'Black Girl' Bears A Heavy Mental Diagnosis for Black Women

Black Girl film poster.

Despite being released in 1960, Ousmane Sembène's award-winning Black Girl exposes the oppressive system set in the colonialist world today and should be required watching material for those invested in classic films revealing deeper provocation through a Black lens. Black Girl is one of the better offerings on the eclectic Criterion Channel streaming service, launched after Film Struck's unfortunate demise.

Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) is a stylish, carefree young woman in Dakar seeking a job to support her family.

A picture of joy and passion (here in her boyfriend's bedroom), Djouana's disposition will shift in the employ.

In this compelling masterpiece, it is like a grand fairy tale that an excited Senegalesen woman named Diouana is singled out and chosen to care for a French woman's children. She has dreams for seeing the big, fancy city and becoming as sophisticated as the European magazine models (though quite frankly she is already utterly beautiful and charming). Anything must be more fascinating than the rural life of the impoverished village girl in Dakar. Yet the white Madame has entirely different intentions. At first polite and accommodating Madame gradually changes into a name-calling, slaphappy villain. And Madame's husband, Monsieur, though lenient and kind to Diouana, is silent to his wife's obnoxious behavior.

Diouana slowly becomes morose and solitary, staying in rooms too long, her sanity compromised for the benefit of a rich, bossy stranger. She obviously feels great humiliation from this unexpected betrayal, weighted down by the naivety of illusions. Diouana has fallen under the spell that these misguided illusions cast, often making Black women believe that her country, that where she comes from is less valid than the falsely advertised, materialistic propaganda.

That hungry desire for something better cannot always be found in predominantly white spaces.

Madame (Anne-Marie Jelinek) and Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) with the letter from Diouana's mother.

Black Girl raises existing concerns about white women's damaging perception and desire to control Black women's bodies-- a whole ugly history entirely. They are not innocent flowers more like complicit allies-- abusing Black women's bodies in any way possible, especially considering their role in slavery (which was not simply just a demonstration of white man's physical, mentally, emotional power over Black bodies). For example, Madame continuously calls Diouana "lazy." Tired, overworked Diouana, the Madame's mule, is the one cooking, cleaning, and watching the madam's children. Under the guise of feminism, certain white women defensively keep hold of white patriarchal views and white supremacy because in both instances white women are the primary victor, the apple in the white man's eye. Recently, even a non-Black woman of color author called out a transit worker on social media for eating on public transit. In so many critical eyes, Black women are incapable of showing weakness (sleepiness, hunger, sadness, etc.) and that fabrication needs to end today. Madame ruthlessly enjoyed having authority over Diouana and utilized it every chance she could.

 

Diouana may have felt unsatisfied in Dakar. Perhaps something 

Mon Cherie is likely familiar to modern day publications Seventeen, Vogue, Glamour, etc., magazines that amp up the white women's beauty while making women of color find their own lacking.

Diouana is not allowed a moment's peace. The girl cannot do her own hair without Madame needing assistance.

Diouana's mental illness--often grossly questioned in the Black community-- affects encounters with her further abusive employer. Withdrawn and internalizing her sadness without a true outlet to release frustrations, Diouana's plight from humble beginning to bittersweet end presents a psychological parallel raising awareness on the harmful effects of a specific form of white abuse. She is grossly lied to, manipulated, paraded about, exhibited like a wild savage to the madam's rude dinner friends. An isolated Black woman in a foreign country without no friends and no resources has only the option of remaining in their employ or running away and being subjected to all sorts of other dangerous cruelties in the streets. 

 

Diouana calls Madame and Monsieur's house a prison, merely stating that that she has no free agency to exist in a role beyond a racialized, gender specific stigma. The bars are invisible. Yet her emotional frame of mind is broken, irreparable. 

 

In her room, a depressed Djouana admits a devastating defeat.

Black Girl is a short yet morally important film that stands the test of time. With a resonating "yesterday" feeling weaved into Diouana's heartbreaking story, it is groundbreaking work in its exploration of mental crisis caused by racism and the problematic scope of white women's lack of supporting Black women's interior and exterior being. Plus, Mbissine Thérèse Diop's underrated performance (as well as some of her own handmade clothes) is worth the sixty-minutes.