Steve Martin's "The Jerk"

In 1979, Steve Martin starred in a comedy where he played the white adopted son of a black family. The film opens with a monologue from Steve Martin where he says, "I was born a poor black child" and the tagline of the film was "He was a poor black sharecropper's son who never dreamed he was adopted." This particular clip is toward the beginning of the film and features his family celebrating his birthday. It highlights how out-of-place Steve Martin (Navin in the movie) is because he's white, despite the fact that he was raised by a black family. He says, "It's like I don't fit in. It's like I don't belong" and prefers food like "tuna salad on white bread with mayonnaise...and Twinkies" as opposed to "cornbread and collard greens." Perhaps the most memorable line (and the one I've really remembered after forgetting much of the rest of the movie) is when Steve Martin exclaims, "You mean I'm gonna stay this color?" (2:16) after discovering he was adopted.

I watched this movie several years ago, and it immediately came to mind when I was watching "Pinky." I originally thought that it might follow the same plot line where Pinky was actually adopted. Similarly to "Pinky," Navin leaves home to head north where he attempts to find himself, but ultimately returns home to his family, and in Navin's case along with his lover. In "The Jerk" we witness his journey north, whereas in "Pinky" we only see her return. It's difficult to compare since "The Jerk" is a comedy and "Pinky" is a drama, but I could see where the former could have been inspired in some respects by the latter.

It's interesting that even though the miscegenation clause was no longer explicitly a part of the Production Code, "From 1930 to 1956 the Production Code's...declared: 'Miscegenation...is forbidden'" (Courtney 103) and this was released in 1979, the film still abides by it as Navin found a white lover and was adopted by a black family - not conceived (though not explicitly) from an interracial couple.

How are the two movies similar and different? And in those differences, how may those have been influenced by time rather than genre?