Week #10--Blackness and Sexuality

In her film The Watermelon Woman (1996), Cheryl Dunye portrays a filmmaker who uses the documentary medium to investigate the identity of a Black female actor from the early sound era of Hollywood. Through the documentary medium, Cheryl discovers not only her real name, but the community from which she emerged, a wider knowledge of her film career, and the personal relationships she had throughout her life. Cheryl is able to identify parallels between her and her subject, Fae Richards, in terms of being a Black lesbian working in the film medium, plus being involved in an interracial relationship. Cheryl uses documentary conventions such as picture stills and talking head interviews to both present her subject and chronicle her own journey to identifying herself as a filmmaker. Through the ambitious task of making a film, Cheryl comes to learn that there is as much work demanded to learn about the character one possesses in their pursuit of the objective he/she ultimately wants to achieve, even if it means breaking relationships that develop over time (i.e. Diana), testing the lengths of one’s friendship (i.e. Tamara), or resurrecting demons from the past (i.e. June Walker).

After the documentary is presented in the film’s ending credits, Dunye reveals that the project’s subject is entirely fictional. In her analysis of Watermelon, Thelma Willis Foote describes it as a hoax, which implies that the viewer is ultimately deceived throughout its entire duration. What further contributes to the initial response upon the revelation is that no hints are given that “The Watermelon Woman” does not exist, and the viewer can safely assume that Cheryl just so happens to seamlessly parallel her discovery of Fae’s relationship with her White director, Martha Page, with the intensifying romance between her and Diana. As she drops this bombshell at the film’s conclusion, she begins her statement by saying, “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” This is consistent to how Cheryl introduces herself to the audience, uncertain of whether or not she has earned the credentials to affirm herself as a filmmaker. As she thinks about what she wants to make her film about, she makes it clear that it has to be about Black women because, as she puts it, “…our stories have never been told.” Through the use of what is learned to be a mockumentary, Dunye points to a larger issue: the urgency of memory and recovery of the past, particularly topics that are embedded within the periphery.

When Julie Dash decided that she wanted to set Daughters of the Dust in South Carolina, near the area known as Ibo Landing, she reveals that her family members were reluctant to disclose details about their past. In the film within the film, Cheryl faces opposition from both Tamara, who rejects the notion that Black female actors confined to playing “mammy” roles are a worthy subject matter, and Fae’s partner, June, who finds Cheryl’s attempt to explore Fae’s romance with Martha a misrepresentation of Fae’s legacy. Cheryl courageously challenges both women in her validation of the aspects of Fae’s life neither wants to confront, which further affirms her self-recognition as a filmmaker. Two experimental documentaries also touch upon sensitive subject matter, particularly in regards to the place of Black gay male identity in a larger Black collective identity. In Looking for Langston (1988), Isaac Julien seeks to explore Langston Hughes’s sexual identity and his romantic relationships with fellow artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. By centralizing Hughes’s sexuality in his documentary, even at the displeasure of his estate, Julien also incorporates the work of James Baldwin, Bruce Nugent, and Essex Hemphill to establish a legacy of poetry by Black gay men that has gone often ignored. Hemphill’s poems are also featured in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1990). Riggs uses his own discovery as a gay man and ways in which his voice was silence to both identify transgressions gay Black men face, notably isolation from segments of the Black community, physical violence, and stereotyping within White gay popular culture. Ultimately, Riggs uses Tongues to encourage Black gay men to speak out against forces designed to subjugate then. As you watch both films, identify some of the conventions used in this film that differ from more familiar uses of the documentary medium. What is contained in the content of the poetry featured in each film, and what are some the images used to complement these works? How would you describe the overall structure of each of these films, and in what ways are images and sounds juxtaposed to centralize Black gay male sexuality in terms of romance and threats they face?