She's Gotta Watch It

Is Spike Lee's "She's Gotta Have It" on Netflix really as feminist as it thinks it is?

by Tiffany Curtis

Chances are, unless you were were under a rock or in a Thanksgiving food coma, you were probably binging on Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It last weekend. Assuming that’s true, you’ve been introduced to protagonist Nola Darling and all of her “sex-positive, polyamorous, pansexual” goodness. Nola and her band of merry (albeit dysfunctional) men and women are being heralded as a feminist breakthrough.

While on the surface, the She’s Gotta Have It reboot appears to be making strides for the very fact that we have a Black millennial female lead who boldly declares her sexuality and refuses to be placed into neat, conventional boxes. Nola juggles multiple men without catching feelings, lets her type 3 curls run free, and spends the entire first season trying to reclaim what it means to be a woman of color who enjoys having sex often, while also moving through the world with little personal responsibility.

She’s Gotta Have It has all the makings of Good Feminist TV — or so it seems.

Spike Lee’s heavy-handed brand of feminism may not be as powerful as it claims.

Lee’s heavy-handedness can be seen in the aftermath that follows Nola’s harrowing run-in with a catcaller, which replaces the truly godawful rape scene from the film version. Nola succumbs to urging from her friends to tell all of her bedfellows about the assault, to which they respond with various forms of possessiveness and victim-blaming, because, of course, how dare she be a woman out alone at night? What Nola says and what she does are often out of sync, but hey, that’s human enough, and it would be forgivable were it the single failing of this show, which it isn’t.

The fact is, Lee is very much a 60-year-old man trying to rewrite a 1980s character for a millennial audience. It can be felt in his treatment of this particular plot line, in which Nola makes bold anti-street harassment statements only to have them overshadowed by her being painted as a damsel in distress, by men, in interactions that are supposed to feel liberated and empowered. And that line of failure continues throughout the show.

Lee’s outdated depiction of women also becomes apparent in how he chooses to frame Black women’s bodies, in particular, as cautionary tales. Nola serves as the antithesis to her friend Shemekka with her brand of body positivity that gives off a holier-than-thou vibe, most clearly expressed in a moment when Shemekka shares her interest in getting butt enhancements. If there was ever an example of feminism being driven by the male gaze, it can be seen in the uncomfortable scene in which Shemekka receives illegal butt injections. The climax in Episode Six comes when a silicone-filled Shemekka’s butt literally erupts after she performs a dance routine.

When asked about his motivation for writing this scene in an interview with Nylon, Lee said,

“What has society done that has such an impact on women who feel like they’re not women unless they have these… I don’t even know how to describe these butts.”

While illegal plastic surgery is a reality, Lee’s attempt to grapple with this for a twenty-something audience feels more like a parable that uses mansplaining to shame women who want to change their appearance, much in the way that behaviors like makeup shaming assume that when a woman wants to alter her aesthetic in any way it must be due to low-self esteem.

Lee’s statements seem to give away a lack of awareness of how the patriarchy really impacts women’s lives or the countless brands that thrive off of selling women the idea that they aren’t enough. If you are going to try to write a character that resonates with women, start by educating yourself so as not to beat your audience down with tropes that feel archaic.

A lot can also be said for the way women treat other women in the series, which never fully transcends beyond the stereotype that female friendships are rife with backstabbing and pettiness.

The reality is that many women now choose to make healthy, thriving female friendships a priority in their twenties and beyond, which you wouldn’t know from peeking into the world of She’s Gotta Have It.

Between Nola’s judgement of Shemekka’s vulnerability and painting an Afro onto her portrait when she wanted a weave, her dismissal of Clorinda’s feelings for Mars, and her using Opal as a means of sexual detox from the men in her life, it becomes evident that the female interactions and friendships are pretty shady. But if women are often painted as being self-serving in their friendships, it’s no wonder Lee couldn’t help but paint his female characters in this way.

Largely, what Lee tried to do is commendable, but lacks the nuance and insight to really be a feminist beacon in 2017. So much of the series gets bogged down by male-centric views, and Black female sexuality is still depicted as a commodity. Bisexuality is featured as a novelty alongside not-so-subtle warnings about being a sex-positive Black woman.

