Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
I had no idea what this movie is about. Not very cosmopolitan of me, I know. But I believe I'll see it at some point because of some serindipitous stuff I found during a web search on SAT scores by socioeconomic class.
I wond up on a web site listing books by NYU professors, and since I'm being The Race Guy this week one leaped out at me:
Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are
Despite the many social changes of the last half-century, many Americans still "pass": black for white, gay for straight, and now in many new ways as well. We tend to think of passing in negative terms--as deceitful, cowardly, a betrayal of one's self. But this compassionate book reveals that many passers today are people of good heart and purpose whose decision to pass is an attempt to bypass injustice, and to be more truly themselves.
Passing tells the poignant, complicated life stories of a black man who passed as a white Jew; a white woman who passed for black; a working class Puerto Rican who passes as privileged; a gay, Conservative Jewish seminarian and a lesbian naval officer who passed for straight; and a respected poet who radically shifts persona to write about rock 'n roll.
The stories, interwoven with others from history, literature, and contemporary life, explore the many forms passing still takes in our culture; the social realities which make it an option; and its logistical, emotional, and moral consequences. We learn that there are still too many institutions, environments, and social situations that force honorable people to twist their lives into painful, deceit-ridden contortions for reasons that do not hold.
From there I went to the professor's NYU website (which looks suspiciously like an unbranded MT weblog, but I digress), where I found this entry:
From Anne Thompson in the Arts section of THE NEW YORK TIMES of November 4, 2003, writing from Los Angeles about the arthouse repositioning of the film, THE HUMAN STAIN, under the headline, "Assessing a Film that Lost Momentum:"
Movies about race that have succeeded have been largely inspirational," one studio marketing executive said Monday [November 3, 2003], speaking on the condition of anonymity…
Adds the director Robert Benton: "Pictures like this are incredibly difficult to make and complex to market in a world that demands happy endings."
So now The Human Stain is on my radar.
Posted by P6 at November 8, 2003 10:59 AM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2229You know, I had never thought of gays acting straight as "passing" before. Thanks for the little epiphany.
Hmm. I'd like to get my hands on both books, but I'm particularly interested in Passing. And I'll be keeping my eye out for the movie version of The Human Stain. Hmm.