SOC 285 : Final Paper : Lumir Lapray

Lumir Lapray
SOC 285
Final Paper
Friends and foes : how the representations of the interactions between
black and white girls in teen movies inform the contemporary racial
and political projects.
INTRODUCTION
Early feminist approaches to the media have pointed out the representations of women, as
being “stereotypes, rather than positive images or psychologically rounded, assumed to guarantee
truth to human nature” (Hall 1997, 346). A solution to this, in films for instance, has been to make
movies featuring mostly women, and telling their stories. The woman's film genre was born.
However, by specifically creating “woman's movies”, targeting a female spectators, the idea that
women and girls are not the norm has been reinforced, in the effort to address them as a special
audience. Feminists indeed argue that “in western societies ,the norm of what counts as human is
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provided by the masculine and only women's culture needs to be marked as specifically gendered”. '
Hall 1997 : 362) Female films, for instance, are thought to be “melodramatic”, precisely because
western patriarchy casts women as such, as opposed to men, who are “taciturn” or “severe”, faced
with “real problems” (Hall 1997 : 359) This distinction, which finds its foundation in the
Enlightenment Era – during which mean searched to distance themselves from the “weaker sex”
(Beauvoir 1949) – is still largely valid today, and continuously strengthened in the media. I have
decided to look at the way female friendships are portrayed in woman's films, especially in teen
movies targeting a female audience. Because of the way Hollywood has failed to represent diverse,
complex female types in mainstream movies, I also wanted to take into consideration the
intersectionalities faced by non-white characters, and how these were dealt with. Indeed, because
the “constructionist view of representation outlined by Hall implies that even the terms “man” and
“woman” - whether word or image – which touch upon what appears most personal to us – our sex
and our gender – are in fact cultural signifiers which construct rather than reflect gender definitions,
meanings and identity” (Hall 1997 : 349) we understand the need for plural representations of all
categories of human beings. As a consequence, it is relevant to look at how women of color,
particularly black women are portrayed in teen movies – both because of the weight of the black /
white paradigm in the U.S. but also because blacks are the minority groups the most represented on
screen (Hollywood report 2015). How does the racial project of white supremacy interact with the
political one of patriarchy ? Race is both a social / historical structure and a set of accumulated
signifiers that suffuse individual and collective identities, through tropes of identity, difference and
(in)equality. As such, "every racial project is a both a reflection of and response to the broader
patterning of race in the overall social system" (Omi ; Winant 2014 : 125) And what better way to
understand those interactions than to look closely at how black and white female characters are
made to interact, themselves, in the movies ?
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The teen film genre was born at the end of the 70s, as Shary explains in Generation
Multiplex : “the aspects of youth have led American cinema into a curious and often inconsistent
fascination with stories about and images of young people, a fascination that became abundantly
manifest in the last decades of the 20th
century” (Shary 2014 : 1) They portray human beings who
are going through crucial transformations, and who are navigating maturity and immaturity : high
schoolers, and these are the audience they target. Driscoll argues that we should differentiate
between “youth films”, which are “packed with rebellious subcultural cachet” and thus seem to be
directed towards boys, and “teen films”, “centered on the institutional life of adolescents at home
and school” (Driscoll 2011 : 3), which tend to aim entertaining female spectators. These tend to be
based on classic novels or plays : Clueless, for instance, is a loose interpretation of Austen's Emma,
and 10 Things I Hate About You, on The Taming of the Shrew, a comedy by Shakespeare. They also
tend to be twice dismissed, as non fictional and woman's films (Hall 1997 : 351). If I chose to study
teen films, it is mainly because they inform the behaviors of the entire cohorts for which they were
resonant, and because they tell us about the youth of a particular era (Driscoll 2011 : 2). For
instance, those dating from the 90s tend to explore sexuality, virginity and its loss more deeply that
previous ones (Shary 2014). The spreading of sex-education classes within high schools, but also
the moral panic created by the AIDS epidemic also create a discussion about these issues, which
seems to be mediated through race. Old myths, such as that of the sexually deviant, hypersexualized
black woman is reiterated, as the counterexample of what girls should aspire to be – for their own
health and happiness.
I will look into the latter by studying four films from the a period ranging from the end of
the 90s to the early 00s. First, because there is an increased number of substantial female characters
in teen movies during this time (Shary 2014 : 138). Second, because I have not found a body of
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films, in the genre, that had interracial female friendships, before that time.
