Kiss of Death
Merle Oberon, as seen above, was a famous actress in the 1940's. In class, one of our discussions had to do with the topic of “passing”. Passing is the concept that if you fit a certain standard of a group, you could be accepted or adopted by them. Passing isn’t always just related to physical aspects, it could also be the way you act as well. Merle Oberon changed many aspects of her personality to try and pass as white by using things like skin-lightening cream and her accent as well.
I felt like this article and the picture above both did a great job of highlighting and showing Merle Oberon from beginning to end with no secrets (that we know of). The truth of her ancestry only came out after she had passed away, so uncovering the life of such a prominent figure who also turned out to be a minority is very interesting.
Zoe Saldana and Merle Oberon both connect with me in the same way since it seems like they both dance around their ancestry. Oberon, of course, did it much more intensely by completely dismissing and erasing as much as she possibly could. Saldana does it on a much smaller scale by instead identifying with another part of her ancestry more than her blackness, or by not talking about color at all as she says she and her sisters “don’t refer to Black or White in conversations about race” (Scott 2020). This specifically reminds me of colorblind racism, which is something we had talked about in class. The whole “I don’t see color” stance is not appreciated as most think. Most of Saldana’s comments came from the early 2010s, and since then she has backtracked on a good amount of them.