The 1990’s saw a transition in African American filmmaking when Black Female Directors started to emerge in the industry.  One Director in particular, Kasi Lemmons, rose to critical acclaim with her directorial debut Eve’s Bayou (1997) which met to extremely positive reviews and remains an important and influential text concerning themes of race and black feminist ideologies.

When examining feminist texts within African American Cinema, it is crucial to study the representations of Black Womanhood throughout the history of Black filmmaking, especially texts derived from female directors.  Early representations portray the black female through the use of stereotypes (discussed previously) in the form of the Mammy, the Mulatto, the Jezebel or Sapphire.  The black female identity is often linked to the body, presented as exotically intriguing or erotic; she is hyper-sexualised which contrasts the more passive white female character.  Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou manages to connect these ideologies of Black Womanhood, while simultaneously subverting them to approach such concepts on a feminist level, discussing the mistreatment and misrepresentations of Black Womanhood on the big screen.

Born February 24, 1961 in St. Louis, Missouri US, Kasi Lemmons made her acting debut in television movie 11th victim (1979).  She went on to star in Hollywood hits such as Spike Lee’s School Daze (1988) and Academy Award winning The Silence of the Lambs(1991).  In 1997, she emerged in the industry when she wrote and directed her first feature length film Eve’s Bayou, starring renowned actor Samuel L. Jackson and upcoming actresses Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Meagan Good.  Eve’s Bayou centralised on Black family life, narrated through the main character Eve, the youngest daughter of the Batiste family.  Bayou delivers themes of adultery, sensual eroticism, supernaturalism and witch craft, all of which are tied together in black ancestry and history; depicting the more social and family oriented problems faced by middle class Blacks, situated in 1960’s Louisiana.

Eve’s Bayou

Lemmons’s opening party scene immediately sets up an idealised Black middle class life and emphasises the centrality of Bayou’s female led cast.  Matty Mereaux is dancing with her husband Lenny Mereaux, close up shots of him groping her buttocks are shown; her body parts are immediately fetishized.  Moments later she dances seductively with Roz’s husband Louis Batiste; she pulls up her dress to reveal her stockings and places her head around Louis’s groin area.  This sultry depiction of Matty’s character becomes problematic when applying Laura Mulvey’s work: Visual and Other Pleasures of ‘The Male Gaze’ to the text.  Here, Matty is seemingly objectified by the male viewer to be offered as none other than a placement of sexual desire for the male viewer.  However, Bell hooks, a pioneer of  her work on Black spectatorship, in particular Black female spectatorship, challenges and attempts to deconstruct Mulvey’s theory of ‘the gaze’ stating Black audiences can “both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see”.  Black female spectators have thus since been able to adopt anoppositional gaze, placing white womanhood in the eye of the phallocentric gaze, enabling them to not “identify with either the victim or the perpetrator” (hooks, 1992)

Not only does this opening scene construct themes of erotica and woman as objectified beings.  Lemmons’s overall set up, choreography and mise-en-scene is a huge movement away from previous African American depictions, seen in early 20th century texts.  Here, the Batiste family, are portrayed as a well-mannered, well-spoken middle class family, with lavish clothing and a large country home.  A huge contrast to the savage and uncivilised representations of tribal African Americans portrayed in early Black Cinema.  As the majority of the cast is formed of Black actors and actresses, this idyllic family unit provides the ability for white audiences to identify more closely with Lemmons’s characters.

“the representation of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego of the male hero stands in stark opposition to the distorted image of the passive and powerless female character”

                                                                       Laura Mulvey, 1975/1989, p. 354

Mulvey theorises that male characters play a dominant, powerful role within the narration, while the female characters must submit to a more passive, powerless position in cinema.  Mulvey argues that the audience adopt ‘the gaze’ as we constantly view texts through the dominated male lens of the industry, although “the power of the gaze is not invested in all men, but in White men, and the object of the gaze is not all women, but White women” (Hollinger, 2012, p. 194).

