عنوان

Ming Wong's Imitations

Number

LA4fr0n8bw

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Ming Wong's Imitations

General Material Designation

[Article]

First Statement of Responsibility

Mennel, Barbara

Text of Note

The article ''Ming Wong's Imitations'' analyzes the installation Life of Imitation, created by visual artist Ming Wong for the Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Life of Imitation restages a key scene from Douglas Sirk's 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life, in which the African American character Annie visits her daughter Sarah Jane who is passing as white. In Wong's restaging three male actors from different ethnic groups in Singapore reenact the scene, but switch roles at every cut. The article traces the shifts from the original literary source, Fannie Hurst's 1933 Imitation of Life to John M. Stahl's 1934 film of the same title to Sirk's version. Emphasizing melodrama's organizing structure of ''too late,'' I show how Sirk shifted the melodramatic emphasis from the white mother/daughter pair's romantic conflict to the African American mother/daughter pair's racial conflict. Addressing the question whether such a shift implies a progressive politics, I turn to the contentious discussion of Sirk's earlier film work in Weimar and Nazi Germany, pointing to ideological and formal continuities.

Date of Publication

2014

Title

TRANSIT

Volume Number

9/2

Entry Element

Mennel, Barbara

Electronic name

[Article]

275578

a

Y