Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres Memòria del Treball de Fi de Grau
The Cinematic Underrepresentation of Black Women from the Civil Rights Movement
Silvia Maymó Gallurt Grau d’Estudis Anglesos
Any acadèmic 2020-21
DNI de l’alumne: 41583686P
Treball tutelat per Paloma Fresno Calleja Departament de Filologia Anglesa
S'autoritza la Universitat a incloure aquest treball en el Repositori Institucional per a la seva consulta en accés obert i difusió en línia, amb finalitats exclusivament acadèmiques i d'investigació
Autor Tutor Sí No Sí No
Paraules clau del treball:
civil rights movement, activism, black women, cinematic representation, underrepresentation.
Abstract
Cinematic representations of the civil rights movement are taken as sources of historical information. Although black women were actively involved in the fight, they have certainly been underrepresented in these films. This paper scrutinizes four movies about the movement (Malcolm X (Lee 1992), The Rosa Parks Story (Dash 2002), The Help (Taylor 2011), and One Night in Miami (King 2020)) with two objectives: to examine how women are presented when they are not the center of the story and how they are depicted when they are the protagonists.
The analysis considers the roles and the environment that women occupy in the films, and it reveals that black women are cinematically nullified as activist members of their community, which translates into a supposed lack of participation. In contrast with male figures, the representation of black women marginalizes them from the movement by relegating them to the family environment, romanticizing their lives, and highlighting the negative outcomes of their actions instead of recognizing their accomplishments.
Keywords
Civil rights movement, activism, black women, cinematic representation, underrepresentation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction………...1
2. Women and the civil rights movement………..…………2
3. Women in male-focused movies………4
4. “Invisible leaders”: female-focused movies………...………...8
5. Conclusion………..12
6. Works Cited……….14
Introduction
The civil rights movement, which took place in America between the 1950s and the 1960s, was a long battle in which both men and women from the black community fought to gain their rights and an equality which would end with discriminative measures. As many other historical events, this movement has been illustrated in books, movies, and documentaries. However, the way in which it has been brought to the cinema has distorted female reality. Although there are written accounts such as Rosa Parks: A Bibliography (Hanson 2011) or Black Feminist Thought (Collins 2000) that, among others, provide a transparent compilation of black women’s struggle and participation, the same cannot be stated regarding films. At present, movies have become
“mainstream representations” (Smith 2014, 36) of history and many people take them as a source of instruction. Traditionally, the cinematic industry has produced a wide range of male activists’ movies and, most of the times, the same male figure is portrayed in several films throughout different decades. For instance, Martin Luther King is discussed in King: A Film Record. Montgomery to Memphis (Lumet and Mankiewicz 1970), Boicot (Johnson 2001), Selma (DuVernay 2014), I Am Not Your Negro (Peck 2016), and many others. In contrast, when it comes to women, there are far less productions, which means that they are being hidden or erased from history. By way of illustration, Rosa Parks, who is taken to be as one of the most outstanding black female activists, has only been portrayed as protagonist in The Rosa Parks Story (Dash 2002). Hence, although women “performed roles that by any standard would merit their being considered “heroes” […] of the movement” (Barnett 1993, 163), this is not recognized in the quality and quantity of representations.
The scarce and inaccurate cinematic productions devoted to black women activists are detrimental to the way in which they are perceived by the audience. Women are figures from the black community who have been left in the shadows from the point of view of fiction since it does recover plenty of historical masculine figures, but it ignores female ones. Therefore, cinematic representations of black women from the civil rights movement nullify and silence them.
Taking into account that cinema has a strong power of influence over society, this paper aims at revisiting some of these representations in order to analyze the way in which women are portrayed and relegated both in movies where they are protagonists and in others where they are not. This study is divided into three sections. The first one is devoted to the real contribution of women in order to provide a distinction between their historical participation and how
cinematic representations, discussed in the second and third section, transform that reality. The following sections inspect four movies that have been produced between the last half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. The second section deals with how the participation of black women in the movement is negated in male-focused movies.
