“It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are.”
—Annie Johnson, Imitation of Life

Literature helps the reader travel inside the skin of the character—the mystery of another human being—and this understanding unsettles the reader’s received notion about the ‘other,’ a person who might be otherwise judged. The same can be applied to studying a film, allowing us to enhance our appreciation of subject matter that depicts a range of human experience by carefully looking at the artistic systems, such as cinematography, lighting, costume, and acting, that produce a rich and textured work of art. Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodramatic film Imitation of Life, which depicts the lives of four different people living in a world that is beyond their control, is a film that operates at the level of art. The first half of the film deals with a question from a feminism perspective, about what it means to be a woman living in a male-dominated society, and the second half addresses the perspective of how women of color are affected by racism. It is a story about imitating, pretending to be something that isn’t true. However, what is true is what the characters literally see—gender and race—something no one can walk away from.

Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), a white woman who is a widow and an aspiring actress, is always pretending by acting as a way of escaping the hardships of raising her only daughter, Susie (Sandra Dee) on her own with very little money; Lora defies stereotypes by not letting any man control her or get in the way of her success while, with a twist, maintaining proper “feminine” standards of being a good mother. Susie’s imitation of life is how she pretends to be a “daughter,” receiving all of the love and affection from someone other than her mother while desperately showing her love to a man, Steve Archer (John Gavin), love that is unrequited. Sarah Jane Johnson (Susan Kohner), spends her whole life imitating, pretending she is white, when she is actually black. Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), Sara Jane’s mother, is a black woman experiencing a “double-consciousness.” According to W. E. B. DuBois’s The Soul of Double Consciousness, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (qtd. in Bressler). Annie is living in this world twofold—a white world necessary for survival (working as a live-in maid for Lora Meredith and Susie) and a black world for companionship (being part of her church community outside her workplace). All of these characters provide examples of imitation in their performances, except for Annie, who lives her life by accepting the burdens of reality of what it means to be a black woman in a world that is not racially accepting. However, in Lora, Susie and Sarah Jane’s cases, authenticity is punished in a male-dominated world, one that is stacked against women. While all of these examples of imitations are important for discussion, the focal point of this essay will be about Sarah Jane Johnson and how her imitation of life affects her and her mother, Annie, as women of color.

Created by society, race is a pure construct that has no real meaning, and what is underneath the variations of skin color—blood—is a reminder of the humanity that we all share in common. Despite this truth, Sarah Jane, a light/not white little girl, is told by someone at her school that “Negro blood was different” (Imitation of Life). For experimental purposes, Sarah Jane cuts her and Susie’s wrists to see if they both have the same color blood. These arbitrary racial distinctions are devastating to Sarah Jane, making her feel that she has to pretend to be white in order to escape this racially constructed prison. Sarah Jane’s racial suffering resonates on the surface—her skin color. Even though she looks and can pass for white, she rejects her own racial identity and enters a state of “unhomeliness,” a term coined by Homi K. Bhabha that refers to the sense of not feeling at home in any culture (qtd. in Bressler 205). Sarah Jane feels that she doesn’t completely fit in in either black or white culture. Annie argues, “It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are. And it is even worse to pretend, to lie” (Imitation of Life). But Annie’s racial suffering comes from within. She asks Lora a question that no parent can empirically answer: “How do you explain to your child that she was born to be hurt?” (Imitation of Life). Even though Annie is content with who she is as a black woman, her pain is evident throughout the film. For instance, Annie tells Lora after being newly hired as a maid, “Miss Lora, we just come from a place where my color deviled my baby. Now, anything happens here has got to be better” (Imitation of Life). Unfortunately, this isn’t true.  

The mise-en-scene sets the stage for the world outside looking into this experience. The color in the film brings out the vibrant richness in their costumes, which underscores the importance of pretending in this world, and the melodramatic music score works with the dramatic camera angles and lighting, suggesting that both Sarah Jane and Annie are seemingly radiant, but with an emotional and physical exhaustion that undermines the beauty. The music emphasizes the drama of pretending, while the cinematography brings the audience close to the characters’ suffering.

The character that best represents the pain of imitation in a hateful world is Sarah Jane, and her imitation of life creates a world of discomfort. For instance, the placing of the cameras reveals something important about this world of central hatred and racial despair. These camera angles suggest Sarah Jane’s illusion, creating this border that she can never crossover as we will see in several scenes. For example, after Lora makes it as a wealthy successful actress, she hosts parties in her new lavish home. Even though Sarah Jane looks and can pass for white, she is never invited to any of Lora’s parties, which makes Sarah Jane’s illusion a failure, while her true identity limits her opportunities in life.

