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Divas on Screen
Black Women in American Film by Mia Mask
Book Review by Kam Williams
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By
examining the persona of five
African-American women celebrities,
Divas [on Screen] seeks to push the
discussion of African-American celebrity
beyond the ‘good, politically
progressive role model’ versus ‘bad,
regressive black stereotype,’ binary
that stifles dialogue and divides
scholars. Instead, the ensuing chapters
address how African-American celebrity
functions as a social phenomenon. This
is not to minimize the prevalence of
racial stereotypes in the 21st Century…
But the
focus of Divas is slightly
different. It asks: what can we learn
from the complex and contradictory
careers of successful black women? Where
do we find African-Americans in the
performative, ‘other-directed,’
narcissistic culture? What does
African-American stardom as a social
phenomenon reveal about the aspirations
of black folks in the 21st Century? How
have African-Americans—in their struggle
for inclusion in commercial
entertainment—complied with dominant
culture?—Excerpted
from the Introduction (p. 4) |
Vassar Professor Mia
Mask has both a bigger vocabulary and a higher IQ
than I do, judging by how often she had me reaching
for the dictionary and by the many, marvelous
insights about cinema she makes that had never
occurred to this film critic before. So consider
this a fair warning: this sage sister’s book,
Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film
is not light reading but an academic enterprise of
considerable substance. That being said, those
willing to make the intellectual effort are likely
to find themselves richly rewarded by the author’s
fresh perspective, priceless pearls of wisdom and
impressive background in terms of the cultural,
biographical and historical contexts.
The
title might strike you as a bit of a misnomer, for
it suggests more expansive coverage of
African-American actresses than the five icons
focused on here, namely,
Dorothy Dandridge,
Whoopi Goldberg,
Pam
Grier,
Halle Berry and
Oprah. Yet Professor Mask’s unorthodox approach
to the subject still feels comprehensive for, along
the way, she manages to incorporate bon mots about
many of their accomplished contemporaries.
As for that primary
quintet, each enjoys her own chapter. Blaxploitation
era idol Pam Grier is given her props for playing
macho roles which placed an “emphasis on her body in
such a way as to create an image of phallic
femininity.” At the other extreme, early pioneer
Dorothy Dandridge is credited with cultivating “a
public persona of respectable, black bourgeois
womanhood, feminine beauty, and domesticity.”
Dr. Mask describes
Whoopi as an actress excluded from typical romantic
screen liaisons whose repertoire instead reflects an
inclination to disrupt “the dominant social order”
which explains why she has so frequently defied
conventional notions about race, gender, and
sexuality. Of course, Halle and Oprah’s careers are
deconstructed, too, and in a thought-provoking
fashion that will prevent you from thinking of them
in the same way ever again.
A fascinating,
feminist examination of a struggle for
self-definition in the face of a dominant culture
and an entertainment industry perfectly comfortable
with serving up stereotypical images of black women
designed for mass consumption.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Dorothy Dandridge’s
Erotic Charisma 13
2. Pam Grier: A Phallic Idol of
Perversity and Sexual Charisma 58
3. Goldberg’s
Variations on Comedic Charisma 105
4. Oprah Winfrey: The Cathartic,
Charismatic Capitalist 141
5. Halle Berry: Charismatic Beauty in a
Multicultural Age 185
Notes 233
Selected Bibliography 269
Index 291 |
Source:
University of Illinois Press
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Accessible,
theoretical readings of popular African American
women film icons
This insightful
study places African American women's stardom in
historical and industrial contexts by examining the
star personae of five African American women:
Dorothy Dandridge,,
Pam
Grier,
Whoopi Goldberg,
Oprah Winfrey, and
Halle Berry . Interpreting each woman's
celebrity as predicated on a brand of charismatic
authority, Mia Mask shows how these female stars
have deftly negotiated the uneven terrain of racial,
gender, and class stereotypes. As international
celebrities, these women have ultimately complicated
the conventional discursive and industrial practices
through which blackness and womanhood have been
represented in commercial cinema, independent film,
and network television.
Mask examines
the function of these stars in seminal yet
underanalyzed films. She considers Dandridge's
status as a sexual commodity in films such as
Tamango, revealing the contradictory
discourses regarding race and sexuality in
segregation-era American culture. Grier's
feminist-camp performances in sexploitation pictures
Women in Cages and
The Big Doll House and her subsequent
blaxploitation vehicles
Coffy and
Foxy Brown highlight a similar tension
between representing African American women as both
objectified stereotypes and powerful, self-defining
icons. Mask reads Goldberg's transforming habits in
Sister Act and
The Associate as representative of her
unruly comedic routines, while Winfrey's daily
television performance as self-made, self-help guru
echoes Horatio Alger's narratives of success.
Finally, Mask analyzes Berry's meteoric success by
acknowledging the ways in which Dandridge's career
made Berry's possible.—Publisher
"[A]
remarkable, straightforward book. . . . Mask
interrogates the star personae of each of her
subjects with a rigor that is unique and as
refreshing as it is accessible and well written.
Mask's cultural critique of her subjects and the
world in which they operate resonates long after one
has finished the volume. Highly recommended."—Choice
"An original
and imaginative work that is full of intellectual
energy, insight, and engaged writing."—Hazel
V. Carby, author of Cultures in Babylon: Black
Britain and African America
"Mia Mask deftly weaves the lines of inquiry,
theory, popular culture, and history while making
the complex lives of these amazing, charismatic
black women accessible and understandable in fresh
conceptual ways."—Ed
Guerrero, author of Framing Blackness: The African
American Image in Film
Source:
University of Illinois Press
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Mia Mask,
Associate Professor of Film, received
her Ph.D. from New York University.
Before coming to Vassar in 2000, she
taught Film Studies at The College of
Staten Island-CUNY, graduate Media
Studies at The New School, and Film
History at Tufts University, where she
was a Multicultural Teaching Fellow.
At Vassar
College Ms. Mask teaches African
American cinema, documentary film
history, horror film, feminist film
theory, African national cinemas, and
genre theory.
She is
the author of
Divas on Screen: Black Women in American
Film, published by University of
Illinois Press. |
Formerly an
assistant editor and regular contributor at
Cineaste
magazine, she has written film reviews and covered
festivals for
IndieWire.com,
The
Village Voice,
Abafazi: Simmons College Journal,
Film Quarterly,
Time Out New
York, Brooklyn Woman, and
The
Poughkeepsie Journal. Her criticism was
anthologized in Best American Movie Writing, 1999.In
the spring of 2003, she was a Visiting Professor of
Film Studies at Yale University. She has twice been
a visiting scholar at New York University. Her
scholarly essays are published in the
African
American National Biography, Screen Stars
of the 1990s, Film and Literature, and
American Cinema of the 1970s. She is editing an
anthology entitled Black American Cinema
Reconsidered. Her television interviews include
appearances on "The Full Nelson" and "American Movie
Classics."
In 2006, 2007 and 2008 she served at the Institute
of International Education as a member of the
National Screening Committee assembled to select
Fulbright scholars.Vassar
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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