Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 81

Miss Em’s Voyeuristic Gaze of P in k y

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Pinky and Miss Em respond in parallel ways to their guilt. Pinky resists be
coming Miss Em’s nurse; Miss Em resists receiving treatment from Pinky. Inter
estingly, Miss Em also does not gracefully accept treatment from her white male
physician. During this period, almost all doctors were males—white males. Per
haps Miss Em resented the subjectivity of the female that allowed the (white) male
to lay claim over the female body; a position affirmed by Mary Ann Doane who
contends that the eroticizing of the woman was often rendered visible through the
medical gaze. While Miss Em is certainly not eroticized, unless we consider that
she is transformed into Pinky, the fact that she becomes the spectacle for the male
physician “as reader or interpreter, as the site of a knowledge which dominates and
controls female subJectivity,”demonstrates how Miss Em becomes the object of
his scopophilic gaze. The physician’s control over Miss Em’s body further attests
to how the female figure is subordinated in her own story. With control over the
body of Miss Em, and given that Miss Em is transformed into Pinky, the physician
also has control over the body of Pinky in much the same manner that he is respon
sible for her parenthood. Thus, the parallelism shared between these two charac
ters becomes undeniably apparent.
Element of Control
Miss Em’s transformation into Pinky is also exhibited in the sameness they
share in their desire for control. This trait is evident when Pinky flees the South in
order to control her fate and destiny, when she exerts control over Jake (middleaged black character who intercepts her letters to Tom and who extorts money
from Dicey—played by Frederick O’Neal) after discovering his extortion schemes,
and when she controls Miss Em (through her supervisory capacity as nurse and in
the injections that she administers). Miss Em exhibits her desire for control when,
although bedridden, she issues a barrage of commands to Pinky. Because Pinky
recognizes that these commands are an insult to her professional training and rec
ognizes that Miss Em is testing her fortitude, she resists and retaliates. Miss Em
believes she has succeeded in controlling Pinky by eroding her self-confidence
with the intent to alter her psyche and challenge her decision to masquerade as
white. Miss Em makes it known that she is aware of Pinky’s masquerade; when
Miss Em asks, “What name did you go by in the North, Patricia?” Miss Em in
forms her that the name Pinky (Johnson) is more appropriate. Miss Em has con
trolled Pinky by foregrounding the issue of passing and at the same time, has stra
tegically positioned herself by both affirming and negating her masquerade so that
she can further the discussion to force Pinky to come to terms with her identity.
Control is similarly an issue in the masquerades worn by the two women.
Pinky’s masquerade is based on her appearance and reactions to the masquerade.
Miss Em masquerades with fainting spells, pretending to be gravely ill as she