The Watermelon Woman & The Movies That Are Not “For” You (Patreon)

There are million questions that swirl in your head when it comes to how we engage the subjects we write about. Like, is this movie aimed for me? How am I supposed to engage it? What is the way to actually get someone to really sit down and open themselves up to a given film? How am I supposed to write about it? Am I even the one to write about it? Would this be better from someone else and then supporting that someone? And sometimes it’s about realizing you have to write about these contradictions and simply offer some larger mea culpas along the way. Because, like it or not, these questions of framing dominate everything about our discourse. Hell, even I was originally thinking about writing this piece under the banner of some “movies to watch” designation, but I realized I want to make something very very clear.

This shit isn’t homework.

Because we’re already seeing a lot of these lists that are like “Black voices you should follow!” and immediately things take on the tenor of, “yes, educate me!” When the Code Switch podcast shot to number one, Gene Demby went on twitter to talk about the problems, pressures, and reductions of this very issue. Following a human being doesn’t make them your info dump source or guide to being better. People’s personalities and artistry are defined by the wholeness of their identity, not the specificity of what they can give you. The reason to follow them is to get to know them. In that spirit, watching a movie isn’t about ever about “eating your vegetables.” The reason to watch these films is they’re great movies worth seeing. 

But one of things that makes people treat film recommendations like this as homework is because most people only like absorbing work they identify with. Either subconsciously or even consciously, people gravitate toward films that already fit their purview. And sadly, Hollywood has used that lazy tendency as justification to shell out the same stuff for white male audiences for a century, often while completely ignoring a world in wait. Because of that, and so much more, it took until 19-fucking-96 for Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman to become “the first feature film by made by a Black lesbian filmmaker” and yet it remains one of a handful. But if we’re assigning blame… 

I start with myself. That’s because I didn’t get around to finally seeing the film in its entirety until last week. Hell, a few years after its release I even watched clips of it in film school and wanted to go watch it, but, you know, didn’t! Which is a fact I’m both furious about (because it’s so good) and embarrassed about (because it means I fell victim to the same limited sense of my own purview). But if you were like me and also have never seen it, please know the film’s merit is about so much more than it simply being the first of its kind. It’s because few films are more easy-going, fun, thoughtful, and ultimately affecting than The Watermelon Woman. 

I’ll be blunt: please watch it. It’s even right here on the Criterion Channel, which put it out from behind its paywall (and Amazon Prime, but if you can, screw them). Its history is a reminder of how much queer cinema in the 90’s was largely unsupported in distribution. Sadly, the only real publicity the film got was the brouhaha from conservative politicians because a small fraction of the film was paid for by and NEA grant and even the horrible Jesse Helms called the film’s portrayal of lesbian sex, “flotsam floating down a river.” But outside of its small circles of influence, the film seemed to fail in gaining any national traction. This review from the Chicago Tribune seemed to capture the spirit of most mainstream reviews from the time, in that it is light on analysis and concentrated on surface details, at best just taking in the film’s identity as pleasant lark. But The Watermelon Woman is obviously so much more than than light on its feet. It’s layered beyond layered.

Cheryl Dunye plays a version of herself who is also a young filmmaker. It’s hard for her at first to use that word “filmmaker” at first, because of a world telling her she isn’t one yet (largely because she pays rent doing wedding videos and working in a video store). But she soon realizes it’s important to call herself that. It is as if evoking the now-more-common understanding that there’s a million overconfident white dudes who will give themselves that title without even thinking about it. So it’s part of her actualization. And in doing so she picks the subject of her first film: a documentary on “The Watermelon Woman” who we will come to understand is a made-up character from a made-up film called “Plantation Memories,” which is still a stand-in for the very real films of the 30’s and 40s (like Gone With The Wind and Song of the South). While Cheryl may be taking specific aim at the Mammy stereotype found within this work, her goal is not to tell a white audience “this is clearly racist.” It’s to find out out more about the actress who played the titular Watermelon Woman, specifically to find out what was beneath her surface that spoke so deeply to Cheryl.

If that sounds a little academic to you, don’t worry, a lot of the film is just people cracking sex jokes in a video store. Which is probably part of the reason the film had drawn comparisons to Clerks. But that also brings us to an interesting nexus point. Because, yes, there are some obvious tangible comparisons, from the use of title cards, to the vignette style story, to the micro-budget approach. But the comparison also reveals something about who this film is “for.” Because I remember watching those clips back in film school and there were some fellow white guys who were like, “I’m sorry, I get it, but I just have to watch something more visually dynamic!” And yet, they were the same guys who, you know, liked Clerks. 

