Revisiting Positive Representation
Guest writer Anise Davis is a young African American woman studying film in the UK.
Anise has kindly written a piece where she takes us on her personal journey through representation of people of colour on screen.
Following Zeb Achonu's Colum "Speaking to my child about Race" we wanted to know the impact of this issue on young people that are about to enter the workforce in our industry.
As adults, we may think that things are better now than when we were kids, but it is very interesting to hear from Generation Z what their experience is like. In Cinemamas we want a better now for our kids, so we think it's important to improve, change and hear from the generation that precedes our little ones.
As freelance Film and TV workers, we are creating the content that our kids are consuming today.
Anise and her peers will create the content they see tomorrow. We sincerely hope that Zeb's kids as well as all kids of POC origin get to see themselves better represented on the screen than Anise did, and certainly many of us did.
With confidence and cuteness, I wore the original princess costume my mom created for Halloween to kindergarten. At the time I didn’t linger on the thought, but I wondered why couldn’t I wear a Disney princess costume from Walmart? I understand now the reason: in 2004 there wasn’t a Black Disney princess. None of them looked like me. Although I was rocking that pink cone-shaped crown, it was not well received by my classmates. This would not be the last time my classmates commented on the way I look. When my classmates and I watched TV, we would all point out which characters we were. When I said that I wanted to be the lead character, a white girl with a pink bowl haircut, my classmates told me “no.” The lead actor was white and I wasn’t. The first Black Disney princess arrived when I was 11: Tiana from The Princess and the Frog (2010). Although I was “too old” for princesses, I was delighted that my brown skin was associated with opulence. However, it poses the question: why did it take this long for positive black representation?
In 2015, my Junior year of high school, my AP Language and Composition teacher announced that we would do AP Talks. Inspired by TED Talks, AP Talks is a platform for students to research and present their strongest passion. In preparation, we held student-led debates, based on a topic we read from a reputable source like The New York Times or The Washington Post. For the debates, my peers chose topics like validating reverse racism. I chose topics such as if prison labour is equivalent to slavery. My high school consisted of 83% Caucasian students, 14.5% Latinx students and 2.5% Black students. Similar to my Kindergarten class, the majority of the students were conservative. My desire to understand why negative representation exists was unmatched by my peers. My AP Talk, “Positive Representation” was an opportunity to share my knowledge. While preparing for the presentation, one of the students shared a song from Sesame Street called “I Love My Hair” (2010). It featured a muppet wearing different Black natural hair styles. Before the 2-minute clip was over, I was already crying. Imagine if I had this when I was in kindergarten. Leading up to the presentation, I worried that my conservative classmates would attempt to discredit me. To my surprise, a white male student complimented me on my presentation. He had learned something new, and he was thankful that I started the conversation.
After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Jane Elliott, a 3rd grade teacher, was searching for answers on what it is like to be a person of colour (POC). One day, she separated her all-white classroom by eye colour. For the sake of the exercise, Elliott claimed that brown-eyed students were the “better people” (Smithsonianmag.com). Although initially sceptical, the 8 and 9-year-olds demonstrated changes in their behaviour. Students with brown eyes—who were normally timid—demonstrated confidence. Blue-eyed students stumbled over equations they once solved effortlessly. In 1992, Elliott and Oprah Winfrey replicated this experiment on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Elliot commented on how America should be referred to a “salad bowl” rather than a melting pot:
In a salad bowl, you put in the different things they keep [sic] you want the vegetables, the tomatoes, the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences. A melting pot does not appreciate differences (12:45).
This idea is reflected in film and television. Often when the Black community is represented on screen or popular culture, we appear as a monolith or an “acceptable” Black stereotype. An example includes Aunt Jemima, a house servant that appears on pancake mixes and syrups.
Owned by the parent company PepsiCo, Aunt Jemima went gone viral after a TikTok video by Kirby. In 2016, PepsiCo assigned Dominique Wilburn to lead the re-invention of Aunt Jemima. Wilburn was the only black person on the rebranding campaign. According to a New Times Article by Tiffany Hsu, PepsiCo halted this initiative after receiving backlash from the Pepsi commercial featuring Kendall Jenner in 2017. PepsiCo assumed that it would be too risky to introduce a new Aunt Jemima amidst the bad press. There have been two public calls to cancel Aunt Jemima prior to 2020; once in 1980 via National Public Radio by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and in a 2015 New York Times opinion piece by Jamie Malanowski. As a result of recent protests regarding George Floyd’s death, PepsiCo and other brands plan to eliminate offensive black product representations.
I recognise the irony of what I said in my AP Talk, “Not everyone can fly out to California to promote their work” (7:09). In my senior year of high school, I applied to four American universities and one British university. I was accepted to all of them, but the British one was the most affordable and guaranteed a once in a lifetime experience. Throughout my studies, my mission has remained the same: to tell stories about POC, the LGBT+ community, and those with visible and non-visible disabilities. I quickly realised that my fellow filmmakers didn’t share this sentiment. I endured many pitches for stories I didn’t agree with—centring around belittling women, zero POC experiences, homophobic and transphobic ideologies and other disturbing ideas. During one of my modules last year, I pitched a TV series about a Black woman opening a hair salon in the 1950s. My tutor, a Caucasian male, belittled the story saying that this kind of show would only work as a comedy. What’s funny about a Black woman trying to start a business in the ‘50s? Ultimately, I pitched the story the way I wanted it to be told.
The fact that I am graduating this November still has not registered. I am seeking work as a Production Office Assistant, as I plan to start my own production company someday. More than ever, it is important to hold production companies accountable for positive representation in front of and behind the camera. As I climb the production office ladder, I will motivate and challenge my collaborators to evaluate their impact. Can they hire more Black crew members for the film? How many films on their slate are written by Black screenwriters about their experiences? I hope this is the start of delivering joy to the little Black princesses everywhere
Written by: Anise Davis
If you’d like to get in touch with me:
Twitter: @anisedavis1