by the Spin Team
I am a huge fan of movies and serial TV shows. I like to
sit and binge watch a really good series. These days I go for shows that
feature strong female leads. I also enjoy watching documentaries, especially
those that feature different cultures, etc. One of my favourite docu
series on Netflix is Flavourful Origins. If you have not yet tuned in to
watch that particular series, you should check it out.
This article, however is not about binge watching series.
It is about rape. It is about saving women and it is about the
perceptions around black women in movies and tv shows.
There is a documentary/movie currently on Netflix called
Joy. It tells the story of a Nigerian woman who has found herself in
Europe (Austria to be exact) where she is working as a sex worker. She
has taken under her wing a young woman named Precious, who looks to be about 16
or 18 years old and who is clearly uncomfortable with life as a sex
worker.
The women have to pay the Madam (who is also Nigerian) 60,000
Euro, possibly over a period of time. Poor Precious, who can barely
figure out how to navigate life in Europe, pays over 200 Euro to the Madam who
decides to give her a lesson by having her 2 hench men repeatedly rape
her. I don't know how this docu/movie ends, as I turned off the TV.
This is as a result of my taking the stance to no longer watch movies or tv
shows that feature rape scenes.
In many movies/tv shows that feature rape scenes involving
white women, there is always a man who helps that woman to empower
herself. I am not quite sure whether it is lost on the director/producer
of these shows that a woman who has been made to feel less than by a man is now
being empowered by another man. It is for me the very definition of
irony. In the case of white women being raped, they are often then taught
to fight, to use a gun, or to seek revenge against the person who violated
them. White women are given permission to seek justice as a sign of their own
power. Like their white men, it is their duty to exact vengeance on the person
that has wronged them.
In contrast, for black women who experience harrowing and
gruesome rape attacks in movies/tv shows, it is usually other women who come to
her rescue and nurse her back to health. The focus is on being healed or
getting better through her sisterhood with other women. She doesn't get to seek
out justice.
As I listened to the screams and cries of Precious in that
movie, which were disturbing for me to hear, the question that reverberated in
my head was where are the men who will save these women? It is not going
to be her black fathers and brothers because they are the ones who are holding
her down and violating her. It is not the Shaman who at the start of the movie
was casting spells over her body to protect her, knowing full well what she was
going to be experiencing. It is not the black men who are in leadership
positions who will come forward and say no, I am not going to be a part of
this. In the movies, black men are seen only as participating in the rape of
Black women. They are not seen as rescuers like their white counterparts in
movies.
Is that a reflection of how things play out in real life? I have
found that our black brothers do not protect their black sisters in the way
that they should. In the Caribbean many women lose their lives because
men don't know when to accept that a relationship is over. While it is clearly
not unique that men of all races violate women, I do notice that in movies and
tv shows, white men are portrayed as both rapists and saviors. So, while all
women may get raped by men of own their race in real life and in movies, white
women are portrayed as having a possible white male savior to come to her
rescue. What does it mean for white women to see on screen that someone will
look out for them or have their back? Why aren't Black women afforded saviors?
Do we not deserve that in our stories on screen? Maybe it's because of the
stereotype that black women do not need someone in their corner. As a regular
TV watcher, I want to see our sisters getting rescued too. Some may say it's
not realistic but I suspect it's not all that realistic for white women either,
yet I see it often on screen. Black women deserve their hero on screen as
well.
I am interested to hear people's thoughts on this so feel free to
sound off in the comments.
