I think it’s strange that the week we’re supposed to blog about women and womanhood we watched La Noire De… Yes, the title means “the black girl of,” but just because the main character is female does not make this a film about women. The main issue of this movie is race. It’s about colonization and slavery. In class we discussed the idea of Third World Cinema. When someone in the United States makes a movie about a culture in Asia, it is not Third Cinema. I don’t think Ousmane Sembene, a man, should be our insight into women – even if his main character is a woman. This reminds me of Isben’s A Doll’s House, which I hate. The women presented in The Colored Museum are also a man’s presentation. I think this only emphasizes the patriarchy found in many societies.

None of the films we have watched so far have really been about sex. We’ve been really focused on the race part of sex and race. I can’t help but think of that as a trend in American history. Black men got the right to vote before women of any race. Barack Obama is president, not Hilary Clinton. The class has talked so many times about whether we can actually relate to what other people are going to if we don’t have the same experiences as them. We can empathize, but can we really know? Whose story is this? Whose culture is this? Juxtaposition has been a big theme of this class, and the juxtaposition of this question about womanhood with films and plays created by men only reminds me of the sometimes subtle seconding women face.