While the merits of Suture as an entertaining film can be debated, it is obvious that Scott McGehee and David Siegel began the production of the film with very clear intentions. In order to create a film which is truly colorblind, McGehee and Siegel had to ignore every convention, especially when it came to casting the film. In the roles of twin brothers, they cast Michael Harris (a short, thin, narrow-featured, white man) and Dennis Haysbert (a tall, stocky, dark-skinned black man). To deconstruct the exnomination of race in films (as well as in real life), the directors must perform this commutation test in a certain very clever way: no one in the diegesis of the film can recognize Harris and Haysbert’s difference in appearance.

In two key sequences, the intentions of McGehee and Siegel are almost painfully clear: the opening trip to the airport, and the reconstruction of Haysbert’s face by Renee (Dina Merrill), also his romantic interest. In act one of the film, both Vincent Towers (Harris) and Clay Arlington (Haysbert) refer to themselves as brothers, but another barrier has been constructed: a class barrier. Arlington wears jeans, a flannel shirt, and a trucker cap; Towers wears a clean, all-white suit. Halfway through act one, the directors perform another commutation test: Arlington changes into an identical white suit. The contrast between Arlington’s skin and the suit is striking, and it is still impossible for the viewer to call these two men “identical” with honesty. However that is the leap we are asked to make by McGehee and Siegel.

Later in the film, as Arlington (who is now identified as Towers) is evaluated for reconstructive surgery, the exnomination of exnomination continues. Renee describes Arlington as having a “Greco-Roman nose,” a “crisp, angular jaw,” and “fine, straight hair”—in other words, the viewer is confronted in a very direct way. While something onscreen is actually described, the objects being described are clearly not what they are said to be. The ultimate motives of McGehee and Siegel are still unclear, but they at least succeed at bringing exnomination of race to the forefront of their film.

The film Suture is about exnomination on two distinct levels. The exnomination of identity and the exnomination of race. Ultimately, the much more visible (and easier to contemplate) exnomination of identity is used to describe what the viewer is experiencing in relation to race.

When Clay Arlington loses all identity, he desperately seeks to find a replacement for it. He must fill the gap. Identity has been exnominated for Clay. His search for identity fuels the film. But by searching, he becomes caught up in the mechanism of identity. In the end, finding out “who he really is” is unsatisfactory, and he decides to live as who he was told to be. This is an option only someone who has seen the unnamed side of the world can make.

His visual quest for a named tangible identity throughout the film parallels the audience’s physiological quest for a named tangible race. Just as his “mother” tells Clay/Vincent how he was at parties, the modern audience wants desperately to tell Clay that he is black. Clay’s flashbacks are the visual counterparts to tricky lines like “strikingly similar but...different” (uttered while Clay was standing in a lineup as Vincent Towers). In both instances, these scenes work for Clay and the viewer as small hints of “what is right.” Clay goes to Dr. Shinoda repeatedly trying to solve the riddle, with each new flashback a potential clue. We, the viewers, hear those lines and use them as something to hold on to, with each line a potential path to “normality”— normality, here, being the nomination of race.

At the end of the film, Clay and the spectator must face a difficult choice. Clay, confronting a world of exnominated identity, sees his “true” identity and can either embrace it or deny it. The viewer, having been confronted with a world of exnominated race, must now either embrace or deny it. However, the viewer, like Clay, must make the decision while staring exnomination in the face.

Roland Barthes believed in what he called the Naturalness of Ideology. He called this concept exnomination (unnaming), or the difference that goes un-remarked. According to Barthes, exnomination is the thing that someone doesn’t point out. It is the thing that only points out what it (the thing being exnominated) is not. For example, in American society people tend to point out if someone is either really rich or really poor as opposed to just being middle class; with the middle class being the un-named—the exnominated.

Race, unlike social class, is not exnominated. Whiteness, however, is exnominated. John Fiske says that race is unnamed in American and British cultures. An example of what Fiske is saying about race being unnamed is as follows: if I tell Sue about my black friend Scott, I name him as such—a black friend; but if my friend is white, when describing him, his whiteness goes unnamed, exnominated. This is because whiteness is the ideological dominant (just like middle-class status was in Barthes' explanation).