Concretely, in Malcolm X (Lee 1992) and One Night in Miami (King 2020). These movies have been chosen as representative of male dominant productions since they portray some of the main historical male leaders. Moreover, their publication being thirty years apart has been taken into account in order to detect a possible change in perspective over the years. Malcolm X concentrates on the evolution of Malcolm’s life before and after his conversion to Islam, and his participation as a minister of the organization of the Nation of Islam. By contrast, One Night in Miami focuses not on one but on four relevant male figures for the black community who meet to discuss their different approaches to the fight. They are Malcolm X, Samuel Cooke, Cassius Clay, and Jim Brown. Finally, the third section of this paper concerns women in The Rosa Parks Story (Dash 2002) and The Help (Taylor 2011), which are films that portray them as protagonists. These have been chosen since they work from two different points of view: the public or political sphere, and the private sphere. The Rosa Parks Story is based on Rosa Parks’
public and private experiences, from her falling in love to her standing up against segregation laws. Representing the private sphere, The Help depicts the life of several maids that are almost enslaved in white family homes, and they are presented with an opportunity to denounce those facts through a book.
Women and the Civil Rights Movement
Historically, black women played key roles during the civil rights movement, however, the way in which the cinema narrates the story relegates them. “Black women have not been passive objects who were satisfied with watching their menfolk make history” (Staples 1981, 26), presenting them as such “is a poor tribute to their historical deeds” (26). Therefore, it is essential to recover the main black women activists and what they did in order to establish a contrast with cinematic representations.
Rosa Parks is one of the most known activists. She is mainly remembered for her leadership in the Montgomery bus boycott, where Parks refused to leave the white reserved seat that she occupied and that gave way to a host of followers. This resulted in the abolition of segregation on buses. However, she “wasn’t the only Montgomery woman taking an active
role” (Houck and Dixon 2009, 37). Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith were also involved in bus confrontations (38). Indeed, it is said that Colvin’s incident preceded Parks’, and that is something that mainstream media does not portray. Although being mainly remembered by this, Parks also “protested for housing segregation” (Theoharis 2015) and participated in “the Detroit’s Great March for Freedom” (2015). After joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she “focused on voter registration, youth outreach”
(2015), and pursued “legal remedies for victims of white brutality” (2015).
Like the previous activists, Ida Bell Wells confronted public transport segregation. At the time, trains had separate seats for white and black women. Wells “took a seat in the first- class ladies” (Olson 2001, 33) area and refused to get off as a means of challenging segregation.
Thus, despite not giving speeches, women did oppose daily life injustices. Diane Nash was also connected to transport protests as she directed the Freedom Riders. She was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and played a key role in the fight against segregation in Nashville (2001). In her active days, she encouraged “thousands” of people “to become part of this historic crusade” (182). Similarly, Ella Baker, who was a member of the NAACP, also contributed to bringing new members, and “risked her life to urge blacks […] to fight injustice” (132). Therefore, there is no doubt that women were relevant and that they “were responsible for the movement’s success in generating popular support” (Crawford et. al. 1990, 185).
Regarding other areas, Jo Ann Robinson “chaired the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery” (Crawford et. al. 1990), an organization that fought to “raise the status of blacks”
and to “organize voter registration” (1990). By the same token, Septima Clark, who was a member of the NAACP, created school programs which became “the engine for the movement’s voter registration” (Olson 2001, 14). African Americans had to pass a test in order to be allowed to register to vote. The problem was that discrimination frequently took over these tests. Consequently, these women’s efforts were highly necessary. Clark’s role as teacher did not only include creating these new programs, but she also fought “to equalize salaries for similarly qualified black and white teachers” (Levy 2015, 73) since black teachers earned far less for the same amount of work. As much as she accomplished, she was still aware that others would not take her seriously “because she was a woman” (74). Women were disregarded and excluded from major positions (Crawford et. al. 1990), and this lack of male recognition is also transported to the big screen.
Other major activists were Fannie Lou Hamer and Daisy Bates. Hamer is mostly known for her speech: “nobody’s free until everybody’s free” (Lee 2000, 171). She was not content
with freedom as the major aim of the movement was to gain equality, that blacks were as free as whites. Fannie battled “against unequal education” (168) which was at the root of community differences and fought to accomplish “school desegregation” (168). Besides Hamer, Daisy Bates fought “for desegregation of Little Rock schools” (Olson 2001, 134). Furthermore, she was a “journalist” (135), and she would write about black people’s experiences and the discrimination they suffered along with their struggles (135).
