity construction, as summarized by Catherine McKinnon: ‘Gender socialization is the process through which women come to identify themselves as sexual beings, as beings that exist for men’ (1982: 531). Carmen exists for Carmen. As a mixed figure with multiple horizons she exists in defiance of the established order. The film is based on George Bizet’s opera Carmen, first performed in Paris in 1875.35 Set in southern Spain, Carmen is a story of amour fou, with Don José, a naïve soldier, destroyed by his hopeless love for the cunning but irresistible gypsy Carmen. He falls for her, abandons his girlfriend, deserts the army, and eventually kills her when she rejects him. The piece centralizes sexual politics, poverty and vice, and has been adapted many times for stage and screen. In 1943, the Broadway musical Carmen Jones transposed the story to 1940s post-war America, and featured an all-black cast. Preminger adapted this version to screen and 1954’s Carmen Jones was a hit.36 The affair between Carmen and Joe (Harry Belafonte) was the first time that mixed/black leads had been given a sexual/romantic love story in mainstream cinema (as the magazine Jet noted, earlier narrative attempts were implausible and desexualized, see Bogle, 1998: 298). Carmen’s individualism made her a loner, which of course emphasized her position as the heroine. However, it also foregrounded her as a ‘tragic mulatta’, unable to function within a community – a sub-text in Dandridge’s public persona. Carmen is flamboyant,

The opera is based on Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 French novella of the same name. In 2001, Robert Townsend updated Preminger’s film with Carmen: A Hip Hopera, starring the pop star Beyoncé.

35 36

106

Mixed Race Cinemas

fun, selfish and cruel, and as a castrating figure who seeks equality and liberty, she is killed by Joe at the end of the film. Time magazine observed that the film might ‘open the gates of opportunity for Negro entertainers in Hollywood’ and offer a new model: ‘In this picture the actors present themselves not merely as racial phenomena but as individuals’ (cited in Bogle, 1998: 304). As Carmen, Dandridge performed a uniquely glamorous portrait of mixed/black femininity and was afforded a star power no mixed/black actor had yet achieved. Dandridge became the first mixed/black woman to appear on the cover of Life magazine in 1954 – the boxer Jackie Robinson was the first black man to feature on it in 1950 – and the first to visit the Cannes Film Festival when Carmen Jones was shown there to rapturous applause in 1955. Columnist Sheila Graham commented that Dandridge ‘seem[ed] to have what the French want’ (cited in Bogle, 1998: 332). Perhaps she could have had a longer career had she stayed in France and capitalized on Baker’s success. Nevertheless, in America she was the first mixed/black woman to be given a studio contract based on her ability to play a multitude of ethnic roles (e.g. Brazilian, Mexican, Italian, Spanish, Gypsy, Native American, African-American, Asian, mixedrace), and defy Hollywood’s strict racial coding. But Bogle observes that this was a contradictory freedom denying her ‘a place as a contemporary Black woman in cinema’ (1998: 317) and as a leading lady (raced characters rarely played leads).37 Sara Jane can be seen as Carmen’s protégée in many ways: claiming independence, exploiting her sexuality, expressing her desire and refuting convention. In this role and several others, Dandridge, like her friend and co-star Marilyn Monroe, projected sexuality, vulnerability and power. As a South African exhibitor claimed when promoting Carmen Jones to his white apartheid audience, ‘Dandridge was the nearest thing they would ever see to Marilyn Monroe’ (cited in Bogle, 1998: 330). She would no doubt have been Sara Jane’s idol both as a mixed woman and a performative icon who, to paraphrase Rockquemore, used her ‘protean identity’ to move fluidly between interchangeable identities. When Sara Jane dances, she emulates Dandridge and Monroe, particularly the latter’s performance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In this film, Monroe plays Lorelei Lee, a woman who becomes a showgirl in Paris and rejects love for wealth. Her brazen materialism and criminality mimics Carmen’s but is

Following her Oscar nomination she was offered the role of Tuptim in The King and I (Lang, USA, 1956), but turned it down because her contract stipulated that she should only play starring/ co-starring roles, and because she felt the role was essentially that of a slave (see Bogle, 1998).

37

The Limits of the Classic Hollywood ‘Tragic Mulatta’

107

treated as coy in sequences such as ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ (which mimics Baker’s final stage performance in Zouzou). In her routines, Sara Jane, like Lorelei Lee and Carmen, becomes a powerful locus of sexuality, a blank canvass for the male gaze, satiated only by money and sex. Like the stereotypical vamp she has no time for romantic ideals. Although Sara Jane may be seen as an empowering character, the sexualized system in which she works was disempowering and destructive to women, particularly its biggest stars.38 Her tragic reduction to a commodification of womanhood is also key to her positioning as a ‘passing’ figure who disavows part of herself. As Sara Jane shifts between ‘races’, the cinema screen loses its potential to act as a fixed mirror for the white or black audience; she is a signifier of the Freudian unheimlich, familiar yet foreign. Her explicitly artificial performances disprove the legitimacy of racial discourse. As Esteban Muñoz notes: ‘The negotiations that lead to hybrid identity formation are a traveling back and forth from different identity vectors’ (1999: 32). Her interchangeability enables the cinema screen to act as a mirror for the mixed-race viewer, but the fact that the actress is read as white detracts from the potential pleasure this offers. When denied a mirror image or presented with a problematic performative one like Sara Jane, the mixed spectator must ‘read against the grain’ to find a new kind of spectatorial pleasure: ‘Identifying neither with the phallocentric gaze nor the construction of white woman as lack, critical black female spectators construct a theory of looking relations where cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation’ (hooks, 1992: 126). This critical experience offers the spectator the pleasure of resisting the structures of power which expect us to consume culturally dominant images in uncritically and highly circumscribed ways.39 Mixed characters are symbolic of change, diversity, and the painful and joyful truth of complex social histories. They make visible the commonalities we share and illuminate the importance of unity based on psychological connectedness, rather than blood or colour. Characters like Bernice, Peola, Carmen, Lelia and Sara Jane, provide the impetus for exploring hybridity through Bhabha’s (1988) ‘Third Space’ or Anzaldúa’s (1987) ‘new mestiza consciousness’ and yet, as we have seen in this chapter, they are often denied the freedom to exist beyond the politics of polarity. These formulations of mixedness act as templates for contemporary characters like Monster’s Ball’s Monroe and Dandridge’s lives both ended in accidental deaths widely regarded as probable suicide (Monroe in 1962 and Dandridge in 1965). 39 See Kuhn, 1985. 38

108

Mixed Race Cinemas

Leticia, who remain locked into boundaried frameworks, constructed as black or white rather than both. Racial mixing has been a central feature of American cinema, from the silent period to the present day. By contrast, without a large non-white population until comparatively recently, French cinema has been largely focused on whiteness, despite the nation’s imperial reach. In the next chapter, we will consider French cinematic characters who build personal frameworks according to and beyond racial binaries, forming kinship connections based primarily on compassion and empathy. We will explore the issue of performative identity further, considering its potential for those who choose the space between and beyond ‘races’.

4 Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation Representing ‘mixed-race France’

T

his chapter examines French cinema’s mixed-race representations as potential expressions of the Bhabhaian ‘Third Space’, where the inbetween becomes acceptable in its own right. We will explore the mixed character’s positionality in French cinema as a point of comparison with American cinematic formulations through analyses of Métisse, Pour la nuit and Les Trois frères. Métisse (Mixed-Race) (Kassovitz, France, 1993) adhered to the ethics of beur cinema by reimagining the French nuclear family as black, mixed and white through its central characters. As a pioneering work it is flawed but, by directly engaging with issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, the film challenges the culturally embedded assumptions of its socio-historic moment and space. Like Kassovitz’s 1995 film La Haine, Métisse visualizes a France infused with Americana – various scenes feature fast food chains, basketball, graffiti and hip-hop. This cross-cultural focus belies the mixed history of the French nation, and locates the film in a society and industry profoundly changed by the post–Second World War period of American commercial domination.1 Métisse’s mise en scène evades traditional Parisian tropes – key landmarks are absent and there is little philosophizing or romance (only its troublesome

The Americanization of France is a central theme of several nouvelle vague films, including JeanLuc Godard’s classic A Bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960). Métisse’s mixed protagonist Lola’s (Julie Mauduech) characterization can be traced back to the titular character of Lola (Demy, France, 1961), a film which reimagined ideas of family, love, sex and womanhood. Demy’s film follows a single mother and cabaret performer, with several lovers, who firmly believes that the father of her child – her one true love – will return one day. Both Lolas are caught in the gender dialectic of the feminine as Madonna/whore; idealized by beauty and innocence but demonized by sexual deviancy and selfishness.

1

110

Mixed Race Cinemas

consequences). The protagonists are immature anti-heroes – rather than effortlessly chic intellectuals – and embody a mixed-race France. As such, they stand as a contrast to contemporaneous cinema culture – for example Amélie (Jeunet, France, 2001) or Les Apprentis (The Apprentices) (Salvadori, France, 1995) – where Paris is visualized through a white lens. Métisse is a conscious attempt to rewrite the city as its ordinary inhabitants know it; to show characters driven by tangible problems rather than ennui. In Kassovitz’s film, Lola (Julie Mauduech) is a mixed-race pregnant woman who does not know which of her two lovers is the father of the child. The narrative begins with her black and white lovers coming to her apartment, where she breaks the news. As the three come to terms with this unexpected turn of events, they learn to accept one another and form an unconventional family unit. The film combines Franco-American comedy and banlieue narratives to produce an upbeat melodrama, the central issue of which is interracial sex. It can be read as a modern take on the classic ménage à trois film, Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962), is clearly influenced by the nouvelle vagueesque Shadows (Cassavetes, USA, 1959), but also draws on Spike Lee’s oeuvre, reworking elements of She’s Gotta Have It (USA, 1986). Métisse uncovers national attitudes towards ‘race’ and class through the male leads Félix (Mathieu Kassovitz) and Jamal (Hubert Koundé), respectively, white, working class and Jewish, and black, upper class and Muslim. They shift the dynamic of love rival narratives to issues of ‘race’, thus exposing the suppressed anxiety present in the contingent spaces where ‘race’, sexuality and gender intersect.2 This anxiety is reflected in the language of Métisse’s title, form and narrative. The opening voice-over resembles a Marie Le Pen speech in its fierce assertion of multiculturalism as ‘a melting pot where black and white will have no place’. Like La Haine, Métisse begins with a shot of the globe as seen from space. As the camera tries to box and separate areas (and a mix of overlapping radio transmissions builds), the aesthetics convey the disorientating diversity of the planet. This global image is broken by a visual shift to Paris and an audio shift to a pro-multiculturalism rap by French hip-hop group Assassin, which bookends the film. As the camera shoots from the wheels of Félix’s bicycle, classic expectations are broken by images of feet, wheels, congestion and dirt, positioning the city as a space of conflict. This is further expressed by his chaotic behaviour; Félix almost crashes into the cab carrying Jamal, drops his bike, and then forces his way into the tiny lift up to Lola’s apartment with both This exposition also occurs in Mauvaise foi (The Wrong Time) (Zem, France/Belgium, 2006). When Clara (a French-Jewish woman), falls pregnant, she and her partner Ismaël, a French-Maghrebi man (played by Zem), fight over Jewish/Muslim iconography, almost ending their relationship due to anti-mixed-race peer pressure and cultural anxiety.

2

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

111

it and Jamal. By contrast, Jamal is unmoved by the driver screaming abuse at Félix, tips generously, wears polished shoes and a tailored suit, and guesses the door code which a panicked Félix cannot remember. The opening track, La Peur du Métissage (Fear of Racial Mixing) by Assassin, outlines ‘the phobia of mixing – which is the core of racism’ (Taguieff, 1993–4: 123) and exposes ‘the neoracist consensus of today’ (Ross, 1996: 196). The lyrics stress the reproductive anxiety which in stils a fear of racial integration: ‘La peur du mixing les couleurs entre les frères et les soeurs’ (the fear of mixing colour between brothers and sisters). The use of sibling rhetoric evokes the idea of French society as a multicultural family, following Appiah,3 and also recalls AfricanAmerican slang. This challenges myths of the national body as homogeneous, an ideology key to contemporary debates about immigration. As Paul Gilroy observes: ‘A form of cultural racism which has taken a necessary distance from crude ideas of biological inferiority now seeks to present an imaginary definition of the nation as a unified cultural community. … It constructs and defends an image of national-culture, homogenous in whiteness yet precarious and perpetually vulnerable to attack from enemies within and without’ (1987: 49–50). French cinematic representations of an unhyphenated homogenous white nation, also common to America, are a reflection of ‘a mythic monoculturalism that exists only in ethnocentric imagination’ (Bost, 2003: 2). Métisse unpacks these myths and reveals a mixed-race legacy. Lola is Française and Martiniquaise, colonizer and colonized, white and black; as signified by her indivisible love for the two men. Félix is the grandson of Jews who survived Nazi Germany while Jamal is the son of immigrants from the former French colonies in West Africa. Each protagonist rearticulates the history of (la plus grande) France, as one of diversity, racial mixing and integration. Through his combination of African-American and Jewish iconography in Félix’s representation – who wears his yarmulke with hip-hop outfits – Kassovitz unites these two ethnicities in a common experience of exclusion.4 Fanon (1986) referred to the Jew as a brother in misery to the black man and observed that anti-semitic people are also generally anti-black.5 Thus Métisse, Kwame A. Appiah (1998) argues that we are one human race of multiple branches, with ‘multiple presences’ within them. 4 Since 2004, the French government has banned all overtly religious dress, including skullcaps, turbans, headscarves, veils and large crucifixes, in public schools. In 2010, this was extended to criminalize those covering their faces with veils in public spaces. This ban is part of the French secular politic and aims to keep government and religion separate. It has caused great controversy and led to accusations of state racism. 5 See also The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove, 1965). Here X compares the assimilation of African-Americans (from an African to American identity) to that of the Jews in Germany, pre-, during and post-Nazi era, thus likening it to annihilation. He argues that intermarriage, along with adaptations to the dominant culture such as changing one’s religion or name, results in a ‘mixed, diluted and weakened, ethnic identity’ (277–8). 3

112

Mixed Race Cinemas

like La Haine (whose only white protagonist, Vinz, is of Jewish heritage), highlights the similarities between different forms of racism in France and draws parallels of oppression between the communities affected.6 Like Mauvaise foi, a film which explores the relationship between a pregnant French-Jewish woman and her Franco-Maghrebi Muslim husband, these films reflect the ‘common history of exclusion binding Blacks, Jews and Arabs’ (Shohat and Stam, 1994: 191), deriving from anti-semitism, slavery, colonialism, the ratonnades7 and so on. Lola is a free-floating signifier with multiple horizons who asserts the right to choose and shift her identity over time. Still, her parents’ separation – as well as the fact that her mother is absent and her father is not explicitly introduced to the audience – reinforces the popular idea that interracial marriage does not work. This is further emphasized by her lovers’ constant recourse to racial epithets and her white lover’s initial rejection of her after a DNA report lists him as the father.8 Yet, the middle generation is absent in each family presented (a signifier perhaps of post-war national trauma), and the narrative ultimately proves the notion of interracial incompatibility to be false. We will return to this film, but it is important to digress here and examine the wider context of interracial families onscreen.

Reimagining the nation: Mixed families In 1958, the Franco-Italian co-production Tamango (starring American mixedrace actress Dorothy Dandridge) was banned at initial release in the United

See also Jewish African-American Laurence Mordekhai Thomas’s book Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust (1993). 7 The ratonnades (rat hunts) occurred in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). In order to destroy the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale (National Liberation Front), a socialist political party fighting for independence from France), French units were sent on ratonnades, missions designed to threaten, dismantle and displace native communities (derogatively referred to as rats). Allegedly, these missions were unauthorized but carried out with the passive cooperation of the French police. Algeria had been ‘assimilated into the territory of metropolitan France in 1848, for its European settlers it was not a colony but, rather, an integral part of Greater France’ (Barclay, 2013: 15). Barclay notes that the Algerian war of independence resulted in France’s ‘most bloody and painful episode of decolonisation’ (ibid.). After a long period of denial, France finally recognized the Algerian war in 1999 and several films since then have explored the torture and violence that was deployed by the French; for example, see Le Trahison (The Betrayal) (Faucon, 2005, France/ Belgium, 2005), Mon colonel (My Colonel) (Herbiet, France/Belgium, 2006) and L’Ennemi intime (Intimate Enemy) (Siri, France, 2007). 8 It is important to note that even though one is identified as the biological father both men continue to support Lola and the unborn child, acting as fathers-to-be, and Lola frequently reminds them that ‘we’ – all three – are going to be parents. 6

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

113

States9 and in the French colonies, due to its depiction of an interracial romance. The film follows a slave-ship mutiny and reveals the love affair between a Dutch captain and his mixed mistress (played by Dandridge). Of course, there are many reports of slave-ship captains taking black or mixedrace women as mistresses, but it was not acceptable onscreen. Independent film Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964) underscores the fear concerning miscegenation. John Waters’s directorial debut is about a wedding between a black man and a white girl on a rooftop. He courts her by carrying her around in a trash can and a Ku Klux Klansman performs the wedding. Guests dress in pop art influenced costumes made of American flags and tinfoil. The choice of a rooftop wedding could link the film to King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack, USA, 1933),10 while the KKK presence raises issues of institutional racism and white supremacy. Hit comedy Made in America (Benjamin, USA, 1993) romanticizes the interracial family, both through teen Zora Matthew’s (Nia Long) relationship with her supposedly biological father Hal Jackson (Ted Danson), and through his love affair with her mother Sarah (Whoopi Goldberg). Sarah is a very independent black nationalist who runs a shop called The African Queen; having used a sperm bank to conceive Zora, she remains single. Hal is a Southern stereotype in a cowboy hat; while he offends with his regressive attitudes, he is old-fashioned and charming. The televised advertisements for his car showroom (in which he overpowers bears and elephants) construct him as a pioneer hero/colonial adventurer. The plot centres around Zora’s supposed interracial origins, which she discovers upon contacting the sperm bank her mother used. When she tells her mother that the donor was a white man, Sarah is shocked by the news: ‘He’s white, white? … You mean like a creamy, egg-shell kinda tan … You mean he was so light you thought he was a white guy.’ Sarah’s comments reveal the confusion caused by racial categories, where one’s appearance and designation may differ, thus disproving the certainty of either. While these comments allude to descriptors of mixed skin shades – creamy, egg-shell, tan, light – the mixed-race label is never used. Instead Zora’s friend Tea Cake (Will Smith) begins to address her as ‘white’ while donor Hal calls her ‘half-white’.11 By the end of the film she is described by a doctor as ‘coffee with just the right touch of cream’, before being told At this time, Tamango’s American director John Berry was blacklisted as a communist and had been forced to leave Hollywood and relocate to Paris. 10 Rony (2000) explores King Kong as a hyper-imagining of the abjection of the black subject (as representor of immense power and base animalism). 11 The Cosby Show is mentioned in Made in America as a representation of ‘mixed’ kids but Smith’s former TV show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (USA, 1990–6), is not despite the fact that many of the cast were mixed-race/multigenerational mixed, including Smith. 9

114

Mixed Race Cinemas

that she is not Hal’s daughter and her biological father was indeed ‘black’. Undeterred, the family overcome adversity to form a cohesive, loving unit. In Away We Go (Mendes, USA, 2009), mixed pregnancy is normalized (in comparison to the abject forms of white parenthood witnessed) and yet foregrounded as destabilizing and disrupting, prompting the interracial couple to leave their home and travel across the States. The film’s meta-narrative recalls that of Corrina, Corrina (Nelson, USA, 1994), where the central concern of the interracial family is how to find a space of belonging. Following mixed cinematic convention, Away We Go absences the initial agents of miscegenation; the parents of mixed-race Verona (mixed actress Maya Rudolph) are dead. And, while she has a sister, Grace (mixed actress Carmen Ejogo), the two rarely see each other. The film also adheres to Hollywood conventions by depicting the interracial pregnancy as somewhat dangerous due to Verona’s low heart rate. Racial concerns are a constant sub-text. Verona’s white mother-in-law wonders aloud how black their child will be, while family friend LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) patronizingly tells her: ‘Your people have such a wonderful oral tradition.’ The film makes fun of prejudice and refuses clichés. It diverges from most mixed films by making the mixed female an identifiable figure, rounded and empathetic, although Verona’s patient, calm attitude is sometimes hard to believe (as is the pregnant road trip). Away We Go presents a ‘post-race’ politic, suggesting that, in modern societies, as Roger Ebert notes, ‘race is no longer the primary defining characteristic’ (10 June 2009). Yet, it also illustrates how categories of ‘race’ still determine many social factors that directly shape our lives. University-set Dear White People (Simien, USA, 2014) again deals with racial politics through the mixed female body. Sam White (Tessa Thompson) is a media student in love with white Gabe (Justin Dobies), dating black Reggie (Marque Richardson), and ashamed of her mixed identity. In order to fit in with the black students on campus, she wears African clothing and head wraps, rejects those she deems not black enough, asserts separatism and eventually dumps her white boyfriend. While she is centralized, the film shows that homogenous identity politics are universally destructive. Black character Lionel (Tyler James Williams) doesn’t fit in anywhere due to his sexuality and cultural mixedness. He finds blacks intolerant but is exploited and humiliated by whites. When asked ‘What’s harder – being black enough for white kids or being black enough for black kids?’, he responds ‘being neither’. Given his hybrid position – a ‘cultural mulatto’ as Trey Ellis puts it – he is misunderstood by both racial groups. Black character Coleandra (Teyonah Parris) self-defines as ‘Coco’, has blue eyes, wears blonde wigs, only dates white guys and affects Valley girl airs. Over time, she learns that in order to achieve her dreams of fame, she needs to perform blackness, which she does by attacking other blacks online for the entertainment of whites. Black character

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

115

Troy (Brandon P. Bell) dates white Sofia (Brittany Curran) to please his father (Dennis Haysbert),12 but their interracial union is fraught with confusion – she attempts to use black slang to woo him but only embarrasses herself, while he takes drugs to cope with the pressure of living up to his father’s expectations. Troy’s father, as the university dean, says to Sam: ‘I’m sure it was tough growing up, wondering which side you fit into, feeling a need to overcompensate.’ Sam shoots back: ‘If that’s true … I’m not the only one.’ Hybridized perspectives are here posited as part of the collective black, rather than mixed, experience. Troy, Coco, Sam and Dean Fairbanks all operate within a multiplyraced consciousness, code-switching to meet their environment. In the predominately white Ivy League college, racial divisions are exaggerated and manipulated, climaxing in the closing sequence where a ‘blackface’ campus party turns into a race riot. Rather than leading to moral redemption, this leads to financial salvation, motivating a TV company to set up a reality show on campus and profit from the college’s now notorious race problem. Sam’s in-between identity is conveyed semiotically by long shots capturing her between her white and black lovers. At the end of the film, Gabe tells Sam ‘to pick a side’. Her final decision is visualized before it is verbalized when she walks away from Reggie and towards Gabe. It is at this point that the white father is invoked as the key to her identity confusion; she admits that childhood fears of anti-miscegenistic attitudes have manifested as an adult rejection of whiteness. As the film ends, a new student magazine title, Ebony and Ivory, signals hope for future. Yet the real-life images of ‘blackface’ frat parties over the credits explicate the continued problems generated by the ‘colour line’ in America. Mixed director Isabelle Boni-Claverie’s short film Pour la nuit is set overnight in Marseilles, a transnational space which links France to Africa. Director Karim Dridi, who also used the city for Bye Bye, explained its multicultural appeal: ‘Setting my film over there allowed me … to look at Africa from the other side. Just as I am half Arab and half French, so Marseilles is a city at an intersection, a very hybrid city’ (1995 cited in Higbee, 2001: 56). Marseilles is the locus of many interethnic interactions in French cinema. The city is a ‘miscegenated, multicultural space … an espace métise (mixed-race space)’ (Higbee, 2001: 56). In Pour la nuit, Muriel (mixed actress Isabelle Fruleux) grieves for her black mother on the night before her funeral. The film is shot in black and white, an aesthetic choice which emphasizes its subject matter. After a fight with her white father she goes out into the night. The chiaroscuro lighting Troy’s father uses this relationship as a form of revenge against Sofia’s father, the university president, and in order to improve his son’s prospects.

12

116

Mixed Race Cinemas

expressionistically reveals Muriel’s distress. She takes a cab and stops at a bar. Here she meets a white guy and goes for a ride with him. She spends the night on a cliff top, between the freedoms of nature and the duties of civilization. They have sex and part: she for a funeral, he for his wedding. The fluidity of the film recalls Philippe Faucon’s Muriel fait le désespoir de ses parents (France, 1995), whose seventeen-year-old titular banlieue character is equally attracted to a white woman and a black man. Here duality is expressed through métissage, dual love (like Lola/Sam), bisexuality (as in She’s Gotta Have It) and gender transformation. Although Pour la nuit’s Muriel is less adventurous, her sexuality is a key element of her identity and adds to her character (unlike most mixed/black characters whose denied/overrepresented sexuality makes them seem one-dimensional). Pour la nuit was written and directed by Boni-Claverie, a French-Ivorian woman. Her mixed perspective is evident in the narrative’s blurring of established positions, and its refusal to resort to simple conclusions. The filmmaker offers no moral judgement or resolution, thus allowing Muriel to enjoy her plurality and the spectator to be an active witness. The same is true of French-Burkinabé writer/director Sarah Bouyain’s Notre Étrangère (The Place in Between) (France/Burkina Faso, 2010), which explores mixedness through the female character’s search for her black mother. Amy (mixed actress Dorylia Calmel) has been raised in France by her white father and his second wife. Following his death, Amy – named Aminata by her Burkinabé mother – travels to Burkina Faso to find her mother and gain a sense of wholeness. Her search is fruitless and she struggles to fit in due to her lack of knowledge of everything from Dyula to how to wear traditional dress. Her mother’s abandonment of her is not fully explained or criticized, but she is shown living in Paris, teaching a white woman Dyula, and working as a cleaner. She ceases the classes when she discovers the woman’s plans to adopt a Burkinabé boy, but again, the film presents both sides of the argument, and leaves it up to the audience to decide which of these family units is ‘normal’.13 Maria P. P. Root’s bill of rights for mixed-race people argued in favour of claiming liberation from fixed categories: I have the right … not to justify my existence in this world … not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity; to identify myself differently than strangers expect … differently than how my parents identify me; to change my identity over my lifetime – and more than once; to have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people; to freely choose whom I befriend and love. (1996: 3–14) This film is discussed in more detail in the conclusion.

13

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

117

In Notre Étrangère, Amy experiences a splitting of self: while defined as mixed/ black in France, she becomes white in Africa. Her mother rejects transnational adoption, and yet her own daughter has been raised in a white family. The narrative examines the complexities of ‘race’, family and nation, marginalizing essentialist ideologies and centralizing Anzaldúa’s borderlands – ‘the place in between’. Métisse’s DVD blurb lists Lola as métisse antillaise (Mixed-Race and Antillean), emphasizing her mixedness in an Antillean rather than French context (as in Zouzou, see Chapter 1). While this descriptor displaces the nonwhite from access to national identity, implying the distributors’ homogenous view of the French nation, the film frames her as French. Following the pattern of earlier American films, Lola’s grandmother (Berthe Bagoe14) contextualizes her as black, although Berthe also personifies the mixed racial history of Martinique. Lola refuses fixed racial categorization, preferring to live in the borderlands. Lola is characterized as reasoned, independent and mature. She lives on her own while Félix and Jamal still live in their family homes. Her role as a catalyst for their passage to patriarchy illuminates ‘the disruptive role of woman, as the representative of social structuration’ (Franco, 2008: 38). Lola is associated with the domestic, while the men exist in the public sphere. Her ethereal beauty could be taken as a signifier of her sympathetic character, just as in nineteenth-century African-American literature the unusual beauty of mixed women was an indicator of a ‘noble mulatta’. She accepts change without question and observes the men’s attempts to resist change through violence. Luce Irigaray notes that the feminine is constructed as passive to male agency: ‘Women are there as witnesses’ (1985 cited in Flax, 1990: 172). Like Lelia in Shadows or Monique in Kings Go Forth (both in interracial love triangles), Lola’s weakness necessitates the male journey to active agency. These women balance the power of the male subject and thus have little agency of their own: ‘A woman serves (only) as a projective map for the purpose of guaranteeing the totality of the system. … A woman – paradoxically – would thus serve in the proposition as the copulative link’ (Irigaray, 1985: 108–9). Lola may therefore be read as a gendered stereotype who provides the necessary link between different racial groups and promotes patriarchy. Lola’s relatability is limited by the underdevelopment of her character, and the sidelining of her subjectivity in favour of the two male characters. In this way her narrative function bears similarities to that of the Irish-Japanese-American The actress is Mauduech’s actual grandmother, a casting choice which, as with the real-life love story of Mauduech and Kassovitz, adds to the film’s sense of realism.

