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COMMENTARY: Why ‘The Woman King’ Is Revolutionary

CHICAGO DEFENDER — Women characters becoming sword slashing or shotgun-toting badasses (i.e., Kill Bill and Foxy Brown) or rebels against their prescribed roles (i.e. Thelma & Louise) have often still registered as objects of the traditional gaze, rendered more exotic or erotic because they take on expected tropes of masculine toughness or step out of their domestic roles and temporarily seize the day. Women wielding weapons as well as or better than men can too easily be deemed as radical representations of women with little attention to context or the problematic association of violent toughness with heroic maleness on screen.
The post COMMENTARY: Why ‘The Woman King’ Is Revolutionary first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 years ago

September 19, 2022

Chicago Defender Staff

By: Dr. Stephane Dunn and Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftal | Chicago Defender

Back in a 1974 review of the Bond-like Cleopatra Jones movie starring Tamara Dobson, Feminist and former Ms. Magazine editor Margaret Sloan spoke volumes about Black female spectatorial desire. Damn, that felt good she wrote. After viewing The Woman King, we know exactly what she meant.

Cleopatra, a beautiful, kick-ass Black woman empowered by the U.S. government but grounded in her commitment to the Black community, was a Black Power era fantasy character. Over 40 years later, Marvel’s Afrofuturist Black Panther teased us with the cinematic possibilities of Wakanda’s supporting characters, a squad of royal Black women soldiers. The Woman King brings such women to the center and importantly marks both the evolution and realization of this on-screen representation of Black women and the cinematic evolution of its director, Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood with screenwriter Dana Stevens, The Woman King is inspired by the real-life Dahomey female warriors, the Agojie, who were formed in the 1700s and became legendary fighters. Viola Davis, who plays the fictional character General Nanisca – arguably a composite nod to various African warriors like Nzinga and Yaa Asantewaa, and an emerging young Agojie, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), lead an extraordinary cast including, Lashana Lynch as the enthralling Izogie and John Boyega as young King Ghezo.

The Woman King is not a biography or intended to be a neat history lesson on African women warriors and as such takes full creative license to reimagine the Agojie, threading together the historical realities of slavery, racial, gender, and class violence to fashion a world in which women have not only a female-centered, controlled safe space to live but literal physical and socio-political choice, voice, and visibility within the patriarchal structure of their immediate community and beyond.

Women characters becoming sword slashing or shotgun-toting badasses (i.e., Kill Bill and Foxy Brown) or rebels against their prescribed roles (i.e. Thelma & Louise) have often still registered as objects of the traditional gaze, rendered more exotic or erotic because they take on expected tropes of masculine toughness or step out of their domestic roles and temporarily seize the day. Women wielding weapons as well as or better than men can too easily be deemed as radical representations of women with little attention to context or the problematic association of violent toughness with heroic maleness on screen.

The Woman King has a copious amount of violence and blood; brutal warring between different African nations and between the Africans and Europeans involved in turbulent at turns reciprocal slave trafficking is one of the unfortunate realistic historical threads exploited in the film’s unapologetic anti-Atlantic slave trade and African involvement sentiment.

However, the spectacle of physical violence is in service to the dominant and most important critical representation in the film – women whose reaffirming collective sisterhood is a formidable force against patriarchal oppression and to an extent racial and class oppression. The women the Agojie rescue or take captive after the battle are given the power to choose a rare life and identity for themselves whereas men do not generally dictate their daily movements or can willfully them to be subservient wives, daughters, or servants that they can rape and beat at will.

To become Agojie is to fight for their male king and Dahomey, but as they remind each other, they fight for themselves and each other in service to their own double-edged quest for freedom and power as women and Dahomey people. This is not pretty work, women soldiering in battle with and against men. This is why the rare movie depiction of Black women in the community within the Agojie compound registers so magnificently.

Here neither men’s gaze nor presence is allowed. Here women dance, train, and braid each other’s hair, tend tenderly to one another’s wounds, strategize, debate respectfully, learn to transcend ethnic differences, and grow their sense of individual and collective empowerment.

The French slavers call them “Amazons” but this dismissive historical tag holds no weight in The Woman King. The women in the film hold the controlling narrative point of view and declare themselves, “Agojie” and “sisters” and there is the possibility of a ‘Woman King’.