These movies are, by chronological order :
- Clueless (1995), written and directed by Amy Heckerling, starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash
and Britanny Murphy, respectively playing Cher, Dionne and Tai. Cher is a very rich white high
schooler from Beverly Hills, who “selects her own outfits by using a computerized dress-up doll of
herself” (Kaveney 2006 : 145) and takes care of the father after her mom died in of liposuction
complications. She and her (black) best friend, Dionne, decide to organize a make over for the new
girl at school, Tai, while Cher looks for the perfect boyfriend to forsaker her virginity to, whom she
finally finds in the person of Josh, his annoying step brother. The novelty of this film lies in the fact
that, although she is utterly clueless, the white, rich, girl is genuinely nice.
- 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), directed by Gil Junger and starring Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik and Gabrielle Union, who respectively play Kat, Patrick,
Cameron, Bianca and Chastity. It tells the story of two sister, Kat and Bianca, whose father is
obsessed by their preserving their virginity. The former is a die-hard feminist, who becomes less
radical when she falls for the bad boy Patrick (who was initially paid to go out with her), and the
latter a shallow girl who becomes nicer and more considerate after she starts dating Cameron (who
has tried various manipulative tricks to get her interested). Chastity is Bianca's (black) best friend,
who betrays her by sleeping with her ex boyfriend, Joey.
- Bring It On (2000), directed by Peyton Reed and starring Kristen Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse
Bradford and Gabrielle Union, who respectively play Torrance, Missy, Cliff and Isis. Torrance is the
head cheerleader of her suburban high school when she discovers that her predecessor has stolen
her routine from the Clovers, an all-black team from Compton too poor to pay their way to
nationals. She tries to make it right, and they end up competing against each other in the finals.
- Save the Last Dance (2001), written by Duane Adler and directed by Thomas Carter, and starring
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Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Kerry Washington and Bianca Lawson, respectively playing Sara,
Derek, Chenille and Nikki. Sara moves from a white suburb to urban Chicago after her mom passes
away. She befriends Chenille and her clique, and soon falls for her brother Derek, who helps her
prepare for the Julliard audition she so deeply wants to pass. Their interracial relationship upsets
many and they face various obstacles until they finally settle down.
I am attempting to produce an analysis of teen movies directed to girls in the same way
Gledhill studies, in chapter 5 of Hall's book, soap opera and the gendering of popular genres and
signifying practices. This question has not, to my knowledge, been fully treated, so this paper is an
attempt at summarizing and rearticulating existing theories to shed a light on the specific topic of
interracial female friendships in teen movies. Many authors have written on the representation of
(white) girls in teen films (Kaveney, Driscoll, Bernstein), some about female friendships in
woman's films (Hollinger), and others about interracial male friendships (Fuchs), but they somehow
always leave it the topic mentioned. I will thus use various general books about teen films (Shary,
Tropiano, Kaveney, Welsch) and frame my analysis mostly using the concepts and definitions of
Gramsci, Omi and Winant and Hall. I will also use the textual analysis method to try and unveil the
dynamics of each film and explain to the following research question :
How do the interracial female friendships featured in Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You,
Bring It On and Save The Last Dance inform the various gendered and racialized stereotypes
surrounding the representation of black women ?
To answer this, I will first explain why a complex representation of characters of color
seems impossible in teen movies, then explain the various stereotypes I have found to be reinforced
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in these four films, and finally how these purported friendships inform the contemporary racial
projects.
PART ONE / WHITE AMERICA AND THE IMPOSSIBLE REPRESENTATION OF
PEOPLE OF COLOR
The teen genre is very specific, as we have seen, and “deals with the lives of American
teenagers and most especially with their interactions in and around High School”. In all of the four
films studied, we find an internal presentation of the school and its hierarchies. These
representations are more or less binary and stereotypical – Bring It On informs us on the social
capital and popularity granted to cheerleaders (their chant starts with “I'm sexy, I'm hot / I'm
everything you're not”), when Save the Last Dance provides us with a representation of all the
cliques on can find on school ground (and the importance of identifying your own, as Chenille
demonstrates by chastising Sara when she sits with the wrong crowd : “Don't do this again” !)
Whether these hierarchies and the social order is maintained “through bitchery, beauty and sexual
favors” , or through violence or money, these boundaries are always there. The teen movie then
serves as a reminder of the status quo, and thus "has a specific racial mix, a specific set of class
biases and a very interesting set of takes on gender and sexuality” (Kaveney 2006 : 3). Although
these themes seem universal and present in all films targeting a young audience, the teen genre aims
only at representing a very particular portion of the population :they are essentially suburban or
small town movies (Kaveney 2006 : 7). As such, they are inherently white. All of the films here
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studied start in a suburban town : around Los Angeles, for both Bring it On and Clueless, outside of
Chicago for Save the Last Dance, and in an undetermined suburb for 10 Things I Hate About You
(easily identifiable as such, though, thanks to the various shots of traditional suburban houses and
their front lawns, but also an almost entirely white cast). Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the
actors and actresses of the four films studied are white. For instance, in 10 Things I Hate About You,
I counted only four black women and four black men on screen throughout the whole film (lost into
a sea of white characters) and only one of each gender talked at least once. With the exception of
Save the Last Dance, there is never more than one woman of color interacting with the main cast.
