Dorothy Dandridge’s Photograph
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Because “photography and film both always bear the work of death, the
pausing to freeze, mummify, 'corpse-ify’ whatever body they capture or pose...”,
it is conceivable that this photo of Dandridge similarly connotes death through the
body (Petro 73). Dandridge’s body became the signifier of her own internal
contradictions as these contradictions surrounding her death are transfigured into
her photograph. Dandridge’s suicide is visible in her forced happiness pose —
eyes straining to glow, lips opening enough to be suggestive of a smile of complexity
— an “1 am yours and yet not yours” stare. Fear of murder is conveyed in the
striking contrast of her pose, with one arm elevated suggesting that she is warding
off her attackers, while her other arm rests at her side with her shoulder extended
suggesting that she is inviting the attentions of any who could inflict hann. Even
the red (or orange as a derivation of red) dress and lipstick she is wearing in the
photo signifies a plurality of meanings; in this instance, red signifies death consistent
with the Chinese custom of “eating...red sorghum during mourning time ...” (Trinh
Minh-Ha 90). Dandridge’s death represented in this photo may be a mirror image
of her actual death, but what the photo cannot tell us is its cause. Her death, says
Earl Conrad, co-author of her autobiography, “was not suicide, [but] was a murder
that took a lifetime” (Dandridge and Conrad viii).
Death is subtly conveyed in the moles — blots that highlight the sexual
beauty of her face — suggesting that her skin remains unblemished except for
these two dark spots, the darkness of death. And even her necklace simulates a
fetal position, a position often associated with death, as it is linked to birth. This
necklace, encircling Dandridge’s neck, though not a literal strangulation, is a
figurative strangulation, suggesting the exploitative coiling she endured in the
patriarchal institution of Hollywood.
Dandridge’s admittance to the Hollywood industry was hard won; to gain
a level of acceptance as a screen star was a status denied to most African Americans.
Even as a star, however, she was marginalized in the industry and became the
doubly determined cultural "Other” because of her race and sexuality. And that
otherness itself is similarly inflected in Dandridge’s photograph. Both Dandridge’s
sexuality and her race were the basis for her being represented as “Other.” Being
“Other,” however, is not without its own contradictions; as Trinh Minh-Ha
articulates it, being designated as “Other” connotes some sense of privilege, which
is problematic in itself Applying Minh-Ha’s views, I see Dandridge deliberately
designating herself as an Other, “a form of self-location and self-criticism within
established boundaries” (Trinh Minh Ha 186). She no doubt was subliminally aware
that it was necessary. Without understanding the “dialectical relation between
acceptance and refusal, between reversing and displacing,” she felt overwhelmed
and consumed — questioning the power of Hollywood (Trinh Minh Ha 186). But
to be designated as “Other” is to be fraught with change; an inescapable pattern