Hence, women did not only contribute by encouraging new members of the black community to fight for their rights, but they also ended with segregation in public transport, in voter registration, and at schools, and denounced all of these publicly. “The pivotal role that women played in the movement was largely ignored” (Olson 2001, 15). There were many women being members of relevant organizations, but the narrative provided by the cinema omits that. Therefore, it should at least be as recognized in movies as it is in documented records in order to provide an unbiased version of historical events.
Women In Male-Focused Movies
Black women are marginalized in Malcolm X in the contexts in which black activism is promoted, which nullifies them as participants in the activist movement. In public speeches, which have historically always been given by male figures, black women appear in physically marginalized positions. Whenever Malcolm gives a speech, there is a clear distribution of women either at the back or on one side of the room, whereas the central or the front seats are occupied by males (Lee 1992, 1:58:53). This allocation has an impact on how the audience perceives the relevance of women in the organization in turn transmitting the lack of importance which women had in the fight or, more concretely, in the organization of the Nation of Islam (NOI). From a cinematic point of view, “the communicational act takes place on several levels and through many simultaneous channels or modes” (Wingstedt et. al. 2010, 208). Therefore, in this case, not only is there negation of women’s participation in the script, but also in the visuals and the angles of view from which they are presented.
Their marginal distribution evident in these scenes could also account for the passive nature with which black women have been typically characterized. Except for Betty, who is Malcolm’s wife, the female characters in Malcolm X are extras whose roles are irrelevant for the main action. The majority of tertiary roles played are those of waitress, street prostitutes, speech audiences, or party dancers. If, according to Fiske, reality always has an “encoded”
message (2011, 4), it is evident that the use of these marginal female characters in the movie implies that, in real life, women were also mere extras. By the same token, the strong emphasis placed on male members leads to women’s apparent peripheral existence in the civil rights. For instance, the NOI is portrayed recruiting Malcolm and another young man (Lee 1992, 1:50:59).
The fact that it does not portray any woman being recruited does not reflect the historical reality that “black women were much more than followers in the modern civil rights movement”
(Barnett 1993, 162) and displaces them to passive roles and the private sphere. Hence, this particular cinematic representation erases black women’s historical participation in the fight of the black community.
More evidence that female characters are reduced to a secondary role can be found in the fact that women such as Vicki Garvin, who influenced Malcolm’s development as an activist (McDuffie and Woodard 2013, 508), are not portrayed in Malcolm X. Instead, he just seems to be influenced by Elijah Muhammad’s lessons against “the white evil” (Lee 1992, 1:52:01) embedded in the NOI. The omission of female figures is also exemplified in the portrayal of the NOI, a black nationalist organization, as an army mainly formed by men.
According to Fiske’s discussion of television codes, people “perceive or make sense of reality […] by applying the codes of our culture” (Fiske 2011, 4). Thus, by using a march song to accompany the actions of this group (Lee 1992, 1:45:31), the director is portraying them as an army since, considering the “codes of our culture” (4), marches are directly associated with them. Other scholars such as Johnny Winstedt, Sture Brändström and Jan Berg coincide with the idea that music is “used for narrative purposes in film[s] […] in interplay with the visuals”
(2010, 194). Consequently, after considering what the characters are doing and the music that is being played at that moment, Fiske, Winstedt, Brändström and Berg’s contributions help to reinforce the interpretation of the NOI as an army. In this army, additionally, it is hard to detect women participants. Armies fight for a cause which, in this case, is equality, and the fact that in the visuals of the movie it is difficult to detect women taking part in this march points to a supposed lack of contribution of women in the fight of the community. Therefore, through omission or scarce representation, the movie is negating female participation, which results in a cinematic male dominated version of the civil rights movement.
Simultaneously, women’s roles as mothers and wives are highlighted. The main female characters are depicted taking care of their children in the family home. Malcolm’s mother, who was also important in the “shaping” of his son’s “political trajectory” (McDuffie and Woodard 2013, 508), is portrayed through the black female stereotype of a mother with “no money to buy food for their children.” (Mapp 1973, 43). Hence, the movie favors the
representation of the maternal role over her political influence on her son. Furthermore, once Betty and Malcolm marry, Betty mainly appears at home taking care of their daughter (Lee 1992, 1:59:26). While Betty stays passively at home, Malcolm is depicted actively travelling and giving speeches to fight for their community. Whereas this relegation to the family environment might accurately denounce a historical reality whereby “African-American women were often rejected as public spokespersons […] because of gender biases” (Simien and McGuire 2014, 420), the movie condemns the active participation of black women to oblivion.
