The film focuses on the dilemmas that each of the women face in a world they do not control. Lora struggles to become famous without having to sacrifice her ethics, to remain a good mother to Susie despite the career demands that keep her away much of the time. Susie yearns for her mother's attention instead of the expensive niceties with which Lora showers her. Annie lives in two worlds--a white world in which she is a servant, and a Black world in which she is a community leader and highly respected figure--and adopts an accomodationist stance. Sarah Jane, able to pass for white, yearns to leave behind the limitations she feels have plagued her mother in a racist society and to be treated with respect like that afforded Lora.
This melodramatic film, often referred to as a "woman's film" because it was aimed mostly at female audiences, presents an important prescription for female happiness to its viewers. To women who struggle for careers and to young girls who wish to grow into happy women, the film recommends that happiness can be found in focusing on one's "more natural" domestic roles as mother and wife. To women who rebel against the limitations placed on them because of sex or race, it recommends the path of least resistance, acceptance of society's view of women (and women of color) as different and inferior.
While watching this film, pay attention to the "prescriptions" being given to women in the audience. We will be giving the film a feminist and womanist reading, focusing on the ways in which the film advocates particular roles for women and for women of color, and discussing as well women's strategies of resistance that provide alternatives to the prescriptions offered in Imitation of Life.
2) How does Annie put herself forward when she asks Lora for a job when the women meet at Coney Island? What is being said by the film about the sort of a person Annie is?
3) Describe the characters (and characteristics) of Lora, Annie, Susie, and Sarah Jane. What main characteristics dominate the way they are presented in the film? While all the women are female, do any of the characters show behaviors that would have been seen as "male" or "masculine" in 1959? What are those behaviors, and what part do they play in defining the characters that display them?
4) Compare the characters against one another. Each of the four characters serve as foils for one another. Compare Annie to Lora, Annie to Sarah Jane, Susie to Lora, Susie to Sarah Jane, Lora to Sarah Jane, Annie to Susie. In what ways are they foils for one another?
5) Where are the girls' fathers? How does the film represent these male absences in the film? Do Annie and Lora both have sexuality, or is it invisible in one of the women? What is the purpose of this invisibility?
6) What is the meaning of Sarah Jane's many childhood rejections of her racial identity? Examine the incident with the dolls, the incident when Annie brings her boots to school, the incident when she cuts Susie's wrist, her references to Jesus's race. How do these incidents connect with her rejections as an adult?
7) What purpose does Annie play in the household? What purpose does Lora play? Are their roles the "accepted," "normative" roles of women at this time in America?
8) What is the meaning of the scene after Steve proposes where she and he argue about whether she may go to Loomis's office? What is being said about Lora's character in this scene? Is Lora a sympathetic character? Is Annie? Is Steve? Is Sarah Jane? Is Susie?
9) One of the most arresting scenes in the film concerns Sarah Jane being savagely beaten by her white boyfriend when he discovers that she has been "passing" for white. How does the film treat this incident? With which character are you meant to feel sympathy through the way the film presents this scene? What is the underlying message in the way the scene is portrayed?
10) What does Annie know about Lora's world? What does Lora know about Annie's? What does this difference signify?
11) What are Annie's ambitions for her daughter? What are Sarah Jane's ambitions? How do these two visions of Sarah Jane's future come into conflict?
12) One of the most moving scenes in the film is Annie's funeral. What is the meaning of this scene? What does it say about Annie's character that this is the one moment in her life she demands to be in the center of the stage? Who mourns her death? How does the community respond to her death? What does this say about the film's attitude toward her strategy of accomodation?
13) How is Lora's role changed by Annie's death?
14) Imagine this film being made now. Imagine it written by Alice Walker, or directed by Julie Dash or even Spike Lee. How would the film be different? What other strategies would have been available to Sarah Jane than the few choices she has in the film--passing as white, or accomodating herself to racism?
15) Imagine this film made by a feminist filmmaker. How would the options available to the women in general have been different?