14

118

Mixed Race Cinemas

character Mini in Come See the Paradise (Parker, USA, 1990),15 who according to Kent Ono is used in the film ‘as a concept … to facilitate the development of other characters and ultimately to drive the narrative forward’ (2008: 137). Lola has few point-of-view shots and is usually filmed in shot/reverseshot sequences with the male characters, looking directly into the camera (thus invoking empathy and desire), or from above, which emphasizes her vulnerability. The spectator has restricted information regarding her personal life. Like Mini she is a tabula rasa on which the ideological content of the film is displayed, enabling investigations of ‘race’ and racism. Kassovitz presents an empirical struggle between whiteness and blackness (represented by the two men) for Lola’s loyalty. This dichotomous model is also evident in The Matrix and Blade trilogies where two groups fight for the loyalty of the hybrid figure. Lola refuses to be polarized and in the first scene declares: ‘I love you both … I couldn’t choose.’ Yet her structuring and point of view in the world of the film (what Gerard Genette (1972) calls focalization) is demoted to being that of a bridge within cultures. This is a role commonly ascribed to the mixed individual in contemporary multicultural discourse; positioned as a ‘salve’ between divided peoples, for example, see Monique in Kings Go Forth, Dandridge’s roles in Island in the Sun and Tamango, Berry’s roles in Monster’s Ball and Things We Lost in the Fire, Blade in the Blade trilogy and Neo in The Matrix trilogy (unless Reeves is read as white16). Nevertheless, Lola is an important and rare symbol of mixedness as a borderland identity, beyond fixed categories of race. Following Root, Lola freely chooses who she loves, cares little for how others identify her, and maintains a flexible, fluid identity.

Questioning mixed masculinity: Les Trois frères Les Trois frères (Three Brothers) (Bourdon & Campan, France, 1995) follows the lives of three adult brothers, two white and one mixed-race, who meet for the first time when they are called to a reading of their late mother’s will. Like Métisse, it uses male competition as a comic basis for exploring France’s racial tensions. It might be compared to interracial comedies Guess Who, 2 Days in New York or Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu?, which likewise mock prejudices through their exposition and present an integrationist meta-narrative. Les Trois frères was released the same year as Kassovitz’s La Haine. Both films reimagine Paris, and Republican fraternity, as mixed, disadvantaged and Set in America during the First World War, it is one of the few films to consider the position of mixed-race Japanese Americans and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans for the duration of the war (see Ono, 2008). 16 See Nishime, 2008, 2014. 15

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

119

critical, rather than white, wealthy and content. Les Trois frères was made by Didier Bourdon and Bernard Campan, who play the white brothers alongside mixed actor Pascal Légitimus.17 The opening images, and Pascal’s (the actors’ real names are used) final speech, stand out in the film as significantly political scenes representing a directorial plea for tolerance and, following Gilroy, a positive reimagining of the nation as heterogeneous. Les Trois frères’ opening credits are accompanied by images of three male toddlers wandering through a market holding hands. The mixed boy’s African costume is the first clue as to how he will be framed by the film – as a black man, rather than as a mixed-race man. Nevertheless, he is contextualized within a white family. The boys cling to the hand of a woman, presumably their mother, who is only seen at their level, as a pair of white legs. They look directly into the camera. The shaky, fuzzy quality of the images introduces them as flashbacks or imagined memories. The first scene shows the three brothers, now in their thirties, travelling to a lawyer’s office. They have no knowledge of each other’s existence, having been raised separately and away from their mother. The superior knowledge position of the spectator enhances the comedy. They discover that their mother was a famous singer but learn nothing of their fathers (made irrelevant in the light of the maternal wealth which awaits them). Their personal histories (foster/adoptive/care homes) are likewise never mentioned. In comparison with Didier’s overexpressed sexual desires, Pascal’s asexuality makes his characterization appear flat. Mainstream cinema has tended to either deny mixed/black characters a sexual life or over-represent it as their obsession (making them incapable of love): The imaging of Black sexuality in mainstream film, particularly Black male heterosexuality, continues to be the denormalising factor in the Black screen character. By sabotaging the ability to create or maintain primary ties to other individuals through intimate contact, the Black male character calls into question not only his ability to function as a legitimate, full – in other words, normal – member of film culture, but also cancels the ability to be perceived as capable of complete humanity. (Jones, 1993: 247) As well as being denied a romantic life, Pascal is denied familial recognition; throughout the film he is described by his white brothers as a friend (even to his nephew), due to their fear/shame regarding miscegenation. Thus he is denied the fraternity inscribed in the Republican code. Like many mixed characters before him, he constitutes a ‘shadow family’, even to this postmodern, illegitimate family. The three comedians are known in France as Les Inconnus (The Unknowns).

17

120

Mixed Race Cinemas

Pascal’s role and positioning – he works in business, shares his mother’s preference for high art and is the most stable, refined and wealthy of the three brothers – stands in contrast to black/mixed male stereotypes. But, as the most virtuous and middle-class character, Pascal is also the least fun, quick witted or versatile, making him the least sympathetic to spectators. Following ‘tragic mulatto’ conventions, his ambition and ‘race’ isolates him from others; Pascal is the only non-white in his family/workplace and one of few in the film. He is manipulated by others and, like Lola and Mini, often acts as a catalyst for change rather than an agent. Like Jamal, Lola and Zouzou, even though some regard him as Other, Pascal clearly identifies as French and could be read as culturally white. He dresses in the style and speaks in the yuppy dialect of his white colleagues. As a cinematic code, his costume – designer suits, a ponytail, sunglasses – communicates his position and performed identity. It reflects his cultural assimilation, a process which has made him imitate the image of his white master. When he interviews a black man, he treats him with friendly disdain, just as his boss treats him. As such he is constructed as a white middle-class male ‘trapped in a suit’ (Franco, 2008: 40). Pascal is marked by inarticulation and inexpressivity until he sheds the constraints of this masquerade. Pascal exemplifies Bhabha’s theory of ‘colonial mimicry’, although this is problematized by the fact that he is black and white. His home reflects his acculturation; it is a white sanctuary, almost exclusively monotone (highlighting his dark skin colour). In contrast to Lola’s modest bedsit, his apartment is the ultimate in luxury. But unlike Jamal’s similarly luxurious apartment, there is no sign of non-Western culture or in fact anything which is not white. The cost of Pascal’s acceptance into high society recalls the ‘noble negro’ stereotype which, as Fanon notes, refers back to Western culture’s equation of humanity with whiteness and sub-humanity with blackness: ‘The black man is not a man. … The black man wants to be white. The black man slaves to reach a human level’ (1986: 10–11). Although Pascal does not ‘pass’ for white he ‘covers’ certain elements of his identity. Kenji Yoshino observes that many non-whites utilize a racial ‘mask’18 in order to achieve success in white societies, covering: ‘the race-salient traits that distinguish [them] from the white mainstream’ (2006: 133). Nakamura defines ‘covering’ as the postmodern equivalent of ‘passing’, and states: ‘The themes of multiraciality – constructedness, contingency, paradox, multiplicity – are among the themes of postmodernism’ (2008: 70). Pascal is a postmodern archetype, as symbolized by the aesthetics of his 18 Yoshino adopted this term from Erving Goffman who suggested that people living with a stigma of some sort would try their best to ‘cover’ it in order to live with ease and avoid tension. See Goffman, 1968.

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

121

minimalist apartment, artworks and costume. The apartment is an expression of his visible invisibility in the white world. His assimilation reframes Dyer’s comment ‘Other people are raced, we are just white,’ as here Pascal accesses ‘whiteliness’. He is positioned in similarity with his white colleagues and in contrast to both black men and his working-class siblings. But the mise en scène of Pascal’s apartment ultimately serves to ridicule his ‘covering’. When his family moves in, his abstract world is materialized and blackened – literally in that his nephew colours in his white art, and metaphorically in that he becomes a stereotypical black character, that is, unemployed, poor, drunk, homeless and criminal. This experience is both destabilizing and freeing. When Pascal finally sheds his last ‘cover’ (the ponytail), he is liberated from hegemonical whiteness. His speech on racism – given in a courtroom where the three brothers are on trial for a series of petty offences – is met with applause by the black diegetic spectators and his family – also oppressed as white working-class men. A shot/reverse-shot sequence links Pascal with the disparate black ‘brothers’ in the crowd but, due to the court’s barriers, also visually highlights his division and difference from them as a mixed man. The presentation of his speech both characterizes the lonely struggle for equality and the filmmakers’ tendency to exploit clichés for laughs – the politicized criminal cannot be taken seriously (especially if he isn’t really ‘black’ and has spent most of his life in luxury19). Nevertheless, by positioning the character with his white family, speaking as a black activist for equality, the film provides an aesthetic acknowledgement of his mixedness. The sequel, Les Trois Frères, Le Retour (Bourdon, Campan & Légitimus, France, 2014) continues to use Pascal’s ‘race’ as a central concern of the comedy. He is introduced first to his niece as a family friend, then to his nephew’s fiancé’s family as a servant, and he plays the sexual savage for his cougar lover in exchange for financial support. In their various collaborations, the filmmakers play with expectations and deconstruct prejudices, drawing on reductive stereotypes while emphasizing a collective humanism.

Melodrama, motherhood and masks: Métisse The phallocentric gaze, which, as Mulvey described, positioned woman as image and man as bearer of the look, is displaced in Métisse from the white onto the mixed-race woman. Lola, like Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) in the In 2016, this criticism was levelled at Colin Kaepernick and Jesse Williams, mixed-race celebrities who have been vocal in their support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

19

122

Mixed Race Cinemas

25th Hour, appears pure and natural, unspoilt by make-up, artificial hairdos, high heels and all the other trappings of Western feminine beauty. Her lack of artifice is a genre convention: ‘The melodramatic symptom tends to deeroticise its female spectacle’ (Mulvey, 1996: 37–8). Women in melodramas are portrayed as asexual mothers or striving daughters rather than glamorous seductresses. Their eroticism is limited by their corporeal desperation. However in Métisse, as in 1959’s Imitation of Life the mixed-race character is also an erotic spectacle; she is the mysterious woman on whom the camera lingers and with whom men lose their rationale. For example, in Métisse’s first scene, whereupon Lola reveals the love triangle she has created, the camera holds her face in close-up (while Félix and Jamal attack each other in the background). The camera appears to be seduced by Lola’s passive beauty, with shots throughout the film inviting the spectator’s gaze. But in a later scene, when she breaks the fourth wall (just before her waters break) to scream at her lovers, this interaction shifts. While the camera takes the male point of view, she is captured in a medium shot and appears to look directly at us (an eye-level reciprocation which encourages spectatorial identification). Here, as Lola berates her lovers for their immaturity and tells them to adapt or leave, she realizes her independence; she demands to be accepted on her own terms and to create a family unit according to her own value system. Mulvey claims that ‘the spectacle of woman is a symptom that relates back to the male psyche and blocks the understanding of the social’ (1996: 38). Thus Lola’s beauty and refusal to have sex (once she has decided to share her pregnant life with both men) provoke male rage. But her non-conformity also convinces the two men to accept non-normative ideas regarding family, sex and love. From the start it is the men who cook and clean for her (also caring for her grandmother when she’s away). And, once all three move in to Jamal’s apartment, Félix takes on the duties of a housewife. Their unit is representative of the flexibility of modern relationships and the primacy of the mixed-race group, the fastest-growing ethnic minority in many Western societies. As Neil Howe and William Strauss state, ‘Demographically, this is America’s most racially and ethnically diverse, and least Caucasian generation’ (2000: 15). Métisse is a signifier, not of a future unknown but of the present reality, and it asks the spectator (through the bodies of the two men) to deconstruct prejudices and find a way beyond the ‘socialised irrationality’ (Williams, P., cited in Gooding-Williams, 1993: 5) of racism. A bedroom scene reveals the site of the ménage à trois – typically positioned as erotically charged – as a space of peaceful, platonic slumber. As the three share a bed they sleep fully clothed. The bed is shot from above, with Lola lying in the centre and a lover either side. She awakens to a baby’s cry and turns to see the men sleeping soundly, each with a hand on her

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

123

womb. She smiles to the camera in close-up. Even as Lola lies between her former lovers, she hears the sound of babies rather than harbouring thoughts of sexuality. The placement of the men’s hands shifts the expression of their primary desire from the sexual to the maternal space. This repositions her as a mother (a figure of purity) and de-eroticizes a sexual fantasy. When Jamal tries to convince her to forget Félix (claiming that his desire for her is purely fetishistic), he calls her his black sister and talks of their common history, saying, ‘[You represent] my people, my roots, our grandparents were slaves together!’ But Lola refuses to accept his either/or perspective. Adopting a deconstructive approach, she points out the parts of the story he has chosen to leave out: ‘Jamal, your grandparents were diplomats.’ Linda Alcoff notes: ‘If we combine the concept of identity politics with a conception of the subject as positionality, we can conceive of the subject as nonessentialised and emergent from a historical experience’ (cited in hooks, 1991: 20). In revealing the counter-narrative to histories of mixed/black victimization, Lola highlights another lost story, that of success.20 Lola is not colour-blind (she and her grandmother discuss Jamal’s dark skin as a signifier of his Afrocentrism), but she does not take a purely colourfocused approach either. Josephine Lee suggests that colour-blind and colourfocused approaches are united by a shared racial trope of difference as mask: ‘If liberal integrationism felt that race was a false “mask” over the deracinated real self, cultural nationalism insisted on the importance of racial “mask” as a ritualised enactment that would bring forth the “true self”’ (2003: 105). Lola does not use her ‘race’ as a ‘mask’ with which to attack or attract others in the way that the men do, yet nor does she reject it – as is evident in her regular trips to her mother in Martinique. Lola refuses to be essentialized as a raced character, whether it be as an icon of hip ‘boutique multiculturalism’21 for Félix, or as an icon of African roots for Jamal. In Les Trois frères, Pascal chooses to identify as white but has blackness repeatedly imposed on him. His white boss Steven (Bernard Farcy) draws the same associations between colour and identity as Jamal. When Pascal throws a dinner party to celebrate his imminent promotion, Steven and the others are disappointed by his lack of exoticism and encourage him to perform Otherness for them. They assume he is from the islands, that is, Antillean rather than French, reaffirming the exclusion of non-whites from the national body.22 The film foregrounds Jamal’s exceptionalism through positioning him as the only black figure in his milieu. While his fellow law students, friends and girlfriends are all white/light-skinned, the only black characters he meets are his family’s maid, her son and Félix’s working-class friends. 21 See Fish, 1997: 378–95. 22 This supports personal experience; when speaking to other French people, whether in France or abroad, people often assume that I am Antillean rather than French. 20

124

Mixed Race Cinemas

Fanon (himself an Antillean) wrote about his experiences in France as a black man fixed by the stereotypical ‘mark of the plural’:23 ‘I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I subjected myself to an objective examination. I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects, slave-ships and above all else, above all: “Sho’ good eatin”’ (1986: 112). Pascal is fixed as an ‘exotico-victimaire’ (exotic victim) by his white guests and is expected to play his role. As Pascal serves French food and wine on fine crockery and silverware, all the while making polite conversation, his guests demand tales and songs from the islands. Pascal tries to correct them but they continue to reduce him to an imagined essence: ‘Black soul as white man’s artefact … the white man, who had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories’ (Fanon, 1986: 111). Their desire to define his Otherness rather than accept his similarity is a form of what Pierre-André Taguieff calls ‘differentialist racism’ (1993–4: 101). His blackness is for them, that which stands for something beyond itself, here the ‘noble’ rather than ‘savage negro/mulatto’. When Pascal refuses to ‘jouer l’Africain’ (play the African),24 he is sacked.25 In A Day in Black and White (Hall, USA, 2001), a similar dinner party scene externalizes stereotypes of whiteness. A black man is shown having dinner with his white girlfriend and her family. The scene is intercut with imagined shots of her family as menacing pilgrims encircling him as their slave. Like Les Trois frères and Métisse, the film uses Brechtian strategies of distanciation to convey political tensions through humour and melodrama.

In this framework, black people have what Michael Rogin calls the ‘surplus symbolic value’ which is attributed to all oppressed people who are made to stand for something beyond themselves. They are taken to be identical in personality, outlook, ability and interests to all other black people: ‘What Memmi calls the “mark of the plural” [which] projects colonised people as “all the same”’ (cited in Shohat and Stam, 1994: 183). This reduction ignores what Mikhael Bakhtin calls the ‘moral heteroglossia’ (the variety and ‘many-languagedness’) of any social group. 24 A performance of blackness as non-threatening exoticism parodied in films such as Black Mic Mac (Gilou, France, 1986) and Bamboozled (Lee, USA, 2000). 25 The situation is brought to a farcical climax by his brothers who, having been made homeless, have taken drugs in an attempt to spend their nights clubbing rather than sleeping rough. Feeling sentimental, they decide to leave the club, drive to Pascal’s (backwards) and declare their love for their brother. Despite being told that they cannot stay at his place, they cause a scene and force their way in. Their dishevelled – and recently pierced – appearances shock the guests. The brothers respond to their snobbery by repeating everything they say in high-pitched, nasal accents and pulling faces. Pascal tries to appease his guests but fails. His unruly brothers move in to his apartment, shortly followed by his nephew, and his sedate life is thrown upside down. He begins to arrive at work late, finds himself excluded from meetings, and is eventually made redundant. 23

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

125

The mise en scène and score of Métisse reinforce its protagonists’ identifications. The mixed-race female group Zap Mama scores Lola’s scenes.26 Félix’s are accompanied by rap, and Jamal’s by jazz and traditional African music. Lola’s wall decorations reflect her diversity; a collection of film stills and artwork, from France and America. Conversely, her lovers limit themselves to segregated environs: Jamal surrounds himself with African artefacts and sleeps under a map of the continent; Félix is obsessed with hiphop culture and sleeps under graffiti art. When Jamal moves into Lola’s apartment he puts up a map of Africa and screens parts of the space, setting up borders which establish a patriarchal singular culture. She rejects this imposition, preferring to sleep under Mattise’s Blue Nude, an abstract portrait of a woman inspired by European and African art. The image could be read as symbolic of a form of first-wave feminism which has been discredited,27 and yet it expands on her post-binary characterization. Lola acts as an abstract centre-point, a filter for tolerance. When she attends a dinner party with Félix’s family, she provokes his grandmother to admit that the significance of skin colour is a myth. At several points in the film Lola is positioned as a fantasy: in a taxi scene with Jamal the camera keeps her face in soft focus close-up while the shot is saturated with an otherworldly greyish blue; she seduces Félix in his dreams; she remains calm and patient despite the enormous challenges she faces. Her blurred role between fantasy and reality is again a signifier of her hybridity; she is fictional and real, black and white, us and not-us.

Racial-sexual mythology and the interracial family Métisse conforms to Hollywood’s anti-miscegenation codes by never showing a sex scene between Félix and Lola. In fact Félix is never witnessed in any sexual situation, whereas Lola and Jamal feature in several. They also have other lovers (Jamal has a white on/off girlfriend). In one scene, Jamal and Lola are naked together in bed and she jokingly calls him bwana (master), a Swahili term, while the dog she’s minding eats his designer shoes. She and Félix share no such linguistic or physical closeness. This difference in visual Zap Mama is a Belgian band whose work blends Western and African musical styles. First-wave feminism assumed a singular idea of ‘woman’, created by its white middle-class writers. Second-wave feminism introduced non-white, working-class and developing-world issues to feminism and thus discredited the idea of a fixed or common idea of womanhood (see No Turning Back: A History of Feminism and the Future of Women (Freedman, 2003)).

26 27

126

Mixed Race Cinemas

relations adheres to cinematic codes where, as Scherr notes, ‘heterosexual, interracial desire could … be seen as even more “queer” than homosexuality’ (2008: 9). The swimming pool scene is the only instance where Félix and Lola are pictured alone together. Jamal is outside (off-screen), Félix sits by the pool and Lola bobs up and down in the water. In this scene, shortly before she gives birth, the lovers seem alienated and distant, cut off by the horizontal lines of the pool’s architecture. Having been identified as the father, Félix asks Lola what they will do if the baby is black. His concern recalls fears of black babies in interracial relationships in segregation-era American films like Lost Boundaries (1949), Imitation of Life (1959), and I Passed for White (1960). She asks him why it matters and whether he would leave them, to which he replies, somewhat unconvincingly, ‘no’. The dialogue suggests that the presence of blackness in a white family was still deemed threatening in the France of 1993 (just as Zack (1993) noted it was in America). In contrast to the overt depiction of Lola and Jamal’s relationship, Lola and Félix’s love is implied through his spoken memories and occasional moments of desire, for example his affectionate cheek kisses or somewhat erotic, troubling dream. The dream sequence is a recurring motif in Kassovitz’s early films, which he uses to explore hidden elements of his white male protagonist’s psyche, often in relation to ‘race’. Kassovitz’s first short film, Fierrot le pou (France, 1990) – a pun on Pierrot le fou (Godard, France, 1965) – features a character very similar to Félix. It is set in an indoor basketball court with two young adult characters: a slight white boy (Mathieu Kassovitz) who fancies the girl; an athletic black girl (Fabienne LaBonne) who appears indifferent to the boy. They practise their sport at opposite ends and exchange no words. She is visualized as more traditionally masculine than he; stronger and bigger, with more stamina and more athletic ability. By contrast he fumbles for his ball, giggles and takes regular breaks. Feeling emasculated, he imagines himself as a taller and more muscular black man (Alain Brena Labinsky). This man dominates the frame, moving at double speed, propelling the air with his athleticism and commanding attention. His ball play is accompanied by the sound of helicopter blades cutting through the air and his success is cheered on by an invisible crowd. But the ethnic fantasy ends and the white boy returns to reality to find himself back in his diminutive body. Getting the ball stuck behind the hoop confirms his reversion to the comic subject of the girl’s pity. The unreachable ball serves as a metaphor for his position as a white man; athleticism, the

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

127

black girl, hyper-masculinity and popular adulation are all beyond his reach, like his fantasy. This both undermines racial hierarchies by privileging black bodies and reaffirms stereotypes (e.g. the exoticism of the black female, the (reduction to the) physicality of blackness (undermined in Métisse by Jamal’s inability to play basketball), the inferiority of white sexuality/physicality). Yet the enactment of Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’ is a challenge to the established norm, positioning blackness as an identificatory ideal. In Métisse, Félix’s dream scene outlines his fears regarding: Lola as mother and locus of his sexual desire (evoking the Freudian unheimlich); identification with his baby; his relationship with black masculinity; his conflicted position as a cuckold. Following Mulvey, it positions Lola as a signifier of castration anxiety, and details the trauma this produces, situating: ‘… excessive, undomesticated femininity as a problem and source of anxiety for the hero’ (Dyer, 1993: 127). In the dream, Félix’s unconscious attempts to neutralize her sexual difference (and threat to the law of the father) through fetishization. It reduces Jamal from a symbol of sexual potency to a symbol of infancy. The music scoring the scene is by Wagner, who with his Nazi connections underlines the threat felt by Félix. The use of violent, expressive imagery recalls the film’s opening and breaks with the conventions of the comic melodrama. Félix is shown cycling towards a race finish line where Lola stands as his prize/captor. She wears a leather bodice, suspenders and high heels, and for once her long hair is flowing in the wind. Her hair and curves emphasize maternal fertility while her libido (perceived as overabundant given her choice of multiple partners) is externalized as frightening rather than sexy by her dominatrix appearance. She appears tall and threatening as she grips a whip in castrating heels. The primacy of Lola’s body reduces the mixed/black persona to the biological (as in Fierrot le pou). It is an eroticized fleeting image, dream-like in its slow motion: ‘The sexual potency of the Negro is hallucinating’ (Fanon, 1986: 157). As he fantasizes, Félix is seen in a vulnerable state, asleep on the floor, drugged by his desire for her/ the black body. The scene illuminates the film’s meta-narrative by revealing the problematics of a queer romance. It exposes Félix’s insecurities about his own sexuality; both as a heterosexual man in a live-in love triangle with another man, and in comparison to Jamal (based on traditional white/black male sexual anxieties over size, performance, virility, etc.). In the dream, his black rival becomes his son. As Félix cycles, he looks down and sees a pram riding beside him. Below its white bonnet he sees Jamal’s adult visage, laughing and suckling. A baby’s cries are heard. Jamal’s perceived ‘potency’ (the black man as ‘penis symbol’ (Fanon, 1986: 159)) is so threatening to

128

Mixed Race Cinemas

Félix that he imagines Jamal’s phallic powers as capable of rewriting his own child’s DNA. The image reproduces Jamal as a symbol of incestuous abjection – he is both son and lover – recalling David Marriott’s comments regarding the positioning of the black subject as ‘a peculiarly abject masochistic obscenity, an object of fear to support the fascist cause’ (2000: 89). Here Félix and Jamal are not just rivals for Lola’s affection, Jamal forms a threat to the white symbolic order. The sequence draws out aspects of tragic melodrama, rooted in male Oedipal conflict, that is, the son’s desire to challenge the power of the father and replace him.28 The baby embodies Lola’s infidelity with Jamal, Félix’s enduring fear that the child is not his and the abnormalities of their union. Marriott notes that: the aggressivity directed at the racial imago of the other derives from the subject’s own internal aggressivity which, in its attempts to flee the traumas of the visible, the imaginary, latches onto introjected, negrophobic elements from culture. (2000: 80–1) Félix’s fear that his child will be black is in part a projection of his own fears about becoming a father. The moment of hallucination evokes Lacan’s theory of reality as ‘an imaginary, profoundly missed encounter with “the thing” that one detests, that is, the object of one’s relentless dread, the thing that is oneself’ (Marriott, 2000: 88). Perhaps what Félix really fears is his own Otherness, both as an ethnic Other and, perhaps, a sexual Other. While he loves African-American culture, his hatred of Jamal’s blackness might be seen to confirm Fanon’s argument that ‘the negrophobic man is a repressed homosexual’ (1986: 156). Félix’s linguistic force (swearing, rapping, racial slurs), which often manifests in physical aggression against Jamal, further confirms his internal turmoil: ‘Traumatic language is a verbal version of the visual language of dreams’ (Mitchell, 1998: 132). The dream centralizes his deeply unstable patriarchal status. He is represented as a gormless figure being laughed at (and possibly beaten to the line) by his own son/sexual rival. Dressed in shorts on his bicycle he looks more like a boy than a man and is hampered by his inadequate (phallic) strength. The bicycle lacks the speed of Jamal’s four-wheeled pram, powered by an invisible force. Félix’s vehicle is insufficient to win Lola; he is fated to share her and wakes up before the dream ends to Jamal shouting at him for waking her.

For more on the tragic melodrama and masculinity, see Cook, 1983.