To be clear, I like Clerks, too- but its one-take necessity and stiltedness was hailed as low budget DIY smarts. Criticizing The Watermelon Woman for the same thing highlights the hypocrisy. Besides, I just feel it’s plain wrong. The integration of video footage and POV in the film is completely inspired. Even in the real life segments, there’s such power to the specificity of how she films the close-ups during their sex scenes. It was rarely framing for allure of a given body party, but still communicating the emotion, intensity and connection between the two. I look at the visual language Dunye uses and want to scream “wait, wait, she nailed it- how did we lose that!?” as if it was the key to approaching so many depictions of sexuality cinema. 

But of course, the answer is in who we let tell stories. 

Even then, the comparison between the two films isn’t actually about the cinematography at all. For whether someone emotionally gravitates to a certain film is rarely ever just about those stylistic hallmarks. It was about how one movie makes Star Wars jokes for dudes and how another movie makes jokes that aren’t for those dudes. To hang a hat on the idea, I’m sure Randall from Clerks could make a joke about a film called “Bald Black Ball Busters” and the intended audience member would find it funny. But when that same exact joke is made between Cheryl and Tamara? They probably wouldn’t like it as much. That’s because it’s not “for” them. And it speaks to the power and control that comedy wields and where we identify ourselves within those power structures. Understand, The Watermelon Woman isn’t actually aggressive about any of this. It just asks us to be comfortable understanding what is and isn’t for you.

And wouldn’t you know the same issue is part of the crux of the story! Because Cheryl develops a relationship with a white woman named Diana, but no, there isn’t some huge drama at play here. It’s more focusing on the little ways their difference of race and class impact the smaller moments of their lives. Sure, there’s so many interests and attitudes the two have in common, but Cheryl finds herself in a complex emotional place, both enamored, confused, fearful and defensive with her friends anger over her liking of Diana. It’s all so loaded. Sure, there’s all these ways Diana is open and alluring and confident, but there’s ways Diana can get her opportunities at the snap of a finger, the way she barely has to work and has travelled at the world, the way she won’t challenge other white people, and even this way she can be defensive at a given moment.

But it’s not meant to be a portrayal of “peak white hypocrisy,” or anything so extreme. But that’s because the film achieves that same power because trying to highlight the way the micro differences add up to radically different macro existences. Where Cheryl has to deal with the police assuming she’s stealing her own damn movie equipment, Diana doesn’t have to worry about much at all. Those differences create distances that can sometimes feel like a chasm. I mean, the film isn’t even all that subtle about this depiction, but Diana’s behavior is so common and unseen by white people that even I read a review by one author who said she was surprised the film “dropped” their plot-line and didn’t even understand why Cheryl stopped seeing her and it’s like uhhhhhhhhh.

But as this all unfolds, Cheryl’s own story overlaps with her discoveries in her documentary. Turns out that the actress who played “The Watermelon Woman” was named Fae Richards and she also happened to be lesbian, too. Cheryl muses about the happenstance of this connection, but it’s about far more than that fatalistic draw. Cheryl unravels so many more layers to her person. She discovers all the ways Fae had such misgivings about the choices of having to play the titular Watermelon Woman. Cheryl also learns the ways Fae stood up and did exemplary acting and community work that was only remembered by the few it was important to. She also begins to learn about all the ways society let the white people in Fae’s life define her story. And ultimately, the way it was other Black women who looked out for one another and were the ones with her until the end. But all that history can get lost, both in the ignorance of surface-seers, and the way that those who were there pass on. And so the plight of Cheryl’s film is to “make our history before we all dead and gone.”

With that said, Cheryl leaves us with a final note of meta-declaration, having completed both her film and the documentary with the film: “I am a Black lesbian filmmaker.” It is, in itself, an act of defiance against a system. And it doesn’t hurt that the ensuing short documentary that Cheryl presents is beautiful. Our emotions swell and smile as we get to know her final statements about Fae Richards. Gone is the person hiding behind a mammy role and stereotype, instead it flushes in the whole spectrum of her personality, complexity, humanity, social importance, and all the work that white audiences overlooked. 

