Monday, March 18, 2024

Expanding the Coming of Age Film Genre for Black Girls

CROOKLYN MOVIE
CROOKLYN (1994)

*As Shadow And Act points out, “the coming of age genre in filmmaking is one of the most celebrated, and can be one of the most isolating in terms of representation.”

The history of cinema doesn’t include many thought-provoking coming of age films about black girls. As writer Nijla Mumin notes:

When I was growing up, and throughout my life, that hasn’t changed. Still, I’ve connected to the honest portrayals of black girlhood in “Our Song,” the lessons about familial grief and death in”Crooklyn,” and later, the will to proclaim a sexual identity in “Pariah.” Beyond these films, I’ve been impacted by the universality of youth, confusion, and burgeoning sexuality in “Raising Victor Vargas,” “Fish Tank,” and “Mosquita y Mari.”

I binge-watched old episodes of “The Wire.” I was pulled into the honest, affecting portrayals of black boyhood in the midst of poverty, drugs, crime, and innocence.

How powerful it would’ve been if the same portrayals were extended to black girls, who face some of the same barriers to survival as black boys, but are often overlooked. In fact, no woman is more likely to be murdered or raped in this country than a black woman.

Black girls also represent the fastest growing segment of the juvenile population in secure confinement.

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Quvenzhane Wallis as "Hushpuppy" in a scene from the motion picture "Beasts of the Southern Wild."
Quvenzhane Wallis as “Hushpuppy” in a scene from the motion picture “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

There have been a few cinematic portrayals for young black girls, such as Hushpuppy in Ben Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Another portrayal comes in the form of Stefani Saintonge’s short film, “Seventh Grade,” which was the winner of the 2014 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Short Film Contest, and centers on a young black girl named Patrice who stands up for her friend when a raunchy rumor threatens her reputation, and learns about sexuality and adolescence in the process, per Shadow and Act.

As the author of the piece points out, in the end, it’s all about identification and coming to know and understand ourselves and womanhood through images of those who look like us and experience the same emotions, confusion, loneliness, etc…

 

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