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WHITE
WOMEN BREAK THROUGH THE COLOR LINE IN THE 1940S & 1950S
IN TWO FILMS
Women's liberation followed Black liberation in
the 1960s, and White women played a role in the latter. Two
recent films, The Rising Place and
Far from Heaven connect us with
the origins of the role of White women in breaking through
the color line.
Many American films depict the South in a very bad light,
so a more balanced cinematic presentation may tend to be heartwarming.
The Rising Place, directed by Tom
Rice and based on the novel by David Armstrong, falls into
the latter category. The film centers on Emily ("Millie")
Hodge (played by Laurel Holloman as a young woman, by Alice
Drummond as a dying woman), from her courageous stand to protest
bigotry in 1945 until her death, told with flashbacks and
flashforwards. The heart of the film is about the deaths of
two fine African Americans in Hamilton, Mississippi. During
World War II, a Black man took a job while Eddie Scruggs (played
by Scott Openshaw), a White man, went off to the war; he proved
to be an excellent worker. When Eddie returns from the war,
he importunes Will because he does not get the job back and
then nearly bludgeons him to death. Since Eddie's father is
the town mayor and a candidate for senator, he is not prosecuted.
When Wilma Watson (played by Elise Neal), a Black schoolteacher,
decides to organize a protest about the injustice that includes
marking out the name of the senatorial candidate on posters,
Eddie confronts her belligerently. Backing up on a porch to
avoid him, she falls through a loose railing to the ground,
where her head hits a stone and she dies. Millie then appears,
and Eddie runs away. Millie decides to testify in a trial
conducted in Jackson, the state capitol, about the apparent
murder, and Eddie convicts himself through an outburst in
court. However, Millie is blackballed in town, not only because
of her testimony in court but also because she became pregnant
out of wedlock (the baby is taken away from her at birth for
adoption), so her father buys her a house some distance from
the town, and her indiscretions are hushed up. Millie, however,
has a habit of writing eloquent letters to her promiscuous
pilot boyfriend Harry Devening (played by Jackson Walker),
who dies in the war, and the letters are returned to her.
One day a gentleman stops by her place while traveling from
nearby Memphis. In his role as her boyfriend's commanding
officer, he read the letters in Europe and feels compelled
to compliment her for her good deeds in bringing about justice.
His visit prompts her to rethink her reclusive existence and
thus became the "rising place" in her life. She
then becomes a successful schoolteacher, loved by all in town.
Some years later, when Millie is feeble and cared for by her
sister, her niece Virginia Wilder (played by Frances Fisher)
arrives in town to celebrate Christmas with the family, discovers
the letters, and informs Millie on her deathbed how much she
admires her courage and graciousness. What is clear in the
plot is that women maintain what is often called the Southern
way of life through courtesy and decency, while White men
either engage in disreputable deeds or fear the opprobrium
of other men. White women lack racist prejudice in the film,
associating with each other as best friends, while White men
harbor maneuver to maintain dominance. Such a view of the
South was previously seen, albeit more eloquently, in Driving
Miss Daisy (1989), Fried Green Tomatoes
(1991), and Cookie's Fortune
(1999).
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More
of the same is always welcome as the United States continues
to deal, not always successfully, with institutional racism,
North and South. MH
What
could be more heavenly than a beautiful house surrounded by
trees resplendent with autumn leaves, a happily married couple,
and two adorable children in 1957, when civility and courtesy
were the norm in interpersonal relations? In Far
from Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes,
the principal characters discover private hells that were
absent from the much ballyhooed Pleasantville
(1998). Although women defer to men, and children obey orders
from parents without question, the cracks in the orderly world
of the 1950s are initially hidden from view. Frank Whitaker
(played by Dennis Quaid) is an advertising agency executive
in Hartford. His loving wife Cathy (played by Julianne Moore)
has such a busy social and philanthropic schedule that she
is interviewed and photographed for an issue in the local
society column early in the film. While the interview is in
progress, Cathy suddenly sees a strange Black man, Raymond
Deagan (played by Dennis Haysbert) in her yard. When she goes
outside to talk to him, he informs her that he has taken over
the gardening job from his father, who recently died. The
Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in 1954, and we
see a clip from President Eisenhower's announcement in 1957
that he would not allow Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas
to use the state national guard to block desegregation of
Little Rock High School. Although in suburban Hartford Blacks,
called "colored people," are servants, not equals,
Cathy shows no prejudice and finds Deagan to be an excellent
interlocutor, informing her about his daughter, his store,
and the late Mrs. Deagan. The Whitakers also have a Black
housemaid, Sybil (played by Viola Davis). Meanwhile, Frank
appears to be an alcoholic. At the beginning of the film his
wife must bail him out of jail for driving under the influence
of alcohol, and the next morning, upon his arrival at work,
he secretly pours a drink into his coffee. That evening he
informs Cathy that he must work late and instead goes to a
gay bar for a drink, and in due course she finds her husband
kissing another man late at the office. Although Frank promises
to get a cure for his inexplicable compulsion, including both
psychiatry and a second honeymoon with Cathy in Miami, Frank
finds an attractive young man on the trip who persuades him
to give up his marriage so that he can have a life together
with his boyfriend. Meanwhile, Cathy allows Deagan to drive
her to a nursery and to a restaurant frequented by Blacks,
but a White woman at a nearby carwash discovers her being
accompanied by Deagan, and soon suburban telephones are ringing
off the hook, Sybil's daughter is hit by a rock after school,
and rocks are thrown at windows by Black people into Deanna's
house. The couple has a divorce, and Deagan leaves town for
Baltimore. But Frank and his lover may break up, and Cathy
may pursue Deagan as the races desegregate more quickly in
the 1960s. Far from Heaven shows
that individual human proclivities to be human proceeded faster
than the general recognition of the need for a more diverse
society, a point that is nothing new. The film suggests that
we really would like to know how American society got from
1957 to 2002, when gays are increasingly being accorded rights,
and marriages between Whites and Blacks no longer raise eyebrows.
The Far from Heaven soap opera would
be much more interesting if there were a sequel. MH
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