Disappearing Acts: Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone & The Erasure of Black Women in Film

Disappearing Acts: Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone & The Erasure of Black Women in Film

by  Nicole Moore | HuffPost BlackVoices

"I've never changed my hair. I've never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I've always been." - Nina Simone

When I think of Nina Simone I think of her dark chocolate skin, her full lips and her tight 'fro. Her looks were and still are every bit as relevant and powerful as the songs she sang. As a matter of fact, her undeniable African features defined and empowered her musical career. So it's no small wonder that people are outraged at hearing last week's confirmed announcement that Zoe Saldana, an Afro-Latina with a café au lait complexion and fine facial features, has been cast as the High Priestess of Soul in an upcoming bio-pic. The fires were fanned this past weekend when an interview by the film's writer and director, Cynthia Mort, surfaced in "Entertainment Weekly" where she talks about the biopic as something seemingly more inspired by Nina with composite characters than a film about Nina and the real-life characters from her life.

Zoe Saldana, best known for her roles in Avatarand Columbiana, may have the acting chops to play the lead in a feature movie, but when it comes to playing Nina Simone, I'm not so sure. It's not simply that Saldana looks nothing like Simone, a woman who could spit out a truthful and caustic Mississippi Goddamn that reminded you in no uncertain terms that she had been rejected because of her skin color. 

Casting Saldana also attempts, if inadvertently, to erase the memory of Simone's revolutionary ebon image from our minds and history's musical canon. Saldana as Simone specifically challenges the message of Simone's music and undermines the power of her well-documented resistance to conventional ideas of beauty and colorism. Nina's success and appeal had as much to do with her talent as it did with her having big lips, wide hips and that Mama Africa bosom. Unlike Lena Horne, Diana Ross & The Supremes, and Tina Turner whose crossover success was as much a result of having talent as well as having sexy live performances and glamorous good looks, Nina used her experiences with racism, colorism and sexism to ignite her music with strength and resilience heard so defiantly in To Be Yong Gifted & Black for example.

Because Simone's blackness extended as much to her musical prowess as to her physicality and image, it's perplexing that the film's production team, led by Jimmy Iovine, expects anyone, particularly in the black community, to (re)imagine Nina Simone as fair-skinned, thin-lipped and narrow-nosed? I guess if you look at Hollywood's history of casting black female roles, especially in biopics, it's not all that surprising.

With a few exceptions – Angela Bassett as Tina Turner, Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge and Beyonce as Etta James – Hollywood  has a long history of giving black actresses the finger by casting white women in the lead of films based on the lives of black women -- most famously Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. Angelina Jolie was given the green light to portray Mariane Pearl, an Afro-Cuban Chinese, French writer in the 2007 adaptation of Pearl's A Mighty Heart, which we kinda let slide because, well, it was Angie. But then she was cast again in a role based on a black woman character in the film Wanted, an adaptation of the same titled comic book series in which the main character is a black.

And the real kicker came in 2008 when St"uck, the true life story of African-American Chante Mallard, for which Suvari had the nerve to sport cornrows. If it only requires cornrows and a full-lipped box-office bombshell to secure these roles originally penned as black women, then what's to prevent any blonde, brunette, pale-skinned actress from playing black? And if that's the case, then surely Hollywood types also think a light-skinned Black woman can portray a dark-skinned Black woman.

Tim Burton and the other producers behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter certainly thought so when they cast Jacqueline Fleming, a bi-racial woman, as Harriet Tubman. And hell, even Aretha Franklin wants Halle Berry, a bi-racial woman, to play her in her own life story. And yes, Halle is the highest paid Black actress in America, but is that reason enough for her to represent every Black women on the big screen? From X-Men's Storm to Zora Neale Hurston's Janie, to Dorothy Dandrige and now possibly The Queen of Soul, Halle's image has seeped into America's (cinematic) consciousness as the face of every Black woman making it seem like we are this monolithic community of sistas. 

If Aretha, known as much for her voice as much for her thickness (and her taste in hats) doesn't even think full-figured, Oscar-winning actresses Mo'nique or Octavia Spencer would be great choices to portray her life story, I'm really not surprised by Zoe's casting. And I get that actors do not have to resemble the famous personas they portray, but when there are so few empowering images of Black women in TV & film, details like weight, skin color and hair become serious sticking points amongst Black folk.

