Does the gaze truly see?: Living Between Societal Witnessing and Perpetual Invisibility
Objective
My research observes specific scenes from Imitations of Life through Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, specifically Mulvey’s notions of bearers and makers of meaning. This work looks at Sarah Jane and Annie Johnson, specifically at Sarah Jane’s racial identity and Annie Johnson’s assumed societal positionality to show how the gaze does not see but merely translates societal narratives. As Mikki Kendall writes in Hood Feminism “traumas of the past are woven into the fabric of our coping mechanism,” my work builds upon this notion by declaring the gaze as a translator. Additional theoretical frameworks such as Christina Sharpe’s Beauty is a Method, bell hooks’ The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, Saidiya Hartman’s A Minor Figure, and Patricia Hill Collins’ The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Culture and Black Mother/Daughter Relationships will be used to support the observation of the characters and their told and untold stories.Three questions that build the foundation of my analysis.
- Does the gaze truly see?
- If it does, what happens when one is truly seen?
- If it doesn't, is the self rendered in a state of being witnessed through societal misperceptions of identity resulting in perpetual invisibility?
My research argues that Sarah Jane and Annie Johnson are witnessed through a gaze that looks at them but does not truly see their identities and stories which makes their existence invisible.
MAMMY TROPE
In Patricia Hill Collins’ The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Culture and Black Mother/Daughter Relationships, Collins describes the trope as “The mammy, the faithful, devoted domestic servant. Like one of the family, Mammy conscientiously “mothers” her white children, caring for them and loving them as if they were her own. Mammy is the ideal Black mother for she recognizes her place. She is paid next to nothing and yet cheerfully accepts her inferior status.” The mammy trope functions around the notion that overly excited Black women consent without commenting on how exploitation is used to racially skew power dynamics that suppress Black women’s labor by paying low wages while prioritizing the high demands required to care for white children.- Her very first introduction to the film, Annie is assumed by Lora Meredith to be a “mammy” and not the biological mother of Sarah Jane. This notion of the mammy trope is presented throughout the film and touches on racial struggles between the character’s identities. The audience's gaze is confronted with the looking but not truly seeing of Annie’s identity. The gaze that assumes identity rather than acknowledges identity because of societal ideas regarding Black women which lean toward belittlement, demoralization, or dehumanization. Dr. Hartman poses a brilliant question regarding the identity of a Black child in a photograph while situating racial stereotypes that Black women are subjected to saying “ Who is she? I suppose I could call her Mattie or Kit or Ethel or Mabel. Any of these names would do and would be the kind of name common to a young colored woman at the beginning of the twentieth century. There are other names reserved for the dark: Sugar Plum, Peaches, Pretty Baby, and Little Bit-names imposed on girls like her that hint at the pleasures afforded by intimate acts performed in rented rooms and dimly lit hallways.” (14) Like the little Black girl in the photograph that Dr. Hartman is discussing, it is in the act of societally naming and un-naming of an identity that curses Annie Johnson.
- Annie uses that distortion to create a life for her child, a home for her child. In this act of knowing she is not truly seen, Annie responds to Lora by asking if she needs “someone to take care of your little girl? A strong, healthy, settled down woman who eats like a bird and doesn’t care if she gets no time off and will work real cheap?” Annie is deliberating using the gaze that positions her as a carer of white children to survive not only for herself but for her child.
SLAVE NARRATIVES
The gaze that sees Annie as the “mammy” and Sarah Jane as the “mulatto” can be directly tied to slavery during America’s colonial era. Both Annie and Sarah Jane are the result of the positionality that renders Black women in constant relation to their skin, the service they can provide, and the colonial era, as Annie was denied the right to be a mother and Sarah Jane was denied a mother. Bell hooks in aint I a woman elaborates on the societal position of Black slave women’s offspring stating, “the offspring of any Black slave woman regardless of the race of her mate would be legally slaves, and therefore the property of the owner whom the female slave belonged” The legalities surrounding Black enslaved women’s children empowered plantation owners to largely recognize the economic gain of breeding Black enslaved women.- Sarah Jane is constantly confronted with her mothers race while there are little to no inquiries regarding her father’s race. This directly situates Sarah Jane within the gaze that centers racial biases that are built upon slave narrative such as social positionality being dictated by maternal status.
On a night full of optimism, Sarah Jane rushes to meet Frankie in hopes that they will run away together to Jersey.
- It is in the connection between the audience, Frankie, and Sarah Jane’s gaze that we can get a glimpse into how each of these gazes either did not see Sarah Jane at all or distorted her story into a completely different meaning.
From first glance, there are three gazes in this scene, Sarah Jane looking at Frankie, Frankie looking at Sarah Jane, the audience looking at them both. However, there is a fourth gaze, one of the most important gazes in the frame, which is Sarah Jane’s reflection looking back at her through the window. For this analysis, it is in Sarah Jane’s reflection that the gaze and its effects on her identity truly lies.
Sarah Jane’s smile can be also witnessed as her attempt to placate society, as Frankie in this instance would be metaphorically society. She looks at society with a smile and society looks back at her. In this analysis, society is the focus as Frankie is seen twice and Sarah Jane is only seen as a reflection or a mere afterthought. We can see Frankie’s face and the back of his body as if we are seeing both the looking and unseeing of Sarah Jane. Frankie’s face represents society directly confronting Sarah Jane with her racial identity and connection to blackness. The back of Frankie’s head represents the looking away and unseeing of Sarah Jane’s “true” identity. Sarah Jane is seen only as a reflection. This can be witnessed as Sarah Jane being denied the right to make her own meaning but rather a mirror of society and how she is seen through that gaze. The reflection represents how Sarah Jane is seen and not how she sees herself, thus distorting her story into a meaning that is acceptable by society. The window is a very powerful presentation of all of these gazes. Sarah Jane's reflection looking back at her could symbolize the very transformation that she had to endure. She is the product of all the gazes looking and unlooking.
In this moment, Annie is positioned similarly to how Sarah Jane was seen with Frankie, as a mere reflection. Annie now is seen only as the reflection, as the afterthought. Annie is the reflection and not the subject. This can be witnessed as Sarah Jane’s persistence to erase her mother, her blackness from her life. It is the act of looking at Annie’s reflection and not facing her that Annie is rendered imagined. This connection to the imaginary can be further examined when Sarah Jane’s friend sees Annie as having been Sarah Jane’s mammy growing up. Sarah Jane responds to her friend saying “all my life.” By saying these words, Sarah Jane is displaying the trauma that has been produced by society repeatedly seeing Annie as the mammy trope. Annie has had to bear the meaning of being seen as a “mammy” to her biracial child but it was also Sarah Jane who bears that meaning as well. Annie was denied being a mother and subsequently Sarah Jane was denied a mother. For Sarah Jane’s entire life, Annie resided in the imaginary and forced to live within the meaning society enforced. This trauma can be witnessed as Annie lives in the reflection, reflecting back the societal imprint that Sarah Jane actively attempts to erase.