It ignores historical instances of female active implication like Betty’s membership in the NOI or Malcolm’s mother’s political influence over her son and, in consequence, it highlights Malcolm’s power of action.
The cinematic representation of black women in One Night in Miami similarly works to negate their participation in the activist movement through their marginalization. The script contains a scene with a fictional meeting between men that represent different approaches of fighting during the movement, but the scene does not include any female activists, which wrongly suggests their inexistence. Their appearance on screen is limited to two passive women, Samuel Cooke’s wife and Malcolm’s wife, whoseonly relevance is their relation to the male protagonists. They are mostly background figures since Cooke’s wife only appears once (King 2020, 19:31-21:24), and Malcolm X’s wife appears three times (King 2020). Their scarce visual presence is accompanied by scanty lines. Barbara Cooke only has nine interventions within a single dialogue with her husband (King 2020, 19:31-21:24) and none of them concerns the civil rights movement. Justin Wren-Lewis claims that “to decode critically” (1983, 180) is crucial in order to obtain the meanings “encoded” (179) in any production. Thus, a critical decoding of the aforementioned examples demonstrates how the film transmits the idea that women did not participate or even talk about the fight for the black community. This can also be proven by applying the Bechdel test which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “used to evaluate […] the inclusion and representation of female characters” (2007) in movies. Its criteria include “that at least two women are featured” (2007), which is fulfilled in the movie, “that these women talk to each other” (2007), which is not the case, and “that they discuss something other than a man” (2007). The latter point is not really fulfilled, since in their conversation they refer to other concerns, but these are always related to their male partners.
Therefore, after applying the test, it cannot be said that there is a fair inclusion or representation of black women in this movie or that the movie fairly reflects their participation in the historical movement. Both movies silence black women excluding them from an activist sphere in which
Not only are they marginalized but black women are also isolated from the activist sphere and pushed into the private environment. When these two women do appear, they are largely either in the family environment as in the case of Betty or, in the case of Cooke’s wife, at the hotel with their husband. Thus, mainstream movies like this one portray women’s passivity within the fight for the black community as they are not portrayed fighting. Although it is known that Betty was a member of the NOI, this film does not refer to her as belonging to it. Due to their religious beliefs, within the organization women often remained in their
“traditional female roles” (Jeffries 2014, 62) and the movie reflects that. However, it does not mean that there were no female activists in the movement. Along those roles they were also offered “opportunities for leadership in the Nation” (62). This cinematic representation only shows one side of the story, which is the female family role. Women’s being relegated to their home in fictional productions implies that they did not contribute to the cause.
Little attention is paid to the relevance of the fact that the director is a black woman.
Despite the importance of recovering important historical figures, this “remembrance” (Hall 2005, 1233) is also “a way of forgetting” (1233). According to Hall, “the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement […] distorts and suppresses as much as it reveals” (1233).
Considering the gender and ethnicity of the director, she should have been aware of the importance of female inclusion. Thus, the exclusion and suppression of women in a group of what are considered relevant civil rights activists results incongruous. As Lynne Olson claims,
“the images of women throughout history had largely been crafted by men” (2001, 15), and that could be one reason why women are underrepresented. However, Regina King does not take the opportunity of being a woman providing images of other women from a female perspective.
Consequently, it is not only men who contribute to an inadequate representation of women, but women also do.
Altogether, in movies where women are not the center of the story they are largely disregarded. The contrast between Malcolm X and One Night in Miami is that the latter mostly ignores the existence of female figures and strictly focuses on male activists. While Malcolm X does also concentrate basically on men, it visually presents more female characters even if they are silenced and in marginalized positions. Considering that these movies were produced approximately thirty years apart, they do not exhibit any evolution from the point of view of female inclusion. Indeed, One Night in Miami, which is the most recent one, is by far less inclusive than Malcolm X. At the same time, both movies confirm the relegation of women to the family environment, which is a private one, and they negate women’s participation in the public sphere, which would be the political one where it is men that are highlighted. Therefore,
black women are nullified as activists and minimized in fictional representations of the civil rights movement.
“Invisible Leaders”: Female-Focused Movies
The Help presents a perspective in which black women fight passively from the private sphere.
