Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 52
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Popular Culture Review
and upper-middle class African American women as they deal with balancing their
single and professional lives. Each of the four women is searching for relationship
satisfaction as she attempts to maintain her gender and professional identities. Given
her own circumstance, each character battles for “centeredness” as she searches
for a “complete” life involving family, relationship and career. Bemadine gave up
her career to become a homemaker, only to later be divorced by her husband and
left to raise their two children on her own. Gloria is a divorced, self-sacrificing
mother and business woman who feels empty when her son leaves home. Her only
solace comes from sporadic sexual encounters with her bisexual ex-husband. The
two never-married characters, Robin and Savannah, are successful professional
women who continually make bad choices in their relational partners, which ulti
mately lead to self-imposed heartache. On several occasions, however, both women
are willing to compromise their standards in order to fill the empty void of loneli
ness. Savannah becomes involved with a married ex-boyffiend, while Robin settles
for sexual relationships lacking emotional intimacy.
Conversely, the four characters in Set It O ff are dealing with more com
plex issues relative to their low-income status. Instead of focusing on romantic
relationships, the women are playing a game of survival in their everyday lives.
Unfortunately, the characters experience classism, racism, and sexism on their jour
ney. For one reason or another, each character ultimately is “forced” to compro
mise her integrity, which results in their collective decision to resort to a life of
crime to absolve their financial woes and achieve the American Dream. The char
acters occupy a social position of oppression that creates barriers which hinder
success. Level-headed Stoney is the moral compass of the group who takes on the
role of mother as she nurtures her brother and friends through life. When she re
sorts to prostitution to save her brother from the streets, Stoney compromises her
integrity but holds onto her dream of marriage, family, and living in suburbia.
Frankie is the most successful of the group, as she has gone to college and has a
professional job in a bank. Her dreams of receiving promotions and raises dissolve
when she is accused by her White employers of conspiring with Black bank rob
bers from her neighborhood to rob the bank.
Unlike Stoney and Frankie, Cleo is the stereotypical “masculine” les
bian, and has little to dream about as she walks aimlessly through life with little
ambition beyond just making it in the ‘hood. Throughout the movie, we see Cleo
become more resigned to a life of mediocrity, poverty, and oppression. The final
character, Tee-Tee, is a single-mother trying to take care of her child as she searches
for full-time employment. This task becomes overwhelming as Tee-Tee has no
other means of providing childcare for her son and has limited employment oppor
tunities due to her lack of education beyond high school. It is through their indi
vidual and collective economic oppression that the women establish a solidarity
that surpasses the legal consequences of their actions.