How “Love & Basketball” Deconstructs Black Stereotypes

Featured Imaged: Prince-Bythewood, Gina. “Love & Basketball.” © New Line Cinema, 2000.

By: Hannah Brewer

Love & Basketball, written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, speaks on the love affair of the main characters Quincy, played by Omar Epps, and Monica, played by Sanaa Lathan, whose struggles stem from the generalization and the stereotypes embedded in the media culture. While this post will briefly mention the portrayal and stereotypes of the black men in the film, the focus will strive to depict and understand the relationship between gender and racial stereotypes within the women of the film. The chapter, “Race, Ethnicity, and Film” in the book Film Studies, tells how representing minorities is a burden that has fallen onto the independent film. Because this leads to little representation for people of color, there becomes a generalization or stereotype that both minorities and the majority begin to identify or relate minorites to said stereotypes. Eugene Wong describes stereotype as, “a form of representation in film that produces non-white cultures and characters as static and one-dimensional.” While this film works to push against many racial stereotypes based on gender, the film still works within the romance framework, meaning that the film adresses racial stereotypes, but struggles to break away from heteronormative gendered binaries that are often shown in films. (where to put the two types of black females that the chapter mentions)

Donald Bogle, in his article “Black Beginnings: from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Birth of a Nation,” speaks about the early representations of black people in films, two being the earliest representations of black women. These ideas become crucial to understanding the treatment and representation of black women in cinema today. The first mention is that of “the tragic mulatto.” This term refers to a character who is bi-racial, or half white and half black. This character represents a gap in the divide between the ideas of the “other,” meaning these representations begins to show there are racial issues that are outside of white issues.  White audience members are able to sympathize with these characters because of their mixed race. However, because they have, “a drop of black blood,” they are never able to get their happy ending.

Further, described by YouTuber MelinaPendulum, because of their light-skinned appearance, they created a beauty ideal that would affect roles for black women even today. Because light skinned women were able to create this bridge between racial identities, this also caused people to see light-skinned women as innocent and more beautiful because they didn’t have all of the “harsh” features of darker skinned women. This led to people oversexualizing and identifying lighter skinned women as more beautiful and exotic, including those women who were fully black. And because of this, when roles are offered to black women, the production company will most likely choose the black woman who appears to be light-skinned.  

The next character Bogle speaks on is that of “the mammy.” This character is described as a very large woman who is aggressive and typically loud. She can further be depicted as “cantankerous,” or bad tampered or argumentative. This character has another subset, who is typically less aggressive called, “Aunt Jemima.” This character is similar to “the mammy,” however, she is typically nicer in her demeanor and she is content in her place or never causes issues. The way in which these two characters are similar is that they are never sexualized and they are often loyal motherly figures, but they are nothing beyond their support for white people.

Motherly Advice

Two of the first representations of females in the film are of the mothers Camille Wright, Monica’s mother, and Nona McCall, Quincy’s mother. These two women fall into the category of the desexualized loyal figure. The first example is Camille Wright where throughout the film we see her character fighting tooth and nail with her daughter Monica. Her lifestyle is very traditional, and she plays the perfect house-wife where she cooks and cleans the house and takes good care of her husband and children. We see some resentment from Lathan’s character, Monica, where she disassociates herself from her mother in order to avoid what she sees as a “caterer” to a man’s needs. Monica describes her mother as passive and unwilling to stand up to herself in order to provide for others, similar to the idea of the “Aunt Jemima.” Further in the scene where Monica and Camille discuss their problems, Camille explains how she had to let go of her dreams to take care of her family. This particular speech fits perfectly into the idea of the “desexualized, loyal figure,” due to Camille having to give up her dreams and focus on making life easier for her husband and children.

