I Ain't Yo Mammy or Mulatto: An Interpretative Analysis of the Minstrel Representations of Black Women in Films Produced During the 1970s and Early 80s
Historically, the image of the African American woman has been exploited and subjugated in mainstream cinema. Films have continued to typecast African American women as either the mammy or tragic mulatto (concubine), which do not focus on the complexity of the African American woman. It is through this misrepresentation of the African American woman's identity that audiences are unable to identify with these characters being presented. Therefore, the intent of this research, is to illustrate how films produced in the 1970s and 1980s convey more identifiable images of the African American woman, which moves away from those minstrel caricatures of the mammy and the tragic mulatto. Understanding that films are part of popular culture, they may reflect societal views about the African American woman. In order to remove these stereotypes of the African American woman's role in film and society, these roles must be presented with more dynamics and complexity. I employ textual analysis to address the African American women in five films: Carmen Jones (1954), Imitation of Life (1959), Claudine (1974), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979), and The Women of Brewster's Place (1989). The analysis will include a comparative analysis of each film, paying close attention to its particular decade in which it was produced and the cultural and societal influences of the film.
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
English
Research Advisor:
Norman Denzin
Department of Research Advisor:
Institute of Communications Research
Year of Publication:
2003