28

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

129

As the film moves towards its end, Lola’s representation shifts again. Having been called to a police station to bail out the men – their fights lead to several arrests29 – she stands in the street and erupts at them, releasing her voice-cry, as Cixous put it. She undermines their narcissistic fantasies by reminding them of their duties: ‘This is so important, more so than your egos!’ The scene is shot from the men’s point of view and so as she attacks them she attacks the extra-diegetic audience. The moment recalls Spike Lee’s ‘Wake Up!’ leitmotif and is Lola’s moment of self-determination as well as a call to France. Her thesis exposes racism as ‘nothing more than the unreasoning hatred of one race for another’ (Burns, 1948: 16). Lola can be read as a pedagogical tool narrativized through romance. Yet she does not merely act as a nodal point to reveal other characters’ flaws and unite the divided. She is also an active social member with the power to reshape her life (adjusting to life as a single mother, life with Jamal, life with two co-parents). In her vocalization outside the police station, Lola expresses her subjectivity and rejects the demoting of her position. She does not magically unite communities through her very presence, as is common in ‘positive’ representations of mixed-race characters in American cinema, she does so by struggling against injustice and producing change. After this outburst Lola literally erupts into life; she goes into labour. Meanwhile, Félix runs off to a club, nearly gives in to a female seducer and, having received notification of the imminent birth, crashes his bike into a lorry en route to the hospital. The birth is an illuminating sequence in the film. It is unclear as to whether Lola, the baby or indeed Félix will survive. Kassovitz takes this opportunity to play with the spectator’s expectations. He presents Jamal in a dark hospital corridor. A black nurse (Félicité Wouassi) comes over and asks him to go to Lola. He rises slowly and walks with a heavy stride as though weighted down – his weariness suggesting the passing of time and the absence of hope. When he arrives at her door a tear runs down his face. He enters and she looks at him sadly. But then a baby cries and they smile and join hands. Jamal wears Félix’s RUN DMC30 t-shirt and this present-absence, As with Jungle Fever (Lee, USA, 1991), the film associates the mixed-race family with criminality – miscegenation in a new form of family unit leads to frequent arrests. This is what destroys the interracial love story in Jungle Fever as the couple are harassed by the police (who assume he is trying to rape her when they begin to make love on his car), their families (who beat and disown her) and their friends (who assume that they are both living out some kind of erotic fantasy). 30 An African-American hip-hop group. In the 1980s they made history by recording the song ‘Walk This Way’ with white American rock band Aerosmith. This song was a big hit and the first to combine hip-hop and rock. As a result, mainstream music became more integrated as fans sought out and musicians produced combined forms of music previously thought to be exclusionary (e.g. American groups Cypress Hill and the Beastie Boys both combine hip-hop, metal, jazz, punk and rock, and have a diverse fan base). 29

130

Mixed Race Cinemas

as well as the events of the last scene, leads the spectator to assume that Félix is dead. A refrain by Zap Mama begins and the camera tracks out the door and down the hospital corridor. Recognizing classical Hollywood conventions, the audience assumes that the film has reached its resolution with the establishment of the black family unit. But then the tracking shot pauses, the song scratches to a stop and a badly injured Félix emerges. When Félix asks the nurse the colour of the child, she replies: ‘I’ve never heard that one before! Pink with green stars!’ His preoccupation with social categories is forgotten when he joins the others to meet their new family member. As spectators are not given visual access to the child, Kassovitz refutes the significance of colour, denying any racialized resolution. The fear of miscegenation is expressed but ultimately rejected in Métisse. The maternity scene is unusual in mixed cinema as interracial pregnancies/ births are rarely depicted onscreen. In I Passed for White, the baby dies in childbirth. In Away We Go, pregnancy inspires insecurity prompting the couple to travel around America seeking a place of belonging. In the horror film Isolation (O’Brien, Ireland, 2005), a mixed-race woman (mixed actress Ruth Negga) becomes pregnant with her white boyfriend’s baby, but it is a monstrous presence, part alien. Although fitting for the genre, this recalls antimixed-race rhetoric aligning racial mixing with bodily invasion and destruction. The final shot shows the happy threesome discussing baby names: Félix wants a Jewish name ‘David or Joseph’, Jamal wants a Muslim name ‘El Kabir or Mohammed’ and Lola wants a non-raced, non-gendered name ‘Clothére’ (a name which might relate to William Wells Brown’s fictional novel Clotel (1853), about President Jefferson and his ‘shadow family’31). By choosing a freefloating signifier for the baby’s name, Lola dismisses the social obsession with ‘race’. Here ‘race’ is contextualized as a slippery vestige of chance heritage, and colour/language becomes a visual/verbal signifier of this heritage rather than something which defines one’s humanity. The film ends with a crane shot out and over the hospital. This is followed by a return to the initial globe shot, accompanied by a hysterical voice-over, emitting theories similar to those of the opening credits: ‘You know their aims. They want today’s youth, black and white, in one big melting pot. The result would be disaster, with a bastardised, impoverished race in which black and white will have no place!’ The film’s form is clearly designed to reject this philosophy and provide a positive visualization of a mixed-race France. It challenges the assimilation on which the Republican model depends by conferring a special status onto non-French culture through dual-nationality A former slave and an abolitionist leader, mixed-race writer William Wells Brown wrote the first novel, the first travel book and the first play to be published by an African-American.

31

Cultural Shifts: New Waves in Racial Representation

131

protagonists, for example, privileging Jamal’s African cultural products and Félix’s family’s Jewish traditions – which culminate in a song and dance performed by his grandfather that Kassovitz allows to takes over the screen. The fact that the film ends happily for those concerned further undermines the irrational fears surrounding difference. It is an optimistic vision.32 The next chapter will explore the positioning of the family in mixed-race narratives in more detail, focusing on Drôle de Félix (The Adventures of Felix) (Ducastel and Martineau, 1999). The film’s protagonist is mixed, gay and HIV+. While featuring elements of the tragic melodrama, Drôle de Félix is also a road movie and as such further interrogates the position of the mixed character within the national family.

Following Métisse, Kassovitz directed three films in France (he continues to act in and produce French films), La Haine, Assassin(s) (France, 1997) and Les Rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) (France, 2000). He then moved to Canada to make films in English for American film companies. His next film, Gothika starred Halle Berry, but was a typical fantasy–horror rather than an exposition of mixed female subjectivity. In 2008’s Babylon A.D., he uses actors from different national, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds: Malaysian star Michelle Yeoh, French stars Mélanie Thierry and Gerard Depardieu, Anglo-French star Charlotte Rampling and mixed-race American star Vin Diesel. Although it depicts a mixed, transnational, polyglot populus, it does not explore mixed identity on more than a metaphorical level. His next film L’ordre et la morale (Rebellion) (France, 2011) explores the 1988 national independence movement in the French colony New Caledonia which was quashed by the French military. He plays a sympathetic protagonist in the film, working for the French to restore order but moved by the locals’ quest for equality.  Although Kassovitz’s Franco-American work might suggest an ideal source of material for this study, it fails to delve into the subjects which he explored in his earlier French films, although it continues to use non-normative heroes. 32

132

5 Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix A search for identity on the road*

A

n anti-essentialist approach to sex, family and love is applied to mixed masculinity in melodramatic road movie Drôle de Félix (The Adventures of Felix) (Ducastel and Martineau, 1999). The second feature film from directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau takes as its protagonist Félix (Sami Bouajila), a thirty-something homosexual man of European and North African descent who lives in Dieppe with his white partner Daniel (PierreLoup Rajot). The film’s narrative begins after his (white) mother’s death; while clearing out her home, Félix happens upon a Pandora’s box of letters from his absent (black) father in Marseilles. Thus, as in Métisse and Les Trois frères, the interracial parents are an invisible presence but Félix’s interracial (nonproductive1) relationship is made visually explicit. Félix’s mother, like the mother of Les Trois frères, haunts the film as an ideal, evoking the metaphoric mother of France, Marianne, a revolutionary figure who unites the nation’s diverse children. The film traces Félix’s journey from Dieppe to Marseilles to find his father. The camera keeps him in the centre of the frame, encouraging identification and suturing the spectator into the drama. The people Félix meets on his road trip are introduced and sectioned into separate but related chapters by intertitles – for example, ‘My Little Brother’ – and through automatic friendships actualize his familial dreams. With its male oedipal focus, the film can be read as a tragic melodrama. Yet it also explores the contradictory

*A version of this chapter was originally published in Widescreen 1: 2 (2010). 1 By this I mean that homosexual sex will not produce a child (although it is possible that they might adopt). 

134

Mixed Race Cinemas

positions of women in society thus falling into the ‘woman’s film’ mode, as mirrored by Félix’s favourite soap opera Luxure et volupté (Lap of Luxury).2 Félix’s road trip is a metaphor for introspection, self-exploration and revelation – as the personal nature of the film’s title suggests.3 The exposition of his mixed-race experience of marginalization and social exclusion reflects contemporaneous tensions in France regarding its multicultural population. Félix contradicts the idea that having territorial rather than pure blood rights to citizenship preclude one from fitting into a universalist paradigm of Frenchness. Thus Drôle de Félix espouses Ernest Renan’s claim that ‘a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle’ (1994: 17) by showing the collective will that goes above and beyond individual cultural, linguistic and religious identity, as each new character becomes a member of Félix’s national family. In its representation of interracial homosexual love, Drôle de Félix follows on from the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s4 – an American gay-oriented independent film movement primarily written and directed by white gay men – and specifically its representation of mixed couples in films such as Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss (O’Haver, USA, 1998) and Trick (Fall, USA, 1999). These films place the white character in a relationship with a Latino, thus evoking North and South America’s racial and territorial history. As Robb Hernandez (2008) notes, these Latino lovers are stereotyped in similar ways to mixedrace characters; they are positioned as objects of desire for whites, but mostly represented as promiscuous, unstable and incapable of long-term monogamy (thus removing them from the possibility of marriage/parenthood with a white character).5 By contrast, Félix is capable of full humanity and Of the five chapters dealing with an imaginary brother, grandmother, cousin, sister and father, most explore non-patriarchal family units like the protagonist’s own. The widowed ‘grandmother’ talks of her youth, marriage and family life with detachment, seeming happier alone. The ‘sister’ has three children with different fathers, her own career and a new lover at home. In these sequences, the active female subject expresses the ‘emotional, social and psychological problems connected to the fact that she is a woman’ (Basinger, 1993: 20). 3 Like Agnès Varda’s tale of a female nomad Vagabond (France) from 1985, the film promotes freedom of movement and expression without essentialism or sentimentality. It could be compared to the road movie Easy Rider (Hopper, USA, 1969), for its representation of a subculture’s search for meaning and identity through the masculine body, or indeed, Manuel Poirier’s 1997 film Western. 4 Unlike other film movements there is no unique aesthetic vocabulary for these films; the central concept behind the queer cinema movement is fluidity – the presentation of a variety of homo(sexualities) manifested through a diversity of characters, situations, ethnicities, genders, sexual practices and film languages. See New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader, ed. Michele Aaron (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 5 For more on these films, see Hernandez, ‘A Window into a Life Uncloseted: “Spice Boy” Imaginings in New Queer Cinema’ in Beltràn & Fojas (2008), pp. 113–35. See also representations of mixed/black/white lesbian love in: The Watermelon Woman (Dunye, USA, 1996); The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (Maggenti, USA, 1995); When Night is Falling (Rozema, USA, 1995). 2

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

135

positioned in a strongly committed relationship. As queer filmmakers pushing the boundaries of racial-cinematic templates, Martineau and Ducastel focus on the demystification of certainties and divisions to reveal what Anzaldúa (1987) calls the borderlands. They use Félix as a hybrid figure to undermine established concepts of identity. This problematizes issues of essence, purity and the ‘real’. As Anzaldúa writes, ‘The rational … patriarchal and … heterosexual have held sway… for too long’ (1992: 143). The film draws on elements of classical Hollywood Westerns by exploring historical myths of conquest and settlement and their impact on contemporary racial discourse. Marseilles was a French frontier and the launch point to the colonies, the trading port of the Empire responsible for the accumulation of wealth through slavery and plantations, and even today it is France’s largest commercial port and the point of entry for many immigrants. Elizabeth Ezra notes: ‘The coordinates of imperial geography designate Marseille a colonial outpost’ (2000: 146). Dieppe was key to France’s position in Europe, famed for cartography, fought over during the Hundred Years War (and sometimes lost to England), the premier port of the country in the seventeenth century and the launch point for the first colonists heading to the American territories (known then as ‘New France’). By the time of France’s expansion into Africa and Indochina, Dieppe was a monarch-endorsed European seaside resort. The start and end points of Félix’s journey form a vertical line across France linking its African trade to its European power, and signalling its formation as a multicultural nation. As Giles Deleuze noted of the conceptual nomad, Félix’s identity is founded on transnationality: ‘The life of the nomad is the intermezzo. … He is a vector of deterritorialisation’ (1986 cited in Braidotti, 1994: 23). Félix represents the national identity of France as multiple and unfixed. Following Western characters such as Duel in the Sun’s Native-American-Spanish Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones), Rio Lobo’s French-Mexican Pierre Cordona (Jorge Rivero) and The Searchers’ (Ford, USA, 1956) quarter Native-American Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), Félix is a signifier of the borderlands of ‘race’ and nation. As Camilla Fojas notes, ‘These characters represent both the national character in racial terms and the political boundaries of the nation in geographic terms’ (2008: 46). Ducastel and Martineau’s film surpasses Westerns with mixed heroines such as Call Her Savage and Ramona by evading typical mixed-race stereotypes. Like Cimarron, the first Western with a mixed male hero,6 Drôle de Félix’s hero defies convention and plays an active part in society. Robert Warshow (1970) defines the key tropes of the Western as morally ambiguous themes, masculine focus and scenes of an epic nature, viewing it See Smyth, 2008: 28.

6

136

Mixed Race Cinemas

as a metaphor for histories of capitalism and individualism in America. John Cawelti (1971) considers the genre to be a vehicle for expressing workingclass male desire and its conflictual relationship with authoritarian corporate America. Both scholars locate the genre’s central themes in the exploration of masculine identity, the need for self-assertion through violence and the moral questions raised by this extreme use of violence.7 These themes are central to Drôle de Félix. Beur has often been used to classify métissage (mixed-race) as a ‘transnational, hybrid identity’ (Bloom, 2006: 132). Binary oppositions are also a convention of the Western, a genre structured by narrative elements perpetually in conflict. Félix, like Cimarron’s hero, transgresses racial borders and the binaries of the Western myth. His duality is something he seeks to resolve by finding his father, but upon realizing that this duality is a strength, he ends the film facing the African/European border in Marseilles as a mixed man with his white lover, embodying and celebrating a multitude of opposites.

Citizenship, violence and scopophilia Drôle de Félix centralizes questions of migration through its protagonist’s journey, heritage and father. It could thus be read as an interrogation of the postcolonial experience of migration, often seen as culturally destabilizing. According to Bhabha (1993), the migrant perspective repositions specific cultures and truths as orders of provisional and relative signification. In Drôle de Félix this destabilized perspective is central to the protagonist’s sense of identity and is reimagined as liberating. Following ‘tragic mulatto’ conventions, however, Félix is not presented as part of a French multicultural community; France is visualized as racially white yet the directors reject the common practice of presenting non-white characters as one-dimensional.8 Instead, the film portrays a well-rounded mixed-race character who is provincial rather than urban, and French rather than foreign. With TV being his only religion, he is a paradigm of secular France. In order to understand the film’s representations of racism, it is necessary to explore contemporaneous race relations. In 1991, the cover of Le Figaro Magazine showed two contrasting figures; a bust of Marianne and an anonymous woman in an Islamic headscarf, with the caption ‘Immigration ou For more on the Western, see: Schatz, 1981; Nachbar, 1974; Slotkin, 1992; Studlar and Bernstein, 2001; Bazin, 1971; Corkin, 2004; Folsom, 1979; Tompkins, 1992. 8 See Dyer, 1995. 7

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

137

Invasion?’ (Immigration or Invasion?) This dichotomous imagery highlighted the perceived incongruity of different cultural and political models. The visualization of the non-white as Other and threatening rejected the equality of diversity affirmed by the Republican model, foregrounding anti-immigration discourse. In 1993, the La Pasqua laws severely restricted rights to automatic citizenship for new and established North African immigrants. The Front National (FN), experienced great political success at local elections in Southern France. At the time of Drôle de Félix’s release, politician Valéry Giscard d’Estaing continued to espouse zero immigration, enforcing the repatriation of immigrants and calling for a return to citizenship based on genetic heritage; blood rights – droit du sang – rather than territorial rights – droit du sol. The issue of non-white French identity was further ruptured in the creation of the double peine (double penalty), a punishment for criminals without full French citizenship – prison followed by deportation. In Wesh wesh, qu’est ce qui se passe? (What’s Going On?)9 (Ameur-Zaïméch, France, 2002), secondgeneration Kamel (played by the writer-director) is sent to jail and then deported ‘home’ to Algeria. Unable to cope in a space which is completely foreign to him, he asks in desperation: ‘Where the hell’s home?’ Like Félix, he is a homeless nomad. However, due to his ghettoized black positionality, his rootlessness is a negative experience: ‘the weariness of being a permanent immigrant, exile or nomad’ (Ugbabe, 1993: 5). This experience is further explored in mixed-race director Alain Gomis’ L’Afrance (France/Senegal, 2001) via a middle-class Senegalese student who falls victim to the pathology of racism in France, and on his return ‘home’ finds himself a foreigner. Drôle de Félix uses certain beur cinema themes to explore race relations and identity politics in contemporary France, such as self-imposed exile, unemployment, colonial history, delinquency, absent father figures, the search for belonging, integration, interracial sex, racial violence and victimization by the police.10 Beur cinema employs strategic essentialism to highlight a disenfranchised people (separate and therefore divisive to the state), or takes an integrationist approach situating beurs as part of the banlieuesards (working-class French). In 1984, former Cahiers du Cinéma critic Serge le Winner of the 2002 Louis-Delluc Award for best film. As Abbas Fahdel (1990) notes, the beur filmmaking aesthetic is a stylistic representation of claustrophobic living conditions – which Félix experiences internally and externally following the murder – and the nostalgia for return (as seen in Exils (Gatlif, France, 2004), a road-trip movie also on the search for roots, this time from Paris to Algeria).  Teshome H. Gabriel (1989) also identified the ‘nostalgia for return’ theme as key in World Cinema, which shows the influence of Maghrebi cinema on French cinema. But in Drôle de Félix the geopolitical psychology of return shifts from Algeria to Marseilles, signalling Félix’s mixed French identity. His ‘return to origins’ occurs in France because, like Kamel, France is his home. 9

10

138

Mixed Race Cinemas

Péron released Laisse béton, a film following the lives of a pair of boys (one white French, the other French-Maghrebi) in working-class Saint-Ouen. 1985’s Batôn rouge (Bouchareb, France, 1985) focuses on two unemployed FrenchMaghrebi youths who clandestinely go to America to visit their white French friend. Along with Le Thé au harem d’archiméde (1985), these films established the beur movement’s cinematic template with, as Higbee observes: ‘a focus on an interethnic alliance between Maghrebi-French and (white) French banlieue youth combined with a realist esthetic that employed the alienating architecture of the housing estates to reflect the exclusion felt by the films’ youthful protagonists’ (2001: 38). Later films used the beur as a signifier of social dysfunction. In Caché (Hidden) (Haneke, France, 2005), white Georges Laurent’s (Daniel Auteil) comfortable middle-class life is shaken to its core when he begins to receive surveillance tapes of his home. Here the bearer of the image becomes the image. His son disappears. Georges suspects that the impoverished Majid (Maurice Bénichou) – his Algerian adoptive brother – is responsible. A trajectory of extreme inequality between the two brothers’ lives is presented. Even in formal terms, Georges’s position is richer – he and his well-characterized family dominate the screen time and dialogue of the film. Majid appears briefly towards the end of the film, and remains a mystery. Drôle de Félix challenges such filmic traditions by giving spectators full access to Félix. He is not imagined as a shadowy threat but as a fully realized family member – his ‘grandmother’ asks him to live with her and, like all of his ‘family’ members, doesn’t want him to leave her. Like Majid he is a migrant, moving from one reality to another, searching for meaning. Both are unmoored characters, existing between cultures because the mark of their Maghrebi heritage on their skin denies them full inclusion into French citizenship. However, where middle-class mixed-race Félix is able to transcend such limitations and be relocated in the authorial domain, Majid’s Algerian, low-income Otherness keeps him locked into a system of oppression. In this respect Félix is an unusual protagonist; one of the beur-goisie.11 Like the mixed protagonist of Les Témoins, Mehdi (also played by Bouajila),12 he is pictured against natural, green landscapes rather than tower blocks. He is free

See Catherine Wihtol de Wenden and Rémy Leveau. La beurgeoisie. Les trois âges de la vie associative issue de l’immigration (Paris, CNRS Editions: 2001). 12 Les Témoins (The Witnesses) (Téchiné, France, 2007) foregrounds a middle-class ‘open’ interracial marriage in 1980s coastal-rural and urban France. Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart) is a liberated, cosmopolitan writer who has a baby with Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), a Parisian policeman (an unusual role for a French-Maghrebi actor). She shows no interest in the child. Mehdi is bi-sexual and has an affair with a young white man who subsequently dies from AIDS. Les Témoins locates the family unit as transgressive on many levels. 11

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

139

to travel, love and live as and how he chooses. He is limited by his ‘race’ but not condemned by it. This changes in Rouen, where Félix observes a racially motivated murder. He is attacked by the killers and warned off going to the police: ‘You haven’t seen anything. No one will believe an Arab anyway.’ When he resists, they begin to chase him, presumably planning to commit a second murder. He escapes into a café, but the white owner refuses to help him, assuming that he’s a crazed drunk. Upon arriving at the police station he sees a dark-skinned, handcuffed man being led away by a police officer and flees the scene due to a minoritarian fear of the institution. The police launch a nation-wide media campaign to find the sole witness to the murder, but Félix suppresses the memory. In the ‘sister’ chapter of the film, he is reminded of the event as they debate how to negotiate pro-FN towns. White ‘sister’ Isabelle (Ariane Ascaride) wants to drive on through Orange and jokes: ‘Scared of getting lynched, like in Rouen?’ Félix insists: ‘They elected the extreme right. We’re boycotting.’13 References to lynchings and boycotts recall the Jim Crow era, and the tension reaches its climax when Félix is involved in a car crash, representing the social and psychological trauma of racism. When the cars collide, the driver insults Isabelle and calls Félix a ‘faggot’ when he tries to intervene. Perhaps due to the Rouen attack, Félix objects: ‘Why not call me a dirty Arab?’ and is assaulted. Félix becomes, as Marriott puts it, ‘both victim and spectator – spectator as victim – of lynching in a racist culture’ (2000: 4). And while the film does not explore homophobia, it is clear that Félix is doubly oppressed in this moment of sexual and racial intolerance. Félix is contextualized within white French ethnicity; mirrored in a Freudian sense by his lover – his main source of identification whose appearance bookends the film – and the family he creates. But he is still perceived as a black/Arabic man by mainstream white French society. This duality results in the shattering of the non-white imago by the mirror of white society, an experience of which Fanon wrote: ‘I am over determined from without. … Black magic, primitive mentality, animism, animal eroticism, it all floods over me’ (1986: 126). Félix’s sense of self is so fractured by this experience that he eventually cries to his ‘sister’: ‘Do I look like I’m from Normandy? … Do I look like I’ve done something wrong? Do I look like a thief? … Do I look like a murderer?’14 His internalization of racial stereotyping is key to his inability to actualize his selfhood and come forward as a witness to the hate crime. At the time of the film’s release, this town had a FN representative and artistic boycotts had recently followed the pro-FN shift in Southern towns. 14 Sami Bouajila’s casting as a Palestinian terrorist in The Siege (Zwick, USA, 1998) seems based on the prejudices his character objects to here. In the earlier film, he is again pictured naked – unlike his white American female lover – and objectified as something Other. 13

140

Mixed Race Cinemas

As the represented, mixed/black screen characters tend to be denied agency or articulation and are instead acted upon. Félix is the recipient of action from attackers, policemen, journalists, ‘family’ members, and the state. He is also an object of scopophilic pleasure for the audience; as he walks, as he reclines, his face or body fills the screen. When he leaves his bedroom door ajar and his ‘grandmother’ Mathilde Firmin (played by former music-hall star Patachou) peeks through the slit of the door to gaze on his nudity, we are made complicit as the camera lingers by her shoulder. In Chocolat (Denis, France/Cameroon, 1988) and Vers le Sud (Cantet, France/ Canada, 2005), black men are also sexually idealized by white women, but this is painfully dependent upon their subservient position. Vers le sud follows a group of white Francophone female sex tourists from Europe, Canada and America in 1970s Haiti. The black male sex workers are decentred to privilege the female voice. This might be justified by the filmmaker’s choice to adopt a female perspective but reinforces the ‘white lens’, placing blackness on the margins. Yet if read oppositionally, it presents a damning view of matriarchal neo/colonialism. In Chocolat, when the black houseboy of a Cameroonian 1960s French colonial home realizes that he has been seen showering by his white mistress, Protée (Isaach de Baankolé) falls to the ground weeping. While she complains of having no privacy except in the shower, he must shower outside in the servants’ quarters, easily visible from the main house. His position is terminated after he rejects her sexual advances, preferring manual work to prostitution.15 David Marriott comments on the ‘spectacular place of black men in white scopic pleasure’ (2000: 6) in his discussion of lynching and the family photos that whites took at those scenes.16 Fanon also drew associations between lynching, ‘race’ and sexuality asking: ‘Is the lynching of the Negro not a sexual revenge?’ (1986: 159) In Métisse, the physical aggression Félix directs at Jamal suggests a desire to expel his sexual potency through violence, just as the car crash and subsequent attack in Drôle de Félix could be read as motivated by the threat Félix poses to white patriarchy (in this scene, driving his ‘sister’s’ car, acting as the head of an interracial family and articulating his agency). The term the driver uses to insult Félix is a homophobic slur, but it also reveals links to lynching in its original meaning; a faggot being a bundle of sticks bound together as fuel. Nineteenth-century mixed-race writer, politician and newspaper founder Frederick Douglass used it this way in his description of lynching, which centralizes white women’s involvement in acts of oppression: The film also depicts the relationship between a white man and his apparent slave – first seen carrying his heavy suitcase, the black woman is later locked in his unlit room where he returns to her late at night, calling her ‘my little filly’ and feeding her leftovers on the floor. 16 In 1918 a Tennessee newspaper reported on a lynching by advertising the burning of a ‘live negro’. The event drew three thousand spectators (cited in Zack, 1993: 99). 15

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

141

‘Think of the American woman … mingling with the howling mob … with her own hand applying the torch to the faggots’ (1892: 2). The use of the term in the film also implies that negrophobia is linked to repressed homosexuality, as noted by Fanon. This implication is explicitly visualized in La Haine (Kassovitz, France, 1995), where the racist violence that the black and beur protagonists suffer at the hands of the police is accompanied by sexually abusive language. Having been arrested for possession of cannabis, Hubert (Hubert Koundé) and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) are brought to the station for interrogation. The police use female names for them, calling them cute and pretty, and joke about killing and raping them. ‘Don’t get me aroused, you look like a bitch from behind,’ one cop says while holding the handcuffed, seated Hubert in a headlock and applying the ‘Shanghai squeeze’ to his chest, a move which elicits cries and gests of pain from Hubert. The language they use parallels extreme violence and sex: ‘It’s so easy to go too far! But you mustn’t! Though you’re dying to!’ Like Drôle de Félix, La Haine examines the impact of racial abuse on the male psyche, albeit in a much more visceral fashion.

