I agree that Pinky seems a quaint Hollywood anachronism--I think it became

so quite quickly because of the rapid pace of Civil Rights in the postwar

era.  Yet I don't think that that means that it's entirely obsolete.

What's interesting to me about the film is the way that it manages to

naturalize Pinky's relation to a black identity; the film must avoid, at

all costs, allowing Pinky to "cross the line" permanently, so it has to

find ways to domesticate its heroine, to make the "return" to black

community seem inevitable and convincing.  The film does this in a way

that is quite similar to the way that women's films redomesticate the home

sphere for their heroines.  Plus there's the issue of the anxiety of white

spectatorship:  what were white film audiences of the '40s thinking when

they saw Jeanne Crain (well known for being a girl-next-door type) in

the role of a "mulatta" passing for white?  The film may deal with anachronis-

tic political and legal issues (e.g. should Crain's character be allowed

to inherit her white benefactress' mansion?), but the way that it

thematizes issues of racial identity (and the compulsary nature of the racial

binary) seem equally relevant in 1994.  I think it's healthy to be wary

anytime we want to congratulate ourselves for "progress"; in some ways,

a more recent film (like Soul Man, released in '92???) is more retrograde

in its thinking about race and gender than Pinky.

 

Gayle