Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 51

African American Female Identity

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Black Feminist Thought: Understanding Cinematic Representation
As construction of knowledge varies across people and individuals, it is
essential that a framework be used that embraces difference and provides a unique
perspective from which this difference may be understood. By using Black Femi
nist Thought (Collins, 1996a; 1993) for the present study of Waiting to Exhale and
Set It Off, voice will be given to two popular culture artifacts that position
marginalized experiences and voices in the forefront for both African American
and mainstream audience members (Hine, 1992). Such a standpoint provides a
consciousness for an oppressed people and provides a platform for sharing gendered
and racialized experiences too often excluded from dominant discourse (hooks,
1996; Phillips & McCaskill, 1995; King, 1988).
According to Collins (1996a), Black Feminist Thought offers African
American women a voice or a “self-defined collective women’s standpoint about
black womanhood.” Inquiries into such experiences have provided Afncan Ameri
can women with a conceptual framework that challenges stereotypical images of
American women (Collins, 1993), thus creating a consciousness of systematic
oppression from all fronts. In her extensive investigation of Black Feminist Thought,
Collins (1993) has described four controlling images tha t create a distorted image
of Afncan American women. These four controlling images are “the mammy—
the faithful obedient house servant” (p. 71), the matriarch, who is “central to the
interlocking system of race, gender, and class oppression,” (p. 74), the welfare
mother (breeder woman) who is dependent on the welfare state for survival, and
the Jezebel, also referred to as “the whore or sexually aggressive woman” (p. 75).
Collins further demonstrates that these images individually and collectively work
to maintain the oppressive system within which racism, sexism, and classism work
to denigrate the private and public being of all African American women.
Movies as Texts: Storylines of W aiting to E xh ale and S e t I t O ff
In a qualitative study of movies and their portrayals of African American
women, Harris and Hill (forthcoming) found that African American women as an
interpretive community (Bobo, 1995) observe a dialectical tension existent in
Waiting to Exhale. They found that while the film was perceived as an appreciated
visual text providing a multidimensional perspective of African American female
identity. Waiting to Exhale is noted as perpetuating the very stereotypes and con
trolling images that oppress all African American women. Therefore, it is the pur
pose of this critical essay to provide a descriptive analysis of the controlling im
ages within the movies Waiting to Exhale and Set It Off
If we are to fiilly understand the dialectical tensions inherent in racialized
representation in the media, a description of each movie’s storyline must be pro
vided. Waiting to Exhale is a visual text that captures the friendship of four middle-