The Black Queer legacy of Cheryl Dunye’s ‘The Watermelon Woman’
Independent filmmaking boomed in the 1990s, welcoming movements like New Queer Cinema, a term coined by B. Ruby Rich to describe movies that focused on LGBTQ+ characters and storylines. This new wave of filmmaking gave rise to directors such as Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes and Cheryl Dunye, with the latter becoming the creator of the first feature film by a Black lesbian.
The Watermelon Woman was released in 1996 and is considered to be a landmark movie in the Queer cinematic canon. While the movie is now widely celebrated, with Duyne regularly showcasing the movie across the world, it faded into relative obscurity for some time despite initial reception being positive. The Watermelon Woman is one of the most important films of the ‘90s. Not only did Dunye make history as the first Black lesbian filmmaker, paving the way for greater visibility in such a white male-dominated industry, but the movie is also a potent statement on cinema’s troubling treatment of marginalised identities, with Dunye exploring the necessity of illuminating those who have been erased. Dunyne’s film demonstrates how vital visibility is for giving subordinated groups a chance to feel understood and recognised on the big screen and how this subsequently affects real-life experiences.
In the film, Dunyne plays a version of herself, a young video store worker who becomes fascinated with the identity of a Black actor in a fictional old Hollywood film credited only as ‘The Watermelon Woman’. Determined to uncover information about this actor who was relegated to stereotypical ‘mammy’ roles, Cheryl seeks out academics and interviews people like her mother. Meanwhile, she struggles to find peace with her own identity and relationships, with her Black lesbian friend Tamara disapproving of Cheryl’s choice to date a wealthy white woman, Diana.
Soon, Cheryl’s obsession with finding out the truth about ‘The Watermelon Woman’ becomes a conduit for her only journey towards understanding her place in society. Her step back into the past reflects the necessity for these stories to be told; “Sometimes you have to create your own history,” she explains. Dunyne destabilises the narrative by moving between fiction and a quasi-documentary style, with several different films interacting at various levels, with Cheryl’s own documentary on the mysterious ‘Watermelon Woman’ intersecting with Dunye’s film – the one we’re watching.
By using an unconventional structure, with fact and fiction moving seamlessly between each other, Dunye subverts hegemonic filmmaking techniques pioneered by white male filmmakers. In doing so, form and content interact more closely, and Dunye’s film feels wholly indebted to creating a new cinematic space, one where those who have been routinely excluded and silenced have the chance to be seen.
Talking to Vanity Fair, Dunye explained why she wanted to make the first Black lesbian feature film. “It was a whole group of people back at this moment in the mid to late 1980s and 1990s who were in a kind of cultural production world of making matter. All the children of Audre Lorde. We all were doing our work. I wanted to do narrative. I remember Go Fish, and a few other things were happening in the early ’90s with Christine Vachon and Good Machine and Killer Films. Nobody was doing Black lesbian features. I was like, why was everybody else was getting to tell a story? We need a Black lesbian feature film, this doesn’t make any sense. So I knew I was making that moment happen.”
Dunye’s film is vital viewing, tackling race, gender, sexuality and class with nuance, humour and charm. By moving between past and present and fact and fiction, Dunye highlights the importance of these hidden narratives being told. The film ultimately suggests that sometimes, we have to make up our own fictional tales and use our imaginations to move into the future.