Trauma and redemption Following American emancipation, racial segregation was institutionalized in 1894 just as sexologists were defining the borders of ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ sexuality. Leilani Nishime states that ‘eugenicists’ obsessive focus on miscegenation and reproduction influenced the work of sexologists, who frequently adopted eugenicist language to pathologise homosexuality’ (Nishime, 2014: 15). Both same-sex and interracial unions were designated as pathological and unnatural object choices. The ‘miscegenation analogy’,17 still present in much mainstream cinema, presents same-sex desire as a taboo akin to interracial desire, an idea which uses the politics of ‘racial otherness’ to signify ‘sexual otherness’ (Scherr, 2008: 11).18 However, as noted in Chapter 4, heterosexual, interracial desire was often viewed as worse than homosexuality. See Somerville, 2000. In 2014, Time magazine featured its first black transgender cover woman – Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox. Trans issues were hailed as a new civil rights frontier. The TV show Transparent won a Golden Globe for its lead, Jeffrey Tambor, following his intimate depiction of a trans character. In 2015, former Olympian Bruce Jenner came out as transgender in Vanity Fair magazine and became the second figure – after stepdaughter Kim Kardashian – to ‘break the internet’, amassing the fastest trajectory to one million Twitter followers for Caitlyn’s new account. Just as many compare homophobia to racism, comparisons have sprung up between trans and racial discrimination, with activists using the politics of racial otherness to address the challenges faced by trans communities. 17 18

142

Mixed Race Cinemas

Racial mixing was compared to species mixing in 1854 when Henry Hughes proclaimed ‘Mulattoes are monsters’ (cited in Zack, 1993: 82). Miscegenation was also paralleled with incest; both were similarly categorized in legal terms and deemed equitable due to the undocumented phenomena of ‘shadow families’. Drôle de Félix presents a core loving, interracial, homosexual relationship. However, the familial style of its chapter titles means that new interracial sexual encounters recall incest. In Chartres, Félix’s ‘little brother’ tries to seduce him. He flies a kite with his ‘cousin’ in Ardèche and has sex with him in a forest. The film endorses further mixed stereotypes. Félix is framed: as a sexual object; in harmony with nature; childlike in his fascination with kites, soaps and quick thrills. To impress his ‘little brother’, Félix steals a car and then realizes that the owner’s baby is on the backseat. The fact that he sends his ‘brother’ to return the child explicates his own cowardice (as does his refusal to come forward as a witness to the murder in Rouen). Having been made redundant at the start of the film, Félix is seen choosing to take an escapist road trip rather than save his money, look for a job or support his union’s protests. Even his family is a product of his imagination. John Fiske observes that black people have historically been stereotyped as ‘savage, infantile … hypersexual, and thus as “the primitive”’ (1994: 46). Félix’s infidelity and criminality reflects culturally embedded assumptions linking non-white men with promiscuity and anarchy, as well as miscegenation with incest. However, Félix is also self-content and self-assured, capable of commitment and love. Therefore, while being arguably regressive, his fluid, transgressive characterization fits with the concepts of New Queer Cinema; it both endorses and stretches established cinematic boundaries. The film does not use Félix’s sexual orientation as a narrative force, it is simply part of his identity. The love scenes are all shot in daylight and mostly outside – like the majority of the film – so the mise en scène normalizes his sexuality through natural lighting and settings. He is HIV+ but again, this is just another part of his life. In the ‘grandmother’ chapter they take their tablets together and share pillbox tips, while in a doctor’s waiting room fellow white sufferers of different genders and classes discuss medical options with him. The banality of the illness is played for laughs in these scenes rather than being depicted through the lens of pity or shame. In this way, the film’s formal techniques offer an alternative to constructions of homosexuality as hidden and perverse, and to the imaging of HIV in terms of fear, death and the abject (as seen in Les Témoins). Despite his attempts to displace the racist attack, Félix comes to terms with his experience in Rouen through his ‘sister’ Isabelle. Here the film brings together the five elements of melodrama as classified by Singer (2001): pathos; overwrought emotion; sensationalism; moral polarization; non-classic narrative structure. The emergence of the memory becomes a moment of Lacanian

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

143

trauma which allows him to break free of illusion and discover the truth of his own self, needs and family. This becomes the vehicle for his liberation, as he learns to articulate his pain: ‘I was scared of everyone. … I couldn’t imagine myself explaining to them that some guy hit me because I look like an Arab. I was ashamed.’ They talk throughout the night, sharing a bed like siblings, and in the morning he goes to the police to give a witness statement. The film explicitly demonstrates the reality of racism and, unlike most films, does not suggest that it ends via an individual sexual liaison (as in Monster’s Ball, Pinky, Guess Who, Crash), but only when publicly acknowledged as a social problem. It is notable that Félix describes the attack he suffers as being motivated by him ‘looking like’ something beyond himself. Metz (1975) writes about the semiotics of like and other, noting that a child identifies metonymically and metaphorically with its ‘like’ – through its reflection and that of its mother. Yet, the Lacanian mirror stage is often a disruptive event for the mixed-race child, faced with difference rather than that which is ‘like me’.19 The disruption between Félix’s self-perception and who/what he is perceived to ‘look like’ (a thief, a murderer, a foreigner) reaffirms the mixed/black experience which Du Bois identified as a double consciousness and Fanon identified as a triple consciousness. Following Du Bois’s writings on the duality of being ‘an American, a Negro’, Félix is a Frenchman, an Arab and something inbetween, both ‘like’ and Other. But for much of the film he is in denial of this multiplicity. As Anna Friedberg observes, by ‘denying the difference between the self and the other’ (1990: 40) in order to achieve identification, the self becomes an Other to itself. By denying the difference between himself and his white counterparts, Félix becomes psychologically detached from himself (an experience reinforced by misrecognition) and ashamed of his suppressed fears. By seeking out his difference – signified by his father, the only nonwhite member of his road-trip ‘family’ – he recognizes his mixed-race identity.

Destabilizing the primary authority of the father Félix’s journey south is a search for the roots of his (primarily visual) difference, located in the father. This narrative follows recent French cinematic attempts In Things We Lost in the Fire, a mixed boy looks at his reflection in the water and says to his white father ‘Am I fluorescent?’ He replies: ‘Yeah, you are!’ The moment calls attention to the disruption of the mixed ‘mirror stage’. He sees his reflection as a vivid colour which contrasts with the ‘norm’ of whiteness as represented by his father, and the ‘blackness’ represented by his mother (mixed actress Halle Berry). Thus he finds resolution in a third identity beyond the language of racial binaries.

19

144

Mixed Race Cinemas

to rediscover North African culture and the history of migration, focusing on colonial subjects, rather than colonizers.20 Félix seeks to understand his mixedness through the figure who initiated the miscegenation in the primal scene and then abandoned the family. Haraway describes miscegenation as ‘the bloodsucking monster at the heart of racist and misogynistic terror … (it is still a national racist synonym for infection, counterfeit issue unfit to carry the name of the father, and a spoiled future)’ (1997: 258). Interracial families and mixed-race figures are all too often pathologized in mainstream American cinema, and represented as unusual in French cinema (despite more normative representations). The severance from paternal heritage was applied in anti-miscegenation legislation to protect the property of white fathers, and explains the absence of fathers in most mixed films. It also draws attention to the occidental ideologies which constructed whiteness in the perceived image of the ultimate father, Jesus Christ, and categorized whiteness as symbolic of purity and normalcy.21 When he meets his contemplative ‘father’ (Maurice Bénichou) in Marseilles, he tells Félix: ‘I like to fish. … Instead of being trampled on, I fish.’ This comment frames the ‘father’ as a fisherman, a figure linking him to God the Father (reinstating ‘the name of the father’, and the historical Jesus as a brown man22). Furthermore, it posits Judeo-Christianity (France) against a backdrop of Islam (the Maghreb), reflecting the mixed complexity of theology and its commonality across difference. Rather than vie for power, the two men chat as friends. Félix lies on the ground making his seated ‘father’ the dominant figure, a visual gest which, given that it is a practice of respect in Africa, could be read as a signifier of his mixed-race sensibilities. Their conversation is suitably mysterious and unclear, pertaining to an ambiguous kind of resolution.23 Whether or not this man is Félix’s real father is as irrelevant as the authenticity of the ‘family’ he has created. What matters is that he has found a sense of wholeness through unpacking his dual ethnicity. Here, as in most mixed films, the family is revealed to be a construct which, like gender or ‘race’, has to be acted out. The national family is not based exclusively on biological or social criteria, it is a contingent social construct.24 The movement in the 2000s to create a ‘politique de la mémoire’ was an attempt to reveal a hidden colonial history. 21 For more on this subject, see Richard Dyer’s White (1997). 22 See also Son of Man (Dornford-May, South Africa, 2006), The Dark Disciples (BBC TV, 1966). 23 A similar scene occurs in Broken Flowers (Jarmusch, USA/France, 2005), where a father chats to the ‘son’ he has been seeking at the film’s close, without actually asking if he is his son. 24 See also Made in America, featuring a black mother and daughter and white non-biological father; From Dusk Till Dawn (Rodriguez, USA, 1996), featuring a white-Asian family; Date Movie (Seltzer, USA/Switzerland, 2006) or The Ridiculous 6 (Coraci, USA, 2015) where transracial families are exploited for laughs but ultimately presented as a cohesive unit. 20

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

145

Despite not ‘looking like’ each other, his lover, ‘father’ and ‘grandmother’ are narratively linked as they each advise Félix not to seek his father. Furthermore, Félix’s life is shaped by women who have rejected patriarchy. Yet, he persists. As Pam Cook observes, male oedipal problems motivate action in the tragic melodrama: ‘The hero’s incestuous desire to challenge the power of the father and take his place drives the narrative forward along a linear trajectory, though ironic twists of fate can complicate the narrative. The tragic hero is brought low, redeeming himself through a new-found humility. He becomes aware of his guilt, and the reasons for his suffering’ (1983: 18). Félix’s lover, ‘father’ and ‘grandmother’ argue that filial desire for the father is futile in adulthood. Their arguments could be read as assimilationist rhetoric; that he should not look to a culture/father other than France. Yet instead of asserting official origins according to restrictive notions of kin, Drôle de Félix, like Métisse and Les Trois frères, celebrates national kinship as rooted in compassion and empathy rather than sameness or ‘race’, in contrast to Freudian and Fussian thought but following the theories of West, Wright, hooks, Parfit, Taylor and Anzaldúa. This offers an alternative to the fate of mixed Pierre Cordona in Rio Lobo who, unlike Félix, is assimilated by the white father and symbol of hegemony (John Wayne) and thus, as Fojas notes, ‘brought into the fold of mainstream U.S. culture’ (2008: 61). Félix is brought low and transformed by his experiences, which enable him to recognize the injustice he faces, as well as his own fears, leading him to question and reappraise his understanding of patriarchal France. Each ‘family’ vignette prepares the spectator for the meeting with the ‘father’, but this does not mark the end of the film. Narrative equilibrium is restored only when Daniel and Félix are reunited. Following Métisse and Les Trois frères, the lovers form an alternative nuclear family with a mixed framework which provides a model for a new form of national belonging.25 The ideologies of heteronormativity and cultural homogeneity are disrupted and displaced when the transformative power of mixedness is recognized, as Anzaldúa explains: The mixture of bloods and affinities, rather than confusing or unbalancing me, has forced me to achieve a kind of equilibrium. Both cultures deny me a place in their universe. Between them and among others, I build my own universe. … I belong to myself and not to any one people. I walk the tightrope with ease and grace. I span abysses … expert at the Balancing Act … we are the queer groups, the people that do not belong anywhere … [together we] can transform the planet. (1992: 143) See Provencher, 2007.

25

146

Mixed Race Cinemas

Félix’s search for identity is a search for mixed-race balance. The ‘family’ he creates is a queer group, where each member rejects social expectations: the single mother ‘sister’ with multiply fathered children; the openly gay teenage ‘little brother’; the ‘grandmother’ who is quite happy without her late husband or children. Through them and between them he builds his own universe; a ‘Third Space’ where it is possible to be multiply identified. By the end of the film Félix has become an agent who demands the right to choose his ethnic identity, articulate injustice and be a French mixed-race man in love. As protagonist, he directs the spectator’s journey, personalizes the drama of racism and becomes the author of his own representation; making the doubly marginalized gay non-white man a visible and familial part of modern France, showing that difference may be accepted without being stigmatized.

Reuniting transnational families Another film which explores integration through empathy is Lila dit ça (Lila Says) (Doueiri, France/UK, 2004). The film follows the trajectory of a shy mixed boy’s relationship with a sexually confident white girl, Lila. Its director is Lebanese but lives in Los Angeles and the film reflects this cultural mix, thematically, narratively and structurally. Chimo (Moa Khouas) lives in Shady Grove, a poor suburb of Marseilles which could just as easily be part of Paris, Lebanon or L.A. His world is changed by the arrival of Lila (Vahina Giocante), a beautiful, mysterious white girl. Although shot in Marseilles, the regional setting is never specified due to the director’s wish to allow a universal identification with the space. The absence of ugly high-rise towers removes the action from the violence of La Haine, but the narrow alleyways likewise suggest a claustrophobic, sinister entrapment. Chimo and Lila fall in love and free each other from the strictures of society. They establish a ‘Third Space’ where they can escape their difficult lives (Chimo lives with an embittered, anti-male single mother; Lila lives with an ‘aunt’ who she claims is a child molester). In public they mostly hide their relationship for fear of what others will think, but Lila’s garden (like the provincial garden of France that Félix crosses in Drôle de Félix) provides a sanctuary for their romance and a space for them to dream of married life and children. They exist in-between social expectations: Lila plays up to the Lolita stereotype although she is in fact a virgin; Chimo plays up to the gangster stereotype although he is in fact a sensitive artist. Reflecting their hybrid positionalities, the soundtrack features ‘Sousoundé’ by Métisse – a French band comprising African singer Aida and Irish musician Skully.

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

147

In a key scene of sexual awakening the two lovers go for a bike ride through the shipyards. As the camera zig zags and pulls in and out, provoking a sense of freedom, a sense of foreboding is created by shooting with the sun in front, leaving the protagonists surrounded by shadows. As they ride she stimulates him sexually. The bike urges forward. They exist in-between (feminine, encircling) passivity and (masculine, penetrative) activity, the city and the sea, the visible and the invisible. Their fantastical encounters give them space to dream beyond their immediate reality. And, by making his sexual dreams real, Lila shows Chimo that he has the potential to make his artistic dreams real. Like Félix, Lola and many of the other mixed-race protagonists we have considered, Lila and Chimo build their own universe, beyond the groups who reject them. As the film ends, one is hopeful that they can indeed transform society with their art, not least because Chimo is shown in the final shot pursuing his dream as a writer. Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu (Serial (Bad) Marriages) (de Chauveron, France, 2014) explores mixed-race family dynamics. The white French Verneuils have four daughters, all but one of whom have married French men of other ethnic and religious backgrounds. They believe their remaining daughter, Laure (Élodie Fontan), to be single when in fact she is dating Charles (Noom Diawara), a black actor (who they assume to be white when she tells them that he is, like them, a Catholic). Laure and Charles’s engagement is the last straw for her parents and they react to it with vitriolic anger. Her siblings (despite their own racially mixed families) and Charles’s Ivorian parents, the Koffis, are similarly unimpressed. Unable to cope with the loss of their last child to another interracial relationship, her parents decide to separate, and eventually so do Laure and Charles. As this is a romantic comedy rather than a film rooted in social realism, all ends happily with both sides coming to accept the union. The film is of interest for several reasons. First, the interracial marriages – to a Muslim Algerian lawyer, to a Sephardi Jewish businessman, to a Han Chinese banker – are all accepted until blackness enters the family. Obviously, Charles’s fiscally unstable career is a concern but this is not mentioned as often as his ‘race’. Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu deals with the hypocrisy of racial intolerance in France through the families’ patriarchs, who are the most immovable in their prejudice despite both being Gaullists. André Koffi (Pascal N’Zonzi) objects to his son marrying a white woman, yet is subject to the same discrimination he uses against Laure’s family. However, his anger is driven by colonial history and thus his decision to play up to stereotypes of Africans in order to force the Verneuils to admit their latent racism has some rationale. While the female members of the family object in principle to the impact the

148

Mixed Race Cinemas

engagement is having on their family, it is the fathers, and finally the three Verneuil sons-in-law who take direct action to prevent its actualization. The film shows the ubiquity of racism in the ‘post-race’ era. Family gatherings are peppered with racist language used in jest by the non-white husbands, which often leads to anger and sometimes violence. Again, this intolerance is committed by those who have been personally victimized because of difference. So the film reveals that intolerance is learnt and embedded in social relations, and not necessarily affected by one’s own ‘race’. Despite the fact that this film achieved great success at the box office – listing in the top twenty highestgrossing films of 2016 and as one of the top ten highest-grossing French films to date – it has not received international distribution due to its treatment of ‘race’.26 Like France’s 2014 box-office hit, Intouchables, the film deals with difficult subject matter and language, excavating prejudices before proving their nonsensicality (Intouchables got an international release but was poorly received in America due to its racial stereotyping27). Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu seems designed to combat the growing popularity of France’s rightwing party, Le Front National, by showing the positive impact of immigration and integration, and yet it plays on racial stereotypes that continue to offend. Transnational families are explored more sensitively in Notre étrangère (The Place in Between) (Bouyain, France, 2010) and Sous la clarté de la lune (Under the Moon’s Light) (Traoré, Burkina Faso, 2004). Both films centralize mixed females who have been raised by white French fathers in France and away from their black Burkinabé mothers. Sous la clarté de la lune begins with white Frenchman Patrick (Sylvain Lecann) returning to the mother’s village with her daughter Martine (Tania Azar). He is shown, in a flashback scene, stealing Martine from Kaya (Silvie Homawoo) moments after her birth and then paying the king of the village to keep quiet. Kaya has been mute since the incident. Martine believes her to be dead, and on arrival hates the village and its inhabitants. The ambiguity of Sous la clarté de la lune is explicitly highlighted half-way through the film when Kaya seizes her one chance to get to know her daughter by kidnapping her, giving her testimony through gest rather than Patrick’s mother tongue. This event is a reversal of the colonial act, and yet mimics it. See Rory Mulholland’s article, ‘Racist French cinema hit “too politically incorrect” for UK and US audiences’, The Telegraph, 13 October 2014. 27 Intouchables was based on the true story of a friendship between a white French disabled man and his Maghrebi-French carer. In the film, the latter became a black petty-criminal from the ghetto with a penchant for dancing, drugs and prostitutes. The co-directors’ next feature Samba (France, 2015) has fared better abroad for its treatment of a love affair between an undocumented black Senegalese man and his white French immigration advocate, yet the relationship is far more awkward and conditional. The film only features one mixed character, characterized as haughty, and positions the interracial romance as a transaction of civic and emotional security between two social outcasts. 26

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

149

During the kidnapping, as mother and daughter flee Patrick and the search party, heading deep into the bush, the film visually recalls Bhabha’s theories on ‘colonial mimicry’ (where the colonized start to imitate their colonizers) and ‘resemblance’ (an uncertain familiarity and similarity between colonizer and colonized which according to Bhabha is ‘terrifying to the West’ but may also further subjugate the subaltern).28 In this moment, Kaya operates through violent action and is empowered; the subaltern acquires agency and diminishes fixed divisions. Martine’s unexpected death in the forest – unbeknownst to her mother, she has lived with a terminal illness since birth – is a moment of melodramatic catharsis, and somewhat convenient in that it releases the parents from their difficult bond. Yet, rather than reinforcing the discontinuity between their narratives, it brings them closer together through an outpouring of shared emotion. As the embodiment of hybrid space, Martine is only a temporary reality. But in his search for her with a group of townsmen, Patrick comes to identify with the locals and Kaya begins to yearn to reunite with her own mother. The transnational family is fundamentally changed by its hybridity and remains hybrid even after the signifier has collapsed. Here the film takes a critical pluralist approach and emphasizes the personal (and by extension cultural) relativism of memory, drawing on poststructuralist theories whereby ideology is reimagined as myth and loses its power to divide. Before Martine dies she realizes her ‘cultural bilingualism’ and allows those around her to realize theirs, thus bringing peace to her parents and healing the ‘conflicting psychic and cultural realms’ of what Shohat and Stam call the ‘colonial bilingualism’ of Francophone Africa.29 Martine’s signification could be read as being little more than that of a bridge between cultures. Still, by embodying the interstitial space, Martine represents Africa’s transculturalism and the inbetweenness of its postcolonial memories and legacies. Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene’s work examines the racial hierarchy and how it shifts when overlaid with issues such as nationality, gender and class. In Guelwaar (France/Senegal, 1993), a black Frenchman who rejects his Senegalese heritage is referred to as ‘a white man … a black white man … a foreigner everywhere’.30 This is echoed in mixed director Sarah Bouyain’s film Notre étrangère where the mixed protagonist Amy (Dorylia For more on Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of ‘colonial mimicry’, see (1994: 85–92); see also Shohat and Stam, 1994: 88–90. 29 Shohat and Stam (1994: 193). 30 This experience is also popular in exilic cinema; for example, in mixed director Alain Gomis’ L’Afrance (As a Man) (France/Senegal, 2001) the Senegalese postgraduate student finds himself estranged in France (arrested due to a bureaucratic visa error, misunderstood by his white girlfriend, misunderstood by his parents and his long-distance girlfriend), and at home when he returns there to teach. The title refers to the colonial ties which bind the two spaces, often referred to as Françafrique. 28

150

Mixed Race Cinemas

Calmel) is, due to her language, dress, hair, skin shade and mannerisms, seen as white in Burkina Faso and mixed/black in France. She was raised by her Burkinabé mother but left home when she was eight after her white French father sent for her. The relationship between these parents is never clarified, and the film begins after his death. Unusually for a mixed film, Amy has a white stepbrother with whom she shares a close relationship. Now an adult, Amy returns to her birthplace to find her long-lost mother, but Mariam (Assita Ouedrago) has disappeared – following her daughter’s departure, she too emigrated to France. Amy has grown up in a loving (white) family and finds her unstable Burkinabé relatives difficult; hence the film questions conventional ideas of family suggesting that her roots lie with those who love and care for her, rather than those with whom she shares blood ties.31 Counterarguments regarding the transnational family appear in a subplot involving Mariam and white executive Esther (Natalie Richard), who is planning to adopt a Burkinabé child in France. Mariam is a cleaner in Esther’s offices and a Dyula language tutor to her at home. Despite their friendship and Esther’s commitment to understanding her child’s cultural heritage, Mariam cannot accept transnational adoption as anything more than theft (evoking cultural memories of enslavement and the loss of her own child). The film’s title, literally meaning Our Stranger, emphasizes Amy’s interstitial position as always Other whether in France or Burkina Faso. Yet it also draws attention to her as a ‘Third Space’, The Place in Between, linking Europe and Africa, father and mother, black and white.32 She, like Martine, is us and notus, estranged from each culture and at the same time representative of the multiplicity of both. Like Sous la clarté de la lune and Caché, the film provides ambiguous and complex discourses on the transnational family. By foregrounding the experiences of mixed-race women and their families, these films examine the personal and cultural narratives of Africa and its diaspora. Formerly hidden ‘shadow families’ are given centre stage as the secrets of the French patriarch are exposed. Positioned in the space between French father and African mother, the mixed-race daughter reflects the postcolonial nexus between European and African histories, traditions and ideals. The films considered here show the alternatives modern French cinema offers in terms of mixed-race representation. They foreground the racial issues of the present-past, exposing clichés, stereotypes and prejudice, as well as Fiona Handyside (2013) examines films which privilege rupture over filiation in the context of postcolonial adoption, and argues that such an approach may fruitfully subvert the (post)colonial dichotomy which has proved so resistant. 32 Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of ‘Third Space’ is that of an imaginary space between dichotomies where the in-between becomes acceptable in its own right. See Bhabha, 1994: 25. 31

Transnational Families in Drôle de Félix

151

grappling with mixed subjectivities. These works prove that a new social framework is urgently needed in order to produce a greater acceptance of difference. As West observes, ‘Either we learn a new language of empathy and compassion, or the fire this time will consume us all’ (cited in GoodingWilliams, 1993: 10). The ‘fire’ he mentions can be seen in the riots across France and America preceding and following these films’ releases, as well as the hate crimes and terrorist attacks consuming their capital cities. The French films we have explored contrast with mainstream American cinema by not stigmatizing interracial love, pathologizing mixedness or separating mixed-race characters from their white and black families. In fact Drôle de Félix and Les Trois frères both seek to reaffirm their mixed characters’ lost histories. And, in contrast to Park’s (2008) fear that the American ‘tragic mulatto’ has merely shifted from expressing the incompatibility of miscegenation to its compatibility, these films adopt the cross-cultural perspective of the mixed-race figure to illuminate both the dangers and delights of integration. This ‘transracial [rather than white] vision’, to use Leon Wynter’s (2002) term, occupies a ‘Third Space’ between colour-blind and colour-focused approaches. It does not merely portray the nation as it would like to be seen – as is often true of mainstream ‘multiculti’ cinema – but outlines the difficulties and necessity of becoming a truly unified society.

