Mother Myths: Cinematic Representation of Eurocentric Diffusion in <em>Losing Isaiah</em>
2020; Indiana University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/blackcamera.11.2.08
ISSN1947-4237
Autores Tópico(s)South Asian Cinema and Culture
ResumoControlling images of US Black women remain the focus of Black feminist film criticism. This partial exploration of imagistic disparity leaves unexamined attendant representations of White womanhood and allows to remain intact the myth of Whiteness, which Hollywood films perpetuate. This article revisits the film Losing Isaiah (dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal, 1995, United States) to interrogate the construction of this myth and to offer a reading that demonstrates how the film's narrative aligns with Eurocentric diffusionist thought, which posits Africans are savages, European tutelage is necessary to reform said savages, and European intervention is beneficial to and not exploitive of people of color. To construct this myth, Losing Isaiah relies upon dualistic imagery. The film creates a world in which a dichotomy exists between a White, rational laboring society and a Black, irrational underclass. Similarly, Losing Isaiah represents motherhood as a binary with Black women constructed as breeders on one extreme and White women portrayed as natural mothers on the other. This article critiques the film using cultural racism and Black feminist thought as theoretical frameworks to examine the film's Eurocentric message and to draw connections between the political context of the mid-1990s and the film's representations. I argue that Losing Isaiah creates a legitimating discourse regarding compulsory heterosexuality, race, class, and gender, which advances the inferiority of Blackness and the supremacy of Whiteness.
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