https://youtu.be/pgSozH4fZxc

The second character, Nona McCall, Quincy’s mother, is a character who struggles with both sides of the female character. In the beginning of the film, Nona is very oversexualized. We can see the difference between the mothers in the first interaction they have together. Nona is dressed in a more modern and sleeker fashion and her language is more causal, whereas Camille is dressed more modestly, and her speech is more precise. Further we can see the sexualization of her character a little earlier during her interaction with her husband, Zeke McCall. Zeke and Nona’s relationship begins in a very flirtatious and explicit manner, we can see this from Zeke licking icing off Nona’s finger to Quincy listening to his parents having an intimate moment later that night. However, later in the film, we can see how her position has shifted to a more desexualized female. Zeke and Nona start to develop issues after Zeke has retired from the NBA. Generalizations of the black man being “sexually aggressive,” and disloyal to the family start to appear within Zeke’s character. Nona’s character, therefore, starts to be subjected more towards the loyal motherly figure, like Camille. We see that as Nona gets older and becomes more about the familial lifestyle, Zeke moves towards the other category of the oversexualization of black females. 

Look at Me

The language used to describe the young black females throughout the film is that of disgust and corruption. Black females, as described earlier by Bogle, have this underlying association with sexual deviance and harshness. With the exception of Monica, Camille, and Nona, most of the black females in the film are associated with some type of sexual promiscuity regardless if there was any mention of sexual activity taking place. This was emphasized around the male characters in the film, where the female bodies were being used as a tool to allure the men. Specifically, in regard to Quincy, the language used by Monica, Nona, and even Camille suggests that any women, especially black women, who showed interest in him were “whores.” It was even suggested at one point the only way Quincy could catch Monica’s attention was to express interest in another female who looked even slightly “loose.” Yet, the blame remained on the women and there was almost no responsibility from the men in the movie using women for their own personal gain or as a learning experience.

Struggle of Self

Monica Wright, the female lead in the film, from the beginning represents the idea of a conflicting sense of self and her ability to identify with the films idea of femininity. While she seems to push back against there stereotypical females in the film, we can see her struggle to find her identity within the framework of her relationship, as well as her personal needs. As mentioned before, Monica disassociates herself from her mother’s identification of the loyal desexualized housewife. She therefore exaggerates her identity to the desexualized loyal figure. This can be seen through her relationship with Quincy, where in the beginning they were just friends and she would help other women to date him. Then as the film progresses, Monica becomes tired of these women throwing themselves at Quincy as she begins to express interest in him. She remains modest, as pictured below, as she allows herself to connect to a more feminine look.

Lastly, Laura Mulvey offers an understanding for the general progression of most films being reliant on the males and the women being there to help with their development. However, we see this film working together to show these two characters growing individually and simultaneously. After Monica and Quincy start dating, we can see her identity struggling within the framework of a relationship. In the beginning of their relationship, we see that Monica represents a castration threat towards Quincy due to having her own agenda and challenging his views. (need more here) Towards the end of the movie, the audience can see the character developments of both characters as they allow themselves to accept their desires while pushing back on the stereotypical gender binaries. In the final scene, we see that Monica follows her dreams to play in the WNBA, while Quincy sits on the sidelines with the kids and cheers her on. This shows that Monica was able to create her own since of identity that worked within herself and the relationships she had. She was able to create her own definition of femininity and what that looked like for herself as a mother and a wife. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4QQlLAtI78

Works Cited

Bogle, Donald. “Black Beginnings: from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Birth of a Nation.” Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Film, 1973.

“Donald Bogle.” IMDb, IMDb.com, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0091820/bio.

“Gina Prince-Bythewood.” IMDb, IMDb.com, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0697656/.

“Heteronormativity.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronormativity.

MelinaPendulum. “THE TRAGIC MULATTO: BLACK HISTORY MONTH VDEO #1.” YouTube, 5 Feb 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vMHsUlWIM.

Mulvey, Laura. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946).” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, Edited by Sue Thornham, New York Univ. Press, 1999, pp, 122-130.

Prince-Bythewood, Gina. “Love & Basketball.” New Line Cinema, 2000. 

Wiegman, Robyn. “Race, Ethnicity, and Film.” Film Studies: Critical Approaches, edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000, pp. 156-166.