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The medium is the message” – Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan, 1964.
McLuhan believed that media, like TV, radio, etc., have a bigger impact on their audience than the content they deliver. So, a TV screen has more influence than the shows or movies playing on it. This is a good base, but more can be added to it.
It is true that something like a movie screen signals to a population that something is worth seeing en masse. Here, though, is where the meaning behind a movie comes in. What is it that movie creators feel is so important for a large audience to watch together?
As we’ve built up more understanding on how people are influenced, it’s important to look at both the movie screen and the movie as equally impacting. This understanding helps us ask an important question: why did/do creators make Black actresses portray so many negative/overdone/misogynistic tropes?
Representation has slightly improved for Black women over the years. More of them are able to wear their natural hair on screen and get better roles (often from creating those roles themselves). However, there is still more to be done. While not every trope is negative, they largely make a character lack range and depth. One common theme is that many of these roles are filled with dark-skinned Black actresses—even younger (under-18) ones. This is just a list of tropes that you should be critical of while consuming content.
Black woman voice of reason
While not an official term, this trope is similar to the “magic negro.” The “Black woman voice of reason” is about a Black woman who is the involuntary counsellor in a movie or show. Sometimes she’s a side character who encourages the main character(s). Other times, she’s the main character and one of the side characters needs to be encouraged. The problem is that she’s never on the receiving end; she has to be the one to encourage herself.
Throwaway Black girlfriend
This character is too often a stepping stone for a main character (normally a white male). She exists to be his partner for a short amount of time before she leaves his life. Sometimes this ends up with the male character finding a new (white) girlfriend. On the graphic end, she ends up dying and that jump-starts something in him. This has overlap with the women in refrigerators trope.
Token Black friend
This friend has no goals of her own—she only exists to move the story along for the main character. When this happens with two Black actresses, the main character is often lighter than the token friend. The audience knows almost nothing about the character other than her name and her relationship to the main character. She can also double as the “Black woman voice of reason” in her friend’s eventful life.
Obnoxious Black characters
Obnoxious covers a lot of different areas: unnecessarily loud (mostly for comedic effect), overbearing or just plain mean. Again, these roles are populated with dark-skinned actresses.
Unnecessarily loud
She’s loud with a laugh track. The unnecessarily noisy character announces herself by yelling or just talking over everyone else. Whether she’s excited, sad or angry, all of those emotions just come out as loud.
Overbearing
Almost the opposite to the “token Black friend” and the “Black woman voice of reason,” the overbearing character is always in the main character’s business. She mostly annoys them by giving unsolicited opinions and constantly judging them.
Mean
This character never has any nice things to say. If she’s in a scene, she’s there to be mean to the main character. Her character acts as a foil to the protagonist. Much like the overbearing trope, she constantly judges and gives unsolicited opinions. She takes it further by outright insulting the main character—which can sometimes fuel the main character to seek revenge that furthers her own character development.
Disparaging tropes
These are the tropes that can draw from reality but take things to an extreme: overly sexual, constant slang or AAVE usage, ratchet and constantly struggling.
Overly Sexual
This is mostly the Jezebel trope. There is no depth to the character other than being desperate for male attention. Her character is always flirty and sometimes handsy. She often gets portrayed as not being able to have a long-term relationship because of her promiscuity.
Lots of slang or AAVE usage
This trope is often associated with a character that hasn’t gotten a high level of education. She speaks completely different to those around her—even if they are Black too. She often takes on other tropes like “Black woman voice of reason” or any one of the “obnoxious” tropes. This makes slang/AAVE seem as though it’s only for those who haven’t gone far academically.
Ratchet
Ratchet is somewhat of a reclaimed word. However, in this context it is in reference to being “trashy and disorderly…”. She’s often the “slang/AAVE” character who is loud and overbearing. It’s not part of who she is, it’s who she is. This doesn’t match up with the way that Black people have shifted the meaning where it’s part of a whole.
Constantly struggling
This character struggles in everything but mostly love and finances. This, too often, manifests in the Black single mother. She is looking for love after her “baby daddy” left her, but raising a child or children on her own becomes hard financially. This happens especially with dark-skinned characters. This subconsciously implies that her skin colour plays a role in her current situation (dishonourable mention: the welfare queen).
There are many more examples of these types of tropes. No matter how fictional this type of entertainment is, it still draws from the real world and affects it. If the only exposure some people get are negative tropes, they might come to expect them in the real world. Be more critical of the content you consume and, where you can, support creatives who don’t overly rely on these tropes.