And doors do not open for Black actresses with dark skin as readily or as often as they do for their male counterparts. Actors like Wesley Snipes, Sidney Poitier, Don Cheadle, Idris Elba, Bill Cosby and Sam Jackson do not encounter the same level of marginalization and erasure as Whoopi Goldberg, Regina King, Viola Davis and Alfre Woodard.

Then there's Tyler Perry, who has produced films like Diary Of A Mad Black Woman and a remake of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls, and has cast a number of Black actresses in his movies. Unfortunately, when the lead female character in many of these flicks is a gun-toting, outspoken, Bible-thumping, righteous she-ro named Madea-- Tyler Perry in drag-- and the other Black women are depicted as non-sexual or hyper-sexual, emotionally scarred, spiritually bereft women who just need God, Madea and a man to be happy, self-poised and empowered, then even and especially these portrayals affirm the notion that Black women are monolithic, simple and bordering on irrelevant. If a man in a dress with a gun is a box-office hit and popular with Black audiences then Hollywood takes note and actresses who look like Viola Davis or Regina King find themselves disappearing from the big screen.

Since the announcement of Saldana as the lead in Nina's biopic was made, a petition on Change.org has been created, which demands that Saldana be replaced. Supporters of the petition would rather that role go to Lauryn Hill, Adepero Oduye, India.Arie or Viola Davis. The petition, however, has been met with criticism by some who believe the role of Nina Simone is turning into a debate about one actress being "blacker" than another. Those who support Zoe, who is outspoken about being an Afro-Latina, say that her Blackness should not be defined by the color of her skin or the straightness of her hair. The fact that Zoe is Black Dominican is all that should matter. If standards of Black beauty in this country didn't have a history of being valued and de-valued based upon their semblance to whiteness as the standard then maybe it wouldn't matter.

In 1966, the woman born Eunice Kathleen Waymon penned The Four Women, which begins, "My skin is Black/ My arms are long/ My hair is wooly/ My back is strong/ Strong enough to take the pain/ Inflicted again and again." Nina had the posture, past and physicality to make this song not only brazen, but also believable and therefore revolutionary in it's telling. How can Saldana possibly bring the pain in an afro-wig and, God-forbid, dark makeup? The producers may as well cast Madea because if it's going to be all about make-up, wigs and fat-suits, ain't nobody bringing it like Mr. Perry.

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Nicole is the Founder and Editor of theHotness.com. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thehotnessgrrrl

An Unmagical World: Challenging the Princess Paradigm

An Unmagical World: Challenging the Princess Paradigm

by David Leonard | NewBlackMan

When my daughter was about 3-years old, while on a vacation, we ventured into a Disney store where we purchased a set of princess figurines (I still feel compromise about our collective relationship with the world of princesses some 4+ years later).  We quickly returned to my parents’ hotel so that she could play with them.  When it was time to leave and return to where we were staying, I noticed that three of the princesses were missing.  Pocahontas, Mulan, and Jasmine were all nowhere to be found while Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, and Cinderella were in plain sight ready to go with us.  Determined, I searched high and low for her newly purchased toys.  After a few minutes, I realized that the three figurines of color were strategically placed under the bed.  It was not as if she was playing with them and accidentally placed them under the bed; they were far back, to the point that they were almost out of reach.  Not to worry, super-Dad rescued them, only to be told by my 3-year old that she didn’t want them.  The horror.  Overcoming my sense of failure and dismay, I asked her:

Why don’t you want them?

Her: I just don’t

Me: But why?

Her: Because they don’t have sparkly shoes

She was correct; whereas the 4 figurines of white characters had dresses and sparkly shoes (even though you couldn’t actually see the shoes on all of them), the 3 figurines of color lacked all of the traditional markers of princessdom. 

However, much more was at work because in this instance, the daily lessons she had learned about beauty, race, gender, and desirability came into clear view.  As a scholar of race, an anti-racist advocate, and someone committed to media literacy, I was immediately distraught, wondering how I had failed to convey these fallacies within contemporary culture.  As a parent of a mixed-race daughter (I am white and my wife is Chinese), this moment also concretized the powerful messages being delivered about beauty and racial identity.  Notwithstanding the immense problems with the princess trope (and happiness coming from being saved by a prince), it was clear that my daughter was learning the incompatibility of beautiful glamorous princesses and girls of color.  