Clueless does have two black characters, Dionne and Murray, but, although the latter has black
friends in his group, Dionne is seemingly the only black girl of the school... It is also striking to
note that, when there are multiple actresses of color, as in Bring It On, which features a whole team
of black cheerleaders, only their captain, Isis, interacts with white teens (mostly Torrance).
Although we see them a couple of times (mostly in their deserted Compton gym...), they are very
much kept in a “separate but equal” position, where the righteousness of Torrance helps the white
team make up to them and treat them as equal, while never considering them as “friend material”,
and keeping them at a distance. R. Kaveney insists on the fact that “there are regularly non-white
characters in teen movies and television although almost never in central roles”, as Clueless and
Bring it On demonstrate, “but in neither case is the film even marginally about them, nor does their
ethnicity feature even in passing” (Kaveney 2006 : 12)
In this, the teen movie is thus different from films that cast multiple non-white actors and
actresses, mostly black, which then fall, according to Shary, under the category of “African
American crime film” (Shary 2005 : 82). These present various differences with the traditional teen
film, amongst which their representation of urban environments, but also the focusing on more
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substantial hardships, pertaining to the life “in the hood”. As R. Kavenez puts it, the “Standard
economic assumption of the teen genre is that teenagers are given a small but real disposable
income by their parents while the stock assumption of the African-American genre is that you work
for your money, or otherwise hustle for it. Economic necessity is a plot point in the teen genre ; it is
essential background in the African-American one.” (Kaveney 2006 : 13) These profound
differences are part of the reason why I hesitated to include Save The Last Dance in the first place.
However, I have decided to do so, mainly because the story is about Sara, who is a white girl from
the suburbs, and about her moving to Chicago and experiencing the “hood”. The story is seen
through her gaze and she is clearly the main character (the film starts with her and ends with her,
and there are very few scenes in which she is not present). It is here interesting to repeat that none
of these movies were directed by black women. This is important to note, as the gaze of the films
studied fit the gaze of the persons who directed them. For instance, in 10 Things I Hate About You,
the story is told by Cameron, a white boy whose role is not even central to the film – supposed to
either be about two sisters, or about the love story between Kat and Patrick, as demonstrated by the
film poster. The could seem surprising, until we learn that Gil Junger, a white man, is the director.
Similarly, in Clueless this time, Cher is clearly the most important character (she uses “I”, we can
hear her thoughts, …), and we are made familiar with her world and the story through her eyes only
: it is noteworthy that the director, in the case Amy Herckerling, is a white woman. Finally, the only
film presenting a variety of black characters and “types” (the “thug”, the “good negro”, the
“hypersexualized black woman”, the “absent father”, …) is Save The Last Dance, directed by
Thomas Carter, a black man.
The relevance of these facts, which could appear as details if not properly explained, can be
found in Hall's writings. Teen movies are fictional and are thus supposed to present us with a
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“qualitatively different experience from the activities of everyday like and from those media forms
which claim to deal with the real world ” (Hall 1997 : 340). However, they do present accounts of
the everyday lives of teens whom the audience can easily identify to, given that they perform the
same activities as them – school, prom, homework, dating, etc. Teen movies matter because they are
about a crucial period, ranging from the beginning to the end of high school, a period where “most
of us first encounter [romance, sex, employment] in our adolescence, and how we handle them
largely determines how we live the rest of our lives” (Driscoll, 2011 : 2). Similarly to soap operas,
then, they should not be dismissed as “harmless” or “insignificant” entertainment products, as they
shape and inform the behaviors and aspirations of entire cohorts. The emphatic binaries and
simplistic opinions or reactions should not let us believe that the struggle to impose a representation
of realness is not as important as in more “serious” (Hall 1997 : 341) films. Who produces them,
and who they represent then becomes absolutely crucial, for they have power over the changing or
maintaining of norms and values. As a consequence, and as stated by Gledhill in chapter five of
Representation : cultural representations and signifying practices, “what emerges in these
perceptions of media manipulation is the question of the link between social and cultural
domination. According to Marx, the groups who own the means of production thereby control the
means of producing and circulating a society's ideas. Dominant classes thereby subject the masses
to ideologies which make the social relations of domination and oppression appear natural and so
mystify the 'real' conditions of existence.” (Hall 1997 : 348). However, we can think about this
domination in more nuanced terms, along with A. Gramsci and his concept of hegemony, as
described in chapter 4 of the same book “power in a bourgeois society is as much a matter of
persuasion and consent as of force, it is never secured once and for all. Unlike the fixed grip over
society implied by 'domination', 'hegemony' is won in the to-and-fro of negotiation between
competing social, political and ideological forces through which power is contested, shifted and
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reformed.” (Hall 1997) Omi and Winant use the italian philosopher as well, mentioning that
“it is possible to locate the origins of hegemony right within the heart of racial despotism”, but that
"hegemonic forms of racial rule - those based on consent - eventually came to supplant those based
on coercion." (Omi ; Winant 2014 : 127). According to Gramsci, this rearticulation can be
illustrated by the image of a shift from a war of maneuver to a war of position. For Hall,
representation is a key site in such struggle, since the power of definition is a major source of
hegemony. (Hall 1997 : 260). These theories help us make sense of the strengthening of whiteness
in teen movies, as an integral part of the white supremacist racial project. Indeed, the theory of
racial formation, a concept forged by Omi and Winant suggests that society is suffused with racial
projects, large and small, to which all are subjected, and that "white supremacy is the obvious
example of this : an evolving hegemonic racial project that has taken different form from the
colonial era to the present.” (Omi ; Winant 2014 : 125).