152

Conclusion

T

he presence of mixed-race representations onscreen has escalated rapidly since the 1990s Multiracial Movement. Mixed bodies are popular in advertising, music videos and video games, as well as in films and television. But there remain many regressive representations of mixed characters as unstable, isolated and strange. It is important to have not just a proliferation of images which fetishize and commodify mixed agents, either through narratives of prestige or ostracism, but also alternative images which challenge negative representations and offer complex narratives of subjectivity.1 This move away from representations that reify or negate racial formations would provide a space for work that comes closer to lived experience, and engages with the contradictions of ‘race’. This could also be important for dealing with conscious and subconscious racial bias, as Catherine Squires notes of the impact of black TV characters on young American voters’ support for Obama in the landmark 2008 election: ‘Positive parasocial interaction with television characters can influence perceptions of people in the real world’ (2014: 98).2 Showcasing mixed characters and interracial families onscreen reduces the power of negative mythologies: ‘Miscegenation, as the space of commingling and (un)like a vacuum, drags more than just race into its orbit. It also takes categories like brother/sister, human/animal, and produces an end product that is now the “us” that we used to call “them”’ (Holland, 2012: 108). Filmmakers in America and France are opening up new spaces by challenging the anti-miscegenation cinematic template. Mixed daughters are pictured with their white fathers in Métisse, Les Caprices d’un fleuve (Unpredictable Nature of the River) (Giraudeau, France, 1986), and The NAACP and Children NOW have shifted their focus from pushing for a black critical mass on screen to examining the formulations of black representations onscreen. As African-American director Charles Burnett observes, critical representations are more important than critical mass: ‘We have more people of colour having access to studio facilities to make films now, but they’re making the same film. The comedies may make you laugh, but can perpetuate the same myths. … The more things change, the more they stay the same’ (2008: 32). 2 Two biopics marked the end of Obama’s two-term presidency. While focused on his youth, the popularity of these works indicates his impact on the popular imagination: Southside with You (Tanne, USA, 2016), Barry (Gandhi, USA, 2016). 1

154

Mixed Race Cinemas

Pour la nuit, while in Sous la clarté de la lune (Under the Moon’s Light) (Traoré, Burkina Faso, 2004), a mixed daughter is seen first with her white French father and later with her black Burkinabé mother. Notre étrangère (The Place in Between) (France, 2010) by mixed-race director Sarah Bouyain features the white French stepmother, stepbrother and black Burkinabé mother of a mixed woman raised in France by her late white father. Transracial adoption is explored here as well as in Easy A (Gluck, USA, 2010), Ricki and the Flash (Demme, USA, 2015), Meet the Blacks (Taylor, USA, 2016), and Il a déjà tes yeux (Jean-Baptiste, France, 2017). 2 Days in New York (Delpy, France, 2012), Tamara (Castagnetti, France, 2016), Divines (Benyamina, France 2016) and Unforgettable (Di Novi, USA, 2017) feature blended interracial families. Mixed-race family units (interracial parents and children) are seen in: Métisse, Lost Boundaries; Mixing Nia; Made in America; Things We Lost in the Fire; Le Petit lieutenant; Mauvaise foi; Les Témoins; Run, Fatboy Run; Walking Tall; Infinitely Polar Bear; Loving; Neuilly sa mère, Case départ; Little Boxes; Sandy Wexler. By making them visible, these films normalize the mixed family, affirming the possibility of enduring love across cultural contexts.3 However, many American films continue to pathologize interracial sex4 as: incest (see Angel Heart); the uncanny (see Monster’s Ball; The Human Stain; Django Unchained; 22 Jump Street); doomed (Lakeview Terrace; Medicine for Melancholy;5 The Great White Hope; Far From Heaven; Native Son6); or unrepresentable (e.g. Blade II; Devil in a Blue Dress; Hancock; Corrina, Corrina;

See also interracial adult family units in A Family Thing (Pearce, 1996) (white and black-identifying mixed brothers reunited after black mother’s death), Three Brothers (Singleton, 2005) (white and black brothers of white foster mother), Les Trois frères (Bourdon and Campan, 1995) (white and mixed brothers reunited after white mother’s death), etc.  In Parenthood (Howard, USA, 1989), the white ‘prodigal son’ shocks his family by returning home with a mixed-race son (the black mother is unseen). In the 2010–15 TV adaptation, the black mother is not only centralized but the two parents also reignite their romantic relationship and co-parent their son. 4 See Stephens, 1999; Evans, 2002. 5 Barry Jenkins’s 2008 directorial debut is a reworking of Godard’s nouvelle vague classic A Bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960). 6 In Lakeview Terrace (LaBute, USA, 2008), interracial newlyweds are terrorized by a psychopathic black neighbour who disapproves of race mixing. As a policeman, he can be read as a signifier of state fears regarding interracial marriage. In The Great White Hope (Ritt, USA, 1970), interracial love ends in suicide – the film garnered Oscar nominations for Best Actor for its leads and was based on a true story. In Native Son (Chenal, Argentina/ USA, 1951; Freedman, USA, 1986), the interracial kiss leads to murder.  See also Root (2001). 3

Conclusion

155

Bringing Down the House; Taxi;7 Last Holiday).8 Films such as Pinky, Kings Go Forth, Imitation of Life, Shadows, I Passed for White, Island in the Sun, Lost Boundaries, Perfect Stranger, The Fast and The Furious, Things We Lost in the Fire, Dear White People and Away We Go present the mixed family as dysfunctional – absent/dead parents, confused kids, broken relationships.9 In these films, the mixed figure is often isolated and distressed (see also Parisset thriller The Truth About Charlie, Gothika, 25th Hour, Seven Pounds and Cloverfield). In Dear White People (Simien, USA, 2014) and Belle (Asante, UK, 2013), respectively set in twenty-first century America and eighteenth-century England, mixed women are represented as tragic, in part due to their complex relationships with their white fathers. Yet, through immersing themselves in struggles for racial justice, the women overcome their personal obstacles and In the 2004 American remake of this popular action-comedy, an interracial romance between the buddy cop leads is not only denied but the black female (Queen Latifah) is also explicitly masculinized. Shot/reverse-shot sequences emphasize the physical contrasts between her and her white male colleague’s hyperfeminine love interest (Eva Mendes). And in a farcical scene, after inhaling gas the voices of the two cops go extremely deep, hers becoming indistinguishable from his. Conversely, the French original Taxi franchise features interracial male buddies, interracial love and interracial families.  The American version of Taxi, as with many of Latifah’s roles, plays on the ‘Aunt Jemima’ stereotype, presenting the black woman as large, unwielding, argumentative, desexualized and caustic. She is represented as distinct from the other women in the film (see also critiques of Leslie Jones’s role in Ghostbusters (Feig, USA, 2016), where the black female is made distinct from white femininity by explicit differences in class, education, physique, etc.). This refers back to Jane Gaines’ observation that ‘a black female is either all woman and tinted black or mostly black and scarcely woman’ (1988: 324). 8 See also mixed representations of interracial romance in the films below:  Black male/white female: Save the Last Dance (Carter, USA, 2001), Save the Last Dance 2 (Petrarca, USA, 2006); Love Actually (Curtis, UK/USA/France, 2003); L’Afrance (Gomis, France/ Senegal, 2001); L’esquive (Kechiche, France, 2003). Black/Mixed female/white male: Map of the Human Heart (Ward/Australia/UK/Canada/France, 1993); My Baby’s Daddy (Dunye, USA, 2004); The Bodyguard (Jackson, USA, 1992); A Bronx Tale (De Niro, USA, 1993); The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, USA, 2010); Salut cousin! (Allouache, France/Algeria, 1996); Mission Impossible (Woo, USA, 2000); Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Bird, USA, 2011), Clerks II (Smith, USA, 2006). 9 Institutional prejudice regarding mixed families was evidenced in the UK’s 2003 Dfes report. Teachers of mixed-race pupils were found to assume that a white mother of a mixed-race child would be a single mother. They also suggested that a white mother was less suitable for such a child than a black mother because she would be ignorant of black culture and confuse the child by imposing a white identity on him/her. These teachers saw household structure and socioeconomic background as key to mixed-race pupils’ chances of achievement. They assumed that white mothers of mixed-race children were less likely to remain married, have a high level of education, have high aspirations for their child or get involved in school events. There has been some research into whether white or black parents provide better support for the positive identity formation of mixed-race children (see Twine, 1999), although in terms of adoption, mixed-race children (given that they are legally black) are usually given to mixed/black families rather than white families. 7

156

Mixed Race Cinemas

find love with white men. Catwoman, and franchises such as Fantastic Four, X-Men and The Matrix, reimagine the lone mixed character as resilient and powerful, but as fantasies they are perhaps less challenging of social realities than those set in a recognizable space. Although interracial marriage is no longer illegal, in social and familial circles a protectionist, insular cultural position often prevails. Thus, as Courtney notes, many films ‘renounce the miscegenation taboo only by updating and reasserting a series of classical Hollywood identities and forms that have long been sustained with it’ (2005: 16). Roger Ebert observes: ‘Interracial relationships may be an area where the daily experience of many people is better-informed and more comfortable than the movies are ready to admit’.10 Few mainstream films have dealt with black/white marriages: Night of the Quarter Moon; One Potato, Two Potato (Peerce, USA, 1964);11 A Patch of Blue (Green, USA, 1965); Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; Things We Lost in the Fire; Lakeview Terrace; Guess Who (Sullivan, USA, 2005); Away We Go. The first four films date from the civil rights era and use the marriage as a metaphor for social tolerance. In the latter four, the absence of a place of belonging makes the marriage seem untenable. In Away We Go, the couple become homeless; in Lakeview Terrace the couple are terrorized by their racist black neighbour; in Guess Who, the couple leave their home to stay with her black family and are forced apart. In Infinitely Polar Bear (Forbes, USA, 2014), Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana play a married couple with two children, struggling with financial problems (and his bipolar condition) in 1970s Boston. She studies for an MBA at Columbia in order to improve their situation and he takes on the role of care-giver. Despite their love for one another, the couple are unable to find a place where they can build a home together, and his condition makes marriage impossible. In French cinema, interracial marriage has been depicted more positively – see Romuald et Juliette, Mauvaise foi, Les Témoins, Bye Bye and Chouchou. Qu’estce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu? (Serial (Bad) Weddings) (de Chauveron, France, 2014) features multiple mixed families, weddings and children. Like Guess Who – a race-reversal remake of 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – the film uses racial prejudice to drive its comic scenarios.12 In Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu?, the women of a white French Catholic family each take partners of other colours and creeds, much to their parents’ dismay. When the last unwed http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/guess-who-2005 (24 March 2005). This was the first American film to depict an interracial marriage without any ambiguity about either partner’s race. It also centralized a transracial family; the white wife and black husband raise her white child from her first marriage, until her white ex-husband gains custody at the end of the film. 12 Despite being a box-office hit, the film did not receive widespread distribution as its treatment of ‘race’ was deemed too offensive for the English-speaking market. 10

11

Conclusion

157

daughter becomes engaged to the son of Ivorian parents, the family implodes. The melodrama tackles the ideologies of a French nation which is at once racially and culturally diverse, and yet fearful of such difference, as signified by the growing political support for the extreme-right FN party. Despite its clichés, by mocking racist sentiments Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu? encourages empathy and respect, culminating in a happy interracial wedding. It is also one of few films to address the concerns of non-whites regarding interracial unions. Loving (Nicols, USA, 2016) explores the relationship between mixed-race Mildred (mixed actress Ruth Negga) and white Richard (Joel Edgerton), as they fall in love, fall pregnant, get married and get convicted for, as Life magazine put it in their 1966 feature on the couple, the crime of being married. According to reports, while legally designated black, Mildred Jeter was of African-American, European and Native American descent, and her Washington DC marriage to Richard was illegal in their home state of Virginia.13 Having been arrested, held in custody and forced to either go to jail or into exile, the couple contacted the ACLU. Their case ended up in the Supreme Court, and the 1967 ruling resulted in the dismantling of the remaining anti-miscegenation laws. The melodrama focuses on their personal lives, as they attempt to live a normal life in an abnormal situation. The quiet way in which this extraordinary story is told positions them as reluctant heroes, a couple simply trying to raise a family. Their experiences of everyday racism are mooted, as they face covert discrimination resulting in hostile stares, unspoken threats and intimidation. The only explicit racism comes from the state; hence the macroaggressions of the court are matched by the microaggressions of their community. Critics have queried Nichols’s approach, yet the slow burn of constant, underlying racial tension belies their position as prisoners of a system which denies their autonomy. Their home is large, and surrounded by acres of open fields, yet they are constantly surveilled, not just by the state but also by their own community which operates a kind of cultural guard-duty on their behaviour. With the exception of their families, no one can be trusted. The idea of home is thus politicized; the private space is monitored by state and social systems. Multiracial spaces known as ‘racial islands’ formed a subculture of isolated, rural, mixed-race communities existing on the margins of American society (see Frazier, 1973). Filmmaker Kathleen Collins grew up in what is known as America’s oldest mixed-race community, Gouldtown, New Jersey. Indeed Mildred and Richard Loving grew up in one such community – the hill country around Caroline County, north of Richmond in Virginia – where blacks and whites mixed relatively freely. These spaces produced the racial grouping thought to be distinct to America in the 1930s, ‘The North American colored’ (a group derived from interracial relations between African Bantus and Northwestern Europeans). Zack notes that this race emerged over several centuries and is ‘coextensive with the group consisting of all designated black individuals in the United States. By 1966, at least one study concluded that this group … contains 30 percent of the genes contained in the designated white population’ (1993: 35).

13

158

Mixed Race Cinemas

Hence the actors’ restrained performances – they can only survive by living quietly and keeping to themselves. While this is shown in part to be a happy state for two reserved people, very much in love – as well as for their three carefree children – it is also restrictive and dehumanizing. In 1958, the year the Lovings married, a Gallup poll showed that approval among Americans for black/white interracial marriages was just 4 per cent. By contrast in 2013, Gallup data showed that it was 87 per cent. So, Loving shifts the discourse of racial mixture from a 1950s notion of ‘hybrid degenerates’ to ‘post-millenial multiracial families’; the family becomes emblematic of the hope for a unified America central to civil rights discourse.14 Yet the civil rights movement is only briefly glimpsed on background TV sets in the film, and seems secondary to their lives. Likewise the court’s arguments regarding racial mixture as unlawful according to both state and Christian doctrine, as well as counterarguments that the ban on interracial marriage is a slavery law designed to protect white-owned property, are seen only at the start and end of the film. And in fact it is Richard, rather than Mildred, who experiences the most racism.15 As such, the film appears somewhat removed from the sociopolitical history of the Lovings’ period, and more applicable to broader contemporary discourses regarding marriage equality. Thus, as Nishime (2014) notes, while mixed people onscreen embody racial difference, films often avoid addressing that difference in order to use them as signifiers of the potential for cross-cultural bridging, understanding and healing. Despite adopting this approach, the film is a landmark in American mixed cinema; it normalizes the interracial family, showing pregnancies, births, family meals, disagreements, laughter and so on. Loving rehumanizes the interracial family, reducing the border between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In mixed period dramas Loving and A United Kingdom, the main discourse is the question of home; family dynamics are manipulated by racialized state discourse. This remains an issue in films set in the ‘post-race’ era. In Dear White People, the mixed protagonist’s response to the racial divisions on her university campus is to claim blackness and enforce segregated housing. In order to come to terms with her mixed identity (and her white lover), it is necessary for her to physically leave this space. In Away We Go, the interracial couple is faced with a multiplicity of choice in terms of where to raise their as yet unborn child, and is somewhat overwhelmed by this See Squires, 2014. Richard’s whiteness is questioned at two key points: he is referred to as being racially confused due to his father working for a black man, and culturally mixed due to taking on black kin. He is subject to hostility from white and black men, who see him as a traitor/fetishist, and is forced to borrow a rifle to protect his family.

14 15

Conclusion

159

freedom. In testing out potential homes by staying with various families, they discover racial tensions they didn’t know existed. Despite the pioneering actions of the Lovings to secure their right to a safe home space, and the achievements of the civil rights leaders, the idea of home continues to be a very complex issue for mixed families seeking a place of heterogeneity and acceptance.16

‘Post-race’ politics in America and France While set in the past, Loving draws attention to the contradictions of the ‘post-race’ millennium, and it is important to investigate these issues further in relation to the American and French political contexts. Fiona Barclay (2013) writes that the new millennium signalled a high point in commemoration and memorialization in France, illuminating the ways in which contemporary France has been shaped by both the histories of empire and that of its loss. Just as America has been grappling with the so-called ‘culture wars’, France has been gripped by ‘memory wars’ since the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 1998. Charles Forsdick (2007) marks 2005, the year of widespread banlieue riots, as the start of a ‘postcolonial turn’ in French culture. In this year, the government introduced (and later retracted) a controversial legal clause instructing teachers to stress ‘the positive role of the French presence in its overseas territories, particularly in North Africa’ (cited in Barclay, 2013: 7). This can be read as an attempt to control the national narrative and deny the legacies of slavery, colonialism and institutional discrimination which were becoming more and more publically discussed at the time. Contemporary cinematic expressions of la politique de la mémoire are evidence of the ‘postmodern ethnic revival’, which has sparked a global interest in cultural roots.17 Recent narratives from France and America – Indigènes,18 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained, The Birth of a Nation, Caché, Mon colonel, Hors la loi – prove the potential for films to displace the ‘history of white vision’ without erasing difference. While some of the films listed rehash familiar stereotypes, this period has seen filmmakers reinsert forgotten

See Brooke Lea Foster’s article: ‘For Interracial Couples, Growing Acceptance, With Some Exceptions’, New York Times, 26 November 2016. 17 See Marilyn Halter, 2000; Leon Wynter, 2002. 18 Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and five Césars, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and a César for best screenplay. 16

160

Mixed Race Cinemas

histories into the grand narratives of their respective nations (also implying the enduring realities of discrimination and neocolonialism).19 Yet French conservatives, such as former president Nicolas Sarkozy, assert that the colonial period is over and call for a focus on the present-future rather than the past, viewing such excavations of colonial brutality as a form of masochism. In a 2007 speech, Sarkozy declared: ‘Repentance is a detestable fashion … only to accuse the nation, which is the ultimate form of self-hatred … to hate France is to hate oneself’ (cited in Barclay, 2013: 5). He created the Ministry for Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development (2007–10), a controversial body which was read by critics as assimilationist and oppressive – once again, aimed at controlling the concept of national identity. Barclay notes that these various actions deemed the legacies of slavery, colonization and decolonization (including the contributions made by colonized subjects, and the systemic, structural inequalities faced by their descendants) irrelevant to contemporary France. They sought to reposition them as separate yet parallel histories, leading to those who advocated the need to remember (devoir de mémoire) being associated with ‘hypermnesia’ (Winock, 1995), a state of abnormally vivid remembering associated with trauma. The desire to obscure difficult histories through a focus on singular rather than multiple perspectives belies a suppressed trauma in the national narrative. This is clearly present in both French and American contexts. The Jefferson family cemetery issues present a paradigm of the issue, as Thomas Jefferson’s white descendants continue to deny the legitimacy of his black descendants, eschewing histories of slavery, kinship, and as Holland (2012) notes, an inextricably interwoven narrative of trauma and joy. In the United States, as in France, the fear of remembering (associated by critics with financial/moral culpability and a weakened union) conflicts with the need to remember. But here, the need to acknowledge histories of oppression and their impact has been brought into sharp focus not only by the two-term presidency of Barack Obama, but also by the recent media coverage of a spate of shootings of unarmed black men and boys by police officers. When Obama was first elected to the presidency in 2008, the first mixedrace president of the United States was viewed as a mediator who could heal the racial divide (while also being a ‘post-race’ symbol of success). Yet a series of bills, aimed at silencing alternative national narratives, demonstrated See also Case départ (Thomas N’Gijol, Fabrice Éboué, Lionel Steketee, France, 2011), a slapstick comedy about two Frenchmen who are transported into the late eighteenth century and quickly sold into slavery.  This is perhaps simply a consequence of integration, as many of these directors are secondgeneration and, as artists, have a natural inclination to excavate forgotten stories, particularly those which reinsert their own family histories into the national narrative. 19

Conclusion

161

an enduring, underlying reluctance to embrace the multiplicities of America. In 2003, California’s Proposition 54, known as the ‘Racial Privacy Initiative’ attempted to ban the state collection of race and ethnicity data on the basis that this was irrelevant in a multiracial (i.e. ‘post-race’) state. In 2010, Arizona’s House Bill 2281 banned the teaching of ethnic studies – specifically MexicanAmerican studies – on the basis that such work reinforces racial resentment and separatism. Ironically, this led to a flourishing of ethnic studies courses in high schools nationwide as teachers pushed back against the ruling. In 2013, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was described by Supreme Court Justice Scalia as ‘a racial entitlement’ which had no relevance in the ‘post-race’ era.20 These actions cover over the ‘deep disconnect between the scientific status of race as a created concept that has no biological basis and the social reality of the common ideas and practices of race … [which] still have a very real impact on the lives of mixed-descent people’ (King-O’Riain, 2014: 264). In France, critics of racial consciousness often associate it with race-based separation (communautarisme). In America, even the Black Lives Matter movement has been seen as regressive and countered by the slogan All Lives Matter.21 ‘Post-race’ politics in both countries have led to a popular colour-blind ideal, presented in various media forms, utilizing Obama’s success as proof of the end of racism. But mixed characters still usually provide the ‘trouble in the text’ in visual media, evoking fears of cultural violation/creolization, just as racism endures in society. The relative absence of mixed families and children, and the continued preference for interracial narratives which pair light-skinned mixed women and white men, suggests that ‘post-race’ Hollywood isn’t that different from ‘raced’ Hollywood. The utopian politics of ‘racelessness’ obfuscates existing structural inequalities based on racial categorization, insulates racists from allegations of racism and results in a ‘denial of the salience of race in the lived experience of the racialised’ (Lentin and Titley, 2011: 79). This ‘brownwashing’, as Spencer (1999) puts it, reinforces racial boundaries and maintains white privilege (Gallagher, 2003). Furthermore, Squires argues: ‘We must realize that we haven’t fully grappled with the legacy of de jure let alone de facto racism, and Cited in Amy Davidson’s article ‘In Voting Rights, Scalia Sees a ‘Racial Entitlement’, The New Yorker, 28 February 2013.  Ruth Frankenberg sees colour-blind politics as obfuscating structural narratives of power and thus removing the critical space needed to challenge institutional racism. Bonnilla-Silva notes that ‘post-race’ rhetoric allows people to view economic differences as based on individual failure rather than institutional discrimination, and claim that it is racist to talk about race. This rhetoric posits racial consciousness as a form of discrimination, whose policies privilege some racial groups and not others. This follows on from the 1990s civil rights backlash, where affirmative action became seen as a form of anti-white ‘reverse discrimination’. 21 While logical, the latter ‘post-race’ slogan ignores the fact that racial discrimination results in differential rates of representation, education, poverty and incarceration. 20

162

Mixed Race Cinemas

cannot allow post-racial optimism to blind us to the corrosive effects of race in the contemporary world’ (2014: 16). Recent shifts towards nationalist, populist, xenophobic politics have broken the ‘post-race’ illusion and made it painfully clear that we still live in racialized realities. Omi notes that race is still ‘a fundamental organising principle of individual identity and collective action’ (1996: 179). It is a discursive and material element of lived experience and cannot be cancelled out through suppression. Squires writes: ‘White supremacy is not dead and gone: It is a zombie stalking the land … the post-racial is … an era of the “living dead”: The racial ideologies and representational strategies that the “post-” declares to be dead … refuse to stay buried. They keep cropping up, like zombies’ (2014: 101). In filmic terms, we can see evidence of this in the recent crop of horror/zombie movies dealing with ‘race’.22 The Girl with All the Gifts (McCarthy, UK/USA, 2016) follows Melanie (mixed actress Sennia Nanua), a hybrid zombie whose school teacher recognizes her exceptionalism and tries to save her from the brutality of both the humans and the zombies. Meet the Blacks (Taylor, USA, 2016) features an interracial family moving into a white neighbourhood, and is a parody of the 2013 film The Purge. Similarly, Get Out (Peele, USA, 2017) is a comical horror film where a young black man (Daniel Kaluuya) meets the liberal parents of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) and enters into a strange and horrifying reality. The film was written as a critique of ‘post-race’ ideology, and exposes, what mixed director Jordan Peele described at 2017’s Sundance Film Festival as, the ‘post-racial lie’ by revealing the ever-present ‘monster’ of racism.23 The danger of allowing mixed screen characters to transcend ‘race’ is, as Carol Roh Spaulding notes, that this may collapse into ‘another version of biological homogeneity’ (1995: 110), a colour-blindness in which mixedness signifies everything and nothing. This criticism has been levelled at many of the current mixed stars of America, who both signal and refuse racialized identities, for example Diesel, Alba, Biel. As Beltràn notes, screen characters with an ‘off-white look can be said to erase ethnic difference and, by extension,

Some earlier works have also used the genre to comment on American race relations. In George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (USA, 1968), the African-American lead Ben (Duane Jones) is one of few survivors after a zombie invasion, but is killed when whites mistake him for a zombie. 1992’s Candyman (Rose, USA/UK) uses the legacy of racial violence to produce its horror narrative. Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is researching urban legends when she learns of the story of the Candyman. In the 1890s, Daniel Robatille (Tony Todd), a black, wealthy socialite, was commissioned to paint a portrait of a white landowner’s daughter. The two fell in love and had a child, but Daniel was lynched for his transgression. In the 1990s, locals still believe that if you say ‘Candyman’ five times in a mirror, he will emerge and kill you as revenge for the brutality he suffered. Helen accidentally summons him and horror ensues. 23 Another film which considers white transplantation into black bodies is 2010’s Transfer (Lukacevic, Germany). 22

Conclusion

163

to deny the nation’s and film industry’s history of racial discrimination’ (2005: 63–4). They may appease calls for diversity onscreen while transcending blackness and thus reaffirming white agency.24

Enduring stereotypes Recognition is important to the existence of a mixed-race identity because, as Charles Taylor (1994) writes, our identities are formed in dialogue with others. To recognize mixed-race identity is to acknowledge the politics of difference and the illogic of racial categories. This recognition is based on dialogical relations with others, and so is dependent on a society where one is free to have multiple identity categories recognized as part of a complete self. Modern society has not yet achieved this goal, and continues to restrict and impose negative attributes onto mixed and non-white identities, especially in its dominant screen depictions. Mainstream films reassert stereotypes in order, as Gina Marchetti explains, ‘to recognize, domesticate, and absorb differences of various sorts to continue the ideological hegemony of the dominant culture’ (1996: 270). American and French films like Straight Outta Compton, The Help, Blended, Samba, Bande de filles and Intouchables pose no threat to white patriarchal order by featuring black/mixed characters reaffirming what Denzin calls the ‘ethnocentric, Eurocentric, racist stereotypes … that were ascribed to them’ (2002: 8). Thus, as Hall notes, what they amount to is actually ‘inferential racism’ (1996: 446), upholding the same ‘white vision’ which they pertain to reject. 2010 Oscar winners Precious and The Blind Side use well-worn racial stereotypes. In Precious, mixed teacher Ms Rain (mixed actress Paula Patton) rescues the troubled, titular black working-class character (Gabourey Sidibe), while in The Blind Side wealthy WASP Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) – Republican, NRA member, Christian – becomes abandoned and impoverished black teenager Big Mike’s (Quinton Aaron) saviour.25 As the more familiar heroine (despite the film’s patronizing racism), Bullock triumphed over Sidibey to win Best Actress at the 2010 Oscars. Both films ghettoize and displace the black character in favour of lighter-skinned figures, yet are more progressive in terms of gender politics – the female characters (bar Precious’s abusive mother) are formidable characters and signify a shift in representations of women and sexuality (Ms Rain is a lesbian26). See Joseph, 2013. For more on the white saviour film, see Hughey, 2014. 26 American depictions of non-white LGBTQIA characters remain rare, particularly in terms of women – Dope is one of few recent films to feature a mixed-race lesbian (Diggy, played by mixed actress Kiersey Clemons). 24 25

164

Mixed Race Cinemas

Precious is supported by two mixed-race women, Ms Rain and her social worker Mrs Weiss (mixed actress Mariah Carey). Confused by her racial ambiguity, Precious asks Mrs Weiss: ‘Are you Italian? What colour are you anyway?’27 She responds: ‘What colour do you think I am?’ Precious: ‘Are you some kind of black or Spanish?’ She is reminded that labels do not define the person and yet, there is a clear and unmet desire here to fix Carey’s identity – as there has been in her music career. Mixedness is represented through a series of positive authority figures as an idealized form of blackness (‘some kind of black’, recalling the stereotype of the ‘noble mulatta’28) rather than a separate ethnicity. The social confusion concerning mixedness was evidenced in ‘Brian Sings and Swings’, the Family Guy television episode which first aired on 8 January 2006: Dan LaFontaine: (Picture of Stewie) One’s a baby. (Picture of The Rock) and the other’s … Black. I think. At least part Black. Or … Hispanic, I think. You know, possibly there’s some Filipino in there, yeah, possibly some Filipino. I mean if he – if he’s Black it’s definitely diluted. I mean one of his parents must be white. What the hell is Jessica Alba for that matter? If I were 40 years younger I would plow that till next July. The terminology used implies that The Rock (mixed actor Dwayne Johnson)29 is a racial cocktail ‘part Black, some Filipino … diluted’. It also emphasizes his fragmentary (or ‘fractional’, as Laurie Mengel (2001) put it) nature and denies the possibility for multiple heritage to be taken as whole or equal – his dilution implies a loss of value. Likewise the linguistic use of ‘what’ and ‘that’ in relation to mixed actress Jessica Alba reduces her to an inanimate thing (a sex toy to be industrially ploughed, an association which recalls the industrialization and sexual exploitation of mixed/black women under slavery). The mixed figures’ exoticization/dehumanization is linked to their inability These questions have haunted Carey’s career as she has been alternately accused of covering up her black heritage and artificially performing blackness. ‘Mariah’s Theme’ (from her album Rainbow) deals with her struggles as a mixed-race person. 28 The ‘noble mulatto’ stereotype can also be seen in mixed-race actor Lenny Kravitz’s role as a male nurse/father figure/role model. Both he and Patton’s teacher become mentors to Precious. By contrast, dark-skinned Mo’Nique plays the monstrous ‘mammy’, with headscarf (playing on the semiotics of ‘Aunt Jemima’). 29 As a wrestler he was known as The Rock, and performed with the Nation of Domination, which he described as ideologically akin to the Black Panthers but fans described as a parody of the Nation of Islam (see Carter, 2008). This name can be read as a signifier for many things: Plymouth Rock and the colonization of America; a reinvention and reappropriation of the Buck stereotype; the historical dehumanization of non-whites; security and self-determination; strength and endurance; the globe. 27

Conclusion

165

to be singularly categorized.30 While the dialogue celebrates mixed beauty, it subtly reinforces a white-centrist view, revealing the culturally embedded national fears regarding cultural creolization. Following Bhabha’s work on hybridity, mixed bodies reveal contradictions and tensions between cultures, exposing hegemonic discriminatory practices that posit those beyond racial binaries as uncategorizable. The border-crossing mixed characters of Dear White People, Loving and Notre étrangère pose a threat to black and white culture, and yet reveal the interconnections between both. Yet in ‘post-race’ popular culture, mixed characters’ liminality often leads to them being estranged from either ‘race’. In these cases, farce is sometimes used to reduce the conflict to racial homogeneity which they pose (e.g. Guess Who, 2 Days in New York or Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu?).31 But the fantastical nature of being ‘post-race’ is also a key element of contemporary science fiction, symbolizing both the end of ‘race’ (and associated divisive identity constructions) and the end of humanity.

