The Black South in Contemporary Film

Abstract

In a cinema accustomed to equating gritty with real, oppression with existence, and anger with passion when it comes to the lives and legacy of the descendants of African slaves in America, Julie Dash's 1992 film Daughters of the Dust is shocking. Finally, on the screen, African American life is freed from the urban, from the cotton picking, from the tragic integrationist ladder-climbing. Here, in the unlikely arena of American film, the complexity and shaded histories of Black women's lives take center stage. There are no whores or maids in this film. No acquiescent slaves. No white people. Instead, Daughters of the Dust offers an historical moment in African American culture, plain and imperfect, blended with such subtle charm, such careful technique that the preparation of food and a stroll along the beach become overwhelming in their beauty. And Dash has conceded that the film does have a certain preoccupation with beauty. Cinematographer Arthur Jafa holds close-ups far longer than is customary, not only allowing the audience to contemplate the specific grace of his subjects but also forcing viewers into intimate proximity with each one. The entire film, in fact, allows very little space for those who are not Black and not women - a circumstance that was heretofore inconceivable in American movie theaters. Jafa's canvas, a grainy sweep of coastline buttressed by ancient trees and occasional grass, is itself breathtaking. The period costumes are as impeccable as they are varied. And, admittedly, the visual lyricism of the film is at times distracting. The irony is that, on a certain level, the film's narrative is quite simple. A family at the turn of the century prepares to make the journey from the coastal islands off of Georgia and South Carolina, the Sea Islands, to the mainland of the United States. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Sea Islands were used as an entrance point for ships transporting African captives to the slave markets at Savannah and Charleston. The captives who remained on the Sea Islands, the Gullah or Geechee people, were isolated from the large plantations and cities controlled by whites and, consequently, retained a culture rich in Africanisms. (Even today, inhabitants of the Sea Islands maintain a distinct language and culture.) During the early twentieth century, the period in which Daughters of the Dust takes place, the United States was in a period of tremendous industrial growth and held much promise and glamor for the young. In one scene, children pour over a wish book, picking out all of the things they will be able to buy once they leave their isolated homeland. In this, Daughters of the Dust is a familiar immigrant drama. The young reach for change while the old cling to tradition. Folk ways a re challenged and modified for future use. The family's matriarch, Nana Peazant (Cora Lea Day), fears that with the new will come the loss of memory and, the dilution of the strength family provides, a strength particularly necessary for Black people. And, so, the Peazants' final moments on Ibo Landing the place of birth for most farmily members, focus on migrations to and from home, migrations that are' 30th physical and spiritual, and the awkward reconciliation of retention and integration. On the day before the crossing, two expatriates return, embodying both the dilemma and promise migration presents. Mary Peazant (Barbara O), called Yellow Mary because of the color of her skin, is a world-weary traveler, a fallen woman returning to the shelter of her family. Yellow Mary's somber anecdotes, the story of how she became ruined working as a wet nurse in Cuba, for example, provide shrewd snubs to the others' dreams of a better life. Unlike the scraps of memory that Nana Peazant cherishes and draws upon for guidance, Yellow Mary's memories, inflicted by a hostile world in which Black women have no power, must be sealed up and put away, she tells one young cousin. …

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