Whiteness is neutral—not marked.

In saying this, Suture (1993, McGehee and Siegel), deconstructs race as being (or not being) exnominated. This is because, first of all, the film appears (in its entirety) in black and white. Secondly, the characters within the film act as if race does not exist—or are marked. At the beginning of the film, the audience is obliged to believe that Vincent tries to kill Clay because he is black, even though his blackness is unnamed. However, this obligation dies when after Clay (as Vincent) recovers and his blackness clearly goes unnoticed. It is like Clay can pass as Vincent because race is exnominated in this film. Basically, in contrast to the idea of race as not being exnominated, in this film, blackness—as well as whiteness—is exnominated. This happens in two ways: the fact that the film is in black and white underscores the fact that race goes unnoticed, while the fact that the characters do not even notice each others' race solidifies the issue that race is exnominated.

Throughout history, racial differences have been exemplified through widespread culturally-held beliefs (whether justified or unjustified), and thus further infused into the literature and films produced by American society as a whole. This infusion of racial differences, and of the exnomination of "whiteness" into films and literature, has created a seemingly never-ending circle of influence upon society. Film and literature are influenced by the stereotypical culturally-held beliefs of society concerning race (even though sometimes subconscious), which results in film and literature reinforcing those sentiments. As Richard Dyer states, "Looking, with such passion and single-mindedness at non-dominant groups has had the effect of reproducing the sense of oddness, differentness, exceptionality of these groups, the feeling that they are departures from the norm" (733).

Suture (1993, McGehee and Siegel) makes a conscious effort to ignore race, or to invoke from its audience the exnomination of race altogether, instead of assuming the typical exnomination of only "whiteness." The film portrays two long lost brothers meeting for the first time in adulthood, one of which is black and the other is white. From the very beginning of the film, the audience is expected not to question this, because no answers are ever offered. The fact that this important detail (the brothers are of different races) is not discussed or explained at length onscreen is one way that Suture deconstructs the exnomination of race, because it forces its viewers to believe without questioning. By offering no answers (i.e. not talking about race), the film makes a very loud statement about race without ever having to point out racial differences.

Suture goes much farther than just portraying two brothers of different ethnic backgrounds believing they are brothers: all of the other characters in the film mistake the black brother Clay (Dennis Haysbert) for the white brother Vincent (Michael Harris), after Clay is in an accident in Vincent’s car and wakes up with amnesia. The film eases the audience into this notion by showing Clay covered in bandages from head to toe just after the accident, to depict that perhaps they cannot tell them apart because his skin is almost entirely covered. But as Clay begins to heal, the bandages are removed, revealing more and more of his skin, and the difference remains unnoticed by the characters on film. During one love scene between Clay (Haysbert) and his surgeon Renee (Mel Harris) images of his X-rays are flashed upon the screen. X-rays are black and white, and everyone’s looks identical (unless broken bones are revealed); this is a subtle gesture deconstructing the exnomination of race, suggesting that everyone, no matter what race, can/does look the same because we are all essentially the same inside.

Upon the sighting of an African-American walking down the hallway, it is difficult not to think, “There is a black man walking down the hallway.” Although this “thinking” may have become less of a conscious reaction due to routine, the interesting truth is that the white people pushing past him are not noticed. His blackness stands out. It is not from this illustrative “black man (he is even identified as black after the analogy has passed)” that an understanding of race’s role in ideology can take shape, but in the unnamed faces that crowd around him. Of course, this just seems to be the way things are. “Social reality, therefore, appears to be a given, appears to be just 'the way things are', rather than a construction arising from the power relationships within society, which ideology serves to maintain” (www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk). How does this racist ideology operate? Simply by not saying anything about itself. The white man (or “whiteness” in and of itself) goes unnoticed because he has been exnominated. White dominance, so to speak, maintains itself by going unnamed—a silent majority in the world of ideology.

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