Representation in teen movies, highly racialized and gendered, thus does a very poor job at
providing us with diverse and complex characters, especially when they are women, and even more
especially when they are women of color. These seem to be forever relegated to the sidekick role,
helping us see new features of the main white actress. Most of the plots heavily rely on stereotypes
to advance the story and help the audience make sense of the stakes, as we will now see.
PART TWO / STEREOTYPING, MYTHS AND THE REPRESENTATION OF BLACK AND
WHITE WOMEN
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Binary oppositions are crucial for all classification, because one must establish a clear
difference between things in order to classify them. The racialized discourse, in general and
particularly in all four films is structured by a set of binary oppositions : between the “whore” and
the “virgin”, the “angry feminist” or the “bitch” and the “naïve shallow girl”, the “good negro” and
the “thug”. We will here focus on mainly two stereotypes, namely the binary between the “white
virgin” and the “black hypersexualized woman / black whore” (P. Hill Collins), and the stereotype
of impossible trustworthy female friendships for girls. First, let us reiterate the definition of
“stereotyping” given by Hall, who argues that it inherently different than “typing” - the process of
fitting particular objects in broader categories, necessary to make sense of the world. Stereotyping,
indeed, reduces people “to a few, simple, essential characteristics, fixed by Nature” (Hall 1997:
257), only to then exclude anything that does not fit in these simplistic categories. Stereotyping, as
we now easily understand, “as a signifying practice, is [thus] central to the representation of racial
difference” (Hall 1997 : 257), as it creates “a racialized regime of representation” (Hall 1997 :
249), which in turn helps to construct blackness in the white imaginary. A similar analysis could be
made regarding gender and the representation of “men” and “women”, as eloquently explained by
Gledhill in chapter five of Hall's book, who compares the stigma attached to women's films, a genre
considered as mass culture and thus easily dismissed.
The differences, in these four films, are thus widely used and reinforced, as they help us
make sense of the characters and their function in the films. As Hall writes, p. 234, “It is the
difference between black and white which signifies, which carries meaning” as “culture depends on
giving things meaning by assigning them to different positions within a classificatory system. The
marking of 'difference' is thus the basis of the symbolic order which we call culture” (Hall 1997 :
236). It is however important to quote Derrida, too, whose hypothesis, namely that “there are very
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few neutral binary opposition, and there is always a relation of power between the poles of a binary
operations” (Derrida 1974) is widely confirmed in all four movies. For instance, let us look at the
binary between the “white virgin” and the “black whore”, almost always present in these films
(maybe with the exception of Clueless). Because virginity and its loss are ever present in teen
movies, and because the “systematic process of deciding to lose her virginity is a narrative
paradigm common to almost all “good girls” in youth films” (Kaveney 2006 : 252), this dichotomy
is crucial. Every single female character mentions this purported rite of passage : Cher wants to
“save herself for Luke Perry”, Bianca debates having sex with either Joey or Cameron, Torrance is
horrified when her boyfriend sleeps with a college girl and we see Sara 'losing it' with Derek. In the
90s teen films, it is not so much about staying pure until marriage for girls, but about the right or
moral way of losing their virginity, in what process, with what guy.