Mixed-race sci-fi With American racial identity coming to be understood as inherently complex and hybrid, mixing has become a key feature of many fantasy films. Recent examples include Catwoman (Pitof, USA, 2004); Babylon A.D. (Kassovitz, France, 2008); The Matrix, X-Men, Riddick and Underworld franchises.32 While exploring fears of racial/technological/supernatural invasion, these films also explore hybrid forms through their genre blending, thematic layering and intertextuality.33 As Beltràn and Fojas note, the fantasy genre is a ‘popular means of working through cultural tensions and aspirations regarding racial and ethnic mixing, given the singular latitude their narratives offer for dramatising interactions The Family Guy piece reveals and satirizes the daily interrogations mixed people face as others attempt to define ‘what’ they are. Popular acceptance of this invasive practice was further evidenced by the Entertainment Weekly website quiz ‘What Nationalities are in Jessica Alba’s Ancestry?’ (see Beltràn, 2008). 31 These films utilize racist tropes in an ironic manner, reasserting and undermining their validity. This ‘post-race’ comedy practice is known as ‘hipster racism’ or ‘equal opportunity offending’. 32 For more on mixed issues in fantasy films, see Adam Knee’s article ‘Race Mixing and the Fantastic: Lineages of Identity and Genre in Contemporary Hollywood’ in Beltràn and Fojas (2008), pp. 157–11. See also George Lipsitz’s analysis of the links between popular genre film, race and ideology in ‘Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970s Cinema’, Refiguring American Film Genres, ed. Nick Browne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 33 For more on genre merging in mainstream American film, see Adam Knee’s article ‘The Compound Genre Film: Billy the Kid versus Dracula Meets The Harvey Girls’ in Intertextuality in Literature and Film, ed. Elaine D. Cancalon and Antoine Spacagna (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), pp. 141–56; Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, ed. Steve Neale (London: BFI, 2002). 30

166

Mixed Race Cinemas

and amalgamations among all manner of beings’ (2008: 15). Furthermore, Ed Guerrero identifies formulations of ‘race’ as a central element of the fantasy genre: ‘The social construction and representation of race, otherness, and nonwhiteness is an ongoing process, working itself out in many symbolic, cinematic forms of expression, but particularly in the abundant racialised metaphors and allegories of the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror genres’ (1993: 57). While the exposition of difference is a key aspect of the melodrama genre, it is in the fantasy genre that this theme is most explicitly expressed due to the freedom from spatial, temporal and physical verisimilitude which it offers. The fluid possibilities of the genre provide a space for imagining many kinds of mixedness, where in-between characters may act as friendly mediators between individuals, societies or galaxies. In the Star Trek episode ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’ (1969), the crew encounter a group of aliens whose bodies are vertically half black and half white. Their society has established a racial hierarchy based on which side one is black/white, making one group slaves and the other, masters. As Leah R. Vande Berg notes, this narrative utilizes the ‘species-as-race’ theory, whereby ‘racial tensions, differences and issues … have merely been transformed into species differences’ (1996: 55).34 The crew of the enterprise educate the aliens on racial tolerance and order is restored. Indeed many aspects of the series commented on the contemporary racial context. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry said that he wrote the Vulcan-human character Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as ‘half-caste … a half-breed Indian’ (Dillard, 1996: 15). Spock’s mixedness was positioned as species difference onscreen and the character was often troubled by his mixed identity, following tragic mulatto conventions. He was denied a romantic life and his inter-species family were absent, perhaps due to miscegenation being taboo. Indeed, in the 1600s, racial difference was perceived as species difference, hence arguments that the mulatto was an ‘abominable mixture … no species of animals in the natural world was known to have developed from the union of two separate species’ (Gossett, 1963: 61). And, while contemporary discourse posits mixedness as bringing an end to division, there is often a sub-text alluding to mixedness as a strange, alien category, leading us into an unknowable future. Danzy Senna (1998) states: ‘Major news magazines announce our arrival as if we were proof of extraterrestrial life. They claim we’re going to bring about the end of race as we know it.’ Herman Gray observes that in Star Trek ‘the creative vision of the white producers predominated … there were clearly boundaries concerning cultural Film theorist Brian Carr has also explored the representation of difference as species difference in Blade Runner (Scott, USA, 1982), see ‘At the Threshold of the “Human”: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Replication of Imperial Memory’, Cultural Critique 39 (1998), pp. 119–50.

34

Conclusion

167

representations, social themes, and professional conventions that they dared not transgress’ (1995: 71). So Uhura (multigenerational mixed actress Nichelle Nichols), the only ‘black’/female crew member, held only a minor role in the long-running show. Her interracial kiss with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) – in 1968’s ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’ episode – was conducted under duress and barely glimpsed onscreen. In the 2009+ Star Trek film franchise, Spock (Zachary Quinto) engages in a committed relationship with Uhura (multigenerational mixed actress Zoe Saldana), but this is fraught with tension caused by his mixed identity (and possibly enduring fears regarding representations of interracial intimacy). In her study of mixed bodies in science fiction, Nishime notes: ‘Western culture’s long history of equating human with white European suggests that the admixture of human with Other in the cyborg finds its closest racial parallel in the mixed-race body’ (2005: 35).35 This explains the privileging of mixed figures in the sci-fi genre, as signifiers of racial/species hybridity, as well as ‘post-race’, post-human futures.36 The mixed figure here acts as a vital visual signifier of the complexities of interculturalism but their racial identity usually goes unmentioned. In the X-Men films, Storm’s (Halle Berry) background is never discussed, presumably in an effort to be colour-blind, but in the graphic novels her African heritage is central to her identity. In the Riddick series, mixedness is used as a metaphor for species difference – Riddick (Vin Diesel) has heightened senses and can see in the dark, and while assumed to be human (even by himself), it is revealed in the sequel that he is a Furyan, the last of an extinct alien civilization. In both films the mixed character is isolated and yet acts as a mediator, with Riddick finally being hailed as a new leader for his multispecies, multicultural society. The performativity of identity perceived in the mixed body is central to the success and/or failure of the mixed character. In science fiction, this non-fixity and multiplicity enables mixed characters to connect with communities across universes by, as Park puts it ‘performing, in deliberate and nondeliberate ways, what I call virtual race, or the idea of racial and ethnic identity as an ornamental product that can be marketed and consumed, put on and taken off’ (2008: 186). Mixed characters in sci-fi embody gender/race/sexual fluidity, revealing these interlocking categories to be changeable. Like Neo (mixed-race actor Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix trilogy, the mixed body in Halle Berry’s Catwoman See also Nishime, 2014. See, for example, Ra (Jaye Davidson) in Stargate (1994); Ororo Munroe/Storm (Halle Berry/ Alexandra Shipp) in the X-Men films; Blade (Wesley Snipes) in the Blade trilogy; Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix trilogy; Riddick (Vin Diesel) in the Riddick trilogy. Zoe Saldana has repeatedly been cast as blue/green-skinned aliens (Guardians of the Galaxy, Avatar); see also Paula Patton in Warcraft, Lupita Nyong’o in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

35 36

168

Mixed Race Cinemas

is both human and other, black and white, oppressed and oppressor, and can switch between super-/human/animal identities seamlessly. This hybrid characterization reflects what Vivian Sobchak (1987) sees as the central issue of the fantasy genre, the relationship between the strange and the familiar. Perhaps then Nishime is correct to conclude that ‘ultimately it is the mulatto cyborg, chaotic, ironic, without nostalgia or origin, that promises a future of mixed-race subjectivity’ (2005: 47). Following Haraway (1991), the mixed character may thus be read as a signifier of the potential to go beyond socially constructed categorizations and imagine new systems of social relations.

Mixed representational potentials In order to fully move into a ‘Third Space’ we need to move beyond binaried conceptualizations of ‘race’, gender, sexuality and so on. Ettinger (2006) envisages the catalyst for this to be a shift into the ‘matrixial borderspace’, a space where I accept the Other as the other part of myself rather than defining myself in opposition to it. Here subjectivity is formed in co-emergence with another I, whereby the Other is not a threat to my selfhood but ensures it. As she observes, this space allows differences to exist beside and beyond each other and opens the path to trans-subjectivities based on ‘compassion’, that is, on selves ‘sharing their hybrid objet a’ (2006: 2). Mixed films are a step into this borderspace and reflect a growing cultural awareness of identity flexibility and interdependency. Leon Wynter observes that mixed figures represent the ultimate challenge to ideas of ‘race’ in America as ‘high-status billboards for the natural, and perhaps inevitable, positive resolution of the tension imposed on the freedom to enjoy an individual identity in a multiracial society’ (2002: 180). As Zack notes, mixed characters express the possibility of an ‘identity founded on freedom and resistance to oppression rather than immanence and the acceptance of tradition’ (1993: 164). The popular shifts towards mixed-race visibility onscreen have displaced ‘whiteliness’ with narratives of flexibility and adaptability. Cinema’s new multiracial heroes possess ‘[the] ability to thrive in environments defined by cultural border crossings and pastiche’ (Beltràn, 2005: 50). That is, they represent the possibility of a fluid, dynamic identity which is open to re-creation rather than fixed in origin or affiliation. Rather than solely exploring racial fantasies and fears, mixed films should establish a politics of difference. The politics of difference differs from the politics of equal dignity because the latter demands colour-blindness (it is ‘differenceblind’ (Taylor, 1994: 43)), and claims universality by suppressing difference. This does not respond to the vagaries of lived experience; as Jurgen Habermas

Conclusion

169

wrote, ‘The system of rights is not blind to unequal social conditions nor to cultural differences’ (1994: 113). Colour-blindness overlooks the problems of mass unemployment, imprisonment and disenfranchisement affecting the mixed/black population. Thus the politics of difference is an essential tool for mixed societies and mixed cinema. We can use the mixed category to illuminate the injustices of white-centrism, the plethora of trans identities, and the value of non-white cultures. Therefore the mixed category may become a tool for destabilizing fixed ideas of identity – a ‘wedge against racism’, as Zack put it. Foucault called identity a discourse, something which is communicated to others based on our interactions with them. He referred to it as a temporary, shifting construction, rather than an implicit, fixed essence. Positive mixed representations highlight the benefits of this transitory state. They emphasize the acceptance of difference, which is critical to forming stable societies. As Hall observes, ‘We are culturally formed, cultural subjects … [with a] need for that analytical, theoretical and imaginative leap into experiences which are different from ours’ (1998: 402). The de-essentializing of identity in films which embrace the in-between creates an opening for interaction, integration and understanding. Robert Young (1995) writes: ‘Hybridity makes difference into sameness and sameness into difference, but in a way that makes the same no longer the same, the different no longer simply different’ (26). Read in this way, mixed films project the revolutionizing potency of recognizing mixedrace identity in its fullness. They reveal the heterogeneity hidden behind fixed categorizations such as ‘black’ or ‘white’ in dominant cinematic representations. As we have seen, the American and French film industries have come a long way in negotiating racial representations. Some filmmakers have formulated new ways of imaging identities, roles and positions which defy pure and simple categorization. Others continue to play on earlier cinematic templates to reach popular audiences (and in the course of doing so, promote divisive cultural messages). But more often than not, mixed films are contradictory and compelling, both endorsing and challenging stereotypes. Their narratives fundamentally undermine established theories of ‘race’, even while adhering to racial norms. It is this hybridity which makes mixed cinema so rich for research. There are a plethora of sub-texts at play when the protagonist represents more than one identity category (and thus draws attention to the fluidity of all identities), which may apply to various aspects of our lived experiences. In an ever more globalized space, with ever fewer absolutes, mixed characters thus serve an important semiotic role. And, as recognition of mixedness continues to grow, they are important in constructing normalized perceptions of mixed identities, as well as interracial families. Loving is a paradigm of this vision and, along with the diverse representations of recent years, signifies an exciting future for mixed-race cinema.

170

Bibliography Alcalay, R. (1995). ‘Morphing Out of Identity Politics: Black or White and Terminator 2’. Bad Subjects, 19. Alibhai-Brown, Y. (2000). Who Do We Think We Are: Imagining the New Britain. Penguin: London. Alibhai-Brown, Y. (2001). Mixed Feelings: The Complex Lives of Mixed-Race Britons. London: The Women’s Press. Allen, R. L. (1975). Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States. New York: Garden City. Ammons, E. and Rohy, V., eds (1998). American Local Color Writing, 1880-1920. New York: Penguin. Andrew, J. D. (1976). The Major Film Theories. London: Oxford University Press. Anzaldúa, G. (1981). ‘La Prieta’. In C. Moraga and G. Anzaldúa, eds (1983), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, pp. 198–209. Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Anzaldúa, G., ed. (1990). Making Face, Making Soul: Hacienda Caras. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Anzaldúa, G. (1992). ‘La Prieta’ (extract). In M. Humm (ed.), Feminisms: A Reader. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Appiah, K. A. (1994). ‘Identity, Authenticity, Survival. Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction’. In A. Guttman (ed.), Multiculturalism. Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 149–60. Appiah, K. A. (1998). ‘Afterword: How Shall We Live as Many?’ In W. F. Katkin, N. Landsman and A. Tyree (eds), Beyond Pluralism: The Conception of Groups and Group Identities in America. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 243–60. Ardizzone, H. (2008). ‘Catching Up with History: Night of the Quarter Moon, the Rhinelander Case, and Interracial Marriage in 1959.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 87–112. Austin, T. (2002). Hollywood, Hype and Audiences. Selling and Watching Popular Film in the 1990s. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Balibar, E. and Wallerstein, I. (1991). Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso. Barclay, F., ed. (2013). France’s Colonial Legacies: Memory, Identity and Narrative. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

172

Bibliography

Barkley Brown, E. (1994). ‘Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom’. Public Culture 7 (1): 107–46. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. Translated by Lavers, A. London: Jonathan Cape. Bastiaans, A. D. (2008). ‘Detecting Difference in Devil in a Blue Dress: The Mulatta Figure, Noir, and the Cinematic Reification of Race’. In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 223–47. Battegay, A. and Boubeker, A. (1993). Les Images Publiques de l’Immigration (Public Images of Immigration). Paris: CIEMI L’Harmattan. Beishon, S., Modood, T. and Virdee, S. (1998). Ethnic Minority Families. London: Policy Studies Institute. Bell, J. (2008). ‘Blues People’. Sight and Sound 17 (7): 30–2. Beltràn, M. (2005). ‘The New Hollywood Racelessness: Only the Fast, Furious, (and Multiracial) Will Survive’. Cinema Journal 44 (2): 50–67. Beltràn, M. (2008). ‘Mixed Race in Latinowood: Latino Stardom and Ethnic Ambiguity in the Era of Dark Angels’. In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 248–68. Beltràn, M. and Fojas, C., eds (2008). Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press. Benson, S. (1981). Ambiguous Ethnicity: Interracial Families in London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berlant, L. (1993). ‘National Brands/National Body: Imitation of Life.’ In B. Robbins (ed.), The Phantom Public Sphere. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 142–72. Berlant, L. (1997). The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bernardi, D., ed. (1996). The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of US Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Bernasconi, R. (1996). ‘“Stuck Inside of Mobile”’. In C. Willett (ed.). (1998), Theorising Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate. Oxford: Blackwell, 276–98. Berry, S. (2000). Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Bhabha, H. K. (1988). ‘The Commitment to Theory’. New Formations 5. Bhabha, H. K. (1989/1994). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Bierce, A. (1858). The Devil’s Dictionary. New York: Dover. Bingham, D. (1994). Acting Male. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Black, G. (1989). ‘Hollywood Censored: The Production Code Administration and the Hollywood Film Industry, 1930-1940’. Film History 3: 167–89. Blanc, M. (1984). ‘Social Sciences for a Multicultural Society’. In Y. Alibhai-Brown (ed.) (2000), Who Do We Think We Are: Imagining the New Britain. London: Penguin. Bloodsworth-Lugo, M. K. and Flory. D. (2013). Race, Philosophy, and Film. New York: Routledge. Bloom, P. (2006). ‘Beur Cinema and the Politics of Location: French Immigration Politics and the Naming of a Film Movement’. In E. Ezra and T. Rowden (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 469–87.

Bibliography

173

Bogle, D. (1974). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film. New York: Bantam. Bogle, D. (1980). Brown Sugar. New York: Da Capo Press. Bogle, D. (1988). Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc. Bogle, D. (1998). Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography. New York: Boulevard Books. Bogle, D. (2005). Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood. New York: One World. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. 2nd edn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Bonnett, A. (1994). ‘Culture, Communication and Discourse: Negotiating Difference in Multi-Ethnic Alliances’. Workshop Paper. University of Newcastle Seminar. Bordo, S. (1995). Unbearable Weight. Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bost, S. (2003). Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas 1850-2000. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Boswell, D. and Evans, J. (1999). Representing the Nation: A Reader. Histories, Heritage and Museums. London: Routledge. Boyd, T. (1996). Am I Black Enough for You? Popular Culture from the Hood and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bowser, P. and Spence, L. (2000). Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Brooker, P. (1994). ‘Key Words in Brecht’s Theory and Practice’. In P. Thomson et al. (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 185–200. Brooks, P. (1976). The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and The Mode of Excess. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Brown, T. N. and Lesane-Brown, C. L. (2006). ‘Race Socialization Messages across Historical Time.’ Social Psychology Quarterly 69 (2): 201–13. Brown, M. E., ed. (1990). Television and Women’s Culture: The Politics of the Popular. London: Sage Publications. Brown, U. M. (2000). The Interracial Experience: Growing Up Black/White Racially Mixed in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Bryson, V., ed. (1999). Feminist Debates: Issues of Theory and Political Practice. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Bukatman, S. (2000). ‘Taking Shape: Morphing and the Performance of Self’. In V. Sobchack (ed), Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 225–50. Burke, M. A. (2016). ‘New Frontiers in the Study of Color-Blind Racism: A Materialist Approach.’ Social Currents 3 (2): 103–9. Butler J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.

174

Bibliography

Butler, J. (1990). ‘Lana’s “Imitation”: Melodramatic Repetition and the Gender Performative.’ Genders 9: 1–18. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York and London: Routledge. Capatti, A. (1989). Le Goût de Nouveau [The Taste of the New]. Paris: Albin Michel. Carby, H. (1993). ‘Encoding White Resentment. Grand Canyon: A Narrative for our Times’. In C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow (eds), Race, Identity, and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 236–50. Carney, R. (1994). The Films Of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism and The Movies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carter, G. T. (2008). ‘From Blaxploitation to Mixploitation: Male Leads and Changing Mixed Race Identities’. In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 203–20. Carter, G. T. (2013). The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing. New York: New York University Press. Cawelti, J. (1971). The Six Gun Mystique. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press. Chinn, S. E. (2000). Technology and the Logic of American Racism: A Cultural History of the Body as Evidence. New York: Continuum. Christian, M. (2000). Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective. London and New York: Macmillan. Cincotta, H. and Carter, Y. J., eds (1989). The Civil Rights Movement and the Legacy of Martin Luther King. Washington: United States Information Agency. Cixous, H. and Clement, C. (1986). The Newly Born Woman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Clover, C. J. (1992). Men, Women and Chainsaws. Gender in the Modern Horror Film. London: BFI. Cohan, S. and Hark, I. R., eds (1993). Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge. Collins, J., Radner, H. and Collins, A. P., eds (1993). Film Theory Goes to the Movies. London: Routledge. Cone, J. H. (1997). Black Theology and Black Power. New York: Orbis Books. Cook, M. (1998). Generations of Women. San Francisco: Chronicle Press. Cook, P. and Bernink, M., eds (1999). The Cinema Book. 2nd edn, London: BFI. Cook, P. and Dodd, P., eds (1994). Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader. London: Scarlet Press. Courtney, S. (2005) Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Craig, M. L. (2002). Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty and the Politics of Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Creed, B. (1993). The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Crémieux, A. (2005). ‘Vin Diesel: A Colorless Actor for a Colorblind America?’ Available from: http://africultures.com/index.asp?menu=affiche_ article&no=3781 Cripps, T. (1993). Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bibliography

175

Cusack, M. (1986). Black America. Washington: United States Information Agency. Daniel, S. (2002). The New York Times, 4 August. Darwin, C. (1860). On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection: or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. 5th edn. London: J. Murray. Darwin, C. (1889). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2nd edn. London: Murray. Davis, A. (1974). ‘The Racist Use of Rape and the Rape Charge’. In A Statement to the Women’s Movement From a Group of Socialist Women. Louisville, KY: Socialist Women’s Caucus. Davis, A. (1982). Women, Race and Class. London: The Women’s Press. Davis, F. J. (1991). Who is Black? University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Davis, F. J. (2006). ‘Defining Race: Comparative Perspectives’. In David L. Brunsma (ed.), Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the ‘Color-Blind’ Era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, pp. 15–32. Dawkins, M. (2012). Clearly Invisible: Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity. Austin, TX: Baylor University Press. de Lauretis, T. (1986). ‘Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms, and Contexts’. In T. de Lauretis (ed.), Feminist Studies/Critical Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 1–19. de Vos, G. (1975). Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Denzin, N. K. (2002). Reading Race. Hollywood and the Cinema of Racial Violence. London: Sage. Derrida, J. (1968). ‘Différance’ In A. Easthope and K. McGowan (eds) (1992), A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 120–40. Derrida, J. (1991). Acts of Literature. London: Routledge. Dfes (Dept for Education) report. (2003). Understanding the Needs of Mixed Heritage Pupils. UK. Diawara, M. (1988). ‘Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance’. Screen, 29 (4): 66–79. Diawara, M., ed. (1993). Black American Cinema. London: Routledge. Donald, J. and Rattansi, A. (1992). ‘Race’, Culture and Difference. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Douglass, F. (1892). ‘Lynch Law in the South’. North American Review, 155. DuBois, W. E. B. (1969). Negro American Family. New York: Negro University Press. DuBois, W. E. B. (1969). The Souls of Black Folk. New York: New American Library. Dunn, S. (2008). ‘Baad Bitches’ and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Dyer, R. (1993). The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. London: Routledge. Dyer, R. (1995). ‘The Colour of Entertainment.’ Sight and Sound 5 (11): 28–31. Dyer, R. (1997). White. London: Routledge. Dyer, R. (2003). Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: Routledge.

176

Bibliography

Ebert, R. (2009). Away We Go. Available from: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/ apps/pbcs.dllarticle?AID=/2009 Edwards, P., Ganguly, D and Lo, J. (2007). ‘Pigments of the Imagination: Theorising, Performing and Historicising Mixed Race’. Journal of Intercultural Studies 28 (1): 1–13. Edwards, R., Ali, S., Caballero, C. and Song, M., eds (2012). International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing. New York: Routledge. Ellis, T. (1989). ‘The New Black Aesthetic.’ Callaloo 12 (1): 233–43. Ellison, R. (1966). The Invisible Man. New York: New American Library. Elsaesser, T. (1972). ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’. Monogram 4: 2–15. Elsaesser, T. (1986). ‘The New Film History’. Sight and Sound 55 (4): 246–51. Esteban Muñoz, J. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Ettinger, B. (2006). The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Evans, M. (1997). ‘Representation’. In M. Evans (ed.), Introducing Contemporary Feminist Thought. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ezra, E. (2000). The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France. New York: Cornell University Press. Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Paris: Maspero. Fanon, F. (1986). Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. Feldman, S. (1999). ‘Feminist Interruptions: The Silence of Easy Bengal in the Story of Partition’. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 1 (2): 167–82. Feree, M., J. Lorber and B. Hess eds. (1999). Revisioning Gender. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Fish, S. (1997). ‘Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech’. Critical Inquiry 23 (2): 378–95. Fiske, J. (1994). Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Fitzmaurice, T. and Shiel, M., eds (2003). Screening the City. London: Verso. Flax, J. (1990). Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the Contemporary Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fojas, C. (2008). ‘Mixed Race Frontiers: Border Westerns and the Limits of “America”’. In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 45–63. Foucault, M. (1980). History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books. Fox, R. E. (1997). ‘Becoming Post-White’. In Ishmael Reed (ed.), MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace. New York: Viking. Franco, J. (2008). ‘“The More You Look, the Less You Really Know”: The Redemption of White Masculinity in Contemporary American and French Cinema’. Cinema Journal 47 (3): 29–47. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

Bibliography

177

Freeland, C. A. and Wartenberg, T. E., eds (1995). Philosophy and Film. New York: Routledge. Freud, S. (2003/1919). The Uncanny. Translated by H. Haughton. London: Penguin. Friedberg, A. (1990). ‘A Denial of Difference: Theories of Cinematic Identification’. In E. A. Kaplan (ed.), Psychoanalysis and Cinema. London: Routledge, pp. 36–45. Fuss, D. (1995). Identification Papers. New York: Routledge. Gabriel, J. (2000). ‘Dreaming of a White...’. In S. Cottle (ed.), Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, pp. 67–80. Gaines, J. (1988). ‘White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory’. Screen 29 (4): 12–27. Gaines, J. (2001). Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gallagher, C. A. (2003). ‘Colour Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in America.’ Race, Gender, and Class 10: 22–37. Gates, J. H. L. (1986). ‘Introduction: Writing Race and the Difference it Makes’. In J. H. L. Gates (ed.), Race Writing and Difference. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–20. Gelder, K. (1994). Reading the Vampire. London: Routledge. Genovese, E. D. (1972). Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage Books. Giles, F. S. (1995). ‘From Melodrama to the Movies: The Tragic Mulatto as a Type Character’. In Naomi Zack (ed.), American Mixed Race: A Culture of Microdiversity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 63–78. Gilman, S. (2002). ‘Black Bodies, White Bodies. Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in the Late Nineteenth Century’. In S. Scott et al. (eds), Gender: A Sociological Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 392–400. Gilroy, P. (2000). Between Camps: Race, Identity and Nationalism at the end of the Colour Line. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press. Glazier, N. and Moynihan, D. P. (1963). Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gledhill, C., ed. (1991). Stardom: Industry of Desire. London: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1968). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goodchild, P., ed. (1996). Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire. London: Sage Publications. Gooding-Williams, R. (1993). Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. New York: Routledge. Gossett, T. F. (1963). Race: The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Gray, A. (1992). Video Playtime: The Gender of a Leisure Technology. London: Sage Publications. Gray, H. (1995). Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for ‘Blackness’. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Green, J. R. (2000). Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

178

Bibliography

Griffin, J. H. (1962). Black Like Me. London: William Collins Ltd. Haley, A. (1976). Roots: The Saga of an American Family. New York: Dell. Hall, S. (1990). ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’. In J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 222–37. Hall, S. (1992). ‘What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’ In G. Dent (ed.), Black Popular Culture. Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 21–33. Hall, S. (1993). ‘Culture, Community, Nation’. Cultural Studies 7 (3): 349–63. Hall, S. ed (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage Publications Limited. Hammonds, E. M. (1997). ‘New Technologies of Race’. In J. Terry et al. (eds), Processed Lives Gender and Technology in Everyday Life. London: Routledge, pp. 75–85. Hammonds, E. M. (2000). ‘New Technologies of Race’. In G. Kirkup et al. (eds), The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 305–17. Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association. Haraway, D. J. (1992). ‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriated/d Others’. In L. Grossberg et al. (eds), Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 295–337. Haraway, D. J. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan_ Meets_OncoMouse. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. J. (2004). The Haraway Reader. London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1977). ‘Letter on Humanism’. In D. Farrell Krell (ed.), Basic Writings. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 189–242. Henriques, F. (1974). Children of Caliban: Miscegenation. London: Secker and Warburg. Hernandez, R. (2008). ‘A Window into a Life Uncloseted: “Spice Boy” Imaginings in New Queer Cinema.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 113–35. Herrnstein, R. J. and Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve. London: Free Press. Heuman, G. and Walvin, J. (2003). The Slavery Reader. London: Routledge. Higbee, W. (2001). ‘Hybridity, Space and the Right to Belong: Maghrebi-French Identity at the Crossroads in Karim Dridi’s BYE BYE’. In L. Mazdon (ed.), France on Film. Reflections on Popular French Cinema, London: Wallflower Press, pp. 51–64. Higbee, W. and Leahy, S., eds (2011) Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985-2010. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Hill, J. and Church Gibson, P., eds (1998). The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill Collins, P. (1987). ‘The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Culture and Black Mother/Daughter Relationships’. Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women 4 (2): 4–11. Hobson, J. A. (1902/1965). Imperialism: A Study. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hofstader, R. (1973). America at 1750: A Social Portrait. New York: Vintage Books. Holland, S. P. (2012). The Erotic Life of Racism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Bibliography

179

Hollinger, D. A. (1998). ‘PostEthnic America’. In W. F. Katkin et al. (eds), Beyond Pluralism. The Conception of Groups and Group Identities in America. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 47–62. Hollinger, V. (1997). ‘Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire’. In J. Gordon and V. Hollinger (eds), Blood Read. The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 199–212. Holmes, T. (1997). ‘Coming Out of the Coffin: Gay Males and Queer Goths in Contemporary Vampire Fiction’. In J. Gordon and V. Hollinger (eds), Blood Read. The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 169–88. hooks, b. (1991). Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. London: Turnaround. hooks, b. (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. London: Turnaround. hooks, b. (1996). Reel to Reel: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. Routledge: New York. hooks, b. (1999). ‘The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators’. In S. Thornham (ed.), Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 115–31. Horne, L. and Schickel, R. (1966). Lena. London: André Deutch. Howard, J. (2008). Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference. London: FAB Press. Hughes, H. (1854/1968). Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical. New York: Negro University Press. Hughes, Z. (2002). “Has Hollywood Really Changed?” Ebony, June. Hughey, M. (2014). The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Humm, M., ed. (1992). Feminisms: A Reader, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Hurston, Z. N. (1984). Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Hurston, Z. N. (1990). Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. New York: Harper and Row. Ifekwunigwe, J. (2001). ‘(An)Other English City: Multiethnicities, (Post)modern Moments, and Strategic Identifications’. Ethnicities 2 (3): 321–48. Ifekwunigwe, J. (2004). ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader. London: Routledge. Irigaray, L. (1985). This Sex Which is Not One. Translated by C. Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jaafar, A. (2007). ‘Unknown Soldiers’. Sight and Sound 14 (4): 32–4. Jackson, R. (1981). Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen. Jackson, S. and Scott, S., eds. (1996). Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Jackson, S. and Scott, S., eds (2002). Gender: A Sociological Reader. London: Routledge. Jefferson, T. (1845). Writings. New York: The Library of America. Jewell, K. S. (1993). From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: Cultural Images and the Shaping of US Social Policy. London: Routledge. Johnson, K. R. (2003). Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader. New York: New York University Press.