Although this allows the audience to learn about the experiences of black women as maids and how some contributed to denounce white people’s abuses, in this movie, women are only shown acting in private and passive scenarios. Minny, one of the maid protagonists, is described as
“the best cook in Mississippi” (Taylor 2011, 8:23) and this is the weapon she uses further in the movie to get back at her white racist boss. She actually makes her “eat [her] shit” (1:38:17) in the form of a cake. Therefore, she does not defend their cause in a public and crowded space as spectators would see in movies that portray male activists, but she takes revenge on her boss with the resources that she has in order to send a message. Hence, this is a reference to the home environment, in which women fight from the kitchen. Another instance of passive fighting would be Minny’s using her white boss’ bathroom (32:44). This defying act shows her fighting from the private sphere against the Jim Crow Laws, which legalized segregation (Tischauser 2012, 1) and, thus, prohibited the use of the same bathrooms for black and white people. Hence, black maids are not portrayed as totally passive since they do react to injustices, however, they do not denounce them in public. Furthermore, they are perceived as passive in the sense that these maids do not publicly denounce those facts by themselves, it is Skeeter, the white protagonist, who does it by writing and publishing a book. She “interview[s] the black women domestic servants […] and write[s] a book based on their stories” (Smith 2014, 29). This clearly depicts black women’s passivity as the only public denunciation concerning black’s fight is not written by a member of the black community. Additionally, women’s passivity can also be extracted from the scene in which they are watching Malcolm X, a black male activist, give a speech on the television (Taylor 2011, 1:19:58). This contrasts and highlights men’s activeness in the public sphere over maids’ inactiveness. Consequently, the portrayal of black maids in this movie nullifies women’s active participation in the struggle to gain rights and to end with the discriminatory laws and behaviors established by white people against the black community.
Correspondingly, The Rosa Parks Story shows a woman whose fighting is depicted as passive even though she is in the political environment. The fact that Rosa demands equality in
the library services by means of children (Dash 2002, 53:40) certainly presents her as a passive figure. She goes to the white-people’s library with several black children and these children ask for books knowing that, according to the laws, they are not supposed to. This could be interpreted as a way of teaching them how to fight segregation by practicing it, which would underline the importance of women’s influence in prompting a change into younger generations’ ideology. However, by vindicating something through children instead of showing her vindicating it herself, they are sending out the message that she did not do it herself. Hence, this movie does recognize Rosa’s “strong sense of justice” (Schudson 2012, 24) as she wants these children to have equal rights but, in the movie, like in book versions, there is not a fair
“record of [her] political action” (24). With the exception of the bus scenes, which stand for her unique portrayal of rebelling publicly, Parks’ complaints about the black community’s situation of inequality are mostly expressed in the privacy of her home (Dash 2002). Although Simien and McGuire state that “some activist women worked outside the spotlight” (2014, 419), the protagonist’s private complaints do not culminate in any change. Once more, the bus scenes where she challenges segregation (Dash 2002) are the only ones in which her activeness and her ability to make a change are represented. Consequently, there is no escaping the fact that this movie accentuates passiveness in Rosa’s character even if she is considered “a veteran activist” (Dreier 2006, 88).
Her not being presented as her own spokesperson also stands for Rosa’s being “reduced to a passive figure” (Letort 2012, 43). She is standing in front of a mass and she is being televised but, unlike Malcolm X, she does not speak for herself. Instead, there is a man who talks for her. While in movies such as Malcolm X the protagonist’s views and acts are verbalized by himself, in The Rosa Parks Story the director decided to announce Rosa’s achievements to society through a male figure instead of recreating any of the speeches given by her.
Accordingly, the way in which she is portrayed as contributing to a change by making children confront the white librarian instead of doing it herself, and by complaining in the privacy of her home instead of emphasizing her public acts of resistance, is what recreates an image of passivity. Henceforth, this cinematic representation imparts an incomplete record of Rosa’s active participation in the civil rights movement to its viewers.
In contrast with the treatment given to activist men, The Rosa Parks Story romanticizes and trivializes the experiences of the protagonist. While black males movies focus on males’
speeches and fighting, in The Rosa Parks Story the first third of the movie is mainly based on her love story (Dash 2002). Therefore, the hero is being romanticized (Letort 2012, 39). By choosing to pay more attention to love rather than to Rosa’s political action, the director is
conveying a deflected version of historical facts in which this black woman participated.
