Breaking All the Rules: An Examination of Queen Latifah’s Representations and Depictions Associated with the Black Female Body in Film Submitted by Angelica Cooper As part of a tutorial in Cultural Studies and Psychology March 24, 2006 Chatham College Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1 Acknowledgement The past four years here at Chatham College has been a roller coaster ride. I would like to thank every individual who has helped me to get to where I am today; a Chatham College graduate. First and foremost I would like to thank the only Heavenly Father above, Jesus Christ. Though sometimes He pushes you to the limit, He does not give you anymore than you can handle. I would like to thank my mother Diane Cooper and my father Ricardo Cooper Sr. for raising me to be the woman I am today. You guys did a pretty good job. Thank you for all of your continued support in all of the successes and disappointments I have undergone in my past 21 years on this earth. Thank you to my Uncle Conrad Bricker and Jerry Potts. Without you two I would not have been able to make it this far here at Chatham College. I appreciate your faith and trust in my decision making and your continued support of my dreams. To all of my close friends, I must say that I would not have made it this far without your friendships. They mean the world to me more than you could ever imagine. Sister Brandee S. Walker, Sister Rochelle Butler, April Clowney Reynolds (Fwiend), and Careema Bell. To my pride, joy, and happiness my son Jaison S. Brown Jr. Everything that I do I do for you. You are my drive, my energy, and my world. No one loves you more than Mommy! To all of the professors here at Chatham College whom I have had the pleasure of knowing and privilege of being educated under. Dr. Anissa Wardi, Dr. Stephanie Valutis, Dr. Karen Dajani, Prajna Parasher, and Janet James. Thank you for sticking by my side and never accepting anything less than my best. You have been educators, providers and most importantly listeners. You have pushed me to succeed and for that I am truly grateful. Finally, to all of those dear to my heart that have climbed the Heavenly Staircase to be in the best place off Earth, I dedicate this to you: Mom Paula Cooper Beatrice J. Walker Shelley Oravik Uncle Daryl Cooper Uncle Darrell Clowney Karen Sumpter MAY YOU FOREVER REST IN PEACE. 2 Table of Contents Chapter One: History of the Black Female Body in Media…………………….…………3 The Image of the Black Female in the 19th Century…………………………..…..3 The Mammy………………………………………………………………….……5 The Black Female Body in the 20th Century………………………………..……..9 The Black Female Body in the 21st Century……………………………….…….17 Chapter Two: Queen Latifah’s Illustration of Groundbreaking Stereotypical Performances Effecting Images of the Black Female Body in Film, Television, and Music………………………………………………………………………………..……21 Film………………………………………………………………………………21 Bringing Down the House………………………………………………….……21 Chicago……………………………………………………………………..……26 Beauty Shop…………………………………………….………………………..27 Television……………………………………………….………………………..31 Fresh Prince of Bel-Air…………………………………………………………..31 Living Single……………………………………………………………………..32 Music……………………………………………………………………………..34 Ladies First……………………………………………………………………….34 U.N.I.T.Y……………………………………………………………………...…35 Chapter Three: Queen Latifah’s Participation in and/or Rupturing of Various Representations of the Black Female Body….…………………………………………..38 Glamour Interview……………………………………………………………….38 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….39 Appendix………………………………………………………………………....46 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..63 3 Chapter One: History of the Black Female Body in Media “The female body in the West in not a unitary sign. Rather, like a coin, it has an obverse and a reverse. On the one side, it is white, on the other, non-white or prototypically black. The two bodies cannot be separated, nor can one body be understood in isolation from the other in West’s metaphoric construction of “woman.” White is what woman is; not-white (and the stereotypes not-white gathers in) is what she had better not be (Willis/Williams 1). –Lorraine O’Grady” The image of the Black Female in the 19th Century During the slave trade, the Black female body was used as a gauge to determine which women were worthy of purchasing and which were not. In "Doers of the Word": African American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880), Carla L. Peterson notes the conceptualization of the nineteenth-century black woman in terms of the body, "in contrast to middle-class white women whose femininity, as defined by the cult of true womanhood, cohered around notions of the self-effacing body.” The black woman's body," Peterson maintains, "was always envisioned as public and exposed" (Peterson, 20). Black women were put on display at social events and gatherings as pieces of “artwork” carefully placed to provide visual stimulation. These depictions of the Black female body stripped the Black female of her wholeness. Females were usually only partially exposed (i.e. breasts or thighs) in an attempt to further degrade the Black female image. The black female was made to feel like her body only had value where it was accentuated. The women with wide hips and ample breasts were given favor over smaller framed women. Slavery was a business and blacks were the profit of that business. Therefore, only the best could be chosen to produce offspring that would in turn become profit for that slave owner in the form of field hands.