The antithesis then soon becomes they way their black friends have done it. In Mammies No
More, Anderson writes that the “construction of the virgin/whore dichotomy indeed] has implicit
roots in it a white /black dichotomy” and that “the construction of the black female as a sexual
creature also denied her the quality of femininity, at least in the eyes of an American society that
viewed the mythic virginal, sexless white woman as the paragon of feminine.” (Anderson 1997 :
109). Here, black girls either have had sex (Chenille, Dionne) or we don't see their process, which
contributes to their dehumanization as women, and also to the representation of their morals as
“loose” and them being “sexually deviant” (as it being important and a process for good girls is the
norm in teen movies). For instance, Bianca's best friend, Chastity, decides to sleep with Joey at a
party, after Bianca realizes that he is full of himself and consequently becomes more interested in
Cameron. The choice of her name leaves no room for interpretation, and aims at mocking her for
the bad choices she has made, as we later learn that Joey sleeps with girls only to dump them the
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next morning (a watered-down version of the first story, in which he date-raped Bianca's sister Kat).
Similarly, Sara waits until almost the end of the film to have sex with Derek, after he has proved
that he knew her (he took her to the ballet), that he supported her (he helped her with her audition
dance), that he chose her over his friends (he punches Malakai when he calls Sara a “trailer trash”)
and also got into college. We suppose she did that also after having had discussions with Chenille
about Kenny, her “baby daddy”, who did not pay his alimony (Chenille tells him, during a fight
“what do you think I use to raise the kid ? Oxygen ? He had needs, Kenny, and his needs require
money”, does not take care of his son (Chenille once tells him “Yeah that's right, leave ! That's what
you're good at ! Your son ain't seen nothing but your back since he was born !”) and generally does
not take responsibility for his actions (he once says “I'm doing the best that I can ! I didn't ask for
this shit !”, to which Chenille responds “Oh yes ? So I climbed on myself and got myself
pregnant ?”). Sara then chooses her partner and her process to losing her virginity more carefully, as
she is made aware by Chenille's “mistakes” that doing so with the “wrong person” can be very
dangerous and have long-lasting consequences. In Clueless, in a more ironic, somewhat gentle way,
Dionne loses her virginity to Murray, her long-time boyfriend, because he handled well her
panicking when driving on the highway... Black women are thus repeatedly portrayed as overtly
sexualized while not caring about it : sex is meaningless for them (they have sex with inconsistent
boys that white girls deem not good enough for themselves or don't put the same attention to the
loss of their virginity), which proves their amorality (Chenille has a child out of wedlock). They are
also always available (like Chastity is for Joey, even though he is a loser), offering a revival of the
“Jezebel” icon (Anderson 1997 : 89). The author writes that, having started in the biological quest
to confirm the inherent difference (and thus inferiority) of blacks, the efforts to cast African
Americans' sexuality as deviant or aggressive were developed during the 19th
century. Patricia Hill
Collins explains that “Black “whores” made white “virgins” possible” and that the sexually
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denigrated woman could be used as the yardstick against which the cult of true womanhood was
measured”.
This dichotomy is heavily reinforced in teen movies, by parents and authority. For instance,
in 10 Things I Hate About You, Bianca and Kat's father, an OB/GYN does so, as both a parent and a
doctor. In a completely surreal discussion about Bianca dating boys, they have the following
exchange :
Walter : “I delivered a set of twins to a fifteen-year-old girl today, and you know what she
said to me ?
Bianca : I'm a crack-whore who should have made my sleazy boyfriend wear a condom ?”
Knowing how racialized the use of crack cocaine is (Alexander, 2011), and the stereotypes
about teen pregnancies, this clearly aims at reinforcing a barrier between respectable (= pure, =
virgin) white girls and non respectable (= promiscuous ) black girls. Even if the dad's attitude to his
daughters' virginity is ridiculous, the audience is made to understand that he is saying all of this “for
their own good”. What it tells us, really, is that the ultimate authority in a girl's life, her father, wants
to reassert patriarchal conceptions of womanhood : his daughters have to remain virgins until
marriage if possible, because of if they are “deflowered”, they will lose all value. In teen movies,
which are made to provide youth with a ready-made representation of morality and righteousness
typical in suburban culture, he embodies the values of white America. This clearly creates a ranking
of characters, in a puritan and anti sex society : white and black girls can never be friends because
the latter are promiscuous and thus inherently inferior. This also creates the idea that black women
are not trustworthy (such as when Chastity steals Bianca's boyfriend, an act always presented as the
ultimate treason between girls), and angry : in Bring It On, Jenelope, the “angry black cheerleader”,
threatens to beat those girls up so [she] can go home”, in Save The Last Dance, Nikki attacks Sara
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during gym class with no apparent reason, etc... Obviously, what is here signified to white female
viewers, is that black female friends are doomed to become foes.
