Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 85

Miss Em’s Voyeuristic Gaze of P in k y

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course about prejudice operated as a relay between Pinky’s attempt to produce
herself as raced and Tom’s refusal to read her.” When Pinky and her white fiance
Tom meet on screen, they kiss and embrace. Hollywood producers did not have
the license or liberal tendency to screen a more physical interracial romance in the
late 1940s, and even that mild a scene might have been a problem, had the two
actors embracing not both been white
Conclusion
Pinky’s mediated status as neither black nor white allows her to become a
voyeur in both worlds (black and white) without having to relinquish the safe zone
of whiteness. Because she is played by a white actress, Crain’s acceptance of the
role did not escape critique by both the mainstream and African American press.
For example. Time magazine observed of Crain that “with an un-greasepainted
face, [she] seems like a morbid, almost marbleized Sleeping Beauty, bewitched by
her conflict” - a not so subtle attempt to hint at her ambiguity marking the mulatto
character. Conceived from a white imagination, and because she has emerged from
a white patriarchy, she is a commodification of whiteness though marked with
blackness to reify her ambiguous status. While her unique subject position as a
mulatto allows her to be a voyeur to transcend the inside and outside as Trinh
Minh Ha terms, “Not quite the same, not quite the Other,” she provides an unend
ing fascination to a variety of spectators.
The fact that spectators are sympathetic to her plight suggests how the film
channels emotional investment to the mulatto (who, complicating the viewers’
involvement, is actually a white actress). In fact, it is the black female Dicey,
impoverished and exploited, with whom we should be sympathetic. Demonstra
tive of how spectators responded to the film, in Atlanta, although film censors
deleted several scenes (e.g., attempted rape, and love scenes between Pinky and
Tom) when the picture was exhibited at the Roxy Theater, “both the balcony and
first floor moviegoers vigorously applauded the victory for Jeanne Crain.... While
there was no semblance of a demonstration, the picture was painful to many in the
white section of the theatre. It made them squirm, but at the same time, made them
see how intolerant their attitudes are.” Undeniably, the screenplay while it suc
ceeded in evoking sympathy, similarly misdirected the emotional investment of
spectators both white and black, demonstrating how the film appropriates white
ness through the black experience.
Black newspaper critics were among the harshest critics of this film. For ex
ample,
Afw-Americcuu Baltimore, was insulted by the subtle suggestion that if
Pinky had decided to marry her white fiance she would have had to keep her iden
tity a secret and remain veiled behind her white masquerade; an act that they viewed
as a deliberate attempt to erase her blackness. The Chicago Defender look offense