Queerly Beautiful “Pure” Disrupts Black Cotillion Tradition

Pure film poster.

The Black cotillion aesthetic is gaining explorative steam in various art forms: Jacqueline Woodson’s Red At the Bone novel employs past and present weaved with the events of the Oklahoma massacre during Melody’s introduction to Black societal perfection. The California African American Museum’s recent exhibition Rights and Rituals: The Making of African American Debutante Culture discusses the history behind ensuring that young Black girls were not torn between mammy and Jezebel stereotypes. Yet armed with a fresh faced cast and Khalea Ross Robinson’s picturesque cinematography, writer/director Natalie Jasmine Harris’s exceptional debut Pure daringly shifts a straight arrow legacy into the postmodern queer territory era, letting its main character—a gorgeous dark skinned Black girl named Celeste— own her destiny in this exceptionally brave short film. 

Amir (Jacob Daniel Smith) and Celeste (Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew) know how to have fun striking a pose. 

In the practice dance, quiet, intelligent Celeste (excellently portrayed by newcomer Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew) is escorted by Amir (Jacob Daniel Smith), her best friend. While all the girls embrace their purposely razor straightened hair, she seems to be the one who secretly wants her ancestor’s dreams preferred. Septum pierced Amir turns out to be of the LGBTQIA+ variety— i.e. kindly similar to Melody’s best friend Malcolm in Red At The Bone— and Celeste too has one leg dangling out the closet, questioning the plight of budding, hormonal desires that overshadow the piety that debutantes must possess. Although not the typical social butterfly, a slight shyness shrouds Celeste like a warm coat. She is invited to a house party by Joy (a fellow debutante played by Josca Moore) and attends with Amir, her eyelids popping with the magical glitter that rivals a lightning bug’s iridescence. 

Debutante Jamia Glenn being escorted through a gilded oval frame at the Pasadena Alumni Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority in the Golden State Room at the Statler Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, May 1964, reproduction of a Harry Adams photographic print. 

African American woman, head and shoulders portrait, ca. 1899-1900, reproduction of a silver gelatin print, courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. 

Rights and Rituals: The Making of African American Debutante Culture layout and space.

Ethel Thomas designed the cotillion dress worn by Anne Bradford Luke, fall 1952, courtesy of Anne Bradford Luke. Estelle Williams designed Deborah Beavers-Watford, 1967, courtesy of Deborah Beavers-Watford. A cotillion dress worn by and courtesy of Denise Burnett, 2019. 

Couples dance at the Los Angeles Links Ball, November 1964, reproduction of a Harry Adams  photographic print. 

While Rights and Rituals: The Making of African American Debutante Culture nods to the pioneers Fannie Barrier Williams (co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women NACW) and W. E. B. DuBois— earlier advocates for Black women who are unfairly discriminated and educationally behind the rest. The pictures, the videos, and the audio disclose the classic debutante tradition— the perfect postured Black girl wearing gorgeous white ball gowns and long satin gloves, straightened hair, the father/daughter dance, the male chaperones— the young girls only dance with men, fathers or father figures and young men who may be potential husbands. The exhibition reveals the Cinderella story that grooms girls for lives sequestered in grace and piety, positioning high enough in society, maintaining a certain sophisticated air.

Well, this is 2021. Young Black girls don’t have to follow these stern rules anymore.

Twice Celeste dances with Joy. The first dance is outside the strict, stuffy ballroom, at Joy’s house party with charged, pulsing energy from both the pumping music and Celeste’s uncertainty. Plus, this less judgmental audience presents no real fear, no hesitance to just be. Yet Celeste’s uncertainty must be riddled in debutante conviction, the need to please an invisible someone, an invisible moral code. After the intense moment of Joy sensually pressing Celeste, each provocative movement slow and teasing, the undeniable heat between them leads to an authentic, consensually shared pleasure— their first kiss a secret to the audience. In that incredible, jaw-dropping second dance, the one where Celeste leads and Joy follows right in front of critical eyes. They all seem to fade away, any enraged anger, any shocking disappointment, goes to dust. There is no “don’t do this here” or the running from truth. Celeste and Joy dance together freely, smiling and laughing, fondly choosing each other, breaking an old historical notion. 

Celeste (Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew) is ready for her closeup. 

Pure is an eloquent reminder that Black women are the greatest masters of telling narratives about Black women experiences— that they are the best fits to telling humanistic stories that fulfill a specific need in the films being made today. In its compelling honesty, Celeste has that same strength similar to Kai, the dance hopeful in Miss Juneteenth, who wants to break out of family tradition and individualize herself from family duty or Selah from Selah and the Spades who would do anything to win or Summer from Jinn who fights under the wings of religion. Celeste is a phenomenal part of this enriched movement, a championing movement that allows Black girls to value their power, to be a voice of reason to themselves and the others around them. Uniquely still, Celeste is the bold, self-assured Black girl who confidently wears a gay pride t-shirt, rides her bike in a cotillion ball gown, and asks her lover to dance.

Celeste joins a range of intriguing Black girls in film: Jinn’s Summer and Miss Juneteenth’s Kai (top), Pariah’s Alike and Selah and the Spades’ Selah (middle), Pure’s Celeste and Rafiki’s Ziki and Kena (bottom).

Behind Dee Rees and Wanuri Kahiu, Natalie Jasmine Harris also has a key queer story worth sharing in the Black women loving Black women rarity. 

In Pariah—the recently added Criterion Collection gem celebrating its ten year anniversary— and the critically acclaimed Kenyan Rafiki, there is a special fire in seeing queer Black women stand up for themselves, make clear that they are not heteronormative in the face of strict, sanctimonious principles and community validation. The most wonderful thing about Pure is that the short doesn’t employ the violence that happens to the Black woman for expressing her sexuality and the hope rests fully in the recently announced full-length version. Another hope is that the stars are able to return— Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew is an utterly charming star force on screen and her charismatic chemistry with humorously engaging Jacob Daniel Smith and the sharp Josca Moore make the film pleasingly believable. The dying Hollywood industry needs fresh, bold faces and exciting new stories in this remake era. Black women desperately crave seeing themselves tenderly depicted, leading rich, layered inclusive cinema especially in terms of identity— monoracial identity has been severely lacking.

Joy (Josca Moore) makes her interest in Celeste (Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew) quite clear on the darkly lit dance floor. 

Pure, a soft, gentle promise of an evolving Black queer film future, is told brilliantly by Harris, the DGA prize winner for Best East Coast African American Student Filmmaker. A burgeoning filmmaker slowly rising on the scene having also won the 2021 Gotham Projects Lab and the 2021 Outfest Screenwriting Lab, Harris is definitely the one to watch. She has a few other treats up her producing sleeve— for starters the first Black queer short for filmmaker Terrance Hayes called “Pritty: The Animation.” Thus, we should all look forward to anything with her name attached.

Celeste (Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew) riding her bike in full debutante attire. 

The lovely, poignant Pure is currently playing alongside some other incredible shorts at the Neon Movies in Dayton, Ohio in the Top Shorts program on October 11, 2021, 7:30pm and has other upcoming live/virtual dates all over the globe here.