Television review Black Americans Appeared in White – Passing is a pensive and subtle film on a sensitive subject

Drama

Passing ★★★★

USA 2021

Netflix (K13)

Successful Netflix drama Passing is full of gaze: doubtful, unbelieving, insecure, obscure, and striving to recognize.

It’s because of the film’s theme. The word passing in the title of the film refers to a phenomenon in which blond black Americans appear white.

Such themes are significant in American culture but rather unknown in Finland. For example, there are no established Finnish translations of terms biracial, multiracial, multiethnic or mixed race, which suggest that a person has more than one racial background. In the Finnish understanding, people are mainly black and white.

Barack Obama is only black in Finland, but for many Americans it is also the son of a black father and a white mother.

To the 1920s located PassingIrene (Tessa Thompson) would go white in color, but rarely use its benefits. He runs into his old friend Clare (Ruth Negga), which in turn has concealed its black origins even from its racist husband (Alexander Skarsgård).

There is, of course, a lot to gain from encryption in the United States at the time. However, it is very dangerous, especially as Clare begins to push into the world of Irene, who lives in Harlem.

Clare is wild and carefree, Irene responsible and conservative.

Movie based on a black female writer Nella Larsen (1891–1964) to a fine short classic novel Passing (1929), although the final solution has been slightly modified. Described in black and white Passing is his instructor Rebecca Hallin first control.

Passing is a pensive and subtle film on a sensitive subject. The best scenes (recognition scene at the beginning, end scene, a few others) have exceptional power.

The editing, music and excellent acting manage to create a hazy and intense atmosphere. It took too many years for Nella Larsen’s miniature novel to be filmed, but the end result is a credit to the book.

In the American in culture, the phenomenon of passing was widely discussed precisely in the late 19th century, and in the first half of the 20th century, characters like Clare were usually portrayed as tragic.

They lived a lie and did not belong properly to either world, neither black nor white. Their end was tragic unless they then humbled themselves and began to live openly in black.

The tone was often moralizing. The subject was discussed in films, for example The biggest in life (1959), Blood legacy (1949), Theater ship (1936) and A sacrificed life (1934). By the 1960s at the latest, however, the subject began to sink into oblivion.

With a new one the way passing is handled by an American Brit Bennetin (b. 1990) A compelling novel The Vanishing Half (Finnish) What separates us). The book, published in June 2020, was a major bestseller in the United States.

Its main plot line is about black twins, both of whom would go white. They run away from home. One begins to live a hidden life in white, constantly fearing revelation, the other lives openly in black.

Bennett is said wanted to break away from the tradition of melodramatism and moralization. Among other things, the novel tells about how fragile, painful, and strange the creation and presentation of identities can be in general.

The author has stated that passing is both self-creation and self-destruction, and both perspectives are included in the novel. According to him, it is part of the American tradition of defining one’s own identity.

Ethnic the person who changed the group is indeed self-made, if anyone.

Such has, of course, been possible mainly for people who have had both white and black grandparents and, as a result, fairly fair skin. Unlike Passingin the film, Nella Larsen PassingThe novel tells extensively about Clare’s background. Clare’s grandfather was white.

Characters with both white and black family backgrounds were also tragic in early 20th-century American literature. They didn’t seem to belong anywhere. This can also be seen in Clare, as happy as she is.

In a hundred years, the tragedy has, of course, waned. Other types of stories have long been told on the subject.

Together PassingIrene learns that Clare’s husband is a racist in the main scenes of. At the same time, he understands the depth of Clare’s racial scam and gets a hysterical scene of laughter.

Author Brit Bennett is spoke about how much absurdity and insanity there is that skin color affects people’s lives so strongly. That is one of the starting points of his novel.

The idea of ​​the nonsense of racial divisions, even comedy, is strongly involved in such Passingthan in the novels of Larsen and Bennet.

What separates us (January 2021, Finnish: Maria Lyytinen).