Roz comforts her three children after Mozelle’s vision of a child being hit

One way Lemmons subverts this idea is to centralise her female characters.  Eve, the youngest daughter of the Batiste family and her adolescent sister Cicely play a vital role in the progression of the narrative and it is they who hold the power over there adulterous Father Louis.  Alongside their Mother Roz and Aunt Mozelle, together provide a primary example of female solidarity.  Mother Roz is shown to empower the family unit, unlike Louis, whose Fatherly absence only heightens Roz’s empowered status.  hooks states that “once black folk had gained greater access to jobs, revolutionary feminism was dismissed by mainstream reformist feminism when women, primarily well-educated white women with class privilege, began to achieve equal access to class power with their male counterparts”  (2000, p. 101).  Black women and black feminist ideologies were pushed aside once White females started to benefit from feminist movements – “working class white females were more visible than black females of all class in feminist movement”.  However Black women were the voice of experience, “they knew what it was like to move from the bottom up” (hooks, 2000, pp. 103-104).

White women primarily benefited economically from the reformist feminist gains in the workforce, “it simply reaffirmed that feminism was a white woman thing”

                                                                           bell hooks, 2000, p. 107

Although she is subject to notions of patriarchy, (she stays home while Louis works to keep their home) this is quickly dismissed by the audience due to Louis’s controversial actions of adultery against his wife.  His affair with Matty (stereotyped as the Jezebel) interwoven in the plot, highlights mistreated stereotypes of Black Woman.

Cicely is slapped by her Father after she attempt to kiss him

A Trans Woman of Color Responds to the Trauma of “Tangerine”

Why is it that trans women of color have to experience so much violence to remember that they have each other’s back?

That’s what I got from the movie Tangerine. I enjoyed it. Mya Taylor (who plays Alexandra, one of the two trans leads) and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (who plays Sin-dee, the other) were fucking brilliant. They were not respectable, they were surviving in the best way they knew how and they were supporting each other even though it was difficult. I loved that they didn’t apologize for their lives or their existence.

Despite this, the audience still laughed at really inappropriate parts, showcasing the way that the film itself fails the story it’s trying to portray. And don’t get me wrong, the story is real. But the way it’s set up, how it’s shot, the progression of the plot — it’s clear that it is offering up the story to a mostly white, bougie audience. It was voyeuristic in the worst possible way. And while the two stars did have a lot of input into the making of the script, white men are still the ones who get the credit. The names of white men are on the script and white men directed the movie. The story was only made real by the beautiful performance of the actors.

One of the things that frustrated me was the way Razmik (an Armenian taxi driver who is a frequent customer of Alexandra and Sin-dee, played by Karren Karagulian) is juxtaposed to that terrible john. Razmik is no better then the dude that tried to rip off Alexandra. But the narrative manipulates you into feeling sorry for him. He is just a poor misunderstood dude who lies to his wife and keeps his desire secret. But he was just as awful as all the other non trans women in the film. He reduces trans women to what we can do for him sexually, fetishizes our bodies and refuses to publicly acknowledge that he desires trans women. He is still exploits them — he just pays well. Whats more, I don’t care at all about men and how they’re impacted by transmisogyny. Because the only reason Razmik and men like him get any kind of grief is because of transmisogyny. But it is not men who bear the brunt of that violence, it is us. Trans women are murdered for the same reasons that men are shamed. So for this film to focus almost half of the narrative on this man and how hard he has it, is very frustrating. Because even in films that are ostensibly about us, we still have to deal with men and their feelings. We still try to center male experiences.

The complicated relationship that these two trans women had with the men/love in their life was hard to watch. These were people who really and truly hated Sin-dee and Alexandra but said that they love them. They manipulate, take advantage of and abuse them. Chester was an awful abusive liar, but what choice does Sin-dee have? When validation and love come, even if it’s twisted and fucked up, you take it because otherwise you are just alone and sometimes the illusion of someone supporting you is better than nothing at all. I saw my experiences with men reflected in theirs and it fucking hurt. Trans women of color aren’t valued — again, we exist only to serve and perform for men. What does it mean that the people that are supposed to value us the most end up abusing us? What does it mean that trans women of color are often the victims of domestic violence but there is no narrative about it. We cannot be victims because we cannot be loved.

