Ousmane sembene directed the 1966 film, The Black Girl. It is the story of Diouana, an 18-year-old Senegalese female who works as a nurse for a French family in Dakar (Langford13). She is happy to play in the garden with white children, and walk along the streets with them. The French family appears happy to be in Africa with their local friends. However, after Senegalese independence, the family decides to go back to France to bring the girl from Africa as a domestic worker.
In fact, Diouanna has made their Cote d’Azur apartment more spacious since Diouanna’s arrival. This means that she will be expected to perform heavier domestic chores such as cooking for guests or other employers and staying home during the day. Although her relationship with her staff was very harmonious in Dakar (Parascandola 367), their relationship with each other has become difficult and conflictual. Diouana struggles to understand her female employer. They had a great time together, but now Diouana’s identity as an African-American woman is being suppressed daily. Employers praise her exoticism and Diouana feels more marginalized. Diouana ends up taking her own life because of the deep feeling of alienation. After the film ends, Diouana’s male employer brings the corpse of the girl back home to her village. The body is now lifeless and can only witness the tragic end of Senegal’s hopes for a better future.
Diouana’s story of her heartbreak brings the topic of slavery for migrant workers to the forefront. This is a subject that is frequently discussed in academia, as well as in books, movies, and newspapers. Many western middle-class houses have had migrant woman take care of and maintain cleanliness. This has brought attention to the issue for gender and migration researchers (Ba, Saer Maty).
These female migrant worker experiences are a reflection of the globalization issue in care. The functioning of this system has been interjectionally determined by gender, race ethnicity, class, and age. Sembene’s story is more. She tells a story that requires more inquiry about how domestic work experiences are represented.
The movie shows that the French family’s house in France Riviera, where they live with their maiden, is used as a place where the colonial power structures are re-enacted every day. Diouana is accompanied by the couple’s collection African masks. It is just another trophy in their neocolonial conquest. Sembene utilized a dual narrative structure.
The film gives the audience two narratives that conflict: the family’s discussions of Africa colonialism and Africa, which are often ignored and hush Diouana, as well as the internal monologue Diouana. Sembene believes the French are capable of keeping most of their colonial powers by changing the voices of post-colonial people and women. Sembene opted for Diouana as the alternative. This allowed Sembene to tell the story about one typical French family within the contexts postcolonial efforts. This film was a voice for a particular subjectivity and a different way of telling stories.
Sembene’s film is filled with themes of disappointment, alienation, displacement, and post-independence Senegal. Diouana is a relatively unsecure person in traditional society. Yet, she is set for greater expectations and even greater disappointments. When Diouana says that she will never be another slave again, it is clear that she sees herself as a slave.
The white French couple is, however, shown to be disoriented and lacking the traditional meanings that gave their lives meaning. Madame still has the power to select her maidens from other women in Dakar. However, Madame seems disinterested in her children’s care and concerned about her husband, Diouana.
Colonialism, their first power source, has disappeared, leaving behind uncertainty and turmoil. They don’t understand why Diouana is unhappy, or why she wants to die. They are unable to understand why she would give Madame the mask that she had given her first as a token and of friendship. The cinema is now geared towards capturing historical changes in progress. The film can be read as a narrative about colonizers-colonized natives and colonizers-colonized traditional-modern peoples. But this overlooks the way that his films portray each pole.
The film does not ignore the fact that native-foreigner relationships are often repressed. Diouana is the first to be portrayed as a native-foreigner protagonist. The story examines the origins of native-foreigner jobs in western households. It also reveals the ways it is represented and functions. The film examines colonialism’s influence on domestic work by foreigners today.
It is important to look back in order to understand what is happening. Because domestic work is different from other jobs, it should be noted.
Diouana’s silence is more than a language barrier. It is a result of exile. The film’s female mutedness functions semiotically. One scene after another, it makes a case against the gender exploitation of women in postcolonial settings. The other characters observe that she is silent and attribute this to her poor French comprehension, not her refusal to speak. The film is made with a black-and-white film stock, simple photography, slow-paced editing and no concessions to its audience.
