Divided Images: Black Female Spectatorship and John Stahl's Imitation of Life

Abstract

In her discussion of the maternal melodrama, E. Ann Kaplan notes that the mother is usually marginal in traditional cinema. Stories told from the viewpoint of the husband or child displace the mother's perspective, a displacement that Kaplan recognizes in other arenas such as psychoanalysis and the women's movement itself. She ends her essay by stating the necessity for feminists to examine the absent position of the mother and the coding of her negativity in films (Case 126, 135). Melodrama provides a fertile space for such questioning because of its emphasis on the family and its contradictory presentation of the mother. As Linda Williams notes, device of devaluing and debasing the actual figure of the mother while sanctifying the institution of motherhood is typical of 'the woman's film' in general and the sub-genre of the maternal melodrama in particular (138). The importance of the maternal has long been recognized by black feminists. Not only has the mother figure been employed as a means for the discussion of black feminism, but this figure has also been articulated in ways that often differentiate it from conventional paradigms. Patricia Hill Collins, for instance, seeking to illustrate the type of mothering that occurs in black communities in which a network: of women care for children who are not their own, has suggested the term othermothers to incorporate these non-related women into the discussion on black families (119). The space created by these women provides a location for the potential formation of black feminist ideas. The term womanist, used to connote a special kind of feminism among women of color, stresses the mother or maternal figure who acts as a mentor for other, usually younger, women and recognizes the pressures of being a mother in academia (Phillips and McCaskill 1008). Both of these definitions emphasize the respect granted to the black mother. When discussing cinema, black women also turn to a melodramatic film. Imitation of Life provides a unique intersection of feminist film theory and black female spectatorship. In both John Stahl's 1934 film and Douglas Sirk's 1959 film of Fannie Hurst's novel, black women occupy a space closer to the center than in most other Hollywood movies, for Hurst's novel portrays the strained relationship between a black mother and her light-skinned daughter, who wants desperately to be white. Significantly, this drama has been the focus of black feminist discussions on the portrayals and reception of black women in films. Jacqueline Bobo analyzes both movies to discuss black women as cultural interpreters. In particular, she suggests that Nana Peazant, the influential grandmother in Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, provides an alternative to the black mothers in Imitation of Life. Several women wash Nana's feet to show respect to her, while both versions of Imitation of Life show black women rubbing the feet of white women, suggesting their subservience (46-50). For bell hooks, Stahl's film initially caused her to stop going to movies, yet as an adult helped her form an oppositional with which to question the imaging practices of Hollywood cinema (121). hooks's term suggests a wide variety of distinctions from the white masculinist gaze described by Laura Mulvey. In her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey argues that cinema employs two mechanisms to create pleasure in the male viewer. Men in the audience engage in scopophilia, or the pleasure in looking at an object. This pleasure is derived primarily by gazing at the image of a woman, scantily dressed or heavily made up. The second method that creates pleasure combines scopophilia with narcissism in that male viewers find pleasure in looking at the male protagonist of the film. The film's hero is often portrayed as superior to most men. In a cinematic enactment of Jacques Lacan's concept of the mirror stage, the male viewer is fascinated that he looks somewhat like this ideal person on the screen and is pleased in recognizing himself. …