The final moment of the film comes after Sin-dee realizes that Alexandra slept with her boyfriend. Sin-dee is upset with Alexandra and tries to go off by herself but Sin-dee is assaulted, called a tranny faggot and gets urine splashed all over her. An intimate moment ensues where Alexandra takes care of Sin-dee and Sin-dee forgives Alexandra. That moment of sisterhood is so real. Nobody is going to look out for trans women of color except other trans women of color. We only matter to others when we are performing for them. But why does the film find it necessary to emphasize this sisterhood by subjecting them both to violence? What does it say about the director and the audience that this was the only way to bring them back together, because they have no other choice because the world is trying to kill them. This scene also shows them taking off their wigs which is just another instance of that trope saying that trans women’s femininity is not real. It’s a fabrication that comes off during intimate moments, cause what’s “real” is what’s on the “inside”. What does it mean that all the character development that occurred in that film was through trauma and violence? What does it mean that we can only see their vulnerability, their strength, their resilience through this moment of degendering?

I’m glad I went to see it. Seeing some of my experiences reflected in that film were really important and some of the ways they handle sex work and relationships is real. I appreciated the nuance in the way that they displayed men and their relationships to trans women. Trans women of color are almost always seen as objects to be controlled, held and exploited. The movie was clear about this. Clear that the ways men relate to trans women is toxic and fraught with dynamics of power that are abusive. Chester (Sin-dee’s boyfriend and pimp, played by James Ransone) was terrible to Sin-dee and he manipulated his way back into her good graces. Razmik was only interested in how these women could serve his pleasure. Both models — both through intimate relationship and client — capture the way that men are terrible to trans women time and again.

I also liked the way that Sin-dee was in control of her interaction with Dinah (the white, cis woman and sex worker who Chester cheats on Sin-dee with, played by Mickey O’Hagan). So often, cis white women will invalidate our womanhood. They will exclude us from women’s spaces and be generally awful to us. Transmisogyny is pervasive and cis white women are not exempt from perpetuating that. It was satisfying to see another trans woman of color in control of her interaction with someone who was actively denying her womanhood, who mocks Sin-dee’s desire to be valued and seen by her partner. It was satisfying to see her take what she needed from her when so often trans women of color are denied. White feminists might be inclined to read what Sin-dee does as violence against women but Sin-dee is not in a position of power over Dinah. And it was satisfying to watch. And while I do not trust the intentions of the white male director who shot that scene (because he would be perpetrating that violence), I do appreciate the moment for the satisfaction it gave me.

Even with these positive experiences, the voyeurism and almost lurid lens that the film was shot in makes it so that it only serves the consumption of cis white people. I cannot separate or ignore the fact that this was a film made by white men. And how these white men’s careers are going to profit from this film while the actress’s careers will most likely languish.

And why is it that so few TWOC (aside from Laverne Cox and Janet Mock) get any kind of airtime when it doesn’t involve trauma? Why are cis folks only interested in seeing us hurt, traumatized and alone? Those select few trans women who do get the spotlight, not just when they are murdered, are the exception and often tokenized by the spaces that they are in. You only ever hear about TWOC after we have been murdered. And in many ways this film is no different. It relies on the difficulty of our lives, it’s fetishizes the way our existence is marked by this world in order to titillate, to entice. The exotic other enchanting the “normal” cis white audience. And they leave the theater thinking that they know something, that they are more familiar with the lives of trans women. But our lives are not like in the movies.

After the last shot and the credits started rolling, I just broke down and cried. All that trauma and pain laid out like that so that people who don’t give a fuck about us, who just want to eat us alive — it was too much. It was so much to be in that audience, hearing their laughter and knowing we are just some fucking joke to them. That the things we face are a fantasy playground they can hang out in and then leave. That our lives only have meaning through the trauma experience. And don’t get me wrong, our trauma is real. But trauma isn’t the only thing about my existence that is real. But it’s the only thing cis folks care to see. Because a trans woman happy and loved is just so fucking weird to be real. Because seeing the full breadth of our lives is too much for people to handle. And because white people cannot help but exploit our lives.