It’s also all part of a gesture that makes us understand so clearly why Fae had to be a fictional character. Not just because telling the real life story of a given actress from that time would bog down in the details of the specific (many of which weren’t even recorded), but because there is greater power in compositing. By using her character as a symbolic representative, Cheryl gets to highlight the commonalities and hardships that united so many Black female actors of the time. In doing so, she can tell the real history that was always underneath them. To restore the entirety of their humanity.

It is in these ways (and so many others) that The Watermelon Woman isn’t “for” me. Cheryl outright tells us it’s for people like her, the ones who exist within margins within margins and whose stories are not told. But because it is not “for” me, it would be so easy to write and try and usurp the film’s identity and try and make it so it’s about the parts I identify with. Which is to say it would be easy for me to talk about how it affects how I see my own queerness or try to be authoritative on the subject which is not in my purview (which is like the film’s deadpan joke about the gay feminist text: “By Doug McCowan… I wonder if he’s a lesbian?”). Such things detract from the core takeaways. Hell, I even recognize that even writing every word of this essay is a catch 22 in the way it is, in part, propagating a commentary that is unneeded. So what is the purpose in even writing it?

Because what this piece means to be is the mea culpa. 

An acknowledgement of being part of the people who ignored the history of a film that is LITERALLY about the humanity of those subjects who are ignored. Whose work sat on someone’s “to watch” list for two decades. And it is then for the viewer to open up, just as Cheryl does with Fae, and see the entirety of the thing we only had the surface-level understanding of. And it is not on her shoulders to do anything “for” us. Just as there is no primary action for us in turn, just the most outrageous ease of acceptance. And then understanding the goal of facilitating the larger discussion and steering others toward it. 

Even now, it’s already happening. I started writing this essay six days ago and literally the Criterion paywall on the film came down the next day. And just yesterday, the Female Film Critics account linked to a series of new and old reviews on the film. I particularly adore this piece from Neyat Yohannes about the film’s place in the 90’s New Queer Cinema and the elegant thoughts of how it avoids the white male gaze, but also disrupts the white queer male gaze. Likewise, there is this piece by Jude Dry which contextualizes the film within the Black Lives Matter movement and the evergreen nature of these conflicts. There are so, so, so many prescient things to talk about in this film. And likely, from you, so many things to tell and be heard. So most of all, I want to convince you to take in the joy of the film itself.

Because the humor is more than just lewd jokes, but delightfully weird ones, too. I can’t stop thinking of the distinct hilarity of Yvette’s fancy cigarette holder and the way she can make it to a falsetto on stage. I also love the joke about being set-up with the wrong people: “how should I know she was spiritual?!?” But I also think about the way the film piles up these little statements in seamlessly functional moments, like going to the library to research and having so many problems with what sections that Black history get filed under and mislabeled. And then there’s the way Cheryl gets more emboldened in the point of her documentary after interviewing a white feminist professor who dismisses Cheryl’s concerns about problematic portrayals of the mammy and naively asks, “why can’t it be positive?” It’s so brutally elegant, proof positive of the way Cheryl just puts it on display, barely says a word, and in doing so carves it right up. There’s so many great thematic moments like this that I just want to talk about the film non-stop. Just as I want everyone else to watch it. Not because it’s homework. Not even because it is so, so good.

But because it unveils the actuality of what has always been.

In criticism, we often talk about films that “date” themselves. Sometimes it’s a matter of evolving words that are no longer in vogue, but let’s face it: a lot of those same movies had an ugly, not-inclusive spirit to them, too. But for a film that is now 24 years old and dealing with the rapidly changing topics of race, sexuality, and gender, The Watermelon Woman could be ripe fodder for some datedness. And yet it absolutely could have been made today. Sure, maybe, a few terms have changed (there’s also some troubling jokes with eating disorders), but it has its finger on the pulse of so many of the same progressive discussions that fuel today. From the sociological and emotional realities of the core intersections of race, blackness, and sexuality, it sees the need for seeing the humor and humanity, along with recognizing similarities and differences within all of them. It is a film for the people in those spaces. 

And for the one it’s not for, it reminds us that these same conversations go so far back beyond this film. Because even in the 1940’s, there were people who were talking about the problems with these stereotypes right then and there. Which means the mea culpa is always broader. Because it is for us to realize that these ideas are not radical in any way, shape, or form. In fact, people have been espousing the basic morality of these ideas and viewpoints forever.

It’s just high time for the rest of the world to catch up.

<3HULK