Smith, Valerie. “Reading the Intersection of Race and Gender in Narratives of Passing.”  Diacritics Vol. 24, No. 2/3 (Summer - Autumn, 1994): pp. 43-57. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/465163>.

Valerie Smith shows Imitation of Life’s attempt at creating a hierarchy of gender and race as a way to manipulate spectatorial allegiances.  However, focusing on the resistant spectator, or black female viewer, the author states that this spectator would refuse the film’s attempt at disaggregating class and race from gender identity.  She argues that an oppositional viewer would rearticulate these connections, thus disrupting, at least partially, the overdetermined logic of the film.   This viewer would question the premise of the film, that the black woman should remain in her place.  Likewise, such a spectator would also challenge the film’s logic. She would also notice the film’s attempt at glossing over the racial differences between the two women’s circumstances in order to establish People’s story as a metaphor for Bea’s. 

Very much in line with bell hooks, Valerie Smith argues that the resistant spectator (her term for the black female spectator) would pose questions and delve further into the text while watching Imitation of Life as a way to gain pleasure through the deconstruction of myths and stereotypes within the film. Smith contends that the oppositional viewer would refuse Imitation’s attempt at downplaying racism so as to propagate more so the notion of sexism to its viewers and make her own judgments based on personal examination.