In his insightful, groundbreaking book, Bogle (1973, pp. 3- 10) succinctly divides common depictions of African Americans in the movie industry into five categories: the Tom, who loves his white master to the exclusion of all else, except God; the Mammy, a strong, usually rotund, stern, and -- almost always -- dark matriarch; the Coon, a buffoonish clown who is also slow of wit and lazy; the Buck, a violent, dangerous, angry man, often with a lustful eye for white women; and the Tragic Mulatto, generally a sympathetic figure, whose only sin is the fact that she was "tainted," so to speak, by her black blood. As Bogle (1973) notes, "Usually the mulatto is made likable -- even sympathetic (because of her white blood, no doubt) -- and the audience believes that the girl's life could have been productive and happy had she not been a 'victim of divided racial inheritance'" (p. 9).
The above definition of the tragic mulatto describes Queen perfectly. The final installment in the Roots and Roots: The Next Generation sagas, a fictionalized account of the lives of the Alex Haley family, Queen aired fourteen years after Roots, and was completed without Haley, who died before work on the three-part miniseries was completed. Perhaps it is this lack of vital insight that causes Queen to be so much lesser than its predecessors.
The figure of the tragic mulatto has been a part of movie lore almost since the genre's inception. D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) broke new ground in terms of technical innovation; his imaginative use of cross-cutting, editing, lighting, and close-ups set the standard for the feature film. But the treatment of black characters also has made this classic one of the most controversial American films ever released. All of the black characterizations described by Bogle, including the tragic mulatto, are present in this film. In this instance, she has a very minor role as a Senator's mistress.
With Hallelujah (1929) talking pictures introduced the tragic mulatto. Actress Nina Mae McKinney portrayed a light- skinned, keen-featured "good time gal," who leads a decent man astray (stealing him from his darker-skinned sweetheart), only to dump him for a smooth talking ladies' man. She is, of course, punished for her sins, and eventually she dies in the arms of the good, God-fearing man she deserted.
Another tragic mulatto surfaced years later in a Hollywood film that proved so popular, two versions were produced: in 1934 and 1959. This tear-jerker, Imitation of Life, depicts the lives of two widows -- one black, one white -- who join forces. In the 1934 version, Aunt Delilah has a light-skinned daughter named Peola. Having grown up with whites the same color as she, yet denied their privileges because of her black blood, Peola decides to cross the color line and pass for white. Her decision and subsequent desertion prove too much for her mother, who dies shortly thereafter, a broken woman. Peola relents too late and arrives sobbing at her mother's funeral, aware that she has caused her mother's death. Imitation of Life was remade in 1959, with even direr consequences for the mulatto daughter, renamed Sarah Jane, for daring to pass for white.
Released fifteen years after the original version of Imitation of Life, but before the 1959 remake, Pinky offered a slightly different version of the tragic mulatto: one who is provided the opportunity to continue her charade in the white world, but who nobly sacrifices her own personal happiness in order to help relieve the plight of her darker-skinned brethren. While attending nursing school in the North, Pinky passes for white. Reality strikes upon her return home to her grandmother in the South. Faced with the prospect of being black in the Deep South, a humiliated Pinky makes plans to return to the North and to her masquerade as a white. It is an old aristocratic white woman who changes Pinky's mind. The old woman dies, leaving her estate to Pinky, and forcing her to fight for possession of it in court. Pinky wins, and decides to open a school for young black nurses. When her white fiancé arrives to take her away, Pinky elects to remain in the South, armed with a new racial pride, but leaving the audience with the distinct impression that she will be alone forever. Again, the "taint" of black blood allows for no compromises.
The tragic mulatto also figures prominently in the scripts of black filmmakers during the early decades of this century. Often, though not always, after undergoing a great deal of trial and tribulation, this mulatto is allowed a happy ending -- usually involving marriage to a fine, upstanding pillar of the black community. Two examples of movies produced by black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux illustrate this concept of the tragic mulatto in early black moviemaking.
Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1919) tells the convoluted story of Sylvia, a noble mulatto who looks throughout the movie as though she is carrying all of the world's burdens on her shoulders. Sylvia originally plans to marry a fine, upstanding young man, but is thwarted by the machinations of her jealous, spiteful, deceitful, darker cousin, who fancies the man for herself. After losing this man, Sylvia devotes her life to good works by teaching at a Southern school for black children. The school is rapidly running out of money, so Sylvia goes North to raise funds. She is hit by a car, menaced by a con man, and nearly raped by a lustful white man; and she witnesses the lynching of her entire adopted family. What ultimately saves her from the rape is the man's realization that Sylvia is his own daughter, the product of a secret marriage to a black woman. In the end, Sylvia triumphs and finds happiness with a new man, himself a mulatto, who convinces her to retain her patriotism and continue her fight for a place in the American dream.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is God's Step Children (1937). This movie tells the story of Naomi, a very, very troubled young woman. All of her life, Naomi has made no secret of wanting to pass for white. She abandons her black husband and child, falls for her stepbrother, and realizes her wish of passing for white; finally, she pays the price for her many sins (especially passing) by throwing herself into the river.
