I watched Imitation of Life again today and had forgotten how much I like it.

Really, I'm such a sucker for dramatic postures, sweeping orchestration and deliberate (and overt) emotional manipulation. So clearly Douglas Sirk melodramas are about as pleasurable as it comes. I can't help but experience glee both from its sincerity and the hopeless histrionics of it (Sandra Dee's wild girlish performance; Lana Turner's dismissive attitude to the plight of Annie and Sarah-Jane - "Oh but this is serious!").

Every time I watch it I feel confusion over and also compulsion for Sarah Jane. The character is so central to the narrative yet is constantly shunted aside by the painfully, glowingly white females who surround her. Their treatment of her is so patronising that it grates me over and over. Yet they disguise it as affection. Or perhaps it is, but affection for a pet, or an inferior who you think well of (but still maintain their position).

I can't help but wonder what is going on with this character in the narrative. Her story, and that of her mother's, is so much more engaging and developed yet it occupies siginificantly less screen time than that of the concurrent story of Lora (Turner). It's in the contrast between these parallel mother/daughter stories that the latter comes off as so anaemic and lacking in substance. If Sirk meant to undermine the validity of this narrative thread then he did well. It just drips of the kind of ignorant self-centredness that only privilege can afford.