A Black Female Perspective…
A womanist analysis of mainstream and indie films.
Roman Israel —-the character and the film, illustrate a harsh reality of heartbreak, humility, and the attempt at humanity by one who has been dehumanized. Like many of the great black ancestors, film protagonist Roman Israel (Denzel Washington) spent decades fighting for change—reaching for the impossible to the mental exhaustion imbued by his physical efforts. […]
I had never heard of Suburbicon prior to being invited to attend a pre-screening event. As a black woman interested in explicating blackness, seeing the movie was initially of little interest to me. But as a plus-one, the endeavor became a low stakes opportunity to meta a white film targeting an audience of white liberals. […]
If you watch Maury, black love is dysfunctional, careless, and rooted in lust. The same can be said for many other “reality” television shows from court series to VH1 shows that anchor themselves in portraying the black man and black woman as hyper-sexual entities incapable of functioning in their shared state of incivility. The black […]
The film Crown Heights debuted to a lauded reception at the Sundance Film Festival, for its dramatization of the injustice that befell an eighteen-year old Colin Warner–a young black man blamed for the shooting death of Mario Hamilton. Crown Heights, uses Colin Warner as a vessel to depict the detriment of wrongful incarceration, ignoring the […]
Kidnap appears to be yet another action-adventure.suspense film starring a household name. Yet, Kidnap mirrors historical slave narrative in capturing the maternal stress of black mothers. Namely, much like Harriet Jacobs in The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick’s Douglas’ mother who traveled by foot in the dark of night to see her […]
The Dark Tower seemingly solicits a “dark” viewership in casting esteemed black actor Idris Elba (The Wire, Takers, Luther). The placement of a black body in a role authored for a white person is a common act of the contemporary world. This act, while a pseudo act to diversify a still predominately white industry, never […]
The Incredible Jessica James debuted to an audience eagerly awaiting its next piece of seemingly antiracist media where an bothered body occupies central placement. To most The Incredible Jessica James is a coming of age narrative where a black female twenty-something finds her way past a breakup an through her struggles as a striving artist. […]
In recent months, I have written extensively about Dr. Christina Sharpe and the wake work initiative ignited by her book In the Wake: Blackness and Being. The book epitomizes Afro-demia, where blackness is placed in the forefront of formal discourse. Although difficult to point to a single moment in the text as more significant than […]
The rise of the black female leading lady remains a consistent topic of discussion in the contemporary world. Once solely assigned supporting roles, black female portrayal has seemingly shifted. Or has it? Girls Trip depicts four black female stars: Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall and Tiffany Haddish. To the casual gaze, the black female […]
On the surface, Tupac was a young man with big dreams who wished to find a way out of a dead end street where so many black families and individuals dwell indefinately. To those that looked more closely, Tupac was a black man on a mission to be heard, a black man with a story […]