“Objectified in a manner similar to 4 that of black female slaves who stood on the auction blocks while owners and overseers described their important, salable parts, the black women whose naked bodies were displayed for whites at social functions had no presence” (Hooks 62). During the 19th century, there were few photographic images of the black female body. The images that were shown were those in which the black female was used as a sort of prop. Black females were captured often in the backdrop of a photo featuring a white female and when she appeared, she was a “Sarah”1, a servant, or a savage. “Between 1850 and 1890, French photographers were the primary producers of images of black women. Women were usually photographed nude or clothed next to a sexually evocative or nude White female” (Willis/Williams 1). There was, however, an upsurge in ethnographic photography in 1888 with the invention of the Kodak Box Camera. “Scientist Sir John Herschel (1792-1891) wrote about his experiments with the then new invention of photography. “Figures have a strange effect- fair women are transformed into Negresses” (Willis/Williams 1). Herschel is of course referring to what is now referred to as a “negative” for a photograph. Negatives always show the particular image as being much darker and features such as the eyes, and mouth remain distinguishable. Herschel’s remarks help to better identify the roots of many of the ideologies that have shaped the overall portrayal of the black female body image. In photography, although “negatives” are extremely important in the development and preservation of an image, the image itself or the “positive” is the only one that holds any true value. “Studies comparing facial structure, genitalia, and skin color of colonized Africans versus those of the Western world began in 1843 at the Anthropological 1 Term used to describe young slave girls who were kept as companions for young white girls 5 Institute of Britain and were followed by studies at the Societe d’ Anthropologie de Paris in 1859 and the National Geographic Society in 1888 (Willis/Williams 1). The shape and size of African and European skulls were compared using Phrenology and Physiognomy. These comparisons resulted in embellished findings about the differences between blacks and whites. These findings also served to perpetuate the longstanding notion that blacks are mentally inferior to whites. Popular depictions of blacks as ape or monkey-like in nature (i.e. huge lips, bulging eyes) spawned from these studies. The black female body was heavily scrutinized during slavery. Hair is an important element of the female body that represents beauty. Styles, texture, and color all define what is beautiful and attractive in a woman. Long blonde hair has been seen as pretty in relation to the white blue eyed woman. Hair with no coarseness, free of tangle, not nappy, and silky flowing demonstrates how beauty is linked to perfection, and dark nappy hair is seen as undesirable. The Mammy The Antebellum period (1784-1860) spawned a number of well-known and long debated portrayals of the black female body. The most popular and still most highly debated image is that of the Mammy2. The Mammy was an asexual black female who was usually portrayed as being voluptuous or plus-sized and usually was willing to do and say pretty much anything to appease her master. Mammies usually wet-nursed and ultimately raised the children of the master and the mistress along with taking care of the household needs of her own family. Mammies were usually considered “family” by many slave owners. This image of a sub-servant black female was one that played into the already existing 2 Appendix 1 6 inferiority of the black female. During the first several centuries, white people imposed their own definitions of blackness on African Americans with stereotypes alleging that all Africans were savages and even cannibals. By the end of the nineteenth century, society recognized a few basic stock characters with whom to identify blacks and this included the mammy, the Uncle, the Pickaninny, and the Coon. The stereotype of the Mammy was that she was the faithful, obedient, domestic servant. By loving, nurturing, and caring for her White children and family better than her own, the mammy symbolizes the dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal black female relationship to elite white male power.