In “Baad Bitches” & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films, Stephanie Dunn attacks race, gender, heroism, politically correctness and consciousness all in one. She explores the idea of what it really means to be a strong black woman and how the roles in cinema reflect those images.
Dunn expresses her thoughts on images during the Blaxpoitation Era by reaching back into the 70s, exploring films like Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and bringing us up to date where the images of black woman in music and film collide.
She questions what really makes these women heroes: Is it their sexuality, their power, their self-assuredness? And why do those heroines have the ability to transfer those images onto young black women seeking their sense self purpose. The breakthrough of an entire race rests so heavily on images that pose internal conflicts and conjure subtle cheers just for recognition, with a hint of guilt that co-exists, tracing back to the double consciousness of being black in America.
Chapters touch on the Black Movie Going Experience, Sex as a Means of Film Production, Aesthetic Strategy, and Maculating/Emasculating “The Man.” Dunn doesn’t look at films in the scope of what films and images are going to make money, she examines films from the perspective a woman who wants to tell her story the way it should be told, through the eyes of a Black woman. She questions the creation of Black action figures by questioning the creators, and points out that the creations are reflection of how the creators see Black life, and the creators are more than often, not Black. She challenges the filmmaker to create moving image “not as it is, but as it should be.”
With the hope that black woman can make their way in this world, not as just sex symbols, but as multidimensional creatures who handle business beyond the bedroom — she charges for filmmakers who have the power to change those images to use it.
-Crystyn C. Wright
The images of black women and sexuality have been portrayed in the media as, that of the Jezebel or Mammy. With the rise of Pam Grier in the films of the Blaxploitation Era the hyper-sexualized black woman became an object to be capitalized on in media due to the voyeuristic nature of film, and capitalistic nature of American society. In my humble opinion, as a black female filmmaker, I feel that the need to reconstruct the idea of black female sexuality through film is of great consequence, and should be done so by showing positive images of black female sexuality, not straying completely away from it, because all women, and men, are sexual beings. Black female sexuality should be celebrated, not reduced to a the negative stereotypes that have been portrayed thus far through white male dominated and control media.
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