180

Bibliography

Jones, J. (1985). Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books. Jones, J. (1993). ‘The Construction of Black Sexuality’. In M. Diawara (ed.), Black American Cinema. London: Routledge, pp. 247–56. Joseph, R. L. (2013). Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Jowett, G. (1976). Film: The Democratic Art. Boston: Little, Brown. Judy, R. A. T. (1998). ‘Fanon and the Subject of Experience’. In C. Willett (ed.), Theorising Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 301–33. Kaplan, E. A. (1983). Women and Film. London: Methuen. Kaplan, E. A. (1992). Motherhood and Representation. London: Routledge. Kastoryano, R. (2002). Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany. Translated by B. Harshav. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kawash, S. (1997). Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity and Singularity in African-American Narrative. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Keller, F. E. (1985). Reflections on Gender & Science. London: Yale University Press. King-O’Riain, R. C. (2014). ‘Global Mixed Race: A Conclusion’. In R. C. KingO’Riain, S. Small, M. Mahtani, S. Song and P. Spickard (eds), Global Mixed Race. New York and London: New York University Press, pp. 263–80. King-O’Riain, R. C. and Small, S. (2014). ‘Global Mixed Race: An Introduction’. In R. C. King-O’Riain, S. Small, M. Mahtani, S. Song and P. Spickard (eds), Global Mixed Race. New York and London: New York University Press, pp. vii–xxii. Kofi-Tsekpo, J. (1996). ‘Healing the Wounds: Interpretations of African Identity and ‘Race’’. In R. Tapper (ed.), Essays on ‘Mixed Race’ Issues. London: SOAS. Kracauer, S. (1960). Theory of Film – The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, J. (1993). Nations Without Nationalism. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Knee, A. (2008). ‘Race Mixing and the Fantastic: Lineages of Identity and Genre in Contemporary Hollywood.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 157–81. Kuhn, A. (1985). The Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality. New York: Routledge. Kydd, E. (2000). ‘“The Ineffaceable Curse of Cain”: Racial Marking and Embodiment in Pinky’. Camera Obscura 43, 15 (1): 95–121. Lacan, J. (1978). Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Edited by J. A. Miller. Surrey: Hogarth Press. Landesman, C. (2008). The Beat Goes On. The Sunday Times Culture Supplement, 16 November, pp. 4–6. Landwehr, R. (1995). ‘Reconstructing Racial Boundaries: “Tragic Mulattas” In Film, 1915-1959.’ In R. Tapper (ed.), Essays on ‘Mixed Race’ Issues. London: SOAS. Lasch, C. (1973). The World of Nations: Reflections on American History, Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books.

Bibliography

181

Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Hemel Hempstead: Wheatsheaf. Leab, D. (1975). From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Lee, J. (2003). ‘Racial Actors, Liberal Myths.’ Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics 13. Lentin, A. and Titley, G. (2011). The Crisis of Multiculturalism: Racism in a NeoLiberal Age. London: Zed Books. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1961). Triste Tropiques. Translated by J. Russell. New York: Criterion Books. Lewis, G. L. M. (1984). The Reactions of the Cape Coloureds to Segregation, 1900-1948. (PhD, History) Lewis, E. and Ardizzone, H. (2001). Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White. New York: Norton. Locke, J. (1975). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lombroso, C. and Ferrero, G. (1893). La Donna Deliquente: La Prostituta e la Donna Normale, Turin. Lopez’s, I. F. H. (1997). White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. Lott, E. (1993). Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowance, M., ed. (2000). Against Slavery, An Abolitionist Reader. New York: Penguin Books. Lowe, L. (1996). ‘Imagining Los Angeles in the Production of Multiculturalism’. In L. Lowe (ed.), Immigrant Acts. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 84–96. Lubiana, W. (1991). ‘“But Compared to What? Etc.”: Reading Realism, Representation, and Essentialism in School Daze, Do the Right Thing and the Spike Lee Discourse’. Black American Literature Forum 25 (2): 253–82. Lupack, B. T. (2002). Literary Adaptations in Black American Cinema: From Micheaux to Morrisson. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Lykke, N. and R. Braidotti (eds) (1996). Between Monsters, Goddesses & Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science. London: Zed Books. Macdonald, M. (1995). Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media. London: Edward Arnold. Mach, Z. (1993). Symbols, Conflict and Identity: Essays in Political Anthropology. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Maddox, K. B. (2004). ‘Perspective on Racial Phenotypicality Bias’. Personality and Social Psychology Review 8 (4): 383–401. Madigan, M. (1998). ‘Miscegenation and the “Dicta of Race and Class”: The Rhinelander Case and Nella Larsen’s Passing’. Modern Fiction Studies 36 (4): 523–29. Manchel, F. (2007). Every Step a Struggle: Interviews with Seven Who Shaped the African-American Image in Movies. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. Marchetti, G. (1994). Romance and the ‘Yellow Peril’: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

182

Bibliography

Marchetti, G. (1996). ‘Tragic and Transcendent Love in Forbidden City’. In D. Bernardi (ed.), The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 257–70. Marriott, D. (2000). On Black Men. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Martin, O. (1937). Hollywood’s Movie Commandments: Handbook for Motion Pictures Writers and Reviewers. New York: Scribners. Martin, T. (2013). ‘Anti-Racism, Republicanism and the Sarkozy Years: SOS Racisme and the Mouvement des Indigènes de la République’. In F. Barclay (ed.), France’s Colonial Legacies: Memory, Identity and Narrative. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 188–206. Mask, M. (2004). ‘Monster’s Ball’. Film Quarterly 58 (1): 44–55. Mask, M. (2010). Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Matthews, J. (2007). ‘Eurasian Persuasions: Mixed Race, Performativity and Cosmopolitanism’. Journal of Intercultural Studies 28 (1): 41–54. Maurice, A. (2008). ‘What the Shadow Knows: Race, Image and Meaning in Shadows (1922)’. Cinema Journal 47 (3 Spring): 66–89. Mayer, T., ed. (2000). Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. London: Routledge. McClintock, A. (1993) ‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family’. Feminist Review. Vol. 44. McGehee, M. T. (2006). ‘Disturbing the Peace: Lost Boundaries, Pinky, and Censorship in Atlanta, Georgia, 1949-52’. In J. Lewis (ed.), Cinema Journal 46 (1). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 23–51. McGilligan, P. (2007). Oscar Micheaux, The Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Mencke, J. C. (1979). Mulattoes and Race Mixture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Institute of Research Press. Mengel, L. (2001). ‘Triples – The Social Evolution of a Panethnicity: An Asian American Perspective’. In D. Parker and M. Song (eds), Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’. London: Pluto Press, pp. 99–116. Mercer, K. and Julien, I. (1988). ‘Introduction: De Margin and De Centre’. Screen 29 (4): 2–10. Metz, C. (1975). ‘The Imaginary Signifier’. Screen 16 (2): 14–76. Metz, C. (1977/1982). The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. London: Macmillan. Mills, C. (1998). Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Moi, T. (1985). Sexual, Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Routledge. Moi, T., ed. (1986). The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Moran, R. F. (2001). Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morley, D. and Chen, K.-H., eds (1996). Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Morning, A. (2014). ‘Multiraciality and Census Classification in Global Perspective’. In R. C. King-O’Riain, S. Small, M. Mahtani, S. Song and P. Spickard (eds), Global Mixed Race. New York and London: New York University Press, pp. 1–15.

Bibliography

183

Morrisson, T., ed. (1992). Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Pantheon. Mullen, H. (1994). ‘Optic White: Blackness and the Production of Whiteness.’ Diacritics 24: 71–89. Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan. Mulvey, L. (1996). Fetishism and Curiosity. London: BFI. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Cultural Studies of the Americas. Vol. 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Murray, A. (1990). The Omni-Americans: Black Experience and American Culture. New York: Da Capo. Naficy, H. (2001). An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge. Nakamura, L. (2008). ‘Mixedfolks. com: “Ethnic Ambiguity,” Celebrity Outing, and the Internet’. In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, 64–84. Nakashima, C. (1992). ‘An Invisible Monster: the Creation and Denial of MixedRace People’. In M. Root (ed.), Racially Mixed People in America. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 162–79. Nash, G. B. (1992). ‘The Great Multicultural Debate.’ Contention 2. Neale, S. (1979–80). ‘The Same Old Story: Stereotypes and Difference’. Screen Education, 32 (3): 33–7. Neale, S. (1980). Genre. London: British Film Institute. Neale, S. (2002). Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: BFI. Negra, D. (2001). Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom. New York: Routledge. Nishime, L. (2005). ‘The Mulatto Cyborg: Imagining a Multiracial Future’. Cinema Journal 44 (2): 34–49. Nishime, L. (2008). ‘The Matrix Trilogy: Keanu Reeves, and Multiraciality at the End of Time.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 290–310. Nishime, L. (2014). Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press. Omi, M. (1996). ‘Racialisation in the Post-Civil Rights Era.’ In A. F. Gordon and C. Newfield (eds), Mapping Multiculturalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Omi, M. and Winant, H. (1986). Racial Formation in the United States. London: Routledge. Ono, K. (2008). ‘The Biracial Subject as Passive Receptacle for Japanese American Memory in Come See the Paradise.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, 136–56. Oxford English Dictionary (2005). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Park, J. (2008). ‘Virtual Race: The Racially Ambiguous Action Hero in The Matrix and Pitch Black’. In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 182–202.

184

Bibliography

Parker, D. and Song, M., eds (2001). Rethinking Mixed Race. London: Pluto. Parker, A., M. Russo, D. Sommer and P. Yaeger eds (1992). Nationalisms and Sexualities. New York: Routledge. Pettit, A. G. (1980). Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film. College Station: Texas A and M University Press. Philips, A. (1988). Winnicott. London: Fontana Press. Phillips, J. E. (1991). ‘The African Heritage of White America’. In J. E. Holloway (ed.), Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 225–39. Phillips, T. and Phillips, M. (1999). Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain. London: Harper Collins. Pines, J., ed. (1992). Black and White in Colour: Black People in British Television Since 1936. London: BFI. Piper, A. (1996). ‘Passing for White, Passing for Black’. In E. Ginsberg (ed.), Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 234–70. Raimon, E. A. (2004). The Tragic Mulatta Revisited: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Anti-Slavery Fiction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Reed, I. (1989). ‘America’s “Black Only” Ethnicity’. In W. Sollors (ed.), The Invention of Ethnicity. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 226–29. Reid, M. (1993). Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Renan, E. (1882). ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?’ [What is a Nation?]. In A. D. Smith and J. Hutchinson (eds) (1994), Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rich, R. B. (1995). ‘Dumb Lugs and Femme Fatales.’ Sight and Sound 5 (11): 6–11. Riviere, J. (1986). ‘Womanliness as Masquerade’. In V. Burgin et al. (eds), Formations of Fantasy. London: Methuen, pp. 35–44. Robinson, A. (1994). ‘“It Takes One to Know One”: Passing and Communities of Common Interest. Critical Inquiry 20 (4): 715–36. Robinson, R. (2006). ‘Hollywood’s Race/Ethnicity and Gender-Based Casting: Prospects for a Title VII Lawsuit’ UCLA School of Law. Available from: http:// www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/briefs/documents/LPIB_14December2006_000.pdf Rocha, G. (1965). ‘The Aesthetics of Hunger’. In M. Chanan (ed.) (1983), TwentyFive Years of New Latin American Cinema. London: BFI, pp. 13–14. Rockquemore, K. A. (2004). ‘Deconstructing Tiger Woods: the Promise and the Pitfalls of Multiracial Identity’. In H. M. Dalmage (ed.), The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 125–42. Roger, D. L. (1994). ‘The Irony of Idealism: William Faulkner and the South’s Construction of the Mulatto’. In C. Plasa et al. (eds), The Discourse of Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison. London: Routledge, pp. 166–90. Rogers, J. A. (1992). Nature Knows No Color-Line. New York: Helga M. Rogers. Rogin, M. (1992). ‘Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds his Voice’. Critical Inquiry 18 (3): 417–53. Rogin, M. (1996). Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot. Berkeley: University of California Press. Romano, R. (2003). Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bibliography

185

Rony, F. T. (2000). ‘King Kong and the Monster in Ethnographic Cinema’. In K. Gelder (ed.), The Horror Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 242–52. Root, M. P. P., ed. (1992). Racially Mixed People in America. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Root, M. P. P. (1996). ‘A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People’. In M. Root (ed.), The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. London: Sage, pp. 3–14. Root, M. P. P. (2001). Love’s Revolution: Racial Intermarriage. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Ross, K. (1996). Black and White Media: Black Images in Popular Film and Television. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sahlins, P. (2004). Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After. New York: Cornell University. Said, E. (1991). Orientalism. London: Penguin Books. Saks, E. (1988). ‘Representing Miscegenation Law.’ Raritan 8 (2): 39–69. Samuels, A. (2002). Angela’s Fire. Newsweek, July 1. Sandoval-Sànchez, A. (1999). Jose, Can You See? Latinos On and Off Broadway. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Scherr, R. (2008). ‘(Not) Queering White Vision.’ Jump Cut 50: 1–19. Schlesinger Jr, A. M. (1993). The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: Norton. Schwalm, L. A. (1997a). A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Schwalm, L. A. (1997b). ‘“Sweet Dreams of Freedom”: Freedwomen’s Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina’. Journal of Women’s History 9 (1): 9–38. Scott Giles, F. (1995). ‘From Melodrama to the Movies: The Tragic Mulatto as a Type Character’. In N. Zack (ed.), American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 63–78. Senna, D. (1998). ‘The Mulatto Millennium’. In C. O’Hearn (ed.), Half and Half. New York: Pantheon, pp. 12–27. Sevenzo, R. (1995). ‘Manipulation and Contestation: The Question of “Coloured” Identity in South Africa.’ In R. Tapper (ed.), Essays on ‘Mixed Race’ Issues. London: SOAS. Schroeder, E. (2001). ‘A Multicultural Conversation: La Haine, Raï and Menace II Society’. Camera Obscura 16 (1): 143–79. Shohat, E. and Stam, R. (1994). Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. New York: Routledge. Singer, B. (2001). Melodrama and Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. Sisodia, N. (1996). ‘Race and Mixed Race: How Interracial Relationships and People Born of These, are Perceived’. In R. Tapper (ed.), Essays on ‘Mixed Race’ Issues. London: SOAS. Small, S. (2001). ‘Colour, Culture and Class: Interrogating Interracial Marriage and People of Mixed Racial Descent in the USA’. In D. Parker and M. Song (eds), Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’. London: Pluto Press, pp. 117–33. Smith, S. L., Choueiti, M. and Pieper, K. (2016). ‘Inequality in 800 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBT, and Disability from

186

Bibliography

2007-2015.’ Available from: http://annenberg.usc.edu/pages/~/media/MDSCI/ Dr%20Stacy%20L%20Smith%20Inequality%20in%20800%20Films%20 FINAL.ashx Smith, V. (1994). ‘Reading the Intersection of Race and Gender in Narratives of Passing’. Diacritics 24. Smyth, J. E. (2008). ‘Classical Hollywood and the Filmic Writing of Interracial History, 1931-1939.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 23–44. Snead, J. (1994). White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. New York: Routledge. Sobchack, V. (2000). Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sollors, W. (1998). ‘The Multiculturalism Debate as Cultural Text’. In W. F. Katkin et al. (eds), Beyond Pluralism: The Conception of Groups and Group Identities in America. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 63–104. Somerville, S. B. (2000). Queering the Colour Line. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Song, M. (2003). Choosing Ethnic Identity. London: Polity. Spencer, R. (2006). Challenging Multiracial Identity. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Renier. Spencer, R. (2011). Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Renier. Spickard, P. (1989). Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth Century America. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Spickard, P. (2001). ‘The Subject is Mixed Race: the Boom in Biracial Biography’. In D. Parker and M. Song (eds), Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’. London, VA: Pluto Press, pp. 76–89. Spivak, G. C. (1988) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. In P. Williams et al. (eds) (1994), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 66–111. Squires, C. R. (2007). Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America. Albany: SUNY Press. Squires, C. R. (2014). Media and Race in the Twenty-First Century. New York and London: New York University Press. Stallybrass, P. and White, A. (1986). The Poetics and Politics of Transgression. London: Methuen. Stanislavski, C. (1958). Stanislavski’s Legacy. Translated by E. Hapgood. London: Max Reinhardt. Stavney, A. (1998). ‘“Mothers of Tomorrow”: The New Negro Renaissance and the Politics of Maternal Repression’. African American Review 32: 533–61. Stokes, M. and Maltby, R., eds (1999). Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies. London: BFI. Stoler, A. L. (1995). Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stoler, A. L. (2002). Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bibliography

187

Streeter, C. (1996). ‘Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations’. In M. P. P. Root (ed.), The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 305–21. Sullivan, A. (2002). Black Women Make a Date with History. The Times, 21 July. Sullivan, J., ed. (1986). Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural. New York: Viking Penguin Inc. Swain, J. (2008). China’s New Frontier. The Sunday Times Magazine, 10 February, pp. 34–43. Talty, S. (2003). Mulatto America at the Crossroads of Black and White Culture: A Social History. New York: Harper Collins. Tarr, C. (2007). ‘Maghrebi-French (Beur) Filmmaking in Context’. Cineaste 33 (1): 32–7. Tarr, C. (2005). Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (1994). ‘The Politics of Recognition’. In A. Guttman (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 25–74. Taylor, W. (1983), Faulkner’s Search for the South. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Thornham, S., ed. (1999). Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tizard, B. and Phoenix, A. (1993). Black, White or Mixed Race? Race and Racism in The Lives of Young People of Mixed Parentage. London: Routledge. Troeften, D. (2005). Trans/acting Truth: Narrating Transgender in Theory and Practice. Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota. Tyler, C. A. (1997). ‘Passing: Narcissism, Identity and Difference’. In E. Weed et al. (eds), Feminism Meets Queer Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 227–65. Valdivia, A. (2005). ‘Geographies of Latinidad: Constructing Identity in the Face of Racial Hybridity’. In G. Critchlow et al. (eds), Race, Identity and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 307–17. Valdivia, A. (2008). ‘Mixed Race on the Disney Channel: From Johnny Tsunami Through Lizzie McGuire and Ending with The Cheetah Girls.’ In M. Beltràn and C. Fojas (eds), Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press, pp. 269–89. Vaz, K. M., ed. (1995). Black Women in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Vincendeau, G. and Reader, K., eds (1986). La Vie est a Nous! French Cinema of the Popular Front. 1935-1938. London: NFT. Walker, A. (1983). In Search of Our Mothers: Womanist Prose. New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich. Wallace, M. (1990). ‘Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problem of the Visual in Afro-American Culture’. In R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-ha and C. West (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 39–50.

188

Bibliography

Walvin, J. (1997). Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Trade, 1660-1800. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Walvin, J. (2000). Making the Black Atlantic: Britain and the African Diaspora. Leicester: Continuum International Publishing Group, Leicester University Press. Walvin, J. (2001). Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire. London: Blackwell Publishers. Wambu, O. (1998). Empire Windrush. London: Phoenix. Wang, Y. (2005). ‘The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellow Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era’. Camera Obscura 60, 20 (3): 159–91. Warshow, R. (1970). ‘“Movie Chronicle: The Westerner”. The Immediate Experience. New York: Atheneum Books. Wartenberg, T. (1999). Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance as Social Criticism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Watkins, S. C. (1998). Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Watts, E. K. (2010). ‘The (Nearly) Apocayptic Politics of “Post-Racial” America: or, “This is Now the United States of Zombieland”.’ Journal of Communication Inquiry 34: 214–22. Weigman, R. (1995). American Anatomies: Theorising Race and Gender. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Weiss, A. (1992). Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in the Cinema. London: Jonathan Cape. Wells Brown, W. (1853). Clotel, or The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. London: Partridge & Oakey. West, C. (1990). ‘The New Cultural Politics of Difference’. In R. Ferguson et al. (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press in association with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, pp. 19–38. West, C. (1993). Race Matters. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. White, D. G. (1999). Aren’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. White, E. F. (2001). Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. White, L. (2000). Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wihtol de Wenden, C. (2006). ‘Urban Riots in France’. SAIS Review 26 (2): 47–53. Williams, L. (2001). Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, T. K. (1995). ‘The Theater of Identity: (Multi-)Race and Representation of Eurasians and Afroasians’. In N. Zack (ed), American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 79–96. Willett, C., ed. (1998). Theorising Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilson II, C. C. and Gutiérrez, F. (1995). Race, Multiculturalism, and the Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London: The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis.

Bibliography

189

Winters, L. Z. (2009). ‘“More Desultory and Unconnected Than Any Other”: Geography, Desire, and Freedom in Eliza Potter’s A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life. ’ American Quarterly 63: 455–75. Wong, E. F. (1978). On Visual Media Racism: Asians in American Motion Pictures. New York: Arno Press. Wright, R. (1941). Twelve Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States of America. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Wynter, L. (2002). American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America. New York: Crown. Yoshino, K. (2006). Covering: The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights. New York: Random House. Young, R. J. C. (1995). Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge. Yu, H. (1999). ‘Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America’s Fascination with Sex Between “Orientals” and “Whites”’. In M. Hodes (ed.), Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History. New York: New York University Press, pp. 444–63. Yuval-Davis, N. and Werbner, P. (1997). Gender and Nation. London: Sage. Zack, N. (1993). Race and Mixed Race. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Zack, N. (1995). American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield. Zack, N. (2001). ‘Guest Editorial: American Mixed Race: The U.S. 2000 Census and Related Issues’. The Interracial Voice. Available from: http://www. interracialvoice.com/zack.html Zack, N. (2006). Thinking About Race. 2nd edn. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Zanger, J. (1966). ‘The “Tragic Octoroon” In Pre-Civil War Fiction’. American Quarterly 18 (1): 63–70. Zebrowitz, L. A. (1997). Reading Faces: Window to the Soul? Oxford: Westview Press. Zeleza, P. T. (2005). ‘The Postcolonial Uprising in France’. Available from: www.zeleza.com Zipf, K. L. (2000). ‘Reconstructing “Free Woman”: African-American Women, Apprenticeship, and Custody Rights during Reconstruction’. Available from: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v012/12.1zipf.html

Name Index Alba, Jessica  6 Anzaldúa, Gloria  27 n.77, 31–2, 70, 107, 117, 135, 145 Ardizzone, Heidi  81–2 Asante, Amma  2 n.2, 49 Azalea, Iggy  20 Baker, Josephine  5, 35, 51 n.8, 60–6, 104 Bandele, Biyi  49 Barclay, Fiona  159–60 Barrymore, Ethel  75 Bassett, Angela  53 Bastiaans, Aisha D.  47, 69 Beatty, Warren  54 Beavers, Louise  88, 95 Beckford, Tyson  25 Belafonte, Harry  105 Belle, Dido Elizabeth  2 n.2 Beltràn, Mary  19, 29, 47, 51, 162, 165 Benichou, Maurice  42 Bensalah, Djamel  42 Benyamina, Houda  1, 3, 42, 49 Berg, Leah R. Vande  166 Bergan, Ronald  93 Berger, Ron  6 Bernasconi, Robert  12 Berry, Halle  36, 50, 53–6, 167 Bhabha, Homi K.  9, 64, 136, 149, 150 n.32, 165 Bizet, George  105 Bloom, Peter  37 Bogle, Donald  18, 69, 71–2, 75 n.10, 90, 94 Boni-Claverie, Isabelle  115 Bordo, Susan  104 Bost, Suzanne  57 Bouajila, Sami  42, 139 n.14

Bouyain, Sarah  49, 116, 149, 154 Bowser, Pearl  18 Braidotti, Rosi  30 Broca, Paul  61 n.20 Brontë, Charlotte  82 Brosnan, Pierce  54 Brown, Joe David  79 Brown, Lydia  90 Brown, Sterling  57 Buirski, Nancy  2 n.3 Capatti, Alberto  61 Carby, Hazel  100 Carey, Mariah  164 Carter, Gregory T.  53 Cassavetes, John  96, 110 Cawelti, John  136 Chappelle, Dave  52 Chinn, Sarah  6 Chrisafis, Angelique  14 Clooney, George  3 Colbert, Claudette  88 Cook, Pam  145 Coquerel, Flora  15 Courtney, Susan  47, 50, 156 Crain, Jeanne  75 Cripps, Thomas  18 Curran, Brittany  115 Cyrus, Miley  20 Dandridge, Dorothy  18, 21, 30, 104 Danson, Ted  113 Dash, Julie  83 Davis, F. James  31, 74 Debbouze, Jamel  42 Dee, Sandra  100 Deleuze, Giles  30, 135

Name Index Delon, Alain  15 d’Estaing, Valéry Giscard  137 Diesel, Vin  7 n.19, 16 Dolezal, Rachel  19 Douglass, Frederick  140 Downey, Robert Jr.  52–3 Dridi, Karim  42, 115 Du Bois, W. E. B.  95 n.15, 143 Ducastel, Olivier  133, 135 Duvernay, Ava  49 Ebert, Roger  156 Ejogo, Carmen  113 Ellison, Ralph  29, 30 Elmaleh, Gad  42 Ettinger, Bracha  168 Everett, Anna  89 Ezra, Elizabeth  61–2, 135 Famuyiwa, Rick  49 Fanon, Frantz  11, 33, 111, 124, 140–1 Faucon, Philippe  116 Ferla, Ruth La  4 n.7 Fernandez, Wilhelmenia  66 Fetchit, Stepin  18 n.50, 101 Fiske, John  56, 142 Flax, Jane  103 Fojas, Camilla  135, 145, 165 Forsdick, Charles  159 Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey  47 Foucault, Michel  169 Frazier, E. Franklin  59 n.18 Friedberg, Anna  143 Fruleux, Isabelle  115 Frye, Marilyn  28 Gaines, Jane  55 Gay, Amandine  17 Gervais, Ricky  3 Ghorab-Volta, Zaïda  17 Goldberg, Whoopi  3, 113 Goldoni, Lelia  97 Gomis, Alain  49, 137, 149 n.30 Gray, Herman  166 Griffin, John Howard  26 n.75 Guattari, Pierre-Félix  30 Guerrro, Ed  54, 79, 166 Gyllenhaal, Maggie  113

