JULY REVIVAL: The Watermelon Woman

Happy Fall, Happy Autumn, y’all. I’m back with notes from our last summer film club meeting - The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye (1996).

ALERT: SPOILERS AT THE END

Here’s something y’all: near all my friends have watched The Watermelon Woman. Our conversations about the film always end with a brief exchange about whether we liked the film or not, and whether and how it is important. But it took me a while to wonder, well why don’t we speak more in depth about it? Like, a real, full community conversation? Well, our July Revival, we got to have this conversation. And my lord, it was wonderful.

Let’s begin with… 90’s Aesthetic.

a 90’s Aesthetic

Design & Dynamics

The first comment of film club was this: “LOVE THE 90’s AESTHETIC. … (Even though the internet makes everything feel new).” But, the thing is, the 90’s design reminded this film club member of that the dynamics depicted in this 90’s film - the dynamics of the (Black lesbian) community - we’re still dealing with today.

Interracial Dating

First, one film club member asked - “what do y’all think… how do y’all feel that the main character / director Cheryl is in a relationship with a White woman? Does this film need a white partner?” Another one of us answered - “well, could we truly have a Black lesbian film without interracial dating?” And well, this is because, this is because interracial dating is just one of these dynamics which the community still deals with.

Another film club member agreed: “Yes, we have to deal with interraciality with Black lesbian films.” Often, it seems like we don’t know how to love ourselves. And if we can’t love ourselves, how can we love another Black woman? And where do you even begin to contend with this conundrum? So rather than confront it, we date outside the race.

For this same film club member, another redeeming thing about how interracial dating is dealt with in the film is that it is dealt with alongside close Black queer woman friendship.

Cheryl & Tamara

What is super important is that Cheryl and Tamara’s friendship is not romanticized. In fact, the focus of their friendship in the film is accepting and working out their issues with one another around dating, filmmaking, cultural work, and being in community.

They stay fussing and fighting from the beginning until one of the last scenes of the film. But they’re still friends. They’re committed to one another. Another member validates this: “Now that you say it, I can really only think of one other example of Black queer woman friendship that he has seen on film in the last ten years - 195 Lewis (Rae Leone Allen, Yaani Supreme, Chanelle Aponte Pearson, 2017). New York Black Girls TV is brought up as another, but quite little known, example.

Luminal Founder and film club member Curtis John reminds us that we are having this film club meeting just the day after our screening of Brother to Brother (Rodney Evans, starring Anthony Mackie, 2004). The topic of interracial gay dating and Black gay friendship also came up during the post-film talkback just the night before.

Looking for Elders

We’re also still working on endowing ourselves - and proving to others - that being a Black lesbian is nothing new. That Black lesbians lived before us, out, closeted, and in the shadows, and there will be Black lesbians who live after us as well. Cheryl Dunye is searching for Black lesbian elders in cinema by searching for “The Watermelon Woman,” and for Black lesbian (cultural) community through the search itself.

A source of self-regard, let’s say.

Reconsidering “The Archive”

To add to the layers of our conversation - it seemed so key to me that the search for Black lesbian elders dives fully into a critical experience with “The Archive.” The Archive is so reified by Black Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies scholars; to an aggravatingly obsequious degree. This film has such an interesting, playful, whimsical, curious relationship to Archives and archiving. Importantly, not The Archive (with a capital “T” and a capital “A”).

So, our search for Elders, across academia and community, continue from whichever beginnings through the 90’s and The Watermelon Woman to us today and beyond. How many of us actually picked up The Watermelon Woman’s threads? Pursuing life and being with archival lineages through community which might be synthetic, which may have deposits of truth; which we might construct for ourselves and one another.

So, DO WE REALLY TAKE THE WATERMELON WOMAN SERIOUSLY?

My favorite part of The Watermelon Woman is when Cheryl turns the camera on her mother and other Black folx to inquire about their knowledge of The Watermelon Woman. Me personally? I would have been to nervous to even make the approach.

Glitching the gaze

Our film club meeting helped me understand how The Watermelon Woman glitches the gaze. It’s various perspective layers - protagonist as director, protagonist as friend, protagonist as partner, protagonist as daughter, protagonist as filmmaker, protagonist as researcher, protagonist as baby lesbian seeking elders. Men are present, but certainly not the focus; and many of them are implied to be gay. You, as an audience member, only get what you can understand, based on your positionality. Black queer womxn are the center and focus, as Black woman lineage.

And, the coda at the end: “The Watermelon Woman is made up.” And this is not explained further.

The Diasporic connection?

Thing is, it wasn’t until we watched The Watermelon Woman with our July Revival shorts selection - Dunye’s short films “An Untitled Portrait” (1993) - that I learned Cheryl Dunye is of Liberian heritage. In fact, according to Wikipedia and other online resources, Dunye was actually born in Monrovia, Liberia. How does this change your relationship with the film? It seemed too easy to me that this would happen; but it just as simply happened to me - there was a clear diasporic connection in my experience of watching.

The thing that always strikes me when watching this film is just how deeply, and deeply networked, Cheryl’s protagonist as director and director as protagonist inhabits so many different roles. My first thought was, How did Dunye become ok with being “the weird Black lesbian?” Weird, which we now understand to be illegible in so many ways. Growing up as a diasporic Black person, I never felt that there was a Black American heritage that I could claim, which was available to me. Dunye, on the other hand is of both African-American and Liberian heritage. But then also - she’s lesbian. Dark-skinned. “Talks white.” Is a filmmaker. Is dating a white woman. But is still focused on her Blackness.

What came to me during our July Revival film club was this: her being a child of an immigrant - particularly an African immigrant - does the level of illegibility which likely comes with this lend Dunye freedom as well? The freedom to inhabit so many different perspectival layers and roles? A class freedom that, along with this all, allows a freedom to perform, the various pieces of Blackness and personhood?

Another film club member recommended we check out Archive Liberia’s instagram.

JacquiRevival, 2024, July Film Club, The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl Dunye, LesbianComment