In many ways, this film is similar to Paris is Burning. Brilliant and important and life saving while at the same time exploitative to the actors/subjects. The reviews of this film go on and on about Sean Baker and how he shot this film on a iPhone but where are the interviews asking how Mya Taylor felt shooting this film? Where are all the accolades for Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and her beautiful nuanced performance? Jennie Livingston made out like a bandit from that film and so will Sean Baker from this one. And the system is set up that only a white person could even get the funding for this project. TWOC doing this for ourselves doesn’t get the same level of attention or money. When will we get our coins? When will the work we do, the art we make, the lives we lead be for us, by us? When will white cis people stop exploiting our bodies for their profit?

Searching For Detroit: “Sorry to Bother You’s” Female Lead More Symbol Than Person by Jourdain Searles

There’s a phrase that comes to mind when I think of Tessa Thompson’s character Detroit in Boots Riley’s debut feature, Sorry to Bother You: symbolic disrupter. She wears the clothes of a revolutionary. Literally—her clothes are part of her performance-art aesthetic. In one scene, she wears earrings designed to look like penises; in another, a shirt that reads “the future is female ejaculation.” No one comments on it. Even her name, Detroit, invokes a legacy of racial and economic inequality, as well as the rich legacy of organizing to fight it. Detroit carries herself as the physical embodiment of radical Black female resistance, and it seems to be Riley’s intention that she is. Still, it’s a resistance no one in the film, including her boyfriend Cash (Lakeith Stanfield), the film’s protagonist, seems to fully acknowledge or address.

I can’t blame the characters for not taking her seriously, though, because at no point in the film are her values made plain to the audience. Sorry to Bother You is a film that openly critiques and lampoons whiteness, as well as the capitalist structure that upholds it and the ways people sell out for success within that structure rather than actively dismantling it. Cash’s sellout opportunity comes when he realizes that adopting a “white voice” (provided by David Cross) at his telemarketing job catapults him to a world of privilege that requires rejecting his friends and coworkers. This seems like the exact sort of behavior Detroit would clock early and critique immediately, but she doesn’t do it until much later. Her own art takes on a guerilla sensibility—everything is a secret, including her opinions.

Detroit’s artistic and revolutionary sensibilities remind me of the current incarnation of Nola Darling in Spike Lee’s Netflix series reboot of his 1986 classic She’s Gotta Have It. In one episode, Nola (DeWanda Wise)—also an artist—is dismayed by a thoughtful critique of her work by a seasoned critic (Wallace Shawn). He rightfully calls Nola out for not really having an intention for her work and an inability to succinctly explain her message. The episode highlights my biggest problem with Nola, and by extension, Detroit: They are not fleshed-out characters so much as they are figureheads—collections of radical Black iconography, symbolism, and buzzwords all signaling vaguely to rich concepts on which we never see them build. Detroit is a Black radical who doesn’t seem to spend time with any other Black women and is fine taking a backseat to men at every turn.

This has been a component of Black female characters in television and cinema dating back to the blaxploitation era. In movies like Foxy Brown, Sugar Hill, and Coffy, the titular characters were not written to be members of the black community, but rather emblems of it. Foxy, Sugar, Coffy, and their sisters in blaxploitation cinema were written as ordinary women who became vigilantes to avenge their fallen brothers and lovers; their resilience and loyalty to their communities made them icons of Black female power. In the 1970s, when blaxploitation helped spread the ideals of the Black Power movement and highlight socioeconomic realities of Black urban life, such archetypes made sense. But it’s frustrating, in 2018, to feel as though Black women in film are still so often deployed to symbolize their community and support Black men.

What does Detroit stand for? Is she a feminist? Womanist? Communist? Socialist? A combination? It’s almost like the film would prefer that Detroit’s “political” fashion do all the talking. In one telling scene, Cash visits Detroit at her studio and asks what her new art exhibit is all about. But once she begins explaining, he starts to fall asleep and we barely hear what she says. Is it because her rambling spiel is meant to suggest to viewers that Detroit herself doesn’t actually know what her art is about, or is the scene a way to shorthand the distance that’s growing between them? Why make Detroit’s art a plot point at all if we aren’t supposed to know its mission, and her values?