Gina Price-Bythewood’s Black romantic classic, Love and Basketball (2000) marked the debut of its promising director. Two Black leads (portrayed by Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps) come to bond over their passion for playing basketball and later fall in love. We loved Prince-Bythewood’s exploration of a Black woman’s uneasy navigation of her professional ambition and the social gender expectations as her traditional mother’s daughter and boyfriend’s girl. And yet, it settled uneasily. Her passion and ambition for basketball rises, falls and rises again with the twists and turns of her romantic relationship until she’s happily settled in domestic life and in the WNBA.

Later, in Price-Bythewood’s under-rated Beyond the Lights (2014), the exploration of women’s difficulties choosing and defining their paths and self-identity continues with a young pop singer (Gugu Mbatha-raw) struggling to navigate the expectations of her manager mother and pop stardom; a romance with a regular good guy (Nate Parker) helps her to ultimately step into the music and self-representation she truly desires.

In real life, the Agojie were devastated by Dahomey’s ongoing conflicts – wars with other African nations and participation in and against the slave trade with the Europeans – becoming an exhibition for the Western gaze and historical record.

But The Woman King, thank you very much, is a movie. Gina Prince-Bythewood directs her fullest, most satisfying representation of Black women’s quest for autonomy and actualization. The Woman King boldly unsettles the traditional spectacle of patriarchy and not because the women fight with such dazzling physical might and skill with their bodies or rope and machete in hand, but because the most radical thing is that the love, intimacy, and sisterhood between women, the collective power of this, sits boldly at the center of The Woman King. In American popular film, this is revolutionary.

Words by: Dr. Stephane Dunn and Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftal

Dr. Stephane Dunn, PhD, MA, MFA is a writer, filmmaker, professor, and cultural critic and author of Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (2008), Chicago ’66 (2020) Finish Line/Tirota Social Impact Screenplay winner) & the novel Snitchers (2022). She is chair of the Morehouse Cinema, Television & Emerging Media Studies (CTEMS) department. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including, The Atlantic, Vogue, Ms. magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, and TheRoot.com, among others

@DrStephaneDunn

stephanedunn_writes

Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftal is Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and the Founder and Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center, at Spelman College. Sheftall published the first anthology on Black women’s literature, Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (Doubleday, 1979), with Roseann P. Bell and Bettye Parker Smith; Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995); Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality (Indiana University Press, 2001) and (with Johnnetta Betsch Cole Gender Talk: The Struggle for Equality in African American Communities,
@DrGuySheftall

The post Why ‘The Woman King’ Is Revolutionary appeared first on Chicago Defender.

The post COMMENTARY: Why ‘The Woman King’ Is Revolutionary first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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Black Feminist Movement Mobilizes in Response to National Threats

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — More than 500 Black feminists will convene in New Orleans from June 5 through 7 for what organizers are calling the largest Black feminist gathering in the United States.

Published

1 week ago

May 30, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

More than 500 Black feminists will convene in New Orleans from June 5 through 7 for what organizers are calling the largest Black feminist gathering in the United States. The event, led by the organization Black Feminist Future, is headlined by activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis. Paris Hatcher, executive director of Black Feminist Future, joined Black Press USA’s Let It Be Known to outline the mission and urgency behind the gathering, titled “Get Free.” “This is not just a conference to dress up and have a good time,” Hatcher said. “We’re building power to address the conditions that are putting our lives at risk—whether that’s policing, reproductive injustice, or economic inequality.” Hatcher pointed to issues such as rising evictions among Black families, the rollback of bodily autonomy laws, and the high cost of living as key drivers of the event’s agenda. “Our communities are facing premature death,” she said.

Workshops and plenaries will focus on direct action, policy advocacy, and practical organizing skills. Attendees will participate in training sessions that include how to resist evictions, organize around immigration enforcement, and disrupt systemic policies contributing to poverty and incarceration. “This is about fighting back,” Hatcher said. “We’re not conceding anything.” Hatcher addressed the persistent misconceptions about Black feminism, including the idea that it is a movement against men or families. “Black feminism is not a rejection of men,” she said. “It’s a rejection of patriarchy. Black men must be part of this struggle because patriarchy harms them too.” She also responded to claims that organizing around Black women’s issues weakens broader coalitions. “We don’t live single-issue lives,” Hatcher said. “Our blueprint is one that lifts all Black people.”

