African American Women

Social constructions including race, political class, degree of wealth, moral codes, and of course gender are really hot topics today. We shall focus on women in this paper and their role in wars; African women in particular have a different way of life than European women. Obioma Nnaemeka, in her article “Bringing African Women into the Classroom: Rethinking Pedagogy
and Epistemology”, that an outsider to a culture or a way of life can still learn and teach about this (571). Not only does this mean that anybody can be immersed into African culture, but also, within the African culture, men can still publish artistic works about women and vice versa. Even though women do have positive portrayals in many films, there is often times some insight

missing on the part of the men directing these films that does not know how to show a fully authentic experience or bunch of experiences that go through the struggles of women in their own culture, let alone other cultures. In O Herói directed by Zeze Gamboa for example, while the love interest of the main character named Maria Barbara is shown to not completely enjoy her job in the prostitution business, she has lost her child, and she is interested in Vitorio even when he does not have a prosthetic leg nor money, the implications that go with the job she performed were not explored adequately. In order to have made her more relatable to (women) viewers, there should have been a good reason told as to why she did what she did. We will explore Gamboa’s film more later in the article, as well as two other films: Flame directed by Ingrid Sinclair and The Night of Truth directed by Fanta Régina Nacro. In addition, we shall see what several scholars have to say about these films regarding the themes of war and gender in them, and war and gender in general.
Getting back to Nnaemeka’s article briefly, however, it is excellently explained what many of the real problems regarding sex and/or gender are, and other scholars give their insights into this as well. Nnaemeka brilliantly says that “like women everywhere, African women have problems” (573). This not only implies that African women are not any worse off than women from other continents (which means men are not any more violent in Africa than they are in Europe), but it also implies that the problems that African women are perceived to be having are not really problems. The Western world loves to criticize polygyny present in many African countries, including the Islamic countries of Africa. In the film Mandabi directed by Sembene Ousmane, there are two wives that the protagonist has. The film shows viewers that not all of these types of relationships are bad, as the two wives are shown to be getting along throughout the film. As Nnaemeka’s article explains, these relationships can be made up of sisterhood relationships between the wives involved in the polygamous relationships, and the wives are must less likely to have to be worried about cheating on because even if the man is attracted to another woman, he can get another wife. Besides this point, polygyny is not even something that is a prized value against all Africans; an article written by a staff reporter on a website titled Mail & Guardian claims that 68 percent of South Africans are against these types of marriages. Women are particularly more against polygynous marriages in South Africa and elsewhere, and they have a good reason to be against these marriages too.
Nnaemeka argues that patriarchy, and not the continent of Africa itself nor its religions, are to blame for gender inequality (574). Of course, polygynous marriages are often in favor of men, not women, having more than one wife. The implications here are that women will have to care for the children primarily and as a reward, their men, and not them themselves, will be able to have their family names carry on. Of course, in the films seen, men are shown to be using the system of male dominance to their advantage. In O Herói, Vitorio tells his lover Maria to stay home when he wanted to get on the broadcast station to request that whoever had his prosthetic leg give it back. The assumed reason for this is that he felt ashamed of having a (former) prostitute go with him, and yet he used her life circumstances to his advantage the moment he walked through the door of her house. The titular character in Flame also got herself under the control of a man, but it was an even worse case for her than Maria’s case was. Flame was raped by a fellow military soldier named Che. Even when Che apologizes, his oppressive grip still remains when he orders her to leave him (which she does not do). Another potential flaw in the way this was portrayed, however, was when she forgave him so quickly in the film. Flame does not even press charges against Che. Just as it would be looked at as crazy if a mother had her baby child killed by demanding men, rape should not be something taken so lightly. However, society conditions the oppressed to be against warring against the oppressors, and often times even encouraging them to forgive and forget.
Rape is not something that is immune to the rest of the world.

The Hunting Ground, directed by Kirby Dick, shows several examples of women in the United States being overjoyed at their acceptance into prestigious universities. Many American women also have a strong desire to join the military. Even though parents sending their daughters off think that they will have a great, safe experience, this is not always the case. Dirk’s documentary shows that many women on several prestigious college campuses, including but not limited to Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Berkeley, and Arizona State University are raped. The act is most commonly performed by men who take advantage of drunk women, although men often times have to resort to physical force to rape women. Rather than confront the problem of rape culture on college campuses, many colleges try to cover up the problems in order to not lose their prestige. The Hunting Ground shows that the few college women that do report having been raped, many administrators try to (partially) blame the incident on the victims and make excuses for the perpetrators. According to Dirk’s documentary, “more than 16 percent of college women are sexually assaulted while in college”. In the case of the military, women soldiers are vastly outnumbered by male military members and have difficulty keeping up with them. The Invisible War, also directed by Kirby Dick, shows that

many military men also physically and/or sexually assault women. The men often are not subject to disciplinary action because the high ups don’t want any trouble. One woman journalist named Amy Herdy in The Invisible War says that about 500,000 women have been raped in the U.S. military since its foundation. The important thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of sexual assault cases in the military or on college campuses in the USA are not reported, let alone dealt with.
Some readings by scholars that talk about women in the film industry.

Keith Shiri’s Directory of African Film-makers and Films (1992) makes a claim that of the over 250 filmmakers in Africa in the year of 1992, less than 10 were women, cited by the article “The emergence of women’s film-making in francophone sub-saharan Africa: from pioneering figures to contemporary directors” written by Lizelle Bisschoff (159). Bisschoff goes on to explain, however, that others studying this topic have more recently pointed to figures way higher, with there now being over a hundred women filmmakers in Africa (159). Still, women are primarily limited to behind the scenes roles such as makeup artistry, editing, production management, and wardrobing, therefore directing far fewer films than men and Bisschoff says this is a problem “because it results in an imbalanced representation of sociocultural complexities as well as disproportionate representations of individual and collective subjectivities and identities” (159). The uniqueness of being an African filmmaker is that there are so many routes to take when conveying a message. It is true that many women filmmakers focus on women’s issues, but this can include many things, such as being a mother, being a wife, being a target for sexual assault, and going through periods. In addition, they can talk about the same cultural themes as men. Safi Faye explains that she does not only focus on women, but on society as a whole, and she acknowledges

that merely being an African puts one at a disadvantage in the film industry (165). Meanwhile, Fanta Regina Necro says that even though she has gotten a lot of requests to talk about women’s issues, she mainly makes films because “she likes the cinema and wanted to tell stories” (166). Now it should be easy to see that while women may be more inclined to talk about their own problems, ultimately they are human beings too and not just their sex or gender.