The film’s art-opening scene is even more confusing because, once Detroit takes the stage to address a crowd of woke gallery attendees, it quickly becomes clear that, like her boyfriend, Detroit also uses a “white voice” (that of British actress Lily James). This only leads to more questions: Has Detroit been using a “white voice” longer than Cash? Did she develop hers after he developed his? Is it okay that she uses “white voice” because she only does it occasionally? Is “white voice” only truly insidious when you use it all the time?

These are the questions I wish the film would address in Detroit’s interactions with Cash as his life, and his priorities, quickly change. The conversations they do have are so opaque—mostly due to Cash’s constant deflection—that I wonder why Detroit puts up with him. The film establishes that they have a history dating back to their teen years, but offers no hint of why this dynamic woman is devoted to a man who seems to have no political leanings whatsoever, or why she stays with him even after discovering that the job Cash has such aptitude for involves selling slave labor.

And that’s the problem: Detroit’s passion for Cash never pushes her to challenge or act in direct opposition to him. Sure, she participates in the strike against Cash’s employer, but never calls out her man in public even when he crosses the picket line. That faceoff is delegated to Cash’s former coworkers Squeeze (Steven Yeun) and Salvador (Jermaine Fowler), who exchange tense words with Cash as he betrays his working-class brethren in favor of a slave-peddling establishment. We know that in real life, Black women have been at the forefront of protests past and present; it’s frustrating and disappointing to see a Black woman function as a passive actor in this narrative. Worse yet, she becomes a sex prize: the unnecessary, confusing plot point where Detroit hooks up with Squeeze seems to exist mainly to give her something to do. But there’s already plenty to do. She could be working side by side with Squeeze—or better yet—organizing the protests herself.

Since seeing Sorry to Bother You, I’ve wondered what it would look like for Detroit and Cash to face off on picket line, imagined the thrilling possibility of the pair’s ideological differences taking the form of debates that happen in public as much as they do in private. (Especially so characters like Squeeze, who clearly underestimates Detroit at every turn, could see she’s really about the struggle.) In a Newsweek interview, Thompson noted that Detroit “is just trying to figure out the intersection of the art that she makes and activism,” and implies that Cash doesn’t care much for her art or see its relevance to revolution. An argument about that would not only enrich the film, but give us a peek into Detroit’s head: Behind all the symbolism, we could have seen the person.

From the section “Black Women’s Reactions to Controlling Images” in the chapter “Mammies, Matriarchs, And Other Controlling Images”

The many documentaries and feature films where Black women appear as central characters constitute another arena where emergent Black women appear. Not only could Black women read about emergent Black women in Terry MacMillan’s fiction, audiences could view images of Black women trying to “exhale” and “get their grove” on the big screen.This theme of U.S. Black women coming to know themselves, and often doing so in company of other Black women, wove throughout a cluster of films whose subject matter differed dramatically. Feature films made by Black women directors, such as Julie Dash’s Daughters of Dust, Michelle Parkerson’s Gotta Make That Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Ayoka Chenzira’s Alma’s Rainbow all illustrate the value Black women filmmakers place on Black women’s emerging self-definitions. 

Emergent women may have only recently made their appearance in Black women’s fiction and film, but such women have long populated everyday lived experience. In her autobiography, Lorene Carey, a working-class African-American woman who helped desegregate a prestigious New England boarding school, tells of what happens when everyday Black women decide to “turn it out”: 

My mother, and her mother, who had worked in a factory, and her mother, who had cleaned apartments in Manhattan, had been studying these people all their lives.... And I had studied them. I had studied my mother as she turned out elementary schools and department stores. I always saw it coming. Some white department-store manager would look at my mother and see no more than a modestly dressed young black woman making a tiresome complaint. He’d use that tone of voice they used when they had important work elsewhere. Uh-oh. Then he’d dismiss her with his eyes. I’d feel her body stiffen next to me, and I’d know that he’d set her off. And then it began in earnest, the turning out. She never moved back. It didn’t matter how many people were in line. . . . Turning out, I learned, was not a matter of style; cold indignation worked as well as hot fury.Turning out had to do with will (Carey 1991, 58–59).