Melodrama, Woman’s Identity And Mother-daughter Relationship

The maternal melodrama is one of the important film genres for feminist cinema studies. The research history of the maternal melodrama can be traced back to the1980s. However, maternal melodrama is seldom mentioned in cinema studies in Mainland China, except E Ann Kaplan’s paper about maternal melodrama which was translated into Chinese in1988. By a thorough reading of Imitation of Life (1934,1959), this dissertation tries to introduce the maternal melodrama genre and at the same time perform a thorough feminist analysis. As a typical maternal melodrama, Imitation of Life contains several hardcore concerns of feminist cinema studies, for example, the ideology expression in melodrama, the construction of woman’s identity, mother-daughter relationship and the representation of black American women. This dissertation will try to expose the production of meanings of the film, with the support of the feminist film theories.The paper will be proceed under3themes. They are maternal melodrama, woman’s identity and mother-daughter relationship. In the maternal melodrama theme, with a brief description of the circumstance of American cultural and historical backgrounds, I will try to use ideology theory to explain the expression of the ideology in Imitation of Life. And in the second theme, with application of Freud’s psychoanalysis, the white mother and daughter’s identifying mechanism will be revealed, and by using Marx’s theory about capitalism and black feminism theory, the black mother and daughter’s identifying mechanism will be exposed, too. In the last theme, I will discuss the mother-daughter relationship from the perspective of psychoanalysis theories. I will try to perform a feminist understanding of mother-daughter relationship in the film under the concept of pre-Oedipus.In the point of view of feminism, the classical Hollywood cinema is shrouded in the shadow of patriarchal ideology, even though in a maternal melodrama which is led by four women. So a feminist reading of the film means exposing the ideology manipulation and revealing the unconscious expression of patriarchal ideology. However, mother-daughter theme leaves a slice of light for female discourse in this film. Though the light will be put out soon by the manipulation, it has been there once, hasn’t it? And a dissertation of feminist reading is part of the effort for searching for light.