The conference will not be streamed virtually, but recaps and updates will be posted daily on Black Feminist Future’s YouTube channel and Instagram account. The event includes performances by Tank and the Bangas and honors longtime activists including Billy Avery, Erica Huggins, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. When asked how Black feminism helps families, Hatcher said the real threat to family stability is systemic oppression. “If we want to talk about strong Black families, we have to talk about mass incarceration, the income gap, and the systems that tear our families apart,” Hatcher said. “Black feminism gives us the tools to build and sustain healthy families—not just survive but thrive.”

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Hoover’s Commutation Divides Chicago as State Sentence Remains

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Hoover was convicted of murder and running a criminal enterprise. Although some supporters describe him as a political prisoner, the legal and public safety concerns associated with his name remain substantial.

Published

1 week ago

May 29, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

The federal sentence for Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover has been commuted, but he remains incarcerated under a 200-year state sentence in Illinois. The decision by Donald Trump to reduce Hoover’s federal time has reignited longstanding debates over his legacy and whether rehabilitation or continued punishment is warranted. The commutation drew immediate public attention after music executive Jay Prince and artist Chance the Rapper publicly praised Trump’s decision. “I’m glad that Larry Hoover is home,” said Chance the Rapper. “He was a political prisoner set up by the federal government. He created Chicago Votes, mobilized our people, and was targeted for that.”

But Hoover, the founder of the Gangster Disciples, is not home—not yet. Now in federal custody at the Florence Supermax in Colorado, Hoover was convicted of murder and running a criminal enterprise. Although some supporters describe him as a political prisoner, the legal and public safety concerns associated with his name remain substantial. “There is a divide in the Black community here,” said Chicago journalist Jason Palmer during an appearance on the Let It Be Known morning program. “Some view Hoover as someone who brought structure and leadership. Others remember the violence that came with his organization.” Palmer explained that while Hoover’s gang originally formed for protection, it grew into a criminal network responsible for extensive harm in Chicago. He also noted that Hoover continued to run his organization from state prison using coded messages passed through visitors, prompting his transfer to federal custody.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is widely considered a potential 2028 presidential contender, has not issued a statement. Palmer suggested that silence is strategic. “Releasing Hoover would create enormous political consequences,” Palmer said. “The governor’s in a difficult spot—he either resists pressure from supporters or risks national backlash if he acts.” According to Palmer, Hoover’s federal commutation does not make him a free man. “The federal sentence may be commuted, but he still has a 200-year state sentence,” he said. “And Illinois officials have already made it clear they don’t want to house him in state facilities again. They prefer he remains in federal custody, just somewhere outside of Colorado.”

Palmer also raised concerns about what Hoover’s case could signal for others. “When R. Kelly was convicted federally, state prosecutors in Illinois and Minnesota dropped their charges. If a president can commute federal sentences based on public pressure or celebrity support, others like R. Kelly or Sean Combs could be next,” Palmer said. “Meanwhile, there are thousands of incarcerated people without fame or access to public platforms who will never get that consideration.” “There are people who are not here today because of the violence connected to these organizations,” Palmer said. “That has to be part of this conversation.”

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WATCH: Five Years After George Floyd: Full Panel Discussion | Tracey’s Keepin’ It Real | Live Podcast Event

Join us as we return to the city where it happened and speak with a voice from the heart of the community – Tracey Williams-Dillard, CEO/Publisher of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 28, 2025

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=OsNLWTz6jU0&feature=oembed

May 25, 2020. The world stopped and watched as a life was taken.

But what has happened since?

Join us as we return to the city where it happened and speak with a voice from the heart of the community – Tracey Williams-Dillard, CEO/Publisher of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

She shares reflections, insights, and the story of a community forever changed. What has a year truly meant, and where do we go from here?

This is more than just a date; it’s a moment in history. See what one leader in the Black press has to say about it.

Recorded live at UROC in Minneapolis, this powerful discussion features:

Panelists: