Blog 10

I believe that yes, a filmmaker can represent Black women as sex workers in a way that is cinematically transformative.  In order to represent the re-framing, the filmmaker has to show a change in the female cinematic role.  There are very few films with a strong female lead, and there are even fewer films with a strong Black female lead because in a lot of movies, females are represented as supporters and/or girlfriends to their male counterparts, so they are shown as the object instead of the subject.  To go along with that supporting character, women are quite frequently represented as sex symbols, and everything has to be about their body and their appearance.  Therefore, if a filmmaker wants to transform this image, they have to give the Black woman a strong lead role.  The character might be sexy, have a good body, look good and be a sex worker, but if the character also has narrative components like being in control of her life, a group of people, her family and/or maybe even her husband and can support herself if she needed to, that is a big step toward re-framing the representation.