All of these images and representations are relevant, because “myths do not happen outside
of culture : they have profound resonance within that culture” (Anderson 1997 : 121). Because of
the myths surrounding black women and thus effectively limiting our understanding of their
characters (both in “real life” and in the media), certain representations tend to strike cords. Even if
they only represent an epiphenomenon, the “meta-language” implied allows viewers to make sense
of the tropes used (Hall 1997 : 140). For instance, when Nikki attacks Sara during P.E., we are not
surprised, as she has been portrayed throughout the film as the angry, hypersexualized black
woman. This attacks ties into the understanding that we have of her, and does more than solely
advancing the plot, providing the audience with a comforting and known signified. Just as the black
soldier looking up to the French flag is, for Barthes, a representation of the myth of France and its
colonial adventures, Nikki attacking Sara is fuels into that of aggressive black women threatening
pure, virginal white women. If it puts these latter at the top, it also limits their freedom to use of
their bodies as their own, while strengthening the social control on their selves. It also reinforces the
idea that virginity and its loss are a crucial event in a good girl's life (while black women are to be
denigrated for their frivolous conception of virginity and who they give it to).
As a conclusion, black women's “trespassing into the white world does not broaden their
options” (Anderson 1997 : 95), they are constantly stereotyped and used as a the counterexample of
how a “good girl” should act. Because teen movies are sites for sexual discovery, this binary is
largely built on the myth of the black women as sexually aggressive and promiscuous. However,
even when these four films do not overtly engage into racialized representation, race remains at the
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core of the plot, as we will now see.
PART III / THE TRIUMPH OF COLORBLINDNESS AND CODE WORDS ?
It is important to pay close attention to the time in which these movies were made possible.
Indeed, in the 90s, the colorblind era is already well under way, the genealogy of which starts with
the new right rearticulation of racial political, “as Reagan and his successors worked to construct a
new racial hegemony" (Omi ; Winant 2014: 204). Before colorblindness, there had been various
strategies to maintain white supremacy without saying so (which became increasingly frowned
upon after the Civil Rights Movement) – amongst which were the use of code words, or the
legitimization of “reverse racism”. The former enables a reinforcement of racist tropes, by
reaffirming that blacks are not “inferior” per se, but that they are lazy, violent, sexually deviant, etc.
The latter, which became popular in the 70s, permit the questioning of Affirmative Action and
inclusive policies, recasting them as “an attack on whites” (Omi ; Winant 2014 : 218). It also laid
ground for the new praise of “race neutrality”, which was to be instrumental in the implementation
of colorblindness. However, as the two authors note, "colorblind racial ideology represented a step
beyond "reverse discrimination" because it repudiated the concept of race itself” (Omi ; Winant
2014 : 220). It creates the idea, now widely spread, that that race only existed for civil rights harpies
who use the concept of racial inequality to justify their existence, when really everyone else knows
that “racism is over”... This ideology of race neutrality is epitomized by Clueless and its approach
to race (which is non-existent). It is never addressed why Dionne lives in the same neighborhood as
Cher, even though we know of the very stark segregation endemic in Los Angeles. Similarly, her
race is never brought up – except maybe when she mentions the braid she found in her boyfriend's
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car, which is made of polyester and thus cannot be hers (the fact that she is implying that Murray,
the only black man of importance in the film, is cheating on her, is in itself very interesting). There
is no consideration of Dionne's lived experience as a black woman (or even at all...). It is
particularly telling that Clueless, set in Los Angeles and shot in 1995, only three years after the
revolts started by the killing of Rodney King, does not ever mention race. This, especially as it is
one of the very few movies in which the main character has a true, loyal black best friend (from the
beginning to the end). The erasing the problem of “ethnic animosity” (along with that of
homophobia, making no case of Christian's homosexuality) (Doherty 2002, 204) is yet another
manifestation of the “cleanness” and sterilized take on teen lives. Hollinger writes that there is “a
real failure of American cinema to confront racial issues seriously”, and that “the barriers between
them are never examined and their eventual connection is portrayed as entirely divorced from
matters of race.” (Hollinger 1998 : 202). There is absolutely no discussion to attempt to deconstruct
the power relationship between the white and black characters, and no acknowledgment that such a
relationship even exists.
We can find a similar pattern in Save The Last Dance. After Nikki attacks Sara, and as they
are both sitting waiting for their parents to pick them up, Nikki tells Sara :
“It ain't over bitch, cause you always in my way. This is about you. White girls like you.
Creeping up, taking our men. The whole world ain't enough you gotta conquer ours too.”
In terms of reception by the audience, we can only imagine that this comment will be
dismissed – just as it is by Sara, whose response is “Whatever”, because Nikki has been portrayed
throughout the entire film as the ultimate villain. When Chenille, at the doctor's office, tells Sara
that Nikki has a point, we are starting to doubt ourselves : could she be right ? She says
“Maybe she didn't have no business getting all up in your face, but she had reasons to say
17

what she said. You and Derek act like it don't bother people to see you together, like you don't hurt
people to see. […] Black women, Sara ! Derek's about something. He's smart, he's motivated, he's
for real. He's not just gonna make some babies and not take care of them. And here you come, white
so you gotta be right, and you take one of the few decent men we have after jail, drugs and drive-
bys. That's what Nikki meant by “our world”.”
