In 'The Woman King,' Black Sisterhood Is Strength

At a time when there has been much discussion about doing away with the “strong Black woman” stereotype that has dehumanized us, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King is a love letter to Black women that celebrates the power of sisterhood and uses our strength to uplift us.

Set in the 19th-century West African Kingdom of Dahomey, now Benin, the film focuses on a fearless group of Black women warriors, the Agojie, who have brought much stability to the kingdom in the aftermath of the horrific European and American slave trade. 

The group is helmed by General Nanisca (Viola Davis), who is first seen emerging from a valley of tall grasses clad in cowrie shells and wielding a machete.

Nanisca demands excellence, focus, and unity; no woman is ever left behind under her watch.

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Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman was a racist idea, but that's quite common in Hollywood

Hollywood hardly has had a stellar track record when it comes to diversity and inclusion, from its dismal (and continuing) use of yellowface, its past (and present) utilization of blackface or the prevalence of brownface in movies as wide-ranging as "West Side Story," "Argo," "A Beautiful Mind" and "House of the Spirits." However, a recent revelation proves just how absurd its insistence on relying on such tropes really is, and how resistant the industry has been to change.

In a recent interview with Focus Features, Gregory Allen Howard, the screenwriter behind2019's Harriet Tubman biopic "Harriet," dropped a bombshell. Howard, who has been working for more than two decades to get Tubman's story to the big screen, said that, when he first began his journey in 1994, a studio executive suggested that Julia Roberts — then a 27-year-old starring in a summer rom-com with Nick Nolte — should portray the former slave, freedom fighter and abolitionist.

"I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, 'This script is fantastic. Let's get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman,'" Howard remembered. "When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn't be Harriet, the executive responded, 'It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference.'"

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Image: Focus Features.

Dakota Fanning's role in 'Sweetness in My Belly' flaunts Hollywood's addiction to the white gaze

With buzz words like "inclusion" and "diversity" swirling about, the film industry has in recent years begun scrambling to present stories that have previously been ignored or suppressed. However, in doing so, they continue to strip agency from Black and brown voices, pushing them to the side of their own narratives to center white faces.

A rather egregious example of this is the upcoming film, ”Sweetness In the Belly,” starring Dakota Fanning. Based on Canadian author Camilla Gibb's award-winning novel, the story follows Lilly (played by Fanning), a white child abandoned by her hippie parents in a Moroccan village. Raised by a Sufi master in the Islamic faith, 16-year-old Lilly eventually makes an overland pilgrimage to an Ethiopian city — which, if your geography is lacking, is roughly the distance from Anchorage, Alaska, to Miami — and settles there until the revolution breaks out and she's forced to flee to London.

Shoving aside the experiences of Ethiopian people who actually lived through the atrocities of the Ethiopian Civil War is offensive enough — but Lilly never even existed. Gibb, who was born in England, wrote a novel about the "imagined narrative of one woman's search for love and belonging, cast against a nuanced portrait of political upheaval." As astounding as it is to consider, Gibb literally chose a historical incident that involved Black people and created a white woman to place in the center of it all. And now her story will reach an even wider audience through cinema.

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The new 'Little Mermaid,' Halle Bailey, is Disney's second Black princess. Her casting is real magic to some girls.

In 1997, millions of Black girls watched in awe as actress and singer Brandy Norwood was transformed into the iconic princess, Cinderella, in the television movie version of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic musical. Delivering outstanding vocals, Norwood (and a diverse cast that included Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother and Filipino-American actor Paolo Montalbán as Prince Christopher) gave millions of kids (and adults) the chance to see themselves reflected in a fairy tale for the first time.

Now, more than 20 years later, and 10 years after adding its first and only Black princess to its roster, Disney is about to do it again.

Disney announced on Wednesday that they had cast 19-year-old singer and actor Halle Bailey as Ariel in their forthcoming live-action version of “The Little Mermaid.” The animated feature, released in 1989, is still one of Disney's most beloved films and features a rebellious mermaid who is desperate to escape her constrained life under the sea to live above water with humans.

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Image: Instagram

Britney Spears Sure As F*ck Doesn’t Need Our Scrutiny Right Now

It’s not 2007 anymore, so I’m not sure why we’re still acting like it is. Pop legend Britney Spears has struggled openly with her mental health for the past 12 years, but the “…Baby One More Time” stunner has been vocal about getting healthy and making the best decisions that she can as a woman, mom, and a beloved entertainer. In the past decade, American society as a whole has been more open about discussing mental health, self-care, anxiety–and a slew of other things that human beings across racial, social, and economic lines struggle with. Now we need to give some grace to Britney Spears.

Spears has always been close to her father, Jamie Spears, who has been the permanent conservator of her business and life affairs since her public mental health setback in 2007. Unfortunately, Mr. Spears is currently suffering from a grave medical issue that has caused a great deal of strain on his family. The “Oops I Did it Again” singer recently canceled her Domination Las Vegas residency and stepped away from the stage to give her father her undivided attention. As someone who has lost both parents to cancer, I know first hand how mentally, emotionally, and physically draining it can be to watch your loved ones struggle with their health. Deciding to be proactive about her mental health, the songstress checked herself into a mental health and wellness facility this past spring to undergo treatment. Though the public seemed to stand with Spears and her decision at first–commending her for being both open and proactive, it seems the tides are turning.

While Spears was undergoing treatment–rumors began to buzz that she was being held at the wellness center against her will and that she was struggling more than she initially let on. The gossip prompted the singer to upload a video to her social media accounts addressing the reports head-on. Things calmed down for a hot second, but now it seems that folks are buzzing again.

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Photo: Britney Spears via Instagram.

'A Wrinkle in Time' isn't a film for critics. It's Ava DuVernay's love letter to black girls

t was never going to be an easy task for acclaimed filmmaker Ava DuVernay to bring “A Wrinkle in Time” to the big screen; with 26 rejections, author Madeleine L’Engle had a tumultuous journey to get her story published at all. The acclaimed children’s book tells the story of teenager Meg Murry (portrayed now by Storm Reid) as she grapples with the pitfalls of adolescence while coming to terms with the disappearance of her physicist father, Dr. Alex Murry (portrayed by Chris Pine). Though L’Engle‘s story seems straightforward on the surface, Meg’s journey to find her father is full of intrigue, theoretical physics, science fiction and an earnest nod toward love and light. All of these components made it difficult for publishers in the late 1950s and early 1960s to take a chance on “A Wrinkle in Time,” and extremely complicated for anyone to adapt the story to the screen. The first film adaptation hit the small screen in 2003, and L’Engle reportedly hated it.

According to The New York Post, bewildered editors often asked L’Engle if her book was intended for adults or for children to which she would reply, “It’s for people, don’t people read books?” Considering some of the reviews of DuVerney's film, it looks like the motion picture has run into the same critiques as the novel. An uneven tone and choppy script has muddled down the magic of the film for many critics; Forbes, for example, has called it, “a well-intentioned disappointment.”

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