MixedUp: Howard J Davis explores his complicated identity

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

11 Nov 2019

Howard J Davis's film MixedUp is a fiercely personal work, packed with so many ideas and questions that it becomes universal. I know Davis has been working on MixedUp for some time, but its completion could not be more of the moment. At this point in history, all of us are dealing with systematic racism, our own racism, and the legacy of decades of racism. Realizations that are uncomfortable and utterly necessary.  

Davis, the son of a white mother and a black father, finds himself torn between two worlds and MixedUp is his attempt to discover why this is. Why they are defined as two worlds, why he is "belonging to both but existing as neither." Why is black and white a binary choice? "Why is white the default?" Davis demonstrates how with a slight adjustment of make-up he can be either white or black. But why can't he just be himself? As he says, "We need to understand the colours in between."

In his attempt to understand, Davis layers on sumptuous imagery. There are film clips from ancient race melodramas, delightful and devastatingly innocent home movies, historical side trips both horrifying and humorous, and visual representations of Davis's own confusion and defiance. Fortunately Davis is, as he was onstage in I Call Myself Princess, Bombay Black and The Wedding Singer, uniquely charismatic as he morphs himself through the use of liquids, digital effects and make-up. And his eyes, which he explains are simultaneously a source of confusion as to his racial identity but also one of his greatest assets, consistently hold attention.

There is a lot of narration, it is almost constant, running in counterpoint or tandem with the images. For such a visually precise filmmaker (C'est Moi), the flood of words is in danger of becoming hypnotic and too much to be absorbed. There are so many thoughts and ideas that Davis needs to explore and express, that the flood of words come close to being overwhelming. In a far simpler attempt at clarity Davis interviews his family and fellow biracial artists in an initially simple talking heads style.

Thom Allison (Ragtime, Elegies, Killjoys) and Kaleb Alexander (Pass Over, Hamlet/All's Well That Ends Well, Family Story, Delicacy) are familiar, attractive and very talented artists who speak precisely of their experiences and their feelings of being 'other.' And here MixedUp reveals its motives: I have seen Davis, Allison and Alexander in multiple roles had just accepted them as whatever character they were playing. Whether that character was an explicitly black man or an everyman or even a space alien. Their otherness was immaterial allowing their artistic prowess to shine. Or did I? Davis echoes their statements by saying that "My appearance won't do the talking but I sure as hell can. So I come out, again and again." And he wonders, "Can I say I am proud to be white?"

MixedUp made me look, with significant unease, at my own unwitting biases and short-sightedness.

Davis also interviews his two sisters, one who identifies as black and is a Black Lives Matter activist, the other who identifies as 'English.' Placing them visually side by side as they explain their choices creates a vicious demonstration of why a reductive binary system is faulty. Davis cites the "one drop" rule and notes that we all, no matter what race, descend from the same ancestors. Race is a social construct but unfortunately one that wields significant cultural power. Tantoo Cardinal (Hamlet) talks of moving between, of being whatever is demanded of her. A biracial identity should augment, not diminish.

MixedUp also touches on Davis's sexuality and again the ability to pass, to be either, of having to make a binary choice. It might be a layer too many, but the crucial intersection with his father's inability to accept Davis's sexuality and marriage, gives MixedUp a resonance that haunts and complicates. Again I am personally implicated and begin to question. Connections between ideas that initially seemed tenuous have been supported and expanded visually. The viewer has not been told what to think or even given an exact idea of what being 'mixed' entails. But somehow fragments and queries lodge in the brain, provoking and mulling. Leaving us also understanding what it is to be MixedUp.