Portrayal of Betrayal: Featured African American Actresses

    Dowdy speaks about how black women have been portrayed in featured films over a sixteen year time span (1985-2001). She critiques films that gave some of the most famous black female actresses roles in which they were not seen as particularly “book smart” or roles in which their literacy does not help them because of the socio-economic position they hold in the their society. I thought that Dowdy’s analyses of these films were very eye opening and provocative. While reading her thoughts on these films I began asking myself the question are we as black women being portrayed or betrayed? As previously mentioned, Dowdy points out the fact that all the leading black actresses in the films that she is critiquing are wither illiterate in the academic sense or their literacy does not matter in the face of political or social standards that succeed in keeping them from achieving their goals.



     In all the movies, in some way or another, the black female characters are completely dependent upon some greater power. To me, this send the message that black women are never completely in control of their own destiny or they are never able to completely control the acquisition of their goals. So this brings me back to the question of are we as black women being portrayed or betrayed in the films that we star in? I would venture to say that we have been betrayed by the featured film industry. Very rarely do we see black women that are in a position of power and capable of being humble and gracious it is either or, there are no ‘happy mediums’. Either a black woman is portrayed as being dependent on a man or some other societal power or she is independent of any outside controlling force and acts like she does not know where she came from. The roles that black women play in movies should be generalized, just because we are good at taking care of everyone else before ourselves does not mean that that is all that we do. We are multifaceted, diverse and strong; I would like to see more movies depict us as having and using our literacies to show these characteristics that we have.