Watermelon Woman

Watermelon Woman

Cheryl Dunye’s first full feature film The Watermelon Woman is a clever film that explores the absence of black female images particularly in film.  The films documentary style helps communicate how important this issue really is, while the humor of Dunye makes in fun to watch. We begin to see the parallels between the subject and the filmmaker. The lead character, Cheryl, embarks on a personal journey to document the life of an obscure black actress only credited with the name the “Watermelon Woman.”  As Cheryl works to uncover the actresses true identity, she finds that the actress life is a lot more complex than just being a nameless actress on a ‘mammie film.’ She also begins to see herself, as a young black filmmaker in the Watermelon Woman.

The film examines early Hollywood and how the black actress only recourse was to play mammie characters or Aunt Jemimas “From the mammies, jezebels, and breeder women of slavery to the smiling Aunt Jemimas on pancake mix boxes, ubiquitous Black prostitutes, and ever-present welfare mothers of contemporary popular culture, negative stereotypes applied to African American women have been fundamental to Black women’s oppression.” (Collins, 5) The films addresses the great gap in history in regards to the black female experience.  Just like Marilyn Richardson efforts to “edit the writings and speeches of Maria Stewart. (Collins 13) and “Mary Helen Washington’s collections of Black women’s writings,” (Collins, 13) Cheryl attempts to piece together and document the lost story of the Watermelon Woman through film.

Black women were placed in an “outsider within status.” (Collins, 11)   A black woman, while being a vital part of white society (either as domestic help or in this case actress) the black woman is at the same time an outsider.  Cheryl finds that the Watermelon Woman was involved with a white female director.  Even though it appears they had an intimate relationship, Cheryl is unable to find out details regarding either their relationship, or even just information on the Watermelon Woman in film books.  While there were a few books mentioning the director, none of them even mentioned the existence of the Watermelon Woman. It is though she never existed, even though it was her presence in the films that made the director somewhat successful.  Cheryl’s own relationship, with a white woman, causes trouble in her own personal life. She is shunned by her friends and is forced to question her relationship based on racial identity.

Through Cheryl’s search she finally discovers that the actress was also a blues singer at local clubs in Philadelphia.  She also finally finds out her name, Faye Richards.  Like many black woman before her Richards is able to express herself through music. “Historically, much of the Black women’s intellectual tradition occurred in institutional locations other then the academy.  For example, the music of working-class Black women blues singers of the 1920 and 1930s is often seen as one of the important site outside academia for this intellectual tradition.” (Collins 15)

As Alice Walker reports “I write the things I should have been able to read” (Collins 13) Cheryl Dunye does the same.  Faye Richards is a fictional character and a representation of many like her, that remain nameless and forgotten.  Dunye’s film displays not only her humor and mastery of the video medium, but her inclination to explore difficult subjects.  Alice Walker also says of black intellectuals, “she must be her own model as well as the artist attending, creating, learning from, realizing the model, which is to say, herself.” (Collins 19) As a Black intellectual, Cheryl Dunye points the camera to herself while investigating the life of Faye Richards.  In doing that we can better personalize the particular issues that Richards endured during her life and career, because we can see the same issues occur in Cheryl’s life.

Works Cited

Collins, Patricia.  Black Feminist Thought Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politica of   Empowerment New York: Routledge , 2000

The Watermelon Woman dir Cheryl Dunye  film 1996