When Does Superwoman Get Her Paycheck?

Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films
Joanne Kilgour Dowdy
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When will Hollywood release a movie that praises a successful black woman’s journey?

Why are black women depicted as illiterate in each of these movies? Is this the image we have in all films?

Will we ever recover from the crippling stereotype that we need to latch on to others to receive insufficient gratification?

Joanne Kilgour Dowdy does a phenomenal job at outlining the Black Woman’s image in the film industry from 1985-2001. She uses her own literacy and opinions of the film industry to instill techniques of critical analysis into her graduate students in their “Black Women and Literacy” course. She encourages her students to employ critical observation instead of slipping into the norm of naïve consumption. I enjoyed her. She opens her students’ eyes to the ways symbols shape the world’s view of all black women.

Even though all nine movies were centered around the rise of black women, they all shared the issue of illiteracy that plagues our society. In “WIT” Dowdy showed the struggle that black women face in the science and medical fields. Sue was a nurse that had to admit her “stupidity” when a patient said a word that she was not familiar with. “Sophorific” (very sleepy) was the word that the patient mentioned when asking about the side effects of her medication. The incident may have seemed small in the scene but this was a moment that set the black woman back two steps. Will black women ever be viewed as intelligent enough to practice medicine? As an aspiring physician I am striving everyday to put another crack in the imaginary glass ceiling that hovers over the heads of black women. We are intelligent enough! We can be nurses, but we need to strive to be doctors! I take this negative scene as a call to action. I do not agree with the nurse calling herself stupid because medicine is a field based on research. If I am ever put into a situation where the patient needs information that I cannot recall, I would gladly research it.

In another film analyzed, Music from the Heart, I found that the woman depicted was “book literate” but her lack of political influence foiled her attempt to innovate the music curriculum at her school. Principal Bassett worked hard to try to get a famous violin player to teach at her school. Budget constrains did not stop her, she put together several fundraisers help pay for her goal. Her story was very popular in the media, but unfortunately the Caucasian violin player was acknowledged as the hero. This was another tragic example of the way Black women are used and ignored in society. I felt as if she deserved acknowledgement for her efforts, but she got the short end of the stick.

When will we finally receive our due praise?

What is Hollywood’s roll in the continued degradation of our image?

How would the world change if Black women were depicted as the brilliant movers and shakers that they truly are?

-Danielle Winfrey