Interestingly, even at the end of the movie, instead of compiling memories of how she fought for her community, there are flashbacks to their past as a couple: marrying, dating, and living together (Dash 2002, 1:29:04). This choice also constitutes a “stress on the love story” (Letort 2012, 39) that leads to the trivializing effect of Rosa’s activism in the movie. Similarly, when compared to the screen time given to the love story, the scenes on the bus are rather brief (Dash 2002). Her public outstanding acts are reduced to the unfair amount of two bus scenes (Dash 2002) and the rest of screen time is primarily devoted to private concerns. The bus is one of the most important acts by which Rosa Parks is remembered, hence, the director was not mistaken in including it. However, the fact that it is not sufficiently emphasized is what makes it unquestionable to think that Rosa’s contribution to the movement is being trivialized.
Moreover, Parks also took part in a “Great March for Freedom” (Theoharis 2015) and the fight for “voter registration” (2015), which are not even mentioned. Not only are other contributions made by the protagonist ignored, but the one that is portrayed is represented in scarce minutes.
Schudson claims that “her simple act […] invigorated the movement that fundamentally changed American life” (2012, 23). Nevertheless, she is still not portrayed as great a hero as black male leaders are in the films previously discussed. As a result, it can be stated that movies that provide an account of female activists tend to romanticize or trivialize their experiences by accentuating romance or underemphasizing key historical events in which women such as Rosa Parks took part. By doing this, Rosa’s participation in the fight against segregation is being significantly reduced.
Rosa’s connection to the home environment in the movie lessens her militant role. While it has been seen that male centered movies focus on the leader’s political actions, The Rosa Parks Story does not act in accordance. Instead, the action always goes back to the house.
Whenever something happens during the day, she goes back home where there is reflection about it (Dash 2002). It is in the house where the most important discussions take place. For instance, it is where Rosa tells her husband that she wants to become a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her husband disapproves that decision because according to him she “can’t be careful and effective” (2002, 39:38) at the same time. In this case, his position is not only representing his opinion but also the community’s opinion. It is through Rosa’s husband that the lack of acceptability of women in political associations is represented. He acts as the so-called panopticon, which is an institution or person that represents a community’s common beliefs by “inspect[ing] and monitoring” (Savage 1998,
demonstrate to prefer women not to appear at the forefront in battle. Accordingly, the stereotypical depiction of women at home minimizes Rosa’s political involvement.
Similarly, the maids being mainly presented in their role in the white family environment also diverts from the importance of their fight towards equality. The great majority of scenes are concerned with the protagonists’ taking care of the home environment. They “do all the cooking, washing, ironing and grocery shopping” (Taylor 2011, 3:14) and, most importantly, they act like mothers to the white children. Indeed, Skeeter, the white woman who writes their book, recognizes that their maid was the one who raised her (22:50). The behavior of maids consistently confirms their motherly role. For instance, Aibeleen, who is one of the maids, is as happy as a mother would be when the white infant that she takes care of learns how to go to the bathroom (9:22). Thus, there is constant emphasis on maids as mammies.
“Portraying African-American women as stereotypical mammies” (Collins 2000, 69) does not only “justify U.S Black women’s oppression” (69) in real life but also their being cinematically annulled in activist contexts. The director relegates the importance of the maids’ actions towards denouncing the inequality experienced by the black community by deciding to highlight their work in white family houses. By bringing the audience closer to the previous accounts, viewers learn a corrupted version of the participation of women in the civil rights movement.
Remarking the downsides of women’s involvement is another detrimental decision taken by cinematic productions that contributes to women’s underrepresentation.
Notwithstanding that her militant role is diminished, The Rosa Parks Story concentrates on the negative consequences derived from Rosa’s conduct. There are some recognitions of the importance of her sitting in the bus. For instance, they tell Rosa that what she “did on that bus changed a lot of things” (Dash 2002, 1:31:06). However, the things that the movie shows that have changed are negative. This is exemplified by both her husband and her being fired due to the protests that were triggered by Rosa’s confrontation (1:18:10). There is also a constant reminder of the danger associated with confronting officials. After having faced the authorities, Rosa has flashbacks from her childhood. In one of them, she remembers that she saw a hanged man as consequence of his protesting (1:22:29). This representation is detrimental for black women since making this memory coincide with Rosa’s empowerment as a member of the black community connotes that women’s activism leads to negative aspects. Considering that greater attention is paid to the disadvantages rather than to the positive effects, the movie sends the message that it is better for women to distance themselves from the political sphere in order to prevent them and their family from losing their jobs or being killed.
