A Black Female Perspective…
Will Packer (writer/director of 2017’s Girl Trip) kicks off 2019 with a remake of Mel Gibson’s What Women Want (2000) starring Taraji P. Henson (Empire; Baby Boy). Though casting a black woman who proclaims her racial and gender status towards the end of the film, Henson is the latest example of colorblind casting. By colorblind […]
In its contemporary context, blackness assumes a violent coupling. Filmaker Jordan Peele (Get Out) tackles this coupling in both a literal and figerative sense with his latest release Us. Peele depicts humans as “coupled” by a being who mirrors their exteriority. In challenging the presumed singularity of identity, the coupled being obscures reality, simultanously inciting […]
There are some things in life that are simply once in a lifetime experiences. Sam Cooke the singer is a once in a lifetime experience for anyone who loves music. Sam Cooke the activist and black nationalist is a black treasure lost in the media mutilation of his body and legacy. The Netflix Documentary Remastered: […]
What I find both fascinating and terrifying about contemporary culture is its use of intersectionality with regard to blackness. For clarity, I use the term “intersectionality” to represent the literal intersections such as ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation to which blackness is juxtaposed. Intersectional agents function as what I will call the honorary oppressed or […]
I always desired to see a black love story on screen. Not a rom-com, or later-in-life love (though this would be nice too), but an authentic love story with young, black lovers. I know this could never be The Notebook, that though there would be a happily ever after, it would not be conventional because […]
The most profound of black male leaders were advocates for black women. Men like Malcolm X and Thomas Sankara come to mind, their praxis and words providing enlightenment and inspiration to the black collective thoroughly vested in admiration and reverie for a lineage and legacy birthed from and anchored in the black female body. Though […]
In a black studies course taught by an anti-black African adjacent “professor,” I, along with, my classmates were encouraged to adopt the one-drop rule. “She is black,” he said with an authority not vested in him. The “she” he was referencing was none other than Cardi B. Now, to him, an Indian man on a […]
“I am convinced that symbolism is the death of progress.”
Pegged as a bildungsroman or a rom-com gone wrong, Nappily Ever After marks the latest of inclusionary narratives that afford black actors a check and the black collective the illusion of progress. The Netflix rom-com appears to include the black woman into the fairy tale genre. What happens, of course, is that black characters remain […]
There are only two things the black collective needs to know about Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play. The first is that all of its show dates are sold out. The second is that it has a number of rave reviews from white publications and white platforms. Both illustrate that this play cannot possibly be good […]
