White ScreensBlack Images by James Snead

Author:James Snead [Snead, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781135199586
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Bette Davis: Jezebel

As we have already seen, the child-like female Hollywood star of the thirties—whether child or adult—seems to be prized in society, and crucial to many film plots. Therefore, it should come as no surprise when, in the film Jezebel (1938), Bette Davis (Julie) angrily asks Henry Fonda (as Preston Dillard, her fiancé) why he treats her like a child. He responds: “Because you act like one—a spoiled one …” Julie answers: “You used to say you liked me like that once: you never wanted me to change … remember?”

This strange interchange highlights the quandary of such an ideal, which wants from the idealized white woman an adult ability to preserve and obey social norms, on the one hand, and a childlike capacity for periodically ignoring or breaking those constraints on the other. In effect, Preston is criticizing Julie here for obeying his orders, precisely when such orders call for the disobedience of other orders—for acting like a “spoiled” child. Whereas the film Jezebel generally blames Julie for her own behavior and its results, her exchange with Preston points out precisely the double-bind which is certainly the more pertinent source of the film’s tragic ending.

Since much of the plot of the film hinges on the question of command and obedience, it is perhaps no surprise that the “childlike” blacks play a prominent role throughout the film, conveying, among other things, an early sense of institutional servility in the culture of “New Orleans 1852.” The “plot of obedience” literally enwraps the film’s narrative, right up to the ending, when Julie virtually commands Amy, Preston’s Northern wife (Margaret Lindsay), to stay behind while she accompanies Preston to the dreaded “Lazarette Island,” the place for the hopeless “yellow jack” victims. If Miss Julie represents “childish disobedience” (punishment is threatened, but never executed by white males), then the blacks that surround her represent “childish obedience” (punishment threatened and executed), repeating the interracial dynamics of the Shirley Temple movies, but with more dire results.

The first words of the film are: “Boy: stop here …,” yelled by Buck Cantrell (Preston’s rival for Julie’s attention) to a black carriage-driver. Minutes later, another carriage-driver, pulling guests up to where Julie lives with her mother, doffs his hat, repeating “yowsm” (“yes, ma’am”) to his passenger’s orders, which are so frequent that he continues saying “yowsm” mechanically even after the guests have already gone inside. Although this initial servility seems merely a cause for laughter, it actually strikes the dominant thematic chord of obedience for the entire movie.

Later (still within the first five minutes of the film), Julie arrives in her riding garb, and is literally surrounded by black servants. Three of them take care of her horse, others rush in front of her to smooth the way. She arrives at her own party scandalously late, and without changing her clothes, but is still fussed over—while walking!—by at least a half dozen servants. The abundance of blacks here certainly exaggerates Julie’s social distance from them, but also in some ways illustrates her absolute dependence upon them.

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