The University of Ghana (UG) and the Institute of African Studies (IAS) continue to lead the way in remembering the dismembered Global African World with its 2nd Annual Black History Month Film Festival in 2016! This exciting event took place in the month of February and this is a first of the reviews of movies we will be sharing.
by Abena Kyere and Edwin Adjei
The issue of representation and identity involves a cascade of responses and emotions. This is due in greater portion to the fact that the subject is thorny because it revolves around power – who has the right to decide, who is what, and who should be what? This is Africa and her people’s dilemma since Africa has neither had the opportunity nor been given the license to define and refine who she is and what she stands for. The consistency and sometimes the severity with which Africa has been defined belittles the extremely complex and multi-dimensional nature of Africa and Africans.
A large number of movies selected for Black History Month Film Festival sought to address the issue of representation and identity. Identity, especially African identity, is an important part of the discourse because of its political significance. For most Africans, who they are is a life-long soul-searching project. The documentary Am I too American to be African and Too African to be American? speaks to the issue of identity crises experienced by children of African migrants. How are children born to African migrants in the USA supposed to identify themselves? Are they Africans, Americans or both? Who decides?
While such children may view themselves as both, experience has taught them that they are neither. As one of the characters noted: “I am valued for being an American when I am in Africa but I become devalued for being African when in the US.” Their reification on the African continent is a subtle but powerful message of being “the other”, yes you are African but not too African while their devaluation in the US is a powerful message of outright rejection. This is a micro projection of the larger dilemma that Africa faces. Africans are mostly forced to live double lives and the fear of rejection has led to unforetold consequences. In Tress: Artists and Angels, Masters of Natural Hair, African hair becomes
a battlefield on which war has raged for so long. Huge businesses have been set up to produce bleaching creams for Africans to make their skins closer to white despite the side effects. All kinds of creams have been produced to help black women’s hair look like white hair despite the health implications. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder is a popular saying. Beauty indeed lies in the eyes of the beholder but can the beholder’s notions of beauty be influenced? A look at notions of a beautiful woman among many African nations would portray fleshy and plump but curvy women as the standard of beauty. These notions of beauty would also include cultural hair styles. As Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair portrayed to the world in 2009, “good hair” does not include African hair. When it comes to beauty, unfortunately, it does not include African notions of beauty as well so the plumpy and curvy African woman is considered fat, not beautiful. One only has to take a look at the women who have been declared the most beautiful women in their various countries through beauty pageants for some years now to see how notions of beauty have been influenced by those from the west. Take a look also at the women who have been declared the most beautiful women in the world by the organizers of the miss world pageant or the women who have been declared the sexiest women in the world by various magazines. Would these women qualify in any way to be declared sexy or beautiful in the true sense of African beauty? Who determines what is beautiful or who is beautiful? One could boldly assert that most of these women declared as the most beautiful according to international standards would not even be considered when beautiful women were being counted in the true sense of African beauty. Does the notion of beauty only include notions from the west? Must Africans do all in their power to meet western notions of beauty in order to be counted among the beautiful?
Unsuspecting Africans have been forced into developing fake accents, bleaching their skins, stretching their hair with all sorts of chemicals and enduring dreadful acts of procedures to appear not so African. Looming large in these unfortunate trends are the representations of the continent: war raged, hunger stricken, and disease infested. Alarmed at the prospects of being associated with these, Africans, especially young unaware ones, refrain from being associated with the continent. As one character confessed: I felt so ashamed that I told my mother “Mum, don’t speak with your hard Nigerian accent.” The fear of being teased and bullied for no apparent reason other than being African leads some African children in the west, especially in the US, to play down their intelligence for fear of being accused of acting or talking too white.
Being black and proud has become part of the black consciousness movement. But why this active stance to create consciousness? More often than not, Africa’s need to be represented has been done by people who have the voice to articulate their views: donors, western researchers, etc. Such representation does not only affect the knowledge on Africa, it has a great impact on how its citizens view themselves in relation to the continent, the politics and dilemma of disassociation as well as belonging.
Debates about the identity of Africans have raged for years and continue unabated because Africans are yet to take a leading position in determining how they should be defined. Generations of Africans have spoken about how they have been described and its implications without taking the step to define themselves and their descendants. It is about time Africans made a conscious effort to determine who they are and how they are to be defined by others because until then, debates about the representation and identity of Africans look set to continue into the future.
Abena Kyere and Edwin Adjei are Ph.D students at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana and are editorial assistants of the CIHA blog and Luce graduate fellows.
Authors Areas of specialization:
Abena Kyere – Gender and religion, gender and popular culture, creative writing
Edwin Adjei – Children’s literature and gender