<em>The Experiment</em> Podcast: How Netflix’s <em>Passing</em> Upends a Hollywood Genre
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Hollywood has a long history of “passing movies”—films in which Black characters pass for white—usually starring white actors. Even as these films have attempted to depict the devastating effect of racism in America, they have trafficked in tired tropes about Blackness. But a new movie from the actor-writer-director Rebecca Hall takes the problematic conventions of this uniquely American genre and turns them on their head. Hall tells the story of how her movie came to life, and how making the film helped her grapple with her own family’s secrets around race and identity.
Further reading: “Netflix’s Passing Is an Unusually Gentle Movie About a Brutal Subject”
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This episode was produced by Tracie Hunte and Peter Bresnan with help from Alina Kulman. Editing by Emily Botein, Julia Longoria, and Jenny Lawton. Special thanks to B.A. Parker. Fact-check by Will Gordon. Sound design by David Herman with additional engineering by Joe Plourde. Transcription by Caleb Codding.
Music by Water Feature (“With Flowers”), H Hunt (“Wrong I” and “Having a Bath”), and Keyboard (“Shingles” and “Contractions”) provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Joe Plourde. Additional audio from Pinky, I Passed for White, Imitation of Life, and Netflix.
A transcript of this episode is presented below:
(Dramatic, tense old Hollywood music plays through gramophone static, then winds down.)
Julia Longoria: Today on The Experiment, we talk about an old type of American movie.
(Woodwinds complicate a light horn melody through yet more static.)
Bernice, in I Passed for White: I wish I could be a real Negro or a real white person. Somebody. I don’t know what to do.
(The music becomes clearer, as if the static washed away, then gradually fades down.)
Tracie Hunte: So back in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, into the 1960s, Hollywood used to make these “passing” movies. And these were movies where a Black character is passing for white.
Longoria: Correspondent Tracie Hunte has been watching a lot of these movies.
Hunte: So a lot of these movies were written and directed by white people. The Black characters tended to be very stereotypical and not have a lot of depth. And very often—like, almost 100 percent of the time—the actor who’s playing the “passing” character is actually a white woman. And I think the most ridiculous example of this is the 1960 movie called I Passed for White.
(The woodwinds reenter.)
Bernice: I made friends with a nice white girl.
Granny: And when she found out you were colored, she wasn’t so nice?
Bernice: (Woefully.) Yes.
Hunte: We meet our main character, and her skin color is just causing problems wherever she goes.
Bernice: I’m not really a Negro. And I’m—I’m not a white. Why can’t I be what I look to be—what people take me for?
Longoria: So, Tracie, why are you subjecting yourself to all these cringey movies?
(The music)
