Thoughts on Tania Modleski's “cinema and the Dark Continent: Race and Gender in Popular Film”
By: July • Essay • 279 Words • April 7, 2010 • 1,829 Views
Thoughts on Tania Modleski's “cinema and the Dark Continent: Race and Gender in Popular Film”
Tania Modleski’s “Cinema and the Dark Continent: Race
and Gender in Popular Film,” discusses how popular film
perpetuates stereotypes of black women. Some controlling
images of black women include: the mammy, the jezebel, and
the sapphire. While Modelski doesn’t analyze the sapphire
stereotype, she does use Whoppi Goldberg’s past film roles as
examples of the nurturing and maternal mammy and the over-
sexualized jezebel. While I could clearly see Modelski’s
comparison of Goldberg’s roles and black women’s stereotypes,
I could not as easily accept her theories on “Gorillas in the
Mist” and “King Kong.”
Modelski says the gorillas in “Gorillas in the Mist”
and “King Kong” represent issues surrounding the stereotype
of a violently sex-crazed black man and of miscegenation. I
don’t feel when bringing Dian Fossey’s life to the film the
screenwriters intended to allude to a sexual relationship
between Fossey and Digit. While I can see how sexual
overtones can be inferred from over-analyzation, I just don’t
find