“In American society, many women strive to attain mainstream, Western standards of beauty, which are derived from a predominantly Anglo-Saxon influence,” writes Peggy Chin Evans and Allen McConnell with “Do Racial Minorities Respond in the Same Way to Mainstream Beauty Standards? Social Comparison Processes in Asian, Black, and WhiteWomen.” “In fact, physical appearance seems to be the most important predictor of overall self-evaluation in female college and high school students.” Given the dominance of Disney within children’s lives, it is not surprising how much impact this “magical world” has on children telling them that without fair skin, blonde hair, a skinny physique, and a prince on their arm the world wouldn’t be as magical.  

“Most, if not all children, including children of color, see ‘white’ as good, living happily ever after and pretty,” notes Dorothy L. Hurley in “Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess.” “The problem of pervasive, internalized privileging of Whiteness has been intensified by the Disney representation of fairy tale princesses which consistently reinforces an ideology of White supremacy.” By the age of 3 my daughter had already learned the lessons about whiteness and the difficult path for girls of color in securing the idealized dream of marrying a prince: living happily ever after.  As such, she wanted nothing to do with those OTHER princesses who could not live this fairy tale existence since without the right clothes and physical features they would surely never get the right prince.

At one level, I wanted to respond by telling her that Mulan and Pocahontas could be a princess just like Belle and Cinderella – their costumes and skin color did not preclude them from being princesses.  Yet, given the extremely problematic narratives, the focus on physical beauty, and the overall message associated with the princess trope, I didn’t want to elevate the princess as ideal and desirable.  This points to a quandary of wanting to challenge the white/western standards of beauty that emanate from Disney and other mainstream media sources while at the same time challenging the ways in which beauty, glamorous clothes, and other traditional markers are used to mark desirable femininity. 

Then and now I try to tell her that she (and girls of color) can be beautiful and desirable (princesses) yet there is no reason to need or want to garner acceptance through beauty/appealing to males. Maxine Leeds Craig, in “Race, beauty, and the tangled knot of a guilty,” describes the complexity and contradiction in the following way

The difficulty of theorizing beauty is that any body which might possibly be characterized as beautiful exists at a congested crossroads of forces. Bodies provide us with a principal means of expression, yet our bodies are read in ways that defy our intentions. We act on others through our bodies, but nonetheless our bodies are the sites of the embodiment of social controls (p. 160 ). . . . Beauty is a resource used by collectivities and individuals to claim worth, yet it is an unstable good, whose association with women and with sex, and its dependence upon ever-changing systems of representation, put its bearer at constant risk of seeing the value of her inherent beauty or beauty work evaporate. If beauty is ever capital, it is a somewhat stigmatized capital. It must appear unearned if it is to be authentic, as opposed to purchased, beauty. Nonetheless it is a suspect form of capital because it is unearned. It is bodily amid a culture that places the body below the mind (p. 174).

The complexity was further illustrated as I tried in that instant to celebrate Pocahontas, to challenge her white-definition of beauty and appeal, even in spite of the stereotypes and anti-indigenous narratives embodied by this character (for years thereafter she always reminded me that Pocahontas was my favorite a fact that always struck me given my critical discussion of the film in class).  The intervention is tough because I didn’t want to subscribe to the ideological underpinnings of sexism in debunking those associated with white supremacy. 

The impact of the media’s pedagogy of beauty is obvious from the various doll test studies (see Kiri Davis’ wonderful video – “A Girl like Me” on this subject) to skin lightening  & body alteration.  It is also evident in the idolization of whiteness (a particular construct of femininity).   To my daughter, those white princesses not only embodied beauty, glamour, grace, and desirability but were also the only true and authentic kinds of princesses.  Because those other princesses were faux-princesses she did not want them.   

My only hope is that our intervention against these messages about beauty, race, femininity, and materialism take hold because the power was evident when my three-year old daughter tossed away the three “princesses” that she concluded were not undesirable making me wonder if the larger consequence is that she is being told daily that she is just as undesirable. 

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.