Science-women: arcane knowledge and African spirituality in independent African-American cinema of the 1990s

ABSTRACT

This article explores the significant role played by arcane knowledge and expressions of African spirituality in the iconography of powerful black women in three films directed by independent African-American filmmakers in the 1990s: Sankofa (Haile Gerima, 1993, USA), Mother of the River (Zeinabu irene Davis, 1995, USA), and Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997, USA). My discussion draws on the orature and legendary tales of West African-based cosmologies in the African diasporas of the Americas and the concept (and practice) of ‘conjure’ in African–American cultures. It argues that heroic black women characters possessing extraordinary or supernatural powers not only predate the current vogue of cinematic superheroism, but that the iconography of such ‘science-women’ is embedded in culturally specific, African-rooted cosmological, epistemological and spiritual contexts. I argue that the feminine power celebrated in the films by the independent African-American filmmakers discussed here draw on legendary and historical accounts of women in African diasporic oral, literary and spiritual traditions for their cinematic storytelling to construct an affirmative and paradigmatic model of black female heroism based on empowering African spiritual beliefs and arcane knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• African-American cinema
• African spirituality
• representations of Black Women
• Black female heroism
• African Diaspora Studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Haseenah Ebrahim http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1852-5468

Notes

1 Black Panther’s global box office revenues exceeded the $1 billion mark just 26 days after its release (Rubin 2018).

2 Julie Dash could be included among these filmmakers; her film, Daughters of the Dust, has not been included in this discussion because it has received substantial attention from numerous writers and scholars, including Bambara (1993), Diawara (1993), Mellencamp (1994), Humm (1997), Grayson (2000), Machiorlatti (2005), and Missouri (2015), among others.

3 See Cripps (1987) for a decade-by-decade review of black film criticism in the US. He also briefly mentions black film criticism in England and France until the 1970s.

4 See Masilela (1993) and Field, Horak & Stewart (2015) for more detailed documentation and analyses of the movement.

5 Davis has since documented this remarkable movement in her documentary film, Spirits of Rebellion: Black Film at UCLA (2011).

6 While Diawara does not make a link to gender in his characterization of these styles, the films he cites as exemplifying the new Black realism style deal with rites of passage in manhood. However, films such as Set It Off (1996), in which the protagonists are female, would appear to fall into the same category. The examples cited as being expressive in style, however, are films that may have protagonists of either gender, and are directed by both male and female directors, including Charles Burnett, Bill Gunn, Zeinabu irene Davis, Julie Dash, Marlon Riggs, among others.

7 Storm, of Marvel’s X-Men franchise, is the first superheroine explicitly characterized as being of African descent. With an ancestral lineage of African priestesses, her superpower is the ability to control the weather. Others include Vixen who can take on the power of animals, including extinct ones. Some, such as DC Comics’ Catwoman, and Marvel’s Valkyrie have been played by black actresses (Eartha Kitt and Halle Berry as Catwoman and Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie) but the characters were not created as racially black (nor does Catwoman have any superpowers). Several black female superheroines exist within the comic book universe, such as Spectrum, Thunder, Lightning, Friction and Vixen, but most superhero comic characters do not have widespread visibility until they are included in the lucrative superhero cinematic universe.

8 In Japanese manga and anime, superheroes often take the form of robots, and the ultimate goal is to achieve balance in the world and not necessarily for good to triumph over evil. For an elaboration, see Lunning and Freeman (2008).

9 The Maroons are descendants of runaway slaves who formed their own communities and fought numerous battles against the British to maintain their freedom and autonomy. They still retain some autonomy in Jamaica, nominally through separate states which are governed internally (Luntta 1993).

10 López Springfield (1997, xvii), notes that even today Jamaican health traditions are largely female-centered because ‘the healing arts were not wrested from women (as they were in ‘Western’ cultures).’ Christianity, especially Catholicism, waged brutal campaigns against women priestesses by labeling them ‘witches’ and defining their powers as evil.

11 A number of scholars have noted the prominence of ‘survivals’ of African spirituality in the literary expression of black women in the US and in the Caribbean (Baker 1991; Vega-Conzalez 1999; Haynes 2002; Ryan 2005; West 2011).

12 There is now a well-established body of scholarship that examines the historical, cultural, and political positioning of the conjure woman as a recurring figure in African-American women’s writing.

13 The term ‘bayou’ is used in Louisiana to refer to marshy wetlands.

14 Many of these African deities have been redefined within the diasporic context.

15 Many indigenous African religions include women as not only healers and priestesses, but as revered ancestors and potent deities, or orishas. The female deities of the Yoruba-based religions point to notions of femininity that encompass power, strength, courage and beauty. Oya, Oshun, Yemanja – the riverain/sea goddesses – are often symbolized as women with swords.

16 See Terborg-Penn (1987), Bilby and Steady (1987), Mathurin (1975), and Tuelon (1973).

17 I am not suggesting we convert such characters into commodified pop icons. Cinematic superheroines are generally highly sexualized and, in the case of women of color, frequently de-racialized.