Mediated black girlhoods: a multi-level, comparative analysis of narrative feature films

Over the course of a century, there has been limited research directly regarding Black youth actors’—specifically girls’—film content in illustrating characters’ engagement with social institutions. Some research has highlighted Black youth as consumers of media impacting self-esteem, body image and ethnic identity. Several scholars have identified representation as key to the presentation of diversity in entertainment. However, there is a need to move beyond representation to understand the complexity of Black girls’ relationships to social institutions. This dissertation coins the terms Black girl identities, or mediated Black girlhoods, as a way to identify characters in narrative feature films. I utilized two theoretical frameworks: oppositional gaze and the matrix of domination. Hooks’ oppositional gaze theory challenge dominant film spectatorship epistemologies. This investigation centers Black female spectatorship of media in querying characters’ engagement with social institutions of school and police. Early depictions of Black girlhood are largely in the form of supporting characters and flashback sequences in films including Claudine (1974) and God’s Stepchildren (1937). By extending Collins’ matrix of domination—an understanding that all social institutions are connected and inherently inequitable—this research approaches film as illustrating Black girls’ interactions within schools and police, as two types of social institutions that are inequitable and unjust and that also reflect their marginalization, including amalgamations of heterosexism, patriarchy, racism amongst others. In developing a digital timeline and historical filmography of Black girls in film and sociopolitical analysis of their contemporary portrayal, this research not only identifies the first Black girl in film, but also deepens our understanding of the portrayal and relationality of her successors.