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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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