Passing Critics Flashcards
2021 film shot in
black and white
calling Clare n*g erases her name which connotes whiteness
Lori Harrison-Kahan
“the main character is a passer closely observed by another admiring but ambivalent character”
Charles Lewis on similarity between TGG and Passing
“Throughout the novel, Irene assumes a moral superiority over Clare because Irene is grounded in the black bourgeoisie whereas Clare’s father was an alcoholic janitor”
Charles Scruggs
all female characters “rely on their husband for material possessions, security, identity”
Cheryl A Wall
the employing of servants of colour replicates the “class and ethnic hierarchies of white society”
Nicholas Tredell
Irene passes as a “new negro”
Brooke Kroeger
Larsen uses fire imagery to represent sexual desire
Deborah McDowell
Feature of modernist writing that Larsen uses: replaces finite verbs with present participles eg stepping always on the edge of danger
Nicholas Tredell
creates immediacy
Actor who plays Irene in film on ways she is performing
race
sexuality
marriage
motherhood
Tessa Thompson
Film adaptation, director and year
Rebecca Hall 2021
“A tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life: that whiteness conferred an almost universal unearned advantage”
Richard Bernstein
“a throb of the urge to speak out runs through it” - Larsen using the book like a protest
Mary Labaree (contemporary)
“It is essential to ascertain precisely who is the tragic heroine - Irene who is on the verge of total mental disintegration or Clare whose desire for excitement brings about her sudden death”
Claudia Tate
Irene gives a “paranoid and unreliable vision and projections cloud our access to all of the characters and action”
Jonathon Little
