Blog  4

Hollywood Celluloid, Minority Women and the First Person

Bell Hooks writes, “movies make magic, they change things. They take the real and make it into something else right before your eyes. . . They give a re imagined, reinvented version of the real. It may look like something familiar, but in actuality it is a different universe from the world of the real” (B. Hooks, “Reel to Reel, Introduction Making Movie Magic, p 1). Like a Sage - wise and with thorough experience – Hooks writes that main stream media teach the spectators through representations of character and image, how they are to see themselves and how they are "perpetually" defined. She writes “whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people. It may not be the intent of a filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned” (id., p 2).

Hooks brings to mind my pet-peeve, which is that I believe minority women are bombarded by constant media/marketing of youth, thinness, skin tone, physical size and vernacular and are constantly, by innuendo or overt acts, reminded that the “you.” the individual in the present state does not fit this mold. Hooks discusses how main stream (lets call it the "Hollywood Celluloid") dominated by the Patriarchy - define the criteria for what is beauty and what is the "story," and charts the landscape that “real” women are expected to understand to be their "story," specifically minority women.  But, her critique as well as other feminist critique is broad, enveloping issues of : whose vision are we seeing?; is there an absence of the "first voice"?; how is the story teller capturing the voice of the audience or the subjects that I speak of ?  Arguably, the Hollywood Celluloid paints minority women with a broad and "colorless" brush and are portrayed by the industry in the eyes of directors/producers who in most instances is a “he,” who decides which stories "she" will be depicted in, represented and told.

For example, there was much fanfare - like a boisterous jamboree - of Hollywood Celluloid's depiction of minority women and/or men in films, such as, Invictus, The Blind Side, The Princess and the Frog or Avatar, but the reality is that these movies (two, I thought were great!) were not made by minorities and surely not women. Furthermore, commentary reveals that these movies portraying minority women/men in film, were made predominantly by white, middle-aged men (see, “How Hollywood Depicts Race,” Jared Wright, 01/08/2010 [http://spectrummagazine.org/review/2010/01/08/how-hollywood-depicts-race]). Jared Wright notes in his column that “[o]ne wonders how each film might have looked different through the eyes of minority directors. Might Invictus have spent more time on Mandela’s family, from whom he was separated? Might The Blind Side have explored Leigh Anne Tuohy’s racist parents and her own struggle with questions of ethnicity and race? Would Princess and the Frog have been set in the Jim Crow South? In New Orleans? Would the Prince have been a fair-skinned man with a Hindustani name? Would the bad guy have been into voodoo? Would the Na’vi people in Avatar have taken as their leader and “savior” a white American-turned Na’vi?”(id.).

But, this does not have to be. Maggie Humm critiques the “male signature” in film and explores the “auteur theory”, which holds that a director’s film can reflect the director’s creative and distinct vision and not be affected by the Patriarchy and the industrial process, as long as the vision, voice and creativity of the director shines through such “interference.” As an example, Humm explores the oeuvre of the Dutch director, Ms. Marleen Gorris, particularly a comparative analysis of four (4) films: A Question of Silence; Broken Mirrors; The Last Island; and Antonia’s Line. It is through these films that Humm’s explores the female signature in film (Maggie Humm, “Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film,” Chapter 4 [Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film]). Gorris’ work is explored and critiqued by Humm, noting the elaborately women-centred films about women’s experience, exploitation, violence, friendship, and psychic liberation. She explores Gorris’ mystical/mythical belief of women survival from masculine destruction. But, seemingly, Gorris’ work and Humm’s critique also suggest that films, throughout the industry, need to explore and depict ethnic and racial minorities through the eyes of those groups.

In short, the Hollywood Celluloid needs more first-person storytelling, especially from the eyes of minority women.  For example, the "male signature" in African-American centric film appears to replicate "tradition" - euphemism for the Patricarchy - and therefore repeats the blurred vision of  main stream industry.

 

Recent films have explored first-person storytelling of minority women. We can all acknowledge “Precious," based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” as well as the acclaimed new film, "Pariah," which explores the theme of African-American womanhood, sexuality, acceptance and understanding, but told through the eyes of both an African American female director and actor.

Both films speak in the first person and what Hollywood Celluloid is in much need of; it is the opposite of what it currently has too much of.

Until that happens, one has to go to alternative media venues to see the “first person" speak with her own voice and from her vision.  These alternative sites are nesting grounds from which one can explore thevcreative auteur, such as, http://www.mediarights.org/. where the "female signature" come to the fore in minority women-centre film, e.g., Pushing The Elephant, a documentary on the struggle of Rose Mapendo after the lost her family and home to the violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Another alternative film source is http://www.africanfilm.com/home.html which distributes films that focus on the human experience of black people in Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America and Europe. The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets(http://www.indymedia.org/en/static/about.shtml) that provides a venue for diverse story telling in the first voice.