Angrily, the film connects with its viewers in Diouana’s pain. These kinds of stories rarely feature a recasting or highlighting of women’s voices and silences in the context of political struggle. Her inability to speak her mind is disabling, even though her silence has become more powerful. Diouana is sent a letter by her mother, in which she criticizes her for failing to send money home.
Monsieur reads it to her. He writes the letter himself after she fails to provide any words. She decides she is going to destroy the mother’s letter, which was likely written by someone else for her, and other parts of her room.
Diouana’s earlier photo of Diouana mopping while wearing heels, earrings, and shoes demonstrates the contrast between the things she believed she was coming to France for, which is to attend the family’s kids and explore France as a new place with many possibilities. While she yearns for status items like shoes and pretty dresses that will make Dakar friends, family, and acquaintances jealous, it begins to dawn on Diouana that she is a status symbols for her white patrons. A sign that clearly indicates their stay in Senegal.
One of their guests forces her into a first kiss with him because he’d never before sex with a black woman. They complain that Africans have become less natural because of their independence, which she reveals by showing her anger. She persists in frustration, and eventually, she gives up on France.
The tone of her story indicates that she committed suicide. Monsieur returns her possessions to Diouana’s mother, but she refuses to pay the money. The film’s most striking theme is its distant tone. The film is written in journalistic prose that is witty, objective and journalistic. It adopts a grave perspective as well as a subjective one.
The movie then presents the viewers with a steady stream if close-ups. Diouana’s expressive facial expressions to the white French family and her intractable visage make the analogy to the indigenous mask that she originally gave Madame.
Monsieur discovers that he is the object of attention in Dakar’s final scenes. After learning his identity, the whole town stares at Monsieur with contempt. The boy in the mask follows Monsieur along the edge of town, apparently holding the mask above his own. Monsieur’s spell has been broken, as France did for Diouana. But, Monsieur can still see the power of the mask in the presentation Africa is making in the present.
The film makes Africans subjects, not passive objects, from a viewer perspective. Monsieur is unable to know the truth of what has been said about Monsieur. In fact, Monsieur is objectified by the formal title that refers only to him. However, the future audience for the film is invested in the Dakarians, especially the boy in the mask. He is independent and free of France.
Although Diouana isn’t shown to be politically aware, she is well-informed that colonialism ended with little change in the French attitude. When she comments, her voice reveals her anger at being treated like a slave. It is hard for her to feel free. She is unable to bear it any longer and removes her mask. Then she packs her suitcase carefully and ends up drowning in the tub. Although Diouana’s story can be a moving one and may help to understand the relationship between politics and Senegal, the films in which Sembene’s female characters speak out in an active and their own language are more insightful.
Sembene’s films are often regarded as an example of African filmmaking. They have roots in early cinema traditions around the world, but also in postcolonial analysis of racism and identity after the fall of French rule (Fernandez 317). Post-colonial times brought about a thorough examination of power relations in theatre and film. These concerns are important in understanding transitional cinemas. They continue to be relevant in analysing how power imbalances were negotiated with stories of people who cross borders.
Postcoloniality is an important concept that allows for elaboration in order to show colonial legacies through a globalized system of commodification and the symbols and values they accompany. The film shows continuity between colonization, globalization and the past.
The film almost seems to show the privilege enjoyed by colonial Europeans after colonial rule. However, it also shows residual self-Europeanisation by the subjects after colonial rule ends. This preserves Frenchness and the symbol France as a promised land. Elegant and prosper.
This film can teach viewers about colonialism’s harmful effects and show Africans how to resist imperialism. Black Girl can also be viewed as an educational tool. It teaches the fundamentally degrading effects that colonial slavery accompanied with forced isolation from one’s culture and language.
