I've Been Gone For A While ... Only To Reappear With A Little Self-Indulgence

http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2011/11/writer-to-watch-zalika-reid-benta.html

Invisible Women in Invisible City: The Issue That Isn't Acknowledged In Hubert Davis' Documentary

After hearing all of the hype surrounding Hubert Davis’ Invisible City, yesterday I decided to go and watch it for myself. While I found it a little slow-paced, I enjoyed the cinematography and thought the film did an excellent job in illustrating instances of systemic racism. A specific instance is when Mikey visits his guidance counselor and asks to be transferred from applied math to academic. Despite his B average in math, the guidance counselor questions whether or not he would be able to handle the workload in an academic class and keeps him in applied. Invisible City also provides an excellent example of stereotyping when interviewing Kendell’s basketball coach. The coach essentially said that he likes to bring boys from Regent Park onto the team for their inherent toughness and aggression. His comment reminded me of an article I had to read in my Grade 12 English Class that basically stated that while Black players have an inbuilt talent and “flow” for basketball white players are more strategic and tactical in their game. I remember being the only student offended by the notion and shut down by my teacher when I raised my contentions. But anyway, even with these necessary and illuminating scenes, Invisible City is fundamentally problematic for two interrelated reasons:

(Lack of) women and the portrayal of motherhood.

Granted, Invisible City follows the lives of two Black teenage boys: Kendell and Mikey. But there is hardly any representation or acknowledgement of Black teenage girls or Black women in the entire documentary. From what I remember, there are two instances in which the camera focuses on Black girls. One instance is when Kendell is playing basketball and a girl, presumably his girlfriend, is watching him play; the other is when Mikey’s sisters are studying and Mikey’s VO states that his mother doesn’t understand that his sisters don’t have to deal with what he deals with: racially prejudiced teachers, racist cops, and the temptation to follow his friends into trouble.

Both instances are loaded with issues. Mikey’s VO is his opinion but the documentary implicitly takes on the view that Black girls simply don’t face as many problems as Black boys. While it is true that Black girls aren’t confronted with all of the same problems as Black boys, there are plenty of racially-inspired hurdles that both genders face. For instance, Black women face just as many stereotypes as Black men. To name a few, we are stereotyped as being promiscuous, as being “baby-mamas”, as being loud-mouthed, and as being difficult and aggressive. Speaking from experience, teachers and authority figures do in fact label Black girls just as much as Black boys, their stigmatization predicated on the aforementioned stereotypes. Furthermore, Black women must deal with Western standards of beauty and must contend with the fact that we are represented as ugly in comparison to white women. A shocking example of this is the online article Psychology Today posted then deleted, arguing that, scientifically, Black women are less attractive because we have more masculine features compared to women of other races. Growing up with these notions of beauty and ugliness most definitely makes teenagehood for Black girls difficult and cruel and it is plainly wrong to suggest or imply that Black girls have it easy compared to Black boys. Our issues are merely different.

The shot of the girl watching Kendall play basketball bothered me because I found it to be a manifestation of a running theme in the documentary: that Black women are passive and bystanders to men’s lives. The portrayal of the mothers reiterates that theme, for the documentary doesn’t portray them as having active roles in their sons’ lives. Indeed, Davis illustrates that they love their boys and that they work extremely hard to provide for them but when it comes to their sons’ constant run-ins with the law and their inattention at school, the mothers’ vocabulary are filled with phrases such as “I wish”, “I hope” and “I pray.”

Furthermore, the mothers are put in stark contrast with Ainsworth Morgan, former pro-athlete and a local role model, who does actively participate in Mikey and Kendell’s lives, who talks to them “on the real” about how they’re screwing up their lives. He is essentially the father-figure to both boys and to other boys in the community – and he is the one who can put the boys in line. Now, I do think it is extremely important and absolutely necessary for Black men to take up their responsibility and parent their children – sons and daughters – but to suggest, like Invisible City (in my view) does, that Black boys absolutely need their fathers to teach them right from wrong, to keep them in line, to “be a man” essentially, is not only misogynistic, but a Western way of thinking.

But Davis isn’t the only director who takes this approach. John Singleton and Spike Lee treat Black women in very much the same way. While Boyz N The Hood and Do The Right Thing are fictional films, they still make commentary on the social conditions of Black boys and the Black community. In Boyz, Tre moves in with his father because his mother admits she can’t teach him to be a man. When talking about his other, fatherless friends, Tre’s father states that they have no one to teach them responsibility. The women in the film are either drug addicts, neglectful and cruel mothers, or they easily navigate the education system and experience no hardships or issues in their advancement. In Do The Right Thing, the women have a muted presence and are generally portrayed as passive.

Films like Boyz N The Hood, Do The Right Thing and The Invisible City are a good commentary on the social conditions of the Black community in North America, and they are good snapshots of what Black boys have to experience on the day-to-day. But they are incomplete in their commentary on the social conditions because they hardly acknowledge how Black girls deal with the conditions. All in all, there needs to be more films and more books (fictional and nonfictional) that deal with the experiences of Black teenage girls and the struggles and issues we must contend with growing up.