JEZEBEL FILM RESPONSE

In the movie Jezebel, Julie is the one who always resists and acts differently. She refuses to be like the others in the South. She is contumacious. For example, wearing a red dress in the ball while the unmarried girls wear white represents her character in a better way. In the article “White”, Dyer claims that wearing a dress like Julie did can be desired to be worn only by black women (140). This is because red dress signifies sexual desires and a white woman shouldn’t express such a wicked desire. White women must be elegant and respectful. So, Julie’s dress choice is a kind of refusal of being white. That’s why she mentions herself as unclean in later scenes. She believes that her previous behaviors (before Preston left her) were selfish and humiliating. After Preston left her, she started to change in order to prove herself clean. She began to act like a white woman. We see this transition from unclean to pure through her behaviors and face expressions. For illustration, she expresses nothing when there is a quarrel between Buck and Ted and even when heard about Buck’s death. This is because she becomes white again and a white woman shouldn’t express her feelings directly. The reason why Julie wants to be clean is the fact that the white people around Julie cast out her. This is because her behaviors seem abnormal. In the article called “The Matter of Whiteness”, Dyer points out that people don’t see their situation as whiteness because it seems normal to them (10). Thus Julie’s different acts appear abnormal and they associate her behaviors with black people’s living style unintentionally. This condition presses Julie to prove herself. Besides acting like unexpressive white woman, she needs a second chance to show people that she is purified totally. Therefore she begs Amy to accompany to Preston. She believes that sacrificing herself for Preston, a white man, makes her clean again.