191

Haase-Dubosc, Danielle  66 Hall, Stuart  32, 163, 169 Hammonds, Evelyn M.  16, 26 Handyside, Fiona  150 n.31 Haraway, Donna  16, 31, 144, 168 Hart, Fannie  88 Hartley, Hal  113 Hemings, Eston  33 Hemings, Sally  33 Hernandez, Robb  134 Higbee, W.  138 Holland, Sharon P.  160 hooks, bell  11, 32 Hopkins, Anthony  73 Horne, Lena  21, 30, 35, 93, 104 Hughes, Henry  142 Ifekwunigwe, Jane  27 Irigaray, Luce  103 Jaafar, Ali  84 Jackman, Hugh  54 Jackson, Jesse  28 Jane, Sara  90, 92, 100, 103 Jean-Baptiste, Lucien  3 Jefferson, Thomas  33, 160 Jenkins, Barry  49 Jenner, Kylie  20 Jewell, K. Sue  18 Johnson, Annie  100 Johnson, Dwayne  4, 16–17 Jolie, Angelina  19, 51 Jones, Jacquie  18 Jordan, Michael  39 Joseph, Ralina  9 Judor, Éric  42 Julien, Isaac  29, 55 Kassovitz, Mathieu  39–40, 109, 110, 118, 126 Kawash, Samira  76 Khama, Seretse  2 King-O’Riain, Rebecca C.  6, 8 Kohner, Paul  97 Kohner, Susan  97 Koundé, Hubert  110 Kravitz, Lenny  164 n.28 Kutcher, Ashton  52

192

Name Index

Laing, Sandra  34 Latifah, Queen  53 Leab, Daniel  18 Lee, Josephine  9 Lee, Reba  80 Lee, Spike  3, 17, 23, 39–41, 129 Légitimus, Pascal  120 Le Pen, Marie  110, 15 Limbaugh, Rush  6 n.13, 15 Lipsitz, George  52 Loach, Ken  37 London, Julie  81 Long, Nia  113 Lopez, Ana M.  65 Lyle, Helen  162 n.22 Lynch, Silas  10 McDaniel, Hattie  53 n.11 McGehee, Margaret T.  77 McKinney, Nina Mae  21, 34, 51 n.8 93, 104 McKinnon, Catherine  105 McQueen, Steve  49 Maïga, Aïssa  3 Malik, Abd al  2 n.4 Marchetti, Gina  72, 163 Marianne 133 Markle, Meghan  1 n.1, 6, 7 Marriott, David  140 Marshall, Thurgood  22 n.65 Martineau, Jacques  133, 135 Mask, Mia  15, 54, 55 Matthew, Zora  113 Mauduech, Julie  36, 110 Mencke, John G.  59 n.18 Mengel, Laurie  34, 164 Mercer, Kobena  29, 55 Meredith, Lora  100 Metz, Christian  135 Micheaux, Oscar  23 n.67, 69 n.1 Miller, Wentworth  73 Mitchell, Margaret  57 n.15 Monroe, Marilyn  106 Moore, Michael  3 Moran, Rachel  10 n.24 Morning, Ann  8, 13 n.37 Morrisson, Ernest  50 n.4

Moss, Kate  53 Mullen, Harryette  72 Mulvey, Laura  32, 88, 122 Muñoz, Esteban  107 Munro, Cora  11 n.27 Murray, Albert  4 n.9 Muse, George  62 n.23 Muse, Willie  62 n.23 Naceri, Samy  42 Nakamura, Lisa  9 Nakashima, Cynthia  59–60 Napoléon III  37 Neale, Steve  96 Negga, Ruth  2 Newton, Thandie  49, 53 Nishime, LeiLani  4, 6–8, 25 n.73, 92, 141, 158, 167–8 Noriega, Chon  29 n.83 Nyong’o, Lupita  49 Obama, Barack  6 n.13, 8, 13, 28, 156, 160–1 Okonedo, Sophie  53 Omi, Michael  162 Park, Jane  4, 32, 151, 167 Park, Robert  59 Peele, Jordan  162 Péron, Serge le  137–8 Perry, Lincoln  18 n.50 Perry, Tyler  13 Phipps, Susie Guillory  33 Phoenix, Ann  6 Pinchback, P. B. S.  20 n.57 Pines, Jim  18, 48 Pinkett-Smith, Jada  3 Poirier, Manuel  134 n.3 Poitier, Sidney  22 Powell, Colin  13 Powell, Enoch  15 Powrie, Phil  37 Preer, Evelyn  93 Rabanne, Paco  39 Randall, Alice  57 n.15 Renan, Ernest  134 Reuter, Edward  59 n.18

Name Index Rhimes, Shonda  43 Rice, Condoleezza  13 Rich, Ruby B.  75 Richardson, Marque  114 Robatille, Daniel  162 n.22 Robinson, Amy  26 Rock, The. See Johnson, Dwayne Rockquemore, Kerry  6 Roddenberry, Gene  166 Rogin, Michael  52 Romero, George A.  162 n.22 Royal, Ségolène  14 Saks, Eva  55 Saldana, Zoe  53 Sarkozy, Nicolas  160 Sciamma, Céline  40 n.103 Sembene, Ousmane  149 Senna, Danzy  4, 166 Shohat, Ella  12, 51 Sidibe, Gabourey  163 Simien, Justin  49 Singer, Brian  142 Sirk, Douglas  87, 100 Small, Stephen  6 Smith, Valerie  18 Smyth, J. E.  47, 57, 69 Snead, James  18 Snipes, Wesley  35 Sobchak, Vivian  168 Song, Miri  6, 30 Spaulding, Carol Roh  162 Spencer, Rainier  7 Spickard, Paul  4 Squires, Catherine  9–10, 153, 161–2 Stahl, John M.  87 Stam, Robert  12, 47, 51 Starr, Joey  39 Stenberg, Amandla  51 Stone, Lara  53 Stonequist, Everett  59 Sumner, Cid Ricketts  75, 78 Taghmaoui, Saïd  42 Tarr, Carrie  38 Taylor, Charles  163 Taylor, Clyde  18

193

Taylor, Elizabeth  77 n.14 Thaggert, Miriam  91 Thompson, Tessa  54, 114 Tin, Louis-Georges  14 Tizard, Barbara  6 Tourner, Jacques  11 n.27 Tovar, Lupita  97 Trump, Donald  3 Turner, Lana  100 Van Peebles, Melvin  22, 23 Varda, Agnès  134 n.3 Vidor, King  69 n.1 Walker, Rudolph  73 n.7 Warshow, Robert  135 Washington, Fredi  21, 51 n.8 Waters, Ethel  75 Waters, John  113 Watkins, S. Craig  48 Watts, Eric K.  7 Waugh, Alec  77 Weigman, Robyn  27 Wenden, Catherine Wihtol de  40 West, Cornel  19, 93 White, William L.  71 Williams, Bert  93 Williams, Linda  87 Williams, Ruth  2 Williams, Teresa Kay  4 Williams, Tyler James  114 Williamson, Joel  59 n.18 Winant, Howard  26 Winfrey, Oprah  13 Winters, Lisa Ze  74 Woods, Tiger  13, 25 Wright, Jeffrey  36 Wynter, Leon  151, 168 Young, Robert  169 Zack, Naomi  5, 6, 7, 18 n.51, 28, 34, 61, 168–9 Zantoko, Kamini  2 n.4 Zanuck, Darryl F.  77 Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe  40 Zem, Roschdy  42 Zidane, Zinedane  64

Subject Index Academy Awards  2, 3, 21 n.62, 48, 77 n.14, 104–5 African-Americans 28 Agathe Cléry (2008)  14, 70 Ali G Indahouse (2002)  53 All Lives Matter (slogan)  161 A Man Apart (2003)  16 Amélie (2001)  110 American hypodescent practice  12 n.31 Angel Heart (1987)  35, 154 Antebellum New Orleans  61 anti-miscegenation cinematic template  2, 12 n.30, 69, 71, 73, 144, 153, 157 antislavery auctions’  9–10 Away We Go (2009)  114, 155, 158 Babylon A.D. (2008)  165 Bamboozled (2000)  24, 53 Bande de filles/Girlhood (2014)  15, 40 n.103, 163 banlieue riots  110, 159 banlieue stereotypes  17 Batôn rouge (1985)  138 Baywatch (2017)  4 BBC 2  52 Beat Cinema movement  97 Be Kind Rewind (2008)  36 Belle (2013)  2 n.2, 155 beur cinema  17, 36–44, 137–8, 141 beur-goisie 138 Bienvenue à Marly-Gomont/The African Doctor (2016)  2 Biker Boyz (2003)  25 Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998) 134

Birth of a Nation, The (1915)  5, 10, 56, 58, 90, 91, 159 blackface 52–3 black femininity  54–7 ‘black Garbo, the’  35 Blackinese 25 Black Like Me (Griffin)  26 n.75 Black Lives Matter movement  43 n.108, 161 Black Network, The (1936)  59 Black Panthers  164 n.29 Black.White. (TV show)  52 black/white marriages. See interracial marriages Blade II (2002)  154 Blade trilogy  118 Blaxican (Black/Mexican)  25 Blaxploitation  10, 23, 53 Blended (2014)  163 Blind Side, The (2010)  78, 163 borderlands  31, 70, 117, 135 Bo’Selecta (2002–4)  52 Boys Don’t Cry (1999)  70–1 Bridesmaids (2011)  50 Bringing Down the House (2003)  154 Broken Flowers (2005)  36, 144 n.23 Brown v. The Board of Education 10 n.24, 22 Buck stereotype  164 n.29 Bye Bye (1995)  115 Cablinasian 25 Caché/Hidden (2005)  42, 138, 150, 159 Cahiers du Cinéma 137 California Eagle, The 89 Call Her Savage (1932)  47, 135 Candyman (1992)  162 n.22

Subject Index Carmen Jones (1954)  21 n.62, 30, 58, 104–5 Case départ (2011)  160 n.19 casting, and representation  47–57, 93–6 Catwoman (2004)  36, 54, 156, 165, 167 Charlotte Church Show, The (2006)  52 Chocolat (1988)  140 Chronique d’un été (1961)  66 Cimarron (1931)  57, 135–6 Civil Rights Act of 1964  22, 51 civil rights movement  22, 73 Class Act 50 classic Hollywood casting and representation  93–6 Imitation of Life (1934)  100–4 Imitation of Life (1959)  100–4 performative identities  104–8 Shadows and interracial family 96–9 Cloverfield (2008)  155 colonial mimicry  149 colour-blindness  47–8, 53, 162, 168–9 Come See the Paradise (1990)  118 Corrina, Corrina (1992)  114, 154 CRAN (Conseil Representatif des Associations Noires/The Representative Council of Black Associations) 14 Creed (2015)  48, 54 Critical Mixed Race Studies  11, 25 Crossfire (1947)  79 Crying Game, The (1992)  70, 75, 80 cultural bilingualism  149 cultural mastery  48 cultural shifts melodrama, motherhood and masks 121–5 and mixed masculinity  118–21 racial-sexual mythology and interracial family  125–31 reimagining the nation  112–18 representing ‘mixed-race France’ 109–12 culture wars  159 Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The (2008)  35, 61 n.21

195

Da Ali G Show (2003–4)  52 Daily Worker, The 78 Daughters of the Dust (1991)  83 n.21 A Day in Black and White (1999)  19 n.55, 124 Dear White People (2014)  41, 114, 155, 158, 165 Debt, The (1912)  69 n.1 De Gaulle era  39 Departed, The (2006)  71 Depression  23 n.67 Devil in a Blue Dress (2008)  35, 54 n.12, 70, 72, 74, 80, 84, 154 Die Another Day (2002)  50, 54 ‘differentialist racism’  124 discrimination, racial  11, 14, 21, 23, 51, 59, 88, 90, 99, 141 n.18, 147, 157, 159–60, 161 n.20, 162 Diva (1981)  66–7 Divines (2016)  1–3, 154 Django Unchained (2012)  24, 50, 154, 159 DOMTOMs (Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer)  63 n.24 Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows (2015) 51 Dope (2015)  33, 163 n.26 Do the Right Thing (1989)  40 Drôle de Félix/The Adventures of Felix (1999)  41, 131, 133–51 Duel in the Sun (1946)  69, 135 Easy A (2010)  154 Easy Rider (1969)  134 n.3 Entre les murs/The Class (2008)  15 epidermalization 11 equal opportunity offending. See hipster racism Family Guy (television episode)  164, 165 n.30 Fantastic Four (2005)  156 fantasy/sci-fi films  165–8. See also individual films Far From Heaven (2002)  36, 154 Fast and the Furious, The (2001)  16, 48, 155 Fierrot le pou (1990)  126

196

Subject Index

First World War  35, 51 n.8, 57 FN. See Front National (FN) Folies Bergère 61 42nd Street (1933)  62 Françafrique  149 n.30 France historical mulatta screen stereotype in 60–7 immigration to  13, 136–41 mixed-race cinema space in  33–6 narratives and beur cinema  36–44 national identity search  133–6 ‘post-race’ politics in  159–63 Francophone activist film movement  36, 38, 42, 66, 140, 149 French Napoleonic Code  34 Front National (FN)  137, 139, 148 Gallup poll  82, 158 gender, and love  80–5 Generation E.A. (Ethnically Ambiguous) 4 Generation Mix  4 genre blending  165 Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)  79 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)  106 Get on the Bus (1996)  41 Get Out (2017)  162 ghetto riots  14, 17 Girl with All the Gifts, The (2016)  162 God’s Stepchildren (1938)  69 n.1 Golden Globes  2, 141 n.18 Gone With the Wind (1939)  57 Gothika (2003)  36, 54, 155 ‘grammar of acting’  91 Great White Hope, The (1970)  154 Guardian, The  51 n.7 Guelwaar (1993)  149 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1964)  20, 22, 23, 156 Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964) 113 Hallelujah (1929)  34, 58, 60 Hancock (2008)  154 Hapa 25 Harlem Renaissance  8, 25, 73 Help, The (2011)  78, 163

heterosexuality  10, 42, 79, 89, 119, 126–7, 135, 141 Hey Hey, It’s Saturday (television show)  52, 53 HIP HOP (TV show)  39 hipster racism  165 n.31 historical mulatta screen stereotype in France  60–7 in United States  57–60 Home of the Brave (1949)  94 homosexuality  42, 89, 126, 128, 133–4, 141–2 horror/zombie movies  162 Hors la loi (2014)  159 House Bill 2281  161 Human Stain, The (2003)  36, 70, 73, 154 Hundred Years War  135 hybrid characterization  167–9 ‘hybrid degeneracy’ theories  11–12, 21, 57, 60 hypersexuality  11, 56–8, 142 ‘I AM AFRICAN’ charity campaign  53 identity, mixed-race  163–5, 169 Il a déjà tes yeux/He Even Has Your Eyes (2017)  3, 154 Illusions (1982)  70, 83 Imitation of Life (1934)  5, 51 n.8, 58, 65, 78, 80, 85, 87, 88–92, 155 Imitation of Life (1959)  100–4 I’m Not There (2007)  71 Independent, The 53 Indigènes (2006)  43 n.107, 84, 159 inferential racism  163 Infinitely Polar Bear (2010)  154 In Humanity’s Cause (1911)  71 In Slavery Days (1913)  71 interracial desire  85, 99 n.25, 126, 141 interracial intimacy  10 n.24 interracial marriages  13 n.37, 22, 23, 82 n.18, 156 interracial parents/families  72, 81, 112–18, 133, 144, 148, 153–6, 158–9, 162 and racial-sexual mythology  125–31

Subject Index interracial romance  10, 75, 113, 148 n.27, 155 n.7 interracial sex films  154–5 intertextuality 165 Intouchables (2014)  15, 148, 163 Intruder in the Dust (1949)  94 I Passed for White (1960)  70, 75, 80, 82, 92, 126, 155 Ironman (2008)  51 Island in the Sun (1957)  18, 77, 118, 155 Isolation (2005)  75 Jackson Five  52 Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana 33 Jane Eyre (Brontë)  82 Jazz Singer, The (1927)  52 Jefferson in Paris (1995)  35, 36, 70, 73–4 Jezebel (1938)  47 ‘jezebel’ stereotype  54 Jim Crow era  10, 22, 79, 139 J’irai cracher sur vos tombes/I Spit on Your Grave (1959)  36, 66 Jules et Jim (1962)  110 Jungle Fever (1991)  54 Kevin Bishop Show, The (2008)  52 King Kong (1933)  113 Kings Go Forth (1958)  36, 79–80, 117, 155 Ku Klux Klan  78 Lacanian mirror stage  143 La Folie du jour/The Day’s Folly (1927) 62 L’Afrance/As a Man (2001)  137, 149 n.30 La Graine et le mulet/Couscous (2007)  15, 38 La Haine (1995)  36, 38–40, 109–10, 141, 146 Lakeview Terrace (2008)  41–2, 154 La Pasqua laws  137 La Permission/The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967)  23 La Peur du Métissage 111

197

la politique de la mémoire  23–4, 159 La Revue des revues/The Review of Reviews (1927)  62 La Sirène des tropiques/The Siren of the Tropics (1927)  62 Last Holiday (2006)  155 Last of the Mohicans (1920)  11 n.27 League of Gentlemen, The (1999–2002) 52 le cinema de banlieue (ghetto cinema) 38 Le Figaro Magazine 136 Le Petit lieutenant (2005)  154 Les Apprentis (1995)  110 Les Témoins (2007)  41, 138, 154 Les Trois frères (1995)  109, 119, 123, 133, 145, 151 Les Trois frères, le retour (2014)  121 Le Thé au harem d’archiméde/Tea in the Harem (1985)  38, 138 ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’ (1969) 166 Life magazine  157 Lila dit ça/Lila Says (2004)  36, 146 Little Britain (2003–present)  52 Look Beur 37 Losing Ground (1982)  83 n.21 Losing Isaiah (1995)  54 Lost Boundaries (1949)  21, 71–3, 75, 79, 94, 126, 155 love, and gender  80–5 Loving (2016)  1–2, 7 n.18, 154, 157–8, 165, 169 Loving Story, The (2011)  2 n.3 Loving v. Virginia  2, 7 n.17, 22 Lynx ‘Darkman’ ad  52 Made in America (1993)  36, 154 Mad Men (2003)  52 mainstream cinemas  3 n.6, 17, 19, 21, 24, 38–9, 41–4, 50 n.5, 54, 91, 105, 119–20, 139, 141, 144, 151, 153, 156, 163, 165 n.33 Malcolm X (1992)  41 Male and Female (1919)  70 Marie Claire magazine  37 Marly-Gomont (song)  2 n.4 Maryland General Assembly  10 n.25

198

Subject Index

masculine identity  133–6 MATA (mark all that apply)  25 matrixial borderspace  168 The Matrix trilogy  118, 156, 165, 167 Ma 6-T va-cracker/This Ghetto’s Gonna Explode (1997)  38 Mauvaise foi (2006)  154 MAVIN Foundation  4 n.8 Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative 49 Meet the Blacks (2016)  154, 162 melodrama genre  5, 37, 57, 62, 78, 85, 87, 90, 96, 100–2, 110, 121–5, 127–8, 131, 133, 142, 145, 149, 157, 166 memory wars  159 métissage (mixed-race)  136 Métisse (1993)  36, 39, 109–11, 121–5, 127, 130, 140, 145, 146, 153 A Mighty Heart (2007)  51 Mirabella magazine  15 n.44 miscegenation analogy  25–6, 141–2, 144 Miss France D’Autre Mer (Miss Overseas France) competition 61 mixed/black screen characters  5, 49–51, 119, 140, 162 mixed daughters  153–4, 157 mixed female characters  11, 54–5 mixed marriages. See interracial marriages mixed masculinity  116–21 mixedness  27, 163–6 mixed-race  26 n.75 American cinema history  21–5 and fantasy/sci-fi films  165–8 in French and American cinema 33–6 group, in Britain  13 identity 163–5 methodology and frameworks  30–2 mixed masculinity  116–21 and motherhood  121–5 and ‘post-race’ politics  159–63

representations  47–57, 153, 168–9 representing ‘mixed-race France’ 109–12 and stereotypes  163–5 Mixing Nia  16, 154 mixploitation 53 Mon colonel (2006)  159 Monster’s Ball (2001)  54, 55, 78, 107–8, 154 motherhood 121–5 Mr. and Mrs. Loving (1996)  2 n.3 mulatta  90, 103 mulatta concubine  74 multiculturalism  4, 6, 12, 15, 48, 54, 110, 123 Multi-Facial (1995)  7 n.19, 16 ‘multiracial chic’  4 Multiracial Movement (1990)  59 n.18, 153 multiracial spaces. See racial islands Muriel fait le désespoir de ses parents (1995) 116 My Fair Lady (1964)  64 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) Nakamura, Lisa  120 National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP)  21 national identity search  70, 133–6 Nation of Domination  164 n.29 Native Son (1951/1986)  154 ‘New France’  135 ‘new mestiza’ identity  31–2 New Queer Cinema  134, 142 New Racism, the  12 New York Times, The 39 ‘Nigger Light, The’  50 n.4 Night of the Living Dead (1968)  162 n.22 Night of the Quarter Moon (1959)  81–2, 156 Nina (2016)  53 ‘noble mulatto’ stereotype  164 n.28 ‘noble Negro’ concept  72 non-white actors  49

Subject Index Notre étrangère/The Place in Between (2010)  116–17, 148–50, 154, 165 obsession and imitation  88 Octoroon, The (1912)  71 ‘off-white’ status  6, 19, 72, 162 One Potato, Two Potato (1964)  156 Orientalism 65 Otherness  16, 52, 59, 74, 82, 123–4, 128, 138 2 ou 3 Choses que je sais d’elle (1967) 66 Ouvrir la voix (2016)  17 ‘passing’ narratives  26 gender and love  80–5 overview 69–70 and post-war mixed-race women 75–80 representations as ideological construct 70–5 A Patch of Blue (1965)  156 Perfect Stranger (2007)  54, 71, 75, 80, 155 Pierre et Djemila (1987)  38 Pierrot le fou (1965)  126 Pinky (1949)  21, 58, 72, 75–81, 94, 155 Pitch Black (2000)  16 ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’ episode  167 Plessy v. Ferguson  10 n.24 ‘politique de la mémoire’ movement  144 n.20 Popchips ad  52 postmodern ethnic revival  159 ‘post-race’ comedy  165 n.31 ‘post-race’ politics  159–63 post-war mixed-race women  75–80 Pour la nuit (2005)  109, 115, 145, 154 Pour Vous magazine  62 Precious (2010)  163–4 Princesse Tam Tam (1935)  62, 64–5, 82 Production Code  22, 77 pro-multiculturalism 110 Proposition 54. See Racial Privacy Initiative

199

protean identity  6, 71 Purge, The (2013)  162 Quality (Sumner)  75 Qu’Allah Bénisse la France!/May Allah Bless France! (2014)  2 n.4 Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu/Serial (Bad) Marriages (2004)  147–8, 156–7 race-based separation (communautarisme) 161 race-bending  50–1, 53 race/ethnicity  13–14, 16, 27–8, 31, 33, 38, 42, 48, 50 n.5, 54, 65, 71, 161, 164 borderlands  31, 70, 117, 135 and discrimination  11, 14, 21, 23, 51, 59, 88, 90, 99, 141 n.18, 147, 157, 159–60, 161 n.20, 162 dual  27–8, 144 in horror/zombie movies  162 and ideology  11–21 white  19, 29, 139 racial discourses  16, 20, 55, 64–5, 107, 135 racial entitlement  161 racial intolerance  80, 147–8 racial islands  157 n.13 racial otherness  141 Racial Privacy Initiative  161 racial-sexual mythology  125–31 racial terminology  47–57 racial uplift  78 Raintree County (1957)  77 n.14 Ramona (1936)  47, 57, 135 recognition. See identity, mixed-race reimagining nation  112–18 representations, mixed-race  47–57, 93–6, 153, 168–9 Republican model  137 restrictive covenants  79 n.15 Rhinelander case (1925)  82 Ricki and the Flash (2015)  154 Riddick franchise  165, 167 Ringer, The (2005)  71 Rio Lobo (1970)  135, 145 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech  15 n.42

200

Subject Index

Roach, Hal  50 n.4 Rogue One (2016)  3 n.5 Run, Fatboy Run (2007)  154 Samba (2014)  14, 78, 163 School Daze (1988)  41 sci-fi films, mixed-race  165–8 scopic rule  76, 81 Searchers, The (1956)  135 Second World War  13 n.37, 23 n.67, 35, 36–7, 65, 79, 83, 84 Seven Pounds (2008)  41, 155 sexual otherness  141 shadism  19, 23, 34, 53 shadow families  70 n.3, 142, 150 Shadows (1959)  36, 39, 155 and interracial family  96–9 She’s Gotta Have It (1986)  41, 110 Showboat (1936)  5, 57 SimEve experiment  15–16 Skin (2009)  33 ‘socialised irrationality’  122 Soul Man (1986)  20, 70 Sous la clarté de la lune/Under the Moon’s Light (2004)  148, 150, 154 ‘Sousoundé ’ (soundtrack)  146 ‘species-as-race’ theory  166–7 Spider-man: Homecoming (2017)  51 Stargate (1994)  36 Star Trek (TV series)  166–7 stereotypes, and mixed-race  163–5 Straight Outta Compton (2015)  48, 163 Sunday Telegraph, The 33 ‘Supermodels’ 53 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) 23 Tamango (1957)  112 Tamara (2016)  154 Taxi (2004)  155 thematic layering  165 Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)  50, 54, 118, 143 n.19, 154, 155 ‘Third Space’  9, 31, 34, 72, 107, 109, 146, 150–1, 168 Thor (2011)  51 Thor: Ragnarok (2017)  54

Three Brothers (2005)  118 Tiger Woods Bill  13 Time magazine  15, 16 tragic mulatta  4, 9, 11, 18, 44, 57, 59, 72, 90, 95, 120, 136, 151, 166 in France  60–7 in United States  57–60 Transamerica (2005)  70 transnationality/transnational families and citizenship  136–41 father as dominant figure  143–6 identity search  133–6 reuniting 146–51 trauma and redemption  141–3 violence and scopophilia  136–41 transracial adoption  154 Trick (1999)  134 Tropic Thunder (2008)  53 Trumpet (2003)  73 Truth About Charlie, The (2002)  155 12 Years a Slave (2013)  24, 49, 159 25th Hour (2002)  41, 155 22 Jump Street (2014)  154 2 Days in New York (2012)  154 Tyler Perry Studios  13 n.35 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903)  5, 18 n.49 Underworld franchise  165 Unforgettable (2017)  4, 154 A United Kingdom (2016)  2, 158 United States historical mulatta screen stereotype in 57–60 mixed-race cinema history of  21–5 mixed-race cinema space in  33–6 narratives and beur cinema  36–44 ‘post-race’ politics in  159–63 USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism 49 US Marshals (1998)  35 Usual Suspects, The (1995)  71 Vagabond (1985)  134 n.3 Veiled Aristocrats (1932)  69 n.1 Vers le sud (2005)  140 Victory (1996)  35 n.92

Subject Index Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers  2 n.3 virtual race  167 Vogue 53 Volcano (1997)  20 n.58 Voting Rights Act (1965)  161 Walking Tall (2004)  154 Watermelon Man (1970)  14, 53 Wesh wesh, qu’est ce qui se passe?/What’s Going On? (2002)  38, 137 Western (1997)  134 n.3 White Chicks (2004)  53 whiteface 53

201

white identity/whiteness/ whiteliness  27–9, 50, 54–6, 71–3 ‘White Negro girl’  89 White Slave, The; or, The Octoroon (1913) 71 White (TV series)  52 white-washing. See race-bending Within Our Gates (1919)  90 X-Men franchise  156, 165, 167 xXx (2002)  16 xXx: State of the Union (2005)  50 n.5 zouave (native colonial soldier)  63 Zouzou (1934)  62–3, 107

202

203

204

205

206