Queer Aesthetics

Sullivan notes

Clips: Ch. 5, ca. 40 min. Ch. 7, ca. 56:30 min. Ch. 7, ca. 1:01 min. Ch. 1, ca. 0:00. Ch. 8, ca 1:10.

Laura Sullivan, “Chasing Fae: "The Watermelon Woman" and Black Lesbian Possibility”

1. Sullivan argues that this groundbreaking film uses both "deconstructive" and "realist" techniques "to examine the way that identity in contemporary U.S. culture" of the 1990s "is shaped by multiple forces, primarily race, gender, and sexual orientation." The film both "de-centers" and "represents" the "identity and history of a figure most invisible in the textual production of the dominant culture - the black lesbian" (448).

2. It does this work by combining narrative and documentary forms in a kind of "meta-fiction" in which "Cheryl" at times addresses the camera to talk about her film project: a film within a film, thus, a meta-narrative or meta-fiction. Thus, Cheryl's struggle in the story to make a film about “Fae Richardson” works as a kind of reflexive version of the film itself. This is a common quality of meta-narrative or meta-fiction: a film within a film, or a story within a story, makes us think reflexively about the film or story we are seeing or reading, and it makes us think about not only what we are seeing or reading, but how. In this way, highly reflexive narratives can often be seen as explicitly asking their viewers or readers about how and why they see the world as they do: such stories ask us to participate in a critical way with the presentation of the story.

3. So, here, Sullivan is arguing that this film about recovering a black, lesbian actress' story is also reflexively about the way we value a black, lesbian director; Cheryl's determination to find "Fae" and make a film about her is reflexively a sign of Cheryl Dunye's determination to become a director. Thus, there is a key moment in the film: when Cheryl says that "I am a black, lesbian director," this moment stands out especially once we later notice the closing title that tells us that the Watermelon Woman is a fiction - she never really existed.

4. Thus, telling a story about race, gender, and sexual orientation in film history, is also a way of "performing" and of "transforming" the race, gender, and sexual orientation of film production. A key transformation happens in both the fictive and reflexive aspects of the film: Cheryl makes a film about the a forgotten black actress, who was made to be invisible and forgotten turns out to have lived a vibrant life, full of love and community; Cheryl Dunye makes a film about making sure that not only

will she herself not be forgotten, but she will have the authority that will prevent that from happening.

5. But wait - isn't "class" a major shaping force in the film? We might think of some scenes from "Watermelon Woman" in which class is depicted as the kind of shaping force to which Sullivan refers. How well does Sullivan's argument deal with class issues or economic issues?

6. One important way class gets addressed in the film is through Cheryl's exploration of why she has a strong curiosity about, even a desire for, a woman who played multiple "mammy" roles in classical Hollywood cinema. Sullivan argues that in this film, Dunne exposes viewers to the history of seeing black women as servants and as "welfare mothers," and she exposes this history in a way that also asks us to critique it, rather than to accept it. Here, Sullivan mentions the a clip that Cheryl plays for "us" - a clip of Fe Richards playing a slave who comforts her southern mistress. (5:00) In this sequence, Sullivan argues, Dunne as director "comments on the historical continuity of the oppression of black women" (449); the legacy of slavery continues today, Sullivan argues the film shows, but also, the stereotypes derived from slavery continue to determine "acceptable" or "normal" images of black women, which negate the lived experience of women, and helps to limit black women's options for becoming producers of contemporary culture (450).

7. Like other films by black women in this period, the film addresses black women as black persons, but that makes some people uncomfortable - people who need to know that history, too. So the film, instead of just relying on "direct identification" in which a film about black lesbians appeals primarily to black lesbians, also tries to create an "active viewer," tries in other words to create a complex set of "viewing mechanisms" by which to connect to the film and be actively involved with its primary subject matter of black lesbians in film history (450). One key result, then, is we have scenes in which "the black mammy" figure is complicated as not simply a negative stereotype, but, provocatively, an object of desire for a black lesbian.

8. Sullivan points out this complex framing of a black lesbian figure in relation to film history in a key clip: Cheryl miming the words and gestures of Fe in her "mammy" role in Plantation Memories. This sequence, though, is actually repeated twice: the second time, in the final credit sequence, just before we are told "Fae" was entirely fiction.

What do you make of this sequence and the fact that it is repeated twice? We discussed this in lecture in terms of the use of "reflexivity" in the film, and in terms of challenging the non-black lesbian audience's "desires" for this problem to be "solved" for them by Cheryl's making the image of the "mammy" only a matter of "her" desire to be a director.

9. At the same time, though a primary emphasis is given to black lesbian desire, friendship, productivity, sociality, history, the film also takes great pleasure in

emphasizing the sex scene between Cheryl and Diana: as Sullivan points out, it "documents the existence of interracial lesbian romances." (40:00). How would you compare the sex scene here to the ones in Nitrate Kisses?

10. Even though the film emphasizes difference in terms of historical experience, it also challenges any final or essentialist claim that difference should be limiting or confining: Cheryl clearly feels differently about documenting Fae than either Shirley or June, Fae's lover for the last 20 years of Fae's life. For Cheryl, it is important to be able to identify with a black lesbian who had an affair with a white woman, as it is important to be able to belong to a history of black lesbians who fought to create and maintain their own communities and cultures. (453).

11. Sullivan finally comes around to "class identity" on page 454, where she finds it as complex as anything else in the film.

12.The film thus uses a range of "realist" techniques for their "readability," and the power here is that realism can be encourage identification and politicization (456), but it also deconstructs realist and documentary cinemas, showing that these effects are guaranteed by unstable, unreliable references and signs: we are seduced through the realism, but in a way that makes us question cinema's ability to "naturally" represent the world and history.