The Watermelon Woman is the first known film made by a Black Lesbian director. It follows the character of Cheryl as she documents the life of Fae Richards: nicknamed the ‘Watermelon Woman’. Throughout the film, we watch the troubles Cheryl faces in her search for Fae, as well as in her personal life. Thus, the film has three primary characters: Cheryl the character (an aspiring filmmaker), the film she is creating, and Cheryl the real life filmmaker and director.
This film documents the ‘history of history’, in particular, Black American history. Fae was a dancer and actress in the 1930s and 1940s. Through examining the culture around Fae’s life, there documentation of Black American culture in this period: in film, clubs, music, and dancing. Observing Cheryl’s search, we are confronted with the question of why it is so difficult to find evidence of Fae. Why is her history in particular so hard to uncover? This is reinforced as Cheryl is dismissed at various historical spaces, such as by the white gay librarian, by the white lesbian at the CLIT archives, or by her Black male ‘movie buff’ friend. We are forced to reflect upon whose histories are documented. One might assume that all histories are objectively preserved, but we must remember that archives are a product of a process in which documents deemed ‘worthy’ of preservation are maintained.[1] Cheryl’s most successful endeavours occur when she networks with other Black women and engages them in conversation. This memory work results in the first image of Fae, as well as the very uncovering of her real name, not just ‘the Watermelon Woman’. Cheryl’s exclusion as a Black woman is also clear from the interview with feminist academic and social critic, Camilla Paglia, whose rapid and erratic demeanour serves to parody the assumption of academia that white observation and ‘speaking for’ Black histories is sufficient.[2] This is also echoed as one interviewee states that they haven’t yet covered ‘black women and blaxploitation’. The contrast between real lives and theorised retelling of them is explicit.
The film is collated through montage, talking interviews, segments, and imitation archival footage, so that appears to be based upon reality, similar to a documentary.[3] Cheryl chose to film in a variety of formats: the main narrative of Cheryl’s work and life in 16mm, Hi8 video in her addresses to camera, and a Super 8 in her footage of Fae, thus creating a mystery around the genre as it switches between documentary, comedy, and autobiography.[4] This is reiterated as Cheryl speaks openly in the confessionals, making light of the fictional constructs that guide the narrative.[5] This is similar to Sean Baker’s ‘Tangerine’ (2014), which follows a day in the life of two Black transgender women in Los Angeles. It is filmed entirely on three iPhone 5s; an aesthetic choice made to highlight their transness, and the frequent solution facing the difficulties of representing trans people in media.[6] This is linked to Cheryl’s film as she admitted the differences in filming was often limited by budget: similarly, Cheryl the character and Tamara struggle to buy filming equipment together.[7]
The film does not display lesbian culture as homogenous. Cheryl, Tamara, Diana, and Yvette each display a different outlook, politics, and sexual interest. This disputes an idea of community based upon shared identities. This is reinforced by Diana’s overt display of privilege: she is unemployed, and yet lives independently. She easily scores an interview for the research where Cheryl herself has struggled to do so. She epitomises white middle class feminism, as she tries to ‘figure her life out’, juxtaposed against Cheryl’s struggle to survive and make it as a filmmaker.[8] The sex scene between the two serves to legitimise lesbian sexuality, as the camera refuses to turn away. As bell hooks argues, ‘to decenter the white patriarchal gaze, we must indeed focus on someone else for a change’.[9]
As Cheryl holds pictures of Fae to the camera, one eye visible, we are able to grasp that this process of archiving and filmmaking has also been a process of self realisation for Cheryl. Thus, for one moment, the three characters of Cheryl, Cheryl Dunye, and the film meet, and are one.[10] There is a sense of desperation as memories fail, archives lack, and opportunities falter. However, as it revealed that Fae is fictional, we understand that she is a metaphor for the Black lives and histories gone undocumented, and deemed unrecoverable. The film does not end on a conclusive note. But it is a privilege for a film to end comfortably: and the viewer must sit with this discomfort.
Although Cheryl visits established and alternative archives, she ultimately creates her own. It speaks to the emotions of the archives that give them their significance: the nostalgia, the fantasy, and trauma.[11] In this sense, the assembled archive is simply a montage of fragments that create the illusion of totality and continuity.[12] Thus Fae can never be truly reassembled: she is lost to the past. However, Cheryl’s personal archive provides her hope, inspiration, and history. Fae represents the need in the contemporary period to advance Black lesbian realities. As philosopher Achille Mbembe asserts; ‘the act of dying inasmuch as it entails the dislocation of the physical body, never attacks totally, nor equally successfully, all the properties of the deceased. There will always remain traces of the deceased, elements that testify a life did exist, that deeds were enacted, and struggles engaged or evaded’.[13]
References
Baker, Sean, dir. Tangerine. New York: Magnolia Pictures, 2014.
Derk, George. “Inverting Hollywood from the outside in: the films within Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman”. Screen 59, no. 3, (2018): 293-310.
Dunye, Cheryl, dir. The Watermelon Woman. New York: First Run Features, 1996.
Malone, Meagan E. “Celebrating Transness: Tangerine and the IPhone.” European Journal of English Studies 24, no. 1 (2020): 65-75.
Mbembe, Achille. “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits’. In Refiguring the Archive, edited by Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylor, Michele Pickover, Graeme Reid, and Razia Saleh. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2002.
Richardson, Matt, and Dunye, Cheryl. “Our Stories Have Never Been Told: Preliminary Thoughts on Black Lesbian Cultural Production as Historiography in The Watermelon Woman.” Black Camera Ii, no. 2 (2011): 100-13.
Sullivan, Laura L. “Chasing Fae: “The Watermelon Woman” and Black Lesbian Possibility.” Callaloo 23, no. 1 (2000): 448-60.
[1] George Derk, “Inverting Hollywood from the outside in: the films within Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman”, Screen 59:3, (Autumn 2018): 295.
[2] Achille Mbembe, “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits’, In Refiguring the Archive, edited by Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylor, Michele Pickover, Graeme Reid, and Razia Saleh. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2002. p. 21.
[3] Mbembe, 22.
[4] Derk, 309.
[5] Derk, 299.
[6] Laura Sullivan, “Chasing Fae: “The Watermelon Woman” and Black Lesbian Possibility” Callaloo 23, no. 1 (2000): 450.
[7] Sullivan, 456.
[8] Derk, 296.
[9] Derk, 301.
[10] Meagan Malone, “Celebrating Transness: Tangerine and the IPhone.” European Journal of English Studies 24, no. 1 (2020): 66.
[11] Derk, 306.
[12] Mbembe, 20.
[13] Sullivan, 457.
Queer History Through Film 