Micheaux was often criticized for his casting: light-skinned blacks in the heroic leading roles, darker ones in the buffoonish or subordinate roles (Bogle, 1988, p. 92). But it is this inclination that clearly illustrates the function of mulattoes in black history. They were often perceived by black communities as being somehow better, superior, because they had significant amounts of white blood. Rather than being cast off, reviled, or ignored as they were by white society, they became leaders, scions, of black ones. Woefully ignorant of the dynamics of black culture, white Hollywood saw mulattoes the way the white world saw them: as shameful evidence of the sexual mingling of black and white.
Presented on the CBS network in February, 1993, Queen offers no new insights, covers no new ground, and, in fact, is little more than an updated version of another tragic mulatto, whose only "crime," so to speak, is that of being born of mixed blood. Unlike Roots and Roots: The Next Generation, which were based on Haley's investigation into and recollections of his maternal ancestors, Queen is the story of his paternal great-grandmother, Easter, a woman born of the union between a female slave and her white lover, the master's son. Although Easter, Queen's mother, and her young master are supposedly in love, the young man meekly submits to the norms of that time by marrying a white woman and starting a white family, while at the same time surreptitiously continuing his affair with his slave. The focus of the series, however, is Queen, and her "stop-start, Homeric quest for a life beyond existence, acceptance among her oppressors and some idea of who she is" (Jubera, 1993, p. N1). Unfortunately, at the conclusion of the series, the audience is left with the feeling that her quest has been a futile one.
As depicted in the program, Queen's life is a tumultuous, agonizing series of misadventures. She is rejected by her white relatives (despite the fact that she is one of the primary reasons why they have managed to survive the ravages of the Civil War), raped by a white man (after he discovers she is black), forced to escape from a household of elderly white women bent on stealing her child (although what they plan to do with a brown- skinned baby boy never is made clear), on hand when the love of her life is hanged, and eventually committed to a horrifying mental institution. The ending is more than a little ambiguous: Failing to have her true wishes realized (being accepted into the white world), she decides to settle for whatever peace she can find with Alec Haley, a gentle, widowed ferryboat captain.
According to the producers of the miniseries, the stated purpose of the program, aside from entertaining, was to provide the viewing public with another seldom-discussed perspective underlying the slavery issue: namely, that of the so-called "displaced" persons, born of two races and belonging fully to neither. Here, again, the basic ignorance of whites about the black community is evident. Light-skinned blacks often were acclimated fully into black society, and, in fact, often were its leaders. It is also interesting to speculate about what might have prompted the making of Queen, some fourteen years after the original Roots sagas. Could it have been the "politically correct" thing to do? Could the impetus have been a network's attempt to address the increased interest in diversity and multiculturalism? David Stevens, who wrote the script and the book Queen (1993) that Haley was working on just before his death, said that Haley envisioned it as being "representative of a vast body of dispossessed people" (Jubera, 1993, p. N1) -- an ambitious sentiment, indeed, but one which, unfortunately, never was realized. The works of Alex Haley were undoubtedly literary achievements of some note, as well as on-screen triumphs that brought a new awareness of and sensitivity to the complex issue of race relations in the United States. Roots and its sequel raised both black and white consciousness levels. But Queen's worthy aim, that of highlighting the internal conflict of individuals who straddle both worlds, is always just a little off-center. In the final analysis, the miniseries becomes nothing more than a case of the tragic mulatto revisited.
As mentioned earlier, Queen is largely responsible for her white family's surviving the Civil War. She cooks, cleans, scavenges, tends the sick, and even defies Union soldiers on behalf of the folks in the Big House. What does she ask for in return? Only to be recognized and acknowledged as a bona fide member of their family. Their response? As soon as the war is over, Queen is bounced out on her ear to fend for herself. The message is quite clear: Because your black blood prohibits it, your actions, no matter how noble, will never gain your admission into the privileged inner circle. The matriarch of the white family makes this apparent during a scene at the graveside of Queen's natural father. It was impossible for such Southern women not to notice what their men were doing with black women: With their fair complexions and often recognizably white features, the mulattoes were living proof that a significant amount of time was spent by masters outside of their own beds. In a male-dominated world, their "whiteness" was often the only thing such mulatto women had going for them. It was unthinkable to imagine Southern belles sharing their pedestals with the embodiments of their own pain and humiliation. That black women had little say in the matter was not important. Begging in vain for recognition by her white grandmother over the grave of a father who has never freely acknowledged her, Queen underscores this innate tension which cannot be resolved, even by death.
At least two additional incidents underscore this point. As Queen begins what turns out to be an odyssey fraught with tragedy and peril, she is befriended by a woman who is passing for white. The woman offers Queen succor, with the stipulation that they never reveal their mixed-blood heritage. When Queen eventually breaks this rule, she not only is raped by the man who at one time considered himself a suitor, but also is abandoned by her friend. This theme of punishment for daring to pass has been a Hollywood staple for decades. Indeed, in the 1959 version of Imitation of Life, all is well until the mulatto Sarah Jane's secret is revealed; then the young woman is savagely beaten and left in the gutter by her white boyfriend who discovers her deception. This is not her only humiliation: In her quest to become white, Sarah Jane's lot in life deteriorates rapidly. She becomes a seedy showgirl in order to survive, she is forced to sever all ties with her happy childhood, she denies a last attempt by her mother for a reconciliation, and, repenting too late, she is absent at her mother's death.