All of these statements make sense, and are relevant because they are anchored in history
and representation (of white women and black men together, for instance. See Fanon). However,
they are completely, utterly discarded by Chenille herself, who tells Derek, in a later scene :
“ I said some stuff to Sara. Like how maybe Nikki had a point, about black men and white
women. I'm sorry ! I don't even like Nikki, I was tripping off Kenny. You cant' help who you love
Derek. You're not supposed to. When you love somebody, you love 'em.”
It was important that this redemption come from Chenille, because she was Sara's friend (as
she said herself after her monologue at the hospital “I don't understand, I thought we were friends”).
Although she has joined the villains for a while, facilitating the temporary break-up by hiding this
conversation to Derek, she “comes clean” in the end, and becomes somewhat of a neutral character,
neither friend nor foe. This definitely puts Nikki in the “aggressive black woman” category, whose
case is even worsened by her purported irrelevant use of the “race card”. This also frees the
audience from any kind of scrupules and mixed feelings about interracial dating in a colorblind era,
where history – even recent one – seems to definitely have been relegated to a distant past.
Omi and Winant's analysis, linking colorblindness to neoliberal politics, help us understand
the plot of another one of the films : Bring It On. In this latter, Torrance discovers that her routine
has been stolen by the former head cheerleader from the Clovers, an all-black team from Compton,
who cannot afford to attend the competitions anyways. Upon the realization, she decides to
18

convince her dad to write them a check, so that they can come – and her conscious is eased.
However, Isis, the Clovers' captain, is offended and insists that they are not “looking for charity”,
and that they will pay their own way to Florida (which they do by winning on an all-black show).
This is really interesting, first because it obscures the real responsibility of the Toros, Torrance's
team, in stealing the Clovers' creations. It dismisses the historical relevance of cultural theft and
appropriation of African-Americans by whites, especially in the domain of the arts. Because the
interactions are always reported through Torrance's gaze, we have no concept of the extent and
resonance of these stolen routines for the black team. Although this is consequent, another issue is
brought up by this incident : that of help-outs, and the binary between deserving / undeserving poor.
What make the Clovers heroes, and put them on equal terms with the Toros, is that they did not
accept “charity” (another heavily coded word). By paying their own way to nationals, they choose
to compete as even counterpart, and are not held back by their owing something to Torrance, which
allows them to win the game. It is really hard not to think, when watching this, about Reagan's
rearticulation of the political rhetoric on race and “deservingness”. By linking the racial project of
colorblindness to the economic and political project of neoliberalism, Reagan and his successors
were able to both contain social movements, and restrict (or even terminate), the redistributive logic
of the New Deal and of the Greater Society, “combining repression with austerity” (Omi ; Winant
2014 : 220/1). The refusal, by Isis, of Torrance's (welfare ?) check happens during a time when
“Welfare queens” have become essential myths in the white imaginary. By “choosing” to compete
without asking for favor, the Clovers seem to be anti affirmative action champions, presenting us
with a revival of the American Dream and minorities pulling themselves from their bootstraps.
Because "a racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation or explanation of racial
identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political,
cultural) along particular racial lines” (Omi ; Winant 2014 : 125), we can make sense of the
19

importance of seeing this refusal on TV, in a film which became cult classic. Consequently, no
reflection is ever produced on the very real, structurally unequal grounds of their competition. One
can, however, only imagine the discrepancies between a white suburban high school's
infrastructures and funds and Compton one's. There is, similarly, no discussion about the need for
the Clovers' school to go on a TV show to ask for money, only to participate in a sports competition
– nor about the structural system of subordination making this situation possible.
Finally, it leaves us with the very corollary to colorblindness : the idea that racism in the 21 st
century, is inherently the fact of a few individuals. Although many, as R. Miles, regret that the
concept of “racism” has suffered from its inflated use, Omi and Winant argue that actually, what the
term “racism” describes in the U.S. tends to be too narrow, and often leaves out considerations
about the systematic and endemic subordination we have just mentioned. Today, particularly, racism
is seen as the deed of a few, anti-modern individuals who commit “crimes of passion” (Omi ;
Winant 2014 : 128). In the films studied, these will be “Big Red”, who steals the routine from the
Clovers knowing they were too poor to make it to nationals, or Sara's friend from home, who calls
her to ask her if she's seen a shooting, or when Sara says she likes a guy, comments, all surprised “I
didn't know they had white guys at your school”. Considering racism only as insults mentioning
skin color, to hurt people, could also enable us to say that Nikki is being racist when she is denying
Sara the “right” to be with Derek because she's white. Race, however, and as we know, is a
"crossroads" where social structure and cultural representation meet, and cannot, as a consequence,
be discussed, or even be noticed, without reference to social structure (Omi ; Winant 2014 : 124).
