Caputi, Jane. “‘Specifying’ Fannie Hurst: Langston Hughes's ‘Limitations of Life,’ Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God, and Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye as ‘Answers’ to Hurst's Imitation of Life.” Black American Literature Forum Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1990): pp. 697-716. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041797>.

Caputi discusses the impact of Imitation of Life on black audiences. According to Lawrence Reddick, “while white liberals generally applauded the picture and hailed it as a progressive step forward in racial attitudes, editorials in the Negro press were rather unanimous in their praise of Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington as actresses, but they expressed annoyance and disgust at many scenes.”  One scene in particular that let a strong negative impact on the black audience was the “once a pancake scene.” In a review by Sterling Brown, he calls both the film and the novel offensive, resurfacing the old Mammy stereotype.  Hurst was outraged by this review, arguing that Imitation of Life was an important to film and society as a whole, showing the Negro as a part of American life.

Caputi also recounts her reading of the novel Imitation of Life and Their Eyes Were Watching God in succession, after which she became convinced that Hurston’s story deliberately challenged and responded to some of the racist and sexist themes and characterizations in Imitation of Life.  There are striking resemblances, from the parallels between Hurst’s Bea and Hurston’s Janie, as well as between Janie and Peola.  Also, Hurston’s novel mocks and transcends the structuring stereotypes of the mammy and the tragic mulatto through her creation of two multi-dimensional black characters, Janie and Nanny.   She then compares Imitation of Life to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. She states that Morrison offers Pecola as a tragic mulatto, similar to Peola; however, Morrison describes society’s role in this worshipping of white standards of beauty and condemns the racist culture.

This article serves as supporting evidencef for bell hooks’s claim about the black female spectator’s ability to find delight in films that negate the black woman presence through interrogation.  The two novels that Caputi discusses, Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God are examples of black women acknowledging their presence in Imitation of Life, no matter how negated  it was, and finding a way to challenge it. Through their works, both Morrison and Hurston constructively make use of their “oppositional gazes,” challenging the stereotyped caricatures of the black female in cinema.

DVDs are protected by a security system called the Contents Scramble System, which prevents unauthorized use and copying of the encoded material. Thus, only devices that have the CSS key can play these videos. In this lawsuit, eight major movie studios sued Jeraimee Hughes for disseminating a software device, called DeCSS, that can bypass this protective shield. Hughes posted this application on his Internet site, advertising that DeCSS is a "free DVD decoder that allows people ot copy DVDs." This violates the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1988. Regardless of whether or not people utlize such a device, it is illegal to provide technology that circumvents a code that is intended for copyright protection.

There have been a series of other lawsuits against individuals who have also distributed DeCSS through the web. They argue that their actions are lawful under the First Amendment and constitute as fair use under the Copyright Act. Whereas the First Amendment right defense is more complex, the fair use argument is baseless. The defendants are not being sued for copyright infringement but are being sued for providing an illegal encryption decoder. In the case against Hughes, and generally speaking for most of these lawsuits, the defendant was found guilty.

Because my paper explores the digital advancements that pose a threat to the movie industry and how the industry has responded, this case serves as a perfect example of both. Piracy has become more advanced due to digital technologies. Individuals can create devices that can crack security codes and promulgate the information via the web. In order to counter these efforts, the movie industry must take legal action to prevent others from doing the same. Although the movie industry is also improving upon digital means for protection, it seems at this point that hackers will always remain a threat, and therefore must be stopped by the law.