File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-22.073, message 52


From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: M-I: Secrets & Lies and Race & Class
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 15:57:40 +0200


(Anyone who doesn't like reading about movies they haven't seen, don't read
if you haven't seen *Secrets & Lies* or *L'amant - The Lover*)

*Secrets & Lies*, a film by Mike Leigh, has an interesting touch. A British
working class woman from a very dysfunctional has a daughter whom she gives
up for adoption. She is black, the mother, Cynthia, has never seen her and
she doesn't know she is black. The baby girl, Hortense, is adopted by a
loving and functioning lower middle class (as these terms are understood in
Britain, don't attack me) black family. She becomes an optometrician, a job
we learn that requires a degree, and sometime after the death of her adopted
parents she seeks her birth-mother out. Cynthia has another daughter out of
wedlock later, by another man who also abandons her. She is white, works for
the city picking up litter and she seems to be very bitter and grouchy.
Cynthia works at a cardboard factory, cutting boxes. We are shown all three
at work to better appreciate how lousy both Cynthia's and her white
daughters jobs are. That's the story, and I won't say more about it except
touch on this race vs class bit here.

Now, when Hortense shows up, Cynthia is shocked. She is also at an all time
low, she is losing her beauty and she is aging, which might have been the
only  thing she had against the world, she has a lousy job, very little
money and her only relative, her younger brother does not seek her very
often since the younger brothers wife, , and Cynthia loath each other, as
they compete for the brother. (Btw, the younger brother and his wife, who
are childless, seem to have made it into middle class, with a lot of the
tackiness of those who've just made it into middle class). 

Now, everybody else in the movie besides Hortense seems rather disturbed,
unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives. Hortense acts as well as anyone
could act under the circumstances. She remains composed and all her manners
show she is from another class, plus a good family of another class.
Throughout the whole movie, we are reminded of the class difference.
Hortense has a car. Hortense dresses well. Her house is nicely decorated.
She relaxes with a book and a glass of wine. We are pointedly told one her
older brothers is a computer seller, the other has his own garage (adopted
brother). 

I don't know if Leigh was trying to make the point but I thought I saw
clearly Cynthia overcoming her racism more easily as she kept noticing
Hortense's class. When they go out together, Cynthia tries to dress nicely
and act "better". We see Hortense using her forks and napkins properly, we
see Hortense at her nice workplace, etc. Also, when Hortense is introduced
to the larger family, before the family knows who she is, Cynthia goes to
pains to belie her own lie, that they are work-mates at the factory, to the
point of exposing her lie. When the truth is learned, the fact the is an
optometrician and her middle class manners seems to make a clear difference.
It may also be that the movie was underplaying the racism, but it was an
interesting reversal to watch. 

Which reminded me of another movie with the same reversal, The Lover based
of the Marguerite Duras book. The setting is Indochina during the French
occupation. A young French girl who is quite poor becomes the lover of a
very rich Chinese man. She is of much lower class than him and it is him
that seems to be keeping her, if anything. Still, both the girl and her
family seem to swing between looking down on him for his race and admiring
him for his money (and class).

Neither of the movies takes the theme much further, but both were an
interesting interplay of race & class. 

Zeynep





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