Speaking through stereotypes: A comparative study of black women's performance styles in selected American films

This study explored the use of certain traditional stereotypes (the sapphire, the mammy, and the tragic mulatto), of black women by modern actresses as venues for socio-political and black feminist commentary in selected American films (1970--present). I addressed how the image of black women in America operates today through an exploration of black women's performance styles in American films. In order to do this, I filtered my exploration through the prism of Donald Bogle's and Lisa Anderson's assertions regarding stereotypes of blacks in American films; through Richard Dyer's notions regarding stars and performance signs; and through bell hooks' ideas concerning race, gender, class, consumer culture, and representation. I presented a comparative analysis of a survey of American films, ranging from such titles as Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985) to Two Can Play That Game (2001)---within the context of film history. Considering the stereotypes of blacks that have been present and evolving in American film since the debut of The Birth of a Nation (1915), I was interested in exploring how modern black actresses have taken old stereotypes and brought to them (through new constructions) integrity, humanity, and agency that the original models did not fully communicate. I asserted and proved that the traditional images of black women, which remain intact in modern films (1970--present), no longer exist solely to reinforce the traditional white patriarchal power structure. This is because in modern films, performances of these stereotypes serve as both an acknowledgment of American cultural history as well as a criticism of it and the sociopolitical structures that it represents. Representations of black women are no longer one-dimensional. Thus, contemporary constructions of traditional images of black women ultimately foster deeper layers of meaning and power behind the negative representations that are as controversial as they are necessary to revise and reconstruct prevailing cultural myths.