“It Ain't Fittin'” Cinematic and Fantasmatic Contours or Mammy in Gone with the Wind and Beyond

Abstract

The racial stereotype of the mammy figure continues to proliferate in North American culture despite its blatantly offensive and seemingly archaic character. Mammy's continued popularity is evidenced by her numerous literary and film appearances, as well as by the consumer appeal she exercises in the form of Aunt Jemima. Mammy is here analyzed as a dominant cultural fantasy, and the Mammy in Gone with the Wind is closely examined. The mammy fantasy, it is argued, remains active today in the context of the cultural construction of whiteness. Elements of Kleinian and Lacanian theory are brought together to elucidate ways in which primitive defensive mechanisms are retroactively represented in racial terms.