Picture this: you’re in the cinema or at home, popcorn in hand, the lights are dimmed and you are ready to be impressed, but as the film plays, what do you see? The same old tropes and stereotypes are given to black women as if they’re going out of style. When there’s a black woman in a film, what do you expect her character to be? It’s likely to be one of a few roles: the Mammy, the slave, the oppressed woman, the Jezebel, and we can’t forget about the sapphire- fiery, sassy and often reduced to a punchline.
What is not amongst that list is any sort of role that is hyper-feminine, soft, or even messy. This begs the question, why? How can today’s stereotypes regarding black women in film be so regressive, and what can be done to break them and move on from an issue underlining Hollywood since its beginning?
Gone With the Wind is the archetypal film for demonstrating the issues with how Black women are portrayed on film. Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) is the wise, nurturing figure who’s always there to lend a helping hand but never gets her moment in the spotlight. The ‘Mammy’ stereotype exists solely to serve at the expense of her dreams and desires. She is described as overweight and uneducated, and her femininity lies in her subservience to her white counterparts.
McDaniel was the first African American woman to receive an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Whilst Gone With the Wind has become seen as a relic of the past, the shadow of Mammy still looms large over black women on film, who are continually reduced to stereotypes and have their femininity denied.
Kelechi Ehenulo, a passionate film critic and owner of the site Confessions of Geek Mind, spoke to me about the essence of stereotypes and how black women are much more than the limited scopes presented by Hollywood.
“It’s very important to highlight how racism and systemic structures impact Black femininity in the media. When Hollywood was built together with white men placing themselves at the head of the table, opportunities and access eroded for artists.”
She explained how Hollywood reflects a world where whiteness is seen as the standard and that even when racism and sexism were considered, Black women were treated as second-class citizens in both issues. They’re reduced to caricature and stereotype.
Kelechi is not a stranger to having people dictate her femininity and has had personal experiences with being masculinised, and her femininity picked apart and examined.
As a kid, Kelechi was a very sporty person who loved to play football with the boys. Because she wasn’t the stereotypical girly girl, she was classified as a tomboy. For her, she was just doing something that she loved. Fast-forward to being a young teenager. She was walking down the street, minding her own business, when she got catcalled by someone saying, ‘You look like a man’, and her response was a simple ‘mind your own business’.
These types of statements had a great impact on Kelechi.
“[It makes you feel like] you’re different, you’re not pretty, you’re not valued, you don’t have the Black girl magic, you don’t have anything. You’re not special. That can do so much damage to young kids, and it certainly did to me.”
She explains how Hollywood stereotypes enforced this and that Black women rarely get to showcase themselves in the film industry. So often their identities are reduced to one-dimensional characters.
“It’s almost like Hollywood loves seeing black women subservient, but when we go outside these roles and archetypes it’s almost like, oh, that’s too radical, that’s too much, and in reality Hollywood has dictated this stereotypes.”
For her, Black women are more than their suffering or tribulations. The stereotypes Hollywood enforces do not define them, and the true breadth of their identities shouldn’t be erased. Breaking from these stereotypes
It goes without saying that to be a woman is to be born a performer for ungrateful audiences, especially Black women who always end up at the bottom of the barrel and when they perform as the oppressed slave or the sexual Jezebel, which is the only time their femininity is acknowledged. God forbid they are depicted as sweet, cute or feminine or like the colour pink, and because of this, Black femininity will continue to belong to the white characters.
A great example of this is The Color Purple (2023). The film focuses on the trials, tribulations, and oppression of Black women while showcasing the complexity of femininity and how, despite suffering, softness can be found through the strength of sisterhood. Kelechi saw the film with one of her friends and reflected on her feelings after watching it.
“It’s a film that made me cry like I actually cried, and I remember being at the screening with one of my critic friends, who is a black female and at the end of the film, we just hugged each other because we were crying.’
“[It’s about] recapturing your identity, and that’s a very much empowering strength of how the film represents black femininity. Blackness is not a monolith because when you see Black stories, we are also more than our tragedies, our traumas and labels people deem us and watching The Colour Purple never shied away from this.”
Read more about the representation of women of colour here
When asked what Hollywood could do to break stereotypes and allow Black women to be feminine, she said, “I can assure you there’s a lot of solutions to this dilemma, solutions Hollywood turns its back on. To name a few, we need more Black female writers, directors, and creatives in rooms where narratives and decisions are being created and finalised.
“We need stories about Black female lives being told from their lens and have them take control of the narrative. We need more enriched storytelling because every story with a Black woman is always going to be different. Blackness is not a monolith.”
We need more black women playing soft characters, messy characters and vulnerable characters, and if Hollywood doesn’t recognise the talent and value black women bring to the table, then stereotypes that box black women in certain categories will continue to exist and control how their femininity is presented in movies.
