Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 58
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Popular Culture Review
American female identity as illustrated by the female characters and storylines
present in the movies Waiting to Exhale and Set It Off.
It was found that while the African American female characters were tell
ing stories of relationship (dis)satisfaction and race, class, and gender oppression,
the same stories perpetuate controlling images that have become a mainstay in Western
culture. Instead of challenging the very negative depictions that such images epito
mize, the various characters keep alive the matriarch, Jezebel, and welfare mother
images traditionally associated with African American women. Both movies em
body African American women’s experiences from two distinct socioeconomic classes
through the interpersonal context of friendship/sisterhood, creating an interesting
dynamic in need of critical inquiry. Collins states that Black Feminist Thought of
fers African American women a voice or a “self-defined collective black women’s
standpoint about black womanhood” (1996a). In turn, formal inquiries into such
experiences have provided African American women a conceptual framework that
challenges stereotypical images of American women (Collins, 1993), thus creating
a consciousness of systematic oppression from all fronts.
In a recent qualitative study about perceptions of the cinematic representa
tion of professional African American women in the movie Waitingjo Exhale, Har
ris and Hill (1998) found that some women serving as members of an undervalued
interpretive community experienced cognitive dissonance as they watched the char
acters develop on-screen. While there was satisfaction in seeing a somewhat realis
tic representation of life for themselves in the movie, most participants were dis
heartened to observe the subconscious debasing of African American women. Al
though they felt Waiting to Exhale was a positive attempt by African American film
makers at providing creative space for the expression of Blackness and femaleness,
participants felt that it also perpetuated the matriarch and Jezebel stereotypes tradi
tionally associated with African American women (Harris & Hill, 1998).
According to Collins (1993), African American women have experienced
a particular oppression and misrepresentation, which has created unfavorable im
ages that have been readily accepted as truth by the masses. Currently, some cin
ematic efforts have been made to challenge such manipulated constructs in an
effort to redeem the beauty of all African American women. Using Black Feminist
Thought as the conceptual framework, this essay explored a dialectical tension
whereby attempts to portray African American women in the movies ultimately
perpetuate stereotypes of matriarch, Jezebel, and welfare mother, which are his
torically and traditionally associated with African American women in Western
culture. It is hoped that future inquiry into this tenuous state of cinematic annihila
tion will be explored to deconstruct and reconstruct the multiple identities of all
African American women.
University of Georgia
Tina M. Harris