How We Are Portrayed In Film

Joanne Kilgour Dowdy explains how black women that are cast in lead roles typically play a character that is ultimately demeaning to them in her article Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films. They play roles such as addicts, caretakers, and housekeepers. These characters are always depicted as undereducated or submissive. Writers of such movies are creative enough to show these images to the world without much analysis from those without knowledge of this concept. Many people do not realize how detrimental these images are to the Black community. Some believe that the way Black women are shown in movies dictates how they are in reality. The few female African American characters in movies that are intelligent have supporting roles. Therefore, these are not the images that stand out to movie viewers.

What happens when these images are taken as an insight into Black culture? Other ethnicities begin to feel as though Blacks are inferior and incapable of being highly successful without the help of others. This is why there is such surprise when others see African Americans excelling in school and in their careers. These are the images that young, Black women have been seeing since slavery and they are still widely produced. For some, it is the only image they see of themselves. They believe that it is ok to replicate the actions of a fictional character created by a Caucasian writer to depict typical African American behavior. This will continue to be a problem until more Black female writers emerge and attempt to counterbalance this act by producing more positive images for Blacks to identify with and circulating them around the world.