Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 74

70 Popular Culture Review solved through the image of her dark mother. This position on the racial origin of the mulatto character in Imitation o f Life is applicable to the mulatto, Pinky, who also ultimately established her mulatto status through her black mother— Dicey’s daughter. Scholar Elspeth Kydd contends that “the race of the parent who is shown relates to the ultimate destiny of the character.” Pinky and Dicey When Pinky declares that her return to the South is to be only temporary. Dicey counters that her return must be permanent. The two women view this con flict through several lenses. Dicey insists that Pinky has an obligation to remain in the South to return to her black self and the status associated with blackness — not because she wants Pinky to live a life of deprivation, but because she believes that Pinky can find fulfillment through “belonging-ness.” Dicey wants Pinky to con tribute to her community through her service— to offer nursing care to those who could benefit from her skill, including the elderly Miss Em, and as a gesture to ward repaying Miss Em for her help as Dicey’s employer. Pinky, having passed as white, craves the privileges and the romance she enjoyed in the North, but Dicey confronts Pinky, accusing her of masquerading and insisting that Pinky pray to the Lord for forgiveness. Dicey is stern in her treatment of her granddaughter, and unrelenting in her badgering of Pinky to return to her black self. Eventually Dicey penetrates through the “fence” with which Pinky has sunounded herself, and con vinces Pinky to remain in the South. Dicey and Miss Em Dicey is the very embodiment of subordinance among whites. She is compro mising, subservient, and placating even in the face of racial degradation. To Miss Em, however. Dicey is also religiously steadfast in her loyalty. Although Dicey reminds us of the not too distant slave past when some African Americans re mained loyal to slave masters even after achieving their liberation; some charac terize this behavior as a demonstration that they were morally superior to their white slave owners. Concerning Dicey’s relationship with Miss Em, film scholar Linda Williams avers that “the affinity between nineteenth-century white women and their slaves ... disenfranchised persons with no rights, white women and black slaves were liminal beings who derived whatever power they had from the moral virtue of their very powerlessness.” It is also of note that Time magazine referred to Miss Em as “a ‘symbol’ of white paternalism” and [to] the Ethel Waters role [as| “a ‘symbol’ of Aunt Jemima-ism,” affirming Dicey’s placating behavior. Dicey’s ad herence to a subordinate status in relation to Miss Em is further apparent in her withholding of support for Pinky’s attempt to fight for property she had rightfully