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In Michael Boyce Gillespie\u2019s book Film Blackness<\/em>, the author makes the claim that \u201cblack film, and black art more broadly, navigates the idea of race as constitutive, cultural fiction, yet this art is nevertheless often determined exclusively by the social category of race or veracity claims about black existential life in very debilitating ways\u201d (Gillespie 1.)\u00a0 In this manner, black film appears to present a reductive and unnecessarily narrow portrayal of \u201cblack lifeworld,\u201d (Gillespie 5) which ultimately suggests that black film is a chaotic amalgamation of work with only race in common.\u00a0 Professor Herzog as well Jennifer DeClue, in the roundtable discussion surrounding Pariah, deem this compartmentalization of black art as a ghettoization.\u00a0 In other words, the film is analyzed and interpreted but in a category outside of contemporary, mainstream media.\u00a0 The content and character of the work is ignored.\u00a0 It is the blackness of the art that is underscored.\u00a0 It is the blackness of the art that separates it from other films and makes it a legitimate endeavor.\u00a0 Interestingly, it was this concept of ghettoization that I kept coming back to while watching Dee Rees\u2019s film Pariah<\/em>.<\/p>\n While Pariah<\/em> can be viewed in accordance with Gillespie\u2019s theories surrounding the ghettoization of black film and black art, it was in the portrayal of several different types of black lesbians in the film that the intricacies of his theories were illuminated.\u00a0 In this manner, Dee Rees appears to be combatting this compartmentalization but with both race and sexual identity.\u00a0 Alike, the main protagonist of this film, is an adolescent, middle-class, black lesbian from a conservative and religious family.\u00a0 She knows she is a lesbian, yet she has not come out to her family. \u00a0She is also not entirely comfortable in her own skin as a lesbian.\u00a0 In this manner, she does not feel as though she fits in with the stereotypical black, lesbian crowd.\u00a0 Her best friend, Laura, her mentor and greatest support system, does, however, which ultimately throws Alike into an environment where she does not feel comfortable or able to be herself.\u00a0 It even gets to the point where she attempts to wear a strap-on to the club to try and conform to what she thinks a lesbian should look like.\u00a0 When she meets Bina, a churchgoing free-spirit who shares many of the same tastes in music, art, and hobbies, she no longer needs to change herself to fit in with the other black lesbians who she was previously hanging out with.\u00a0 Instead, she is unhindered by her constant need to conform to the identity that is expected of her.\u00a0 She no longer has to be Laura\u2019s type of lesbian, and she no longer has to be her parents\u2019 type of daughter.\u00a0 She is able to come to terms with her sexuality and break free from her chameleon status by coming out to her parents and pursuing her greatest passion, poetry.\u00a0 It is ultimately through this portrayal of Alike\u2019s character that the film challenges the compartmentalization of both blackness and lesbianism.<\/p>\n In Dee Rees\u2019s film Pariah<\/em>, Rees presents a wide variety of black lesbian characters thus combatting the notion that all black lesbians have certain characteristics, proclivities, and sexual preferences.\u00a0 In essence, she appears to be doing exactly what Gillespie promoted in his book surrounding the ways in which black film \u201cmight offer a more inclusive and variegated investment\u201d (Gillespie 3.)\u00a0 In this manner, Dee Rees is not trying to reflect lesbian lifeworld but is instead trying to present the different types of black women that might become lesbian and the struggles that they face.\u00a0 She is not compartmentalizing black lesbianism but broadening it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Michael Boyce Gillespie\u2019s book Film Blackness, the author makes the claim that \u201cblack film, and black art more broadly, navigates the idea of race as constitutive, cultural fiction, yet this art is nevertheless often determined exclusively by the social category of race or veracity claims about black existential life in very debilitating ways\u201d … <\/p>\n