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The Watermelon Woman
Feb. 25th, 2019 07:16 amSometimes you have to create your own history. The Watermelon Woman is fiction. - Cheryl Dunye, 1996
When Cheryl Dunye made The Watermelon Woman in 1996, she had very little tradition to build on as a black lesbian woman filmmaker. Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, the first theatrical release by an African-American woman, had only come out five years earlier. So, as Dunye explains in the quote above (which plays at the end of the movie), Dunye set out to create her own history with this film.
The main character “Cheryl Dunye” (a black lesbian aspiring filmmaker played by Cheryl Dunye; clearly very similar to actual Cheryl Dunye, but a fictional character) uses her job as a video store to special-order old films from the thirties and forties, searching for black actresses in even the smallest bit parts. Her friend and coworker Tamara doesn’t understand her obsession: after all, most of these actresses are playing maids and mammies, so what’s the appeal?
Along the way, “Cheryl” grows interested in one particular actress, billed only as “the Watermelon Woman.” True, she plays mammies, but “Cheryl” is intrigued by her acting, her good looks, and the fact that she made a few movies with the same director: Martha Page, pretty clearly patterned off of Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood at the time.
Like the real Arzner, the fictional Page is a lesbian, and “Cheryl” soon discovers that Page and the Watermelon Woman had an affair - until the Watermelon Woman, whose real name was Fae Richards, left Hollywood to star in black-cast movies (also called race movies). These showed exclusively for black audiences and thus had far smaller financial rewards than Hollywood films, but they did allow Fae Richards to break out from the mammy role and play the star.
The movie is at its strongest as “Cheryl” plays girl detective and follows her research: she visits a library, chats with a family friend of Tamara’s who happens to collect race movies, interviews Martha Page’s surviving sister (who is horrified by the suggestion that Martha was one of those women), and visits a lesbian archive called the Center for Lesbian Information and Technology (C.L.I.T.) (yes, I know). The search begins to alienate her friend Tamara, but “Cheryl” can’t let it go: Fae Richards has come to mean to much for her. As “Cheryl” explains to the camera, documentary style:
“What she means to me, a 25-year-old black woman, means something else. It means hope, it means inspiration, it means possibility. It means history. And most importantly, what I understand, is that I’m going to be the one who says, I am a black lesbian filmmaker who’s just beginning. But I’m gonna say a lot more and have a lot more work to do.”
I really liked The Watermelon Woman, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to a general audience. The quote above shows the movie’s exuberance and passion - and also its limitations. The dialogue is sometimes stilted, both in delivery and in writing; the scene transitions often seem awkward. The pacing can be odd. Why are there scenelets of “Cheryl” dancing on the waterfront interspersed throughout the second half of the movie?
But if you’re interested in film history, particularly women’s film history or black film history - or just in the way that people create usable pasts for themselves, even out of seemingly unpromising materials - then The Watermelon Woman is a fascinating piece of work.
When Cheryl Dunye made The Watermelon Woman in 1996, she had very little tradition to build on as a black lesbian woman filmmaker. Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, the first theatrical release by an African-American woman, had only come out five years earlier. So, as Dunye explains in the quote above (which plays at the end of the movie), Dunye set out to create her own history with this film.
The main character “Cheryl Dunye” (a black lesbian aspiring filmmaker played by Cheryl Dunye; clearly very similar to actual Cheryl Dunye, but a fictional character) uses her job as a video store to special-order old films from the thirties and forties, searching for black actresses in even the smallest bit parts. Her friend and coworker Tamara doesn’t understand her obsession: after all, most of these actresses are playing maids and mammies, so what’s the appeal?
Along the way, “Cheryl” grows interested in one particular actress, billed only as “the Watermelon Woman.” True, she plays mammies, but “Cheryl” is intrigued by her acting, her good looks, and the fact that she made a few movies with the same director: Martha Page, pretty clearly patterned off of Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood at the time.
Like the real Arzner, the fictional Page is a lesbian, and “Cheryl” soon discovers that Page and the Watermelon Woman had an affair - until the Watermelon Woman, whose real name was Fae Richards, left Hollywood to star in black-cast movies (also called race movies). These showed exclusively for black audiences and thus had far smaller financial rewards than Hollywood films, but they did allow Fae Richards to break out from the mammy role and play the star.
The movie is at its strongest as “Cheryl” plays girl detective and follows her research: she visits a library, chats with a family friend of Tamara’s who happens to collect race movies, interviews Martha Page’s surviving sister (who is horrified by the suggestion that Martha was one of those women), and visits a lesbian archive called the Center for Lesbian Information and Technology (C.L.I.T.) (yes, I know). The search begins to alienate her friend Tamara, but “Cheryl” can’t let it go: Fae Richards has come to mean to much for her. As “Cheryl” explains to the camera, documentary style:
“What she means to me, a 25-year-old black woman, means something else. It means hope, it means inspiration, it means possibility. It means history. And most importantly, what I understand, is that I’m going to be the one who says, I am a black lesbian filmmaker who’s just beginning. But I’m gonna say a lot more and have a lot more work to do.”
I really liked The Watermelon Woman, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to a general audience. The quote above shows the movie’s exuberance and passion - and also its limitations. The dialogue is sometimes stilted, both in delivery and in writing; the scene transitions often seem awkward. The pacing can be odd. Why are there scenelets of “Cheryl” dancing on the waterfront interspersed throughout the second half of the movie?
But if you’re interested in film history, particularly women’s film history or black film history - or just in the way that people create usable pasts for themselves, even out of seemingly unpromising materials - then The Watermelon Woman is a fascinating piece of work.