A powerful resonating scene that occurs in the film is when Sarah Jane meets with a boy from Greenwich Village, Frankie (Troy Donahue), in a desolate back alley. Here Sarah Jane explains about the complications she is having at home with her mother and asks Frankie about running away together and going to New Jersey to find work. The camera moves back a little, showing Frankie standing with his back leaning up against a store window facing Sarah Jane.  This shot is intriguing because at one moment you see them together, but then suddenly Frankie moves back and away from her, creating this “doubling” but separating effect with the reflections in the window. In other words, she is staring at him and yet, in the shot she appears because of her reflection to be behind him—she is both facing him and not facing him—she is not with him but behind him. So, what this shot in this scene suggests is that the only reality demonstrated here is Frankie’s reflection of Sarah Jane, and the reality of that illusion is something that Sarah Jane cannot see, or touch. Even when Frankie supposedly loves her, when he sees beneath her fiction, he immediately turns on her. In other words, this experience reinforces her idea that she has to lie and can’t be herself because her true self is hated and slapped into her in the street. This scene unsettles the audience because when the camera pans over and then the audience sees the real Frankie and the reflected Sarah Jane, the viewer can understand that Frankie can be who he is because he is white and doesn’t have to pretend. However, Sarah Jane, in his presence, can’t be her true self and can only be a reflection—something that is not real.

Sirk’s film techniques such as music and camera angles underscore his critique of the way race played out in this era in America in the 1950s.  An example of the way Sirk’s film techniques emphasize his point occurs in the scene when Annie finds out that Sarah Jane lies about working at the library and soon discovers Sarah Jane working as a dancer at Harry’s Club.  The song that Sarah Jane sings in her dance performance is “Empty,” and the lyrics are emotionally engaging:

The loneliest word I’ve heard of is empty.
Anything empty is sad.
An empty purse can make a good girl bad.
You hear me, dad?
The loneliest word I’ve heard of is empty.
Empty things make me so mad.  (Imitation of Life)  

The song is suggesting that Sarah Jane is empty and homeless. Her sense of “unhomeliness” and not belonging in either culture leaves her lonely, truly unable to connect to anyone--black or white.  

The camera angles in the nightclub scene are set up in many interesting ways. For instance, the use of venetian blinds and the shadowing of black and white creates this discreet blending-in filtering through the blinds with a splotching of different colored flesh tones. Before confronting Sarah Jane, Annie is standing behind the blinds; this looks like she is standing behind bars—a prisoner of her own circumstance—a barrier she is not allowed to crossover to reach her daughter. Next, Sarah Jane is in the center of the screen, not standing behind the venetian blinds, talking to a man who is standing discreetly behind the blinds inquiring if she has a boyfriend. This separation effect occurs when Annie appears from the right of the screen yelling at her daughter; then suddenly the manager of the nightclub steps in between Sarah Jane and Annie, and Sarah Jane’s identity as a black woman is exposed. No matter where she goes, the reality is always present and the past keeps haunting her. The color of her skin, in other words, shadows her. Sarah Jane is judged because once she is identified for who she truly is, she is never looked at in the same way. This experience of being judged has an effect on her; she is being dragged toward self-loathing by the culture’s insanity.

Another example of the use camera angles occurs in a pivotal scene where Sarah Jane’s mother visits her for the last time in Hollywood as Sarah Jane dances at the Moulin Rouge. The camera angles are set up to create two effects—separation and the doubling of the mirror image.  Annie goes to Sarah Jane’s hotel room, and in one shot the camera is placed behind a chair, creating a separation between the two:  the arm of the chair creates a border between the women, reinforcing the distance of skin color—light/not quite white and a black woman.

This distance is also evident in the mirror image in the scene, again suggesting that Annie’s image is real because she is not pretending to be something other than she is. For instance, the mirror shows only one image of Annie, while Sarah Jane is doubled, emphasizing her “double-consciousness” in part because she cannot accept who she really is. This effect is interesting again because the image of Annie is behind Sarah Jane and not with her, which suggests that Sarah Jane cannot accept her mother. Sarah Jane chooses to push her mother away by continuing to run away from the reality of her identity. Sirk again underscores in this scene the pain of distance and illusion between Sarah Jane and Annie. 

Film is a medium that tells a story through images. The powerful images in the scenes carry the weight of the story. What these images tell the audience is that women of color have a hard time feeling at home in any culture and leading an authentic life rather than experiencing a sense of double-consciousness. Imitation of Life with its emphasis on the performance of race and gender roles in the 1950s makes the audience question the necessity of these roles.

Works Cited

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introductory to Theory and Practice. 5th Edition.
Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. 2011. Print.

Imitation of Life. Dir. Douglas Sirk. Perf. Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Sandra Dee,  Dan O’Herlihy, Susan Kohner, and Robert Alda. Universal Pictures, 1959. Film. 2019. iTunes.

Originally from Maplewood, NJ, Ilari Pass is a retired maintenance worker for the United States Postal Service of twenty plus years. She holds a BA from Guilford College of Greensboro, NC, and an MA in English, with a concentration in literature, from Gardner-Webb University of Boiling Springs, NC.