black girls face: r. kelly (preview)

about one year ago, i completed the film i had always wanted to see but got tired of waiting for someone else to make. here's some snippets of it:



i purposely included the black female subjects of this documentary trying to figure things out and make meaning while they spoke. that's real to me. in watching a nation and media obsess about an older white man's remarks about younger black women, i realized that when racism and sexism are the topics, we are allowed very little space to just think and express something outside of guilt and resentment (white folks) or anger and resolve (black folks). anything outside of these emotions exceed the limits of mass media, particularly tv.

the issues underpinning the imus drama can't be resolved or even fully understood in mainstream media, mostly because mainstream media thrive mostly off of eruptions--events that ultimately become spectacles that inundate more than they inform. as far as imus went, i found myself as interested in how the story was reported on as much as the story itself.

one of the most frustrating things is the continued insistence of mainstream media to rely on perspectives from black folks who are older and/or male. to refer to al sharpton at every eruption is almost as offensive as the eruptions themselves. another reality that keeps becoming more and more clear is that if a white man is the perpetrator (imus) or accused perpetrator (duke guys) and the target(s) is black and female, the problem is consider a "racially explosive" issue and is quickly addressed. but if the perpetrator is a black man, its like the infraction didn't happen.

and i am talking about r. kelly. it's going on 5 years since he's been charged with child pornography--younger black females as the targets--and he has not seen a trial. i quietly bring and re-bring this up, not because i have a vested interest in seeing r. kelly being admonished in the same ways that imus was (as an aside, i'm not convinced firing him was necessary). it's more because as a young black woman, i care about what's being implied in all these eruptions, particularly when they have to do with my peers.

rather than glamorize what's being implied, i'll just tell you my goals for the documentary--they are purposely the opposite of what all these eruptions suggest.

show our faces,
show us being vulnerable and pensive,
show us processing,
show us as female.

then we can draw some more appropriate conclusions about black girls and women.

tokumbo bodunde
04.13.07