Pessimistic connotations attributed to activism are also highlighted in The Help.
Skeeter’s plan is presented to the maids “as an opportunity to share their own stories and memories” (Smith 2014, 30). While it would give them a voice, it would also expose them.
Therefore, the feeling of dread is intensified as to portray how dangerous it could be from a societal perspective. It might not only lead to their being attacked by members of the white community, but it could also provoke the violence of African American fellows. For instance, when Minny’s husband learned that she had her boss eat an excrement pie, he beat her (Taylor 2011, 39:07). This fearful atmosphere is maintained throughout major part of the movie. It is only contrasted in the final scene, where people applaud Aibileen as a symbol of recognition for the maids’ heroism that led to the publication of that book (2011). Hence, although black women’s efforts are shortly praised at the end, a greater part of the film emphasizes the repercussions and the fear for them that arise from female activism.
Altogether, even when portrayed as protagonists, the family environment is one of the central points both in The Rosa Parks Story and The Help. Since the focus of discussion that they portray comes from different social spheres, the analysis of both movies in conjunction allows to see how women are left out from the center in cinematic productions. At the same time, both communicate the negative connotations surrounding black women’s actions in a way that they prevail over the importance of their achievements, especially in The Rosa Parks Story.
Therefore, not only do these movies discourage the black female audience from taking action, but they also nullify the power of their activist role by focusing on peripheral elements such as love life, family care and negative outcomes.
Conclusion
After having analyzed the portrayal of black women in cinematic representations from the civil rights movement, it can be stated that women are underrepresented. Despite knowing that there were plenty of women whose interventions in the movement were crucial, there is a clear insufficiency of movies based on them. Instead, these productions tend to concentrate on male figures. In male-focused movies, women’s participation is negated. Women are mainly portrayed through tertiary roles, roles that are not historically relevant. Thus, this depiction reflects them as historically irrelevant. Both in Malcolm X and One Night in Miami women are relegated to the family environment while their husbands are being active in the public sphere.
In Malcolm X, most of the women are extras and they appear in visually marginalized positions.
These movies ignore historical instances of female active participation. Any kind of involvement on part of women is directly negated in One Night in Miami, where there are only two women and they scarcely appear or speak and, if they do, they are also relegated to the family environment. Thus, representations of women in male-focused movies erase women’s contribution to the cause. This misrepresentation is carried out not only by male directors but also by women, which is the case in One Night in Miami since, in gathering relevant black activists, the director does not even mention women.
Something similar happens in movies that concentrate on black women protagonists.
The maids in The Help are not shown taking any public action. They contribute anonymously to the publication of a book that denounced their situation and, furthermore, the publisher is a white woman. Thus, they are not strictly active. Rosa Parks’ endeavors for equal accessibility to libraries’ books, despite being public, is managed to be projected as passive since it is the children who speak up instead of her. Moreover, despite recognizing Rosa’s bus boycott, she is constantly depicted complaining at home, which emphasizes passivity. Certainly, these movies romanticize women’s experiences as Rosa’s political trajectory is opaqued by her love story with her husband. By the same token, black women are reduced to the family environment even if they are portrayed as protagonists. While in The Rosa Parks Story the action repeatedly goes back to their home as a source of reflection, in The Help it is the mammy role of women that is overemphasized. In conjunction with this realization of women as happy at home, films convey negative consequences that do or might occur if women are activists. The maids live in constant fear for the possible reprimands, and Rosa and the people that surround her do experience those repercussions. Considering all these aspects, it is confirmed that black women have been underrepresented in cinematic productions due to the lack of inclusion of activist women, the emphasis on irrelevant or negative aspects surrounding them, and their constant relegation to the family environment. Despite having been produced in different decades, the four films that have been analyzed perpetuate the same portrayal, which shows no sign of evolution in terms of female recognition. Thus, the narratives that are provided to the audience are biased since films offer incomplete and romanticized versions of women’s participation in the history of the civil rights movement.
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