"She's Not Just a Fat Aunt Jemima on a Pancake Box"

"She's Not Just a Fat Aunt Jemima on a Pancake Box":

A Response to Ishmael Reed
by Khadijah Costley White

Precious is one of the few movies I have truly appreciated in a while--and I've seen a good number of the "notable," patriarchal and sexist Black films that show how much Black men love white/light-skinned women that Reed uncritically admires in his review (ahem, The Great Debaters?!). Moreover, it sounds like Reed's central complaint is more about the lack of other similar portrayals of non-Blacks than an ACTUAL critique of this specific movie. In fact, based on his summary of the movie in his review, I'm not even sure he's seen the film.

Precious provides a new twist to an old stereotype--the "mammy" figure in this film speaks, she suffers, she schemes, she aspires, she fights back... she's not just a fat Aunt Jemima on a pancake box. I don't see typical, humanistic portrayals of overweight Black women that aren't comedy. I definitely see problems with Precious--one of them being that in order to create a sympathetic Black female welfare recipient, she has to be so ridiculously beat down. I wouldn't argue that it's a scot-free portrayal-- I'm just saying that its complexity deserves much more of a thorough critique than the "oh it's stereotypical" arguments that I've seen thus far. Finally, we get a film in which an overweight Black woman isn't just happy and funny.

Additionally, the fact that the character Precious narrates this film is extremely significant--the idea that she understands her own subjectivity and the conditions of a system in which she is undernourished and undereducated is absolutely integral to the power of this piece. Precious takes the stereotypes of Black people and transforms them into a real person with thoughts and ambition and complexity. THAT alone makes it a worthwhile film. Much better than The Green Mile or any of those other magic negro movies. No one said that Precious is supposed to represent the experience of all of Black humanity--no more than the Cosby show did.

Let's talk about what it means for her to be welcomed into the home of a loving lesbian couple. Let's talk about why it's important that she is so aware of her own surveillance that she steals her social worker's file and discusses the realities of a morally bankrupt system like "workfare" with her peers. Please, someone, analyze why its so poignant that one of her classmates can't help but laugh at the absurdity of a baby wrapped in a blood covered blanket. How about the damaging impact of colorism, represented by a dark-skinned girl's fantasy about being a white woman with blonde hair or being loved by a light-skinned man with "good hair"? And, ideally, we can ponder why Precious' mother tells the social worker "bring my baby back,"stating truthfully "that's what you do!" -- in this she reminds us of all the family reunification projects that have resulted in any number of murdered or horribly abused children, often after ignoring other types of kinship ties within the Black community.

In any case, who gets to decide what serves as Black "reality"? Ishmael Reed? Is there a review board? There are any number of human experiences--I don't like the DuBoisian tendency to pick and choose which ones count as worthwhile and which ones don't (thus, the complete disregard for a luminary like Zora Neale Hurston 100 years ago). Would a film about the savagery that some of us have seen our own female relatives suffer at the hands of male relatives make the "representational black film" cut?

And, even more importantly, can anything about Black women ever be about BLACK WOMEN, or will a male-centric gaze always shove us aside --even in our own narratives?

Khadijah White is a PhD student and Fontaine Scholar in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, she worked as an Associate Producer at NOW on PBS.

Staging Impropriety: Jes Grew at the VMAs

hat-tip to Jeff Chang & Salamishah Tillet

Staging Impropriety: Jes Grew at the VMAs

by Mark Anthony Neal

Twitter and Facebook were aglow, seconds after Kanye West’s most recent flare-up, this time snatching the microphone from a bewildered Taylor Swift, who had just won the “Best Female Video” award at MTV’s VMAs. West was ostensibly “protesting” Swift’s victory over fellow nominee Beyonce Knowles. West’s behavior at such events has become something of a cliché and as such it was almost to be expected. But this time was a bit different, in that West was not protesting on behalf of his usual favorite charity—himself. Something was afoot.

In a weekend that was in part defined by black impropriety—Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech and Serena Williams vitriolic verbal attack on a line judge at the US Open—West’s moment seemed like staged Jes Grew, as Ishmael Reed might refer to it, in response to what has been several months of improprieties liberally taken at the expense of black bodies, be it the late “King of Pop” or the current President of the United States. It is part of a script that West has carefully crafted, in the best (post-modern) spirit of P.T. Barnum. The boos that appeared whenever West’s name was mentioned throughout the evening were also part of that script and we all sat enraptured wondering how Knowles might respond to West’s misguided attempt to “speak” on her behalf. After a stirring performance of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” all eyes were on Knowles when she received the award for “Video of the Year” and called Swift to the stage to recover her interrupted moment.

What immediately stuck me about Knowles’ gesture, were the cynics who suggested that Knowles did so at the behest of MTV and that Knowles’ kindness was essentially staged by the network. Plausible indeed, but if that is plausible, why isn’t is also plausible that the whole experience was in fact staged, to generate the kind of buzz on social networking sites that translates into increased viewership and traffic at MTV.com? Now in its 25th year, the VMAs are an aging and fatigued brand. As such the “drama” of the awards—remember Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley’s staged kiss—has become more integral to the success of the awards than its performances.

There was no risk in having Kanye West act a fool, because it is what we have come to expect from him and fair amount of people will grant him his eccentricities, because of his genius. As for Taylor Swift, she now has increased visibility because she was the victim of black impropriety, something she shares with Kim Clijsters, winner of the US Open. Beyonce Knowles is now granted a level of gravitas for her public graciousness or what critic Leonard Feather once termed “a rare noblesse oblige gesture” in response to Aretha Franklin giving her 1973 Grammy Award to fellow nominee Esther Phillips. And finally for MTV, they have produced the most talked about VMAs since that Jackson and Presley kiss.