The necessary by-product of representing racism as an individual act rather than the product
of structural subordination and oppression is that white people can choose to distance themselves
20

from such practices. Indeed, Torrance, by inventing a new routine and apologizing on behalf of her
team, has chosen to make things right – and the audience understands she should be celebrated for
it. By actively making the decision not to persist in the cultural theft of her predecessor, she has
proven that one individual can mend things – as is demonstrated by Isis, in the end, who gives her
advice on her moves, to “thank her” : this is how she goes from foe to friend. This leaves the
audience with the impression that nice white girls are always innocent (as is Sara when she wants to
date Derek, Torrance when she teaches the routine she did not know was stolen even if everybody
else did, Cher when she decides to organize a human disaster relief to send aid abroad) and should
not be held responsible for their behaviors because they do not know better. This also disqualifies
white privilege, and whiteness as property as a reality.
CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, teen films targeting a female audience actually target white girls. The
presence of women of color, even as main characters, does not allow their representation to
emancipate itself from the long-lasting stereotypes and myths surrounding them. It can be argued
that teen movies, as a genre, inherently cannot provide viewers with a nuanced portrayal of people
of color, precisely because it stems from suburban life, and aims at reinforcing suburban values –
which need antithetic tropes to be effective. Never in these films do we get a sense that black
women can be more than either sidekick and counter-models. They thus remain impossible to truly
befriend, for they have so complexity in the best of cases, and are extremely manipulative, deceitful
individuals in the worst. We have seen various ways in which the white supremacist racial project is
being upheld in these films. The use of stereotypes and the reiteration of myths surrounding the
21

sexuality of black women is used both to dismiss them as potential friends and partners, and to
provide white girls with example of what not to do if they want to remain “good”. White supremacy
is also strengthened by the colorblind turn in teen movies, in which black characters are indeed
included, but without ever creating the conditions to discuss race and its meanings, implications and
impacts. The fact that both colorblindness and traditional, overtly racist tropes and stereotypes in
the same movies and at the same time is not in itself contradictory. Indeed, as Omi and Winant
remind us "at any historical moment, racial projects compete and overlap, evincing varying capacity
either to maintain or to challenge the prevailing racial system" (Omi , Winant 2014 : 126)
My assessment on this issue, if I have to give one, would follow what we have seen in
class : a solution to this (mis)representation is of course, more diverse writers, directors and
producers. These will bring new ideas and new types, like those described by Gray in Cultural
Moves. For instance, Coach Carter, also directed by Thomas Carter (who directed Save The Last
Dance), presents the viewers with a large number of black male characters, who each represent a
different type, in a film which made it into mainstream culture. Most importantly, and without
implying that numerous representations is necessarily guarantees more truthful portrayals, they will
give life to multiple new characters. I believe that the debates surrounding shows such as Empire or
Black•ish also stem from the lack of diversity of black women and men. When these are so rare,
there can be a fear that they will be understood, by the white, mainstream audiences, as the sole
types of blackness. This danger fades away, at least a little, when people can compare one
representation with a set of others, which help them make sense of the diversity and dynamism of
ways to embody blackness today. A more tangible and structural obstacle to a faithful representation
of interracial female friendships in America, is that, I believe, these are not too common. Because
segregation of space, schools, housing is still the rule in American society, such bonds are unlikely
to happen on a large scale, making their representations even more precarious and arbitrary.
22

REFERENCES :
Anderson, Lisa M. Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen.
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. Print.
Bernstein, Jonathan. Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies. New York: St. Martin's
Griffin, 1997. Print
Cohan, Steven, and Ina Rae. Hark. "Buddy Politics."by Fuchs C. in Screening the Male: Exploring
Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Driscoll, Catherine. Teen Film: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Berg, 2011. Print.
Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in
Association with the Open U, 1997. Print.
Hollinger, Karen. In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1998. Print.
Kaveney, Roz. Teen Dreams: Reading Teen Film from Heathers to Veronica Mars. London: I.B.
Tauris, 2006. Print.
McCabe, Janet. Feminist Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema. London: Wallflower, 2004.
Print.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: Third Edition New
York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2014. Print.
Shary, Timothy. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema.
Austin: U of Texas, 2002. Print.
Tropiano, Stephen. Rebels and Chicks: A History of the Hollywood Teen Movie. New York: Back
Stage, 2006. Print.
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Welsch, Janice R., and J. Q. Adams. Multicultural Films: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 2005. Print.
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SOC 285 : Final Paper : Lumir Lapray

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