Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 76

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Popular Culture Review

contends that “the contradictory evidence of blood that is both visible and invis
ible, not there one minute and there the next [is part of the] ... mysterious process
of racial identification, the visible is no guarantee of anything....” Susan Courtney
asserts that the issue is “not only how subjects are culturally identified as raced
subjects (’black’ ’white’) but how subjects psychically identify with such
interpellations” that hint at the dilemma Pinky confronted. When a white actress
assumes the mulatto role, the way in which the cinema industry visibly constructs
race is still at issue, and if the construct that is provided is an artificial construct,
then can race be visibly represented or is it as Courtney suggests “perpetually
constructed through discourse?”
Because of white paranoia or fear associated with passing, and whites' accep
tance of the notion that even a drop of black blood would somehow be tainting,
passing is much less related to blacks masquerading as white than it is to whites
fearful of their lack of race purity. Elspeth Kydd argues that “Mrs. Wooley repeat
edly talks about ‘keeping the house in the family.’ Perhaps her ultimate fear is that
this is exactly what Miss Em is doing.” Williamson adds that “Blackness had be
come not a matter of visibility, not even, ironically, of the one-drop rule. It had
passed on to become a matter of inner morality and outward behavior. People
biologically black in any degree could not openly aspire to whiteness; but whites
could easily descend into blackness if they failed in morality.” It is Williamson’s
supposition of what Michael Rogin termed, “fascination with racial masquerade”
that gives countenance to the argument I present below.
Articulating Voice(s)
As Pinky comes to terms with remaining in the South, re-connecting with black
ness, and engaging in the struggles associated with being black, she prepares to
fight to retain property legally inherited. Both she and the film experience shifts in
voice. The film primarily unfolds through alternating female and male voices. On
one level, the voices are those of women (even though they are male constructions)
who are in contest with each other (Dicey, Pinky, Miss Em, Melba). On another
level, the voice then shifts from female to male (specifically, white male), when
Pinky challenges a white patriarchal system in a battle to retain her property. The
shift from female to male voice is most visibly apparent during her legal proceed
ings and includes the white male voices of the judge, the attorneys, the witnesses,
and the predominately white male courtroom attendants. Melba automatically aligns
herself with these males, but even Pinky engages a white male attorney demon
strating her perception of needing his voice in order to emerge victorious.
Race plays an especially complex part in this contest over property. The victo
rious position occupied by the mulatto is threatened even after the court awards
the property to Pinky. She receives a warning that although she won the legal