Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 50

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Popular Culture Review

identity in film, the current essay explores the mediated messages embedded within
the films Waiting to Exhale and Set It Off. Each film is a visual (mis)representation
of African American women’s experiences with love and life in the 1990’s. Each
film presents character experiences that reflect real life experiences for some Af
rican American women, yet a dialectical tension emerges when the consequences
of entertaining result in the perpetuation of negative stereotypical images. In their
own right, each film embodies life for African American women from two distinct
socio-economic classes. It is through the context of friendship, or sisterhood, that
we understand the multidimensional aspects of African American female identity.
The tension becomes more apparent as the movies are juxtaposed and examined
for their contributions to (de)constructing racialized gender identity as it relates to
African American women.
Waiting to Exhale is based on Terry McMillan’s novel of the same name
and explores the sisterhood between four Afhcan American women as they share
with the audience the fhistrations experienced in maintaining balance between
their personal and public lives. Similarly, Seth Offxs a screenplay centering around
four Afncan American women who are in search of a “better” life as they deal with
classism, sexism, and racism. In either case, both sets of friends capture the multi
dimensional aspects of identity and the centrality of female friendship in under
standing one’s self and her position in society.
The films Waiting to Exhale and Set It O ff were selected because of their
popularity, although undocumented, within the African American community and
their shared attempts to address the centrality of sisterhood (emotional/spiritual)
between the characters as they survive and/or cope with their life circumstances. It
is through their sisterly relationships that we understand how the characters nego
tiate and deal with pressures from mainstream society to achieve the “American
Dream.” As each film evolves, we are able to further understand how these pres
sures influence the individual and collective decisions made by the characters.
Although each film presents a unique dilemma for its characters, both films col
lectively speak to a societal dilemma regarding representation and racialized gen
der identity. The images communicated from these visual texts create contradic
tory images that challenge our perceptions, constructions, and ideas of what it
means to be an African American woman in the 20^^ century.
This critical essay will engage in a textual analysis of the films and how
these storylines/plots, which are commonly found within mainstream films, present
a dialectical tension that challenges the movies to entertain yet educate the audi
ence as they reconstruct long-held notions of “the African American woman.” As
a conceptual framework. Black Feminist Thought will be used to understand the
media’s role in creating multiple, contradictory meanings that succeed in
deconstructing or reconstructing the multiple identities of African American women.