African-American Women And Film Analysis

Simpson portrays empowerment gender, identity, and culture in her images despite the oppression of racist culture impacts black women 's body and identity. Five-day forecast by Lorna Simpson incorporates five large boxes with days of the week Monday through Friday. It 's a way of expressing misconceptions as a black woman. In her image “five-day forecast” she has two words in each day such as; misdescription, misidentifies and mistranslate. When the audience sees this particular image they think of race and identity because Lorna has her arms crossed in each box but it happens to be so that as the days pass by her shirt starts getting wrinkled.

Walker uses Woolf’s ideas as a feminist scaffold upon which she builds up blackness. Alice Walker quotes and adapts Virginia Woolf’s writing to reframe it for black women. She inserts and changes words to reshape Woolf’s writing to reach black feminists and to tell the painful narrative of black women’s history. It is clear that Alice Walker has respect for Virginia Woolf, and while she does not tear Woolf down in her essay, she also does not sing Woolf’s praises.

From their experience, African American women learned to be self - reliant, which was a character trait that stood in opposition to the ideal of femininity of the time. As a consequence, African American women began to “be characterized as tough, domineer ing, and strong” (hooks 83). Nevertheless, the racist practices changed the view of African American women who began to be seen as “masculinized sub - human creatures” by the American mainstream society (hooks 71). Barbara Christian asserts that “in both A nglo - and Afro - American literature [African American women] have been assigned stereotype roles” ( Black Feminist Criticism 2).

“Lemonade” is Beyonce 's call for the liberation of Black women. By using her platform, she was thinking beyond herself when producing her album, she was connecting her pain to the millions of other Black women. In order to heal from the betrayal she faced from her husband, she had to cope with other issues that define what she is in society’s eyes as a Black woman. Throughout history, women had to fight to have a voice. There was a point in time where men were the only head of the households and women are just to accept whatever the man thought was right.

According to the chapter “Is the Personal Still Political” in Patricia Hill Collins’s book From Black Power to Hip Hop, African American women could not fully identify with the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s because of “race, class, and nation matter” (Collins 178). In other words, African American women did not wholly face the same struggles as White women and formed their own feminist organizations as a result. Even today, there is still a divide between White feminism and Black feminism and many Black artists have taken on the role of mobilizing the Black feminist movement. Of all the works we have studied in RLGN 278, I was most fascinated by the works of Janelle Monae and the film Black Panther.

Although critics claim that Beyonce’s album portrays the black woman as the ‘victim,’ Lemonade instead empowers black women to freely express themselves and their ‘anger’ because there is no greater oppression than suffering in silence. Truly, Bell Hooks’ claim that “much of the album stays within a conventional stereotypical framework, where the black woman is always a victim,” is false and insensitive. As an artist, Beyonce crafts music that resonates with women, especially black women, who have suffered pain due to patriarchal ideals that infiltrate the household as well. The

‘The Colour Purple’, published in 1982, was written by Alice Walker and demonstrates the brutal treatment of black women within the early 20th century. During this time, there was much oppression, particularly for black women. They were mistreated purely because of their colour and gender. The form and content of the novel can be viewed as a slave narrative that reflects the struggle for one woman’s independence. Female independence and freedom from the patriarchal society are topics that many feminist literary theorists tend to explore, particularly those that belonged to the third wave of feminist writing.

Female African American writers tend to focus more on the experience of black women (which we will consider for this novel). Black women are often introduced as the minority in the race, especially seen in writings during the 1970’s. Most of these writings have female characters who have domestic duties, which can reveal the passing of traditions and cultures from one generation to the next and the role of a woman in an inconvenienced household. They also deal with the image and perception of the Black woman, whether through looks, skin color, or her voice. The woman’s narrative is often formed gradually, often times alongside a woman who has already discovered herself, but we must consider that “it may take the form of exploring one’s own abilities, needs, and desires” (Tyson, 391).

In the Oppositional Gaze, Belle Hooks describes the process of identification as the subject (the woman) being replaced by another (someone in the film) that breaches the separation between the two, and in doing so, replicates the same structure of patriarchy (hooke, 124). Hooks describes that the existence of black women in a culture of white supremacy causes complexity and issues in regard to female identification. Due to poor representation of African American women in film, issues of identification can arise. One of this issues is explained in a scenario regarding a woman named Miss Pauline. Miss Pauline is a black woman who goes to the theater, watches a film (which is made for white people) and gets pleasure from it.

The Color Purple unfolds the panorama of black female reality of neo- slavery period that takes shape in the smithy of black male brutality towards black females, racial/ patriarchal oppression and misogynist assumptions. The novel focuses on the process of the self-discovery of an unlettered black southern woman. It traces the gradual growth of her radicalization and empowerment through female bonding, education and self-employment. The black feminist analysis reveals how black female radicalism, embracing of womanism, exploration of black heritage and resultant self- determination bring to fruition Celie’s quest for identity and history. Celie succeeds in her quest for identity and history by developing an understanding of her roots and heritage and acquiring the awareness that she has a right to happiness, passion, creativity and emotional fulfilment.

Overall women were invisible in this time in

She wears her hair curly, and feels pressured to take up the "accents and mannerisms" of her Black friends, becoming "a great actress in the role of black American" (De Brito, 28). In changing her "accents and mannerisms" to conform with the cultural expectations of being Black in America, De Brito is inauthentic to herself, and thus deprives herself of the opportunity to become more comfortable with her multiracial identity. De Brito 's feelings of self-doubt stem from the fact that she feels caught between two races. Although De Brito 's Cape Verdean mixed-race ethnicity grants her some things that can be perceived as privileges within the Black community (light skin, easy-to-manage hair), it also comes with exoticization,

This involvement brought with it heightened discussions on women 's issues that had been absent from the Party 's founding: specifically, a woman 's role as an activist on the frontlines (Lumsden). The Black Panther 's eventual focus on the "emancipation of woman,” along with the Party 's rising women leaders, turned its attention from "the lower class of brothers" and the "cream of Black manhood" to Black Power as it related to both men and women (Josephs, 424). Women were finally being seen less as "females" within the Party and, instead, as fellow Panthers. The Black Panther Party 's shifting goals were not without backlash, however, and following Elaine Brown 's appointment to chairperson in 1974, tension grew between its members. Firstly, Brown brought with her a deeper concentration on women 's growth within the Party.

Pop culture has affect not only the African American women by labeling with the word bitch but has put them out in movies, music videos, and television as the women that rappers created and set the label for them. Not only it affects the African American women but also the Latinas, who have also been label not bitchy but

Identity politics derive from some trait that has resulted in discrimination: being a woman, being African-American, etc. Liberation movements form from such traits and become sources of social empowerment, such as the feminist or Civil Rights movements. In her paper “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” , Kimberlé Crenshaw states that “Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices” (Crenshaw). Crenshaw points to the real problem that arises from identity politics--if experiences of discrimination are only delegated to the bounds of either being a woman or being a person of color, the experience of being a woman of color cannot be told. This is not to say that there is a problem with identifying with others who are discriminated against, but rather that there is a problem with the rigidity of these definitions in their exclusion of women of color.