How ‘Passing’ Upends a Problematic Hollywood History

The Experiment

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🗓️ 18 November 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

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 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. A transcript of this episode is available. Further reading: “Netflix’s ‘Passing’ Is an Unusually Gentle Movie About a Brutal Subject” Apply for The Experiment’s spring internship. Applications will be accepted through November 29, 2021. Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at theexperiment@theatlantic.com. 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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the experiment, we talk about an old type of American movie.
0:13.4	I wish I could be a really cool, a real white person, somebody.
0:19.6	I don't know what to do.
0:23.5	So back in the 30s, 40s, 50s into the 60s, Hollywood used to make these passing movies.
0:31.6	And these were movies where a black character is passing for white.
0:37.8	Correspondent Tracy Hunt has been watching a lot of these movies.
0:42.2	So a lot of these movies were written and directed by white people.
0:45.4	The black character is tended to be very stereotypical and not have a lot of depth.
0:49.9	And very often, like almost 100% of the time, the actor who's playing the passing character
0:57.0	is actually a white woman.
0:58.8	And I think the most ridiculous example of this is this 1916 movie called I Past for White.
1:04.2	I made friends with a nice white girl.
1:06.3	She found out she was colored.
1:08.5	She wasn't so nice.
1:10.5	Yes.
1:11.5	We meet our main character and her skin color is just causing problems wherever she goes.
1:17.9	I'm not really any grown and I'm not a white.
1:21.3	Why can't I be what I look to be?
1:23.6	What people take me for?
1:26.5	So Tracy, why are you subjecting yourself to all these cringy movies?
1:30.4	A lot of these movies are ridiculous, but I think that they're like really kind of
1:35.6	a fascinating snapshot into how white filmmakers in that time period were trying to grapple
	...

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