Nor is the tragic mulatto the only one of the commonly depicted black character types displayed in Queen; also evident are the mammy, the buck, and variations on the Uncle Tom. The love of Queen's life is an angry black man who cannot love her completely because he hates too deeply. Although the more brutish aspects of this character type are omitted, the ex-slave who becomes Queen's lover is a violent man, dedicated to changing the system by any means necessary. He ultimately meets his end at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.
Black bucks met similar ends as early as 1915. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which arguably could be called the first ever blockbuster, featured all of the aforementioned black characters. And, while it is true that Queen depicts the KKK as a renegade, brutal, vigilante organization (Griffith portrays that group as the white-sheeted saviors of the South), black men in both films are dispatched in the same way.
Queen ultimately finds refuge on the plantation of a forward-thinking white man, and it is here that she meets Alec Haley. The household is full of former slaves who are happy to be working for their benevolent employer; here it is easy for one to find the various Toms and mammies, including, to a certain extent, the character of Alec Haley. But Queen's travails are not over. When she discovers that the child of her murdered lover plans to seek his fortune elsewhere, she goes mad. What follows is a disturbing portrait of life in a turn-of-the-century mental institution. When Queen is eventually released (due in large part to a benevolent white man), she returns to Haley, resigned to ending her days in a simple, yet peaceful existence with a man acculturated into white society -- i.e., one who knows his "place." It appears that any attempt by a black woman to live outside this script can lead only to madness. The fact that it takes a white man to release Queen from the horrors of the insane asylum illustrates the power of Eurandrocentricism: Responsible for Queen's very existence, white men do, and will, control her actions until her death.
The cast of Queen features many of the crème de la crème of Hollywood's black actors, including two actresses who themselves are the offspring of biracial marriages. It is noteworthy that the lead actress, Halle Berry, herself the product of mixed-race parentage, found herself wearing lighter makeup in order to become Queen, the "black woman as white as cotton" (Weaver, 1993, p. 5). Ironically, forty years earlier, white movie makers were faced with the dilemma of a black actress who looked too white. This actress was forced to wear darker makeup, so that movie- going audiences would not be shocked by the sight of what appeared to be a white woman in a black man's arms (Bogle, 1980, p. 60).
Also of note is the fact that there were no African-American producers, writers, or production people used during Queen's four-month location shoot (Weaver, 1993, p. 5). The reason given for this was that the superior black crews that were solicited for this production were unavailable during the shooting period. Perhaps it is lack of black input in the final writing and development process that renders Queen an updated version of the tragic mulatto story.
Having received full approval from Haley, with the exception of two minor historical revisions, the producer of the feature purportedly had discussed the final script with the author on the the day Haley died. Even so, the saga fails to address successfully the issue at the heart of the story: the social acceptance of mixed-race individuals, without the necessity of "choosing sides." In the end, it is the same old story: rejection by the white world, acceptance in the black. One critic notes, "It is only in the black world that [Queen] has any possibility of happiness or peace" (Mason, 1993, p. 1).
Mason's comment raises some troublesome issues. It is in a world defined, determined, and monitored by patriarchy that Queen gains her so-called peace, if one defines peace as resignation. That Queen never achieves what she has wanted all her life -- i.e., recognition by the white world -- is left unresolved. Queen ultimately gives up, and it is her abandonment that allows her to function in her strictly prescribed, racially defined world.
If Hollywood is interested in portraying the struggles of the black woman in American society, finding a way of portraying that struggle appears obvious: look to those who have lived the life in order to relay the story. Unquestionably, depictions of black women on the movie or television screen written by black women ourselves portray more realistic interpretations of our roles in society. As evidence, witness the success of adaptations of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls (1976), and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), and the successful television sitcom Living Single (1993). Vital insight from black women writers and producers will aid in the quest to illustrate the struggles faced by black women in a white, male- dominated world. Once and for all, they might help end the cycle of the poor, downtrodden, put-upon tragic mulatto.
Bogle, D. (1973). Toms, coons, mulattos, mammies, and bucks.
New York: Viking Press.
Bogle, D. (1980). Brown sugar: Eighty years of America's Black
female superstars. New York: Da Capo Press.
Bogle, D. (1988). Blacks in American film and television: An
Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Press.
Jubera, D. (1993, Feb. 14). Queen. Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, N, pp. 1, 4.
Mason, M. S. (1993, Feb. 9). Complex world of Queen. Christian
Science Monitor, 14, p. 1.
Weaver, M. (1993, Feb. 14). "Queen takes another look at
Haley's family roots. Chicago Tribune, 11, pp. 5-6.
Katrina Covington-Whitmore received her Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She lives and teaches in San Jose, California. Her research interests include media images, minorities in the media, media management, and journalism ethics.
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