| dc.description.abstract | In recent years Black popular culture in television and film has moved beyond the stereotypical texts by complicating the Black narrative with historical storytelling. Within the last ten years, there has been an increase in historical dramas and biographical pictures (biopics) across a variety of media such as feature films (The Help, 2011; Hidden Figures, 2016; Harriet, 2019; Respect, 2021), made-for-television films (Crazy, Sexy, Cool, 2013; Whitney, 2015; The Clark Sisters, 2020), and limited docu-series via internet-based streaming platforms (Self Made, 2020). Previous studies have focused on stereotypes in fictional programming while missing the opportunity to explore the impacts of memory and authenticity inside historical programs like Black biopics. With more Black women’s stories featured in these recent biopics, one must consider how a historized, racialized, and gendered story impacts the Black audience’s understanding of public memory. Within the contemporary COVID-19 context, racial inequities, and pandemic injustices, a nationwide call has been made for Black stories since the summer of biopics have become the standard for Black stories, perpetuating the erasure and silencing of Black women’s voices and experiences.
This study addresses the production of and responses to Black women’s biopics through Black feminist epistemologies (Collins,1989;1990), encoding/decoding (Hall, 2003;1980), and the white racial frame (Feagin, 2013) to better understand the media text and its impacts. Using this theoretical framework, I discuss the identity-making and meaning-making when Black women engage in Black women’s stories, characterization, and representation in these films. Using a newly formed culmination of focus groups and qualitative survey data called virtual sista square methodology, this dissertation addresses how Black historical discourses are shaped by particular stories (Black biopics), storytellers (production), and perspectives (Black women) and produce public and private memory. This study presents several findings: an intersectional call-and-response; Black living room pedagogy amongst Black families with particular regard to Black mothers as teachers; and differentiation between silhouetted representation and shadowy presentations of historical Black women figures. | |
