The Modern Depiction of the Mammy Character in Get Out
/“The maternal instincts made her the most domesticated and dutiful slave; she embodied the archetype of the protector. Although she was a slave, the Mammy became the prototype of domesticity; she would later become everything the White woman wanted…"(Sewell, 2012)
The Mammy and Her Twin: The “Strong Black Woman” & The Adolescent Reception in Get Out
In the United States, Black women have been assumed to represent a type of “deviant womanhood” in regards to both physical and psychological characteristics (Townsend Gilkes 2001). While White women have fought against assumptions of their passivity and weakness, Black women have also had to contend with the myth of the “strong Black woman”. Black women exude this strength by “struggling to make a way outta no way” and “single-handedly raises her children and works multiple jobs to support her family (Thompson 1994). However, this myth can be thought as a historically complex conception derived from the “Mammy” archetype of the 1800’s. The mammy, in particular, was supposed to appeal like a natural, normal, and inevitable part of everyday life. The maternal instincts made her the most domesticated and dutiful slave; she embodied the archetype of the protector (Sewell, 2012). African-American women are struggling with this common trope of the strong Black female in cinematic images. According to Angela Mitchell and Kennise Herring (1998), “If there is one prevailing image we have of ourselves, it is that we can survive anything.” The characteristics of fortitude and caretaking of the black male that are ascribed images of Black women today can suggest that the ‘strong black woman” myth is simply a modern example of the Mammy Character. Both stereotypes are consistent in the belief that the Black woman struggles and suffers for those that she loves; and you are able to observe this notion within the 2017 film, Get Out.
Get Out is a new featured film produced by Jordan Peele, released on February 24th, 2017 during what was perceived as the “busiest” Black History Month. The Black boy Joy and Black Girl Magic intensified as Beyoncé gave birth to her twins. Nevertheless, Get Out garnered just as much attention. The film is about Chris Washington, a Black photographer played by Daniel Kaluuya and his White girlfriend, Rose Armitage, played by Allison Williams, who take a whimsical “meet the parents” trip upstate to meet Rose’s wealthy, traditional family who “would have voted for Obama a third time if they could have”. Although, Rose reassures Chris that her parents do not “care about his race”, Chris grows skeptical of the Armitage’s household within the first couple of minutes of arriving. The first symbolic conversation arises when Rose’s father reveals his disgust with “deer” that are ruining neighborhoods due to their inability to assimilate into society. A tragic reality is that Black men’s lives have been pathologies and labeled as “innately incapacitated, violent/criminal, exotic/strange and constantly seeking external validation” (Boyd & Allen 1996; Jackson 1997; Orbe, 1998). This foreshadows the appropriation of black bodies by the Armitage’s is justified as being for the greater good, or in other words, service to the community.
Throughout the movie, the audience is introduced to other Black characters in the film; Walter, the family’s groundskeeper, Logan, a party guest’s husband, and the housekeeper, Georgina, who, we later realize, are all in the sunken place and have been taken over by the Armitage elders. I found all of these characters to have a significant amount of depth. However, the way that this movie portrayed black womanhood was particularly intriguing. Through the lack of Black female characters present in the film, the movie seems to reemphasize society’s ability to overlook or devalue Black women. Nevertheless, with conviction, Georgina’s role seeks to expose their strength. The Armitage’s appropriation procedure, we are told, has a higher success rate if the patient understands and complies, but Georgina does not want to submit, nor comply, to this operation and thus is observed fighting to break through the sunken place throughout the film. The scenes discussed expose Georgina’s plight to break free of bondage, “struggle singlehandedly”, in order to provide assistance to protect Chris.
The scene portrayed at the beginning of the movie in which Georgina is pouring Chris a glass of sweet tea, is the first time Georgina is witnessed trying to fight through the sunken place. As Georgina is pouring the tea in Chris’ glass, she flinches and goes into a trance as if she is fighting an internal battle. Her daze is interrupted by the tapping of Ms. Armitage’s glass and is told to go lay down because she is also aware that Georgina’s consciousness is fighting. Regardless of the failure to emerge, her facial expression says it all and the audience is left speculating the status of Georgina’s conscious status. The same instance occurs in the bedroom when Chris finds his phone unplugged and Georgina confronts him to apologize. As Chris mentions his discomfort around “too many white people”, Georgina repeats “no, no, no, no, no” as she smiles and cries simultaneously. This emotionally perplexing scene reinforces this battle that Georgina constantly fights with Grandma Armitage.
The audience becomes knowledgeable of the importance of light as a trigger to help the captives emerge from their sleep. However, Georgina is the only one who does not need to “see the light” in order to emerge from the sunken place. Her consciousness breaks through without an external trigger. She also seems to have the greatest internal struggle during the times that she would be in close proximity to Chris, which reinforces the idea that Black women always fight harder to protect Black men. She did not have to fight her consciousness; she could have just allowed Chris to fall prey. This black superwoman withstands “adversity for the sake of her own family or community”, which in this case is Chris.
The analysis of Georgina exposes her to be similar to the Mammy caricature. Adolescents would not be as keen on picking up these innuendos. This being said, they could be able to interpret it the way I did, but that is contingent upon their own personal experiences and also their awareness and exposure to social and racial implications. Developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner, the Ecological systems theory provides an approach to understanding how children’s development is affected by their social relationships and the world around them. According to this scholar, a person’s development is affected by five different levels; the microsystem, mesosystem, exo system, macro system and the chronosystem. An adolescent’s ability to understand this movie would stem from the ways they interact in all of these systems. Their level of understanding innuendos would depend on their self-perception of and within their own cultural environment. Growing up in the United States, socioeconomics and racial realities are the foundations of systematic inequality.
Mass media plays a significant role in the formation of identity of adolescents. Therefore it is extremely important for society to be aware of the images that are displayed. According to Strasburger, “Children and adolescents spend more time with media than they do in any other activity except for sleeping”. These influences can be direct or indirect on the cognitive process in adolescents. This particular movie would be extremely difficult for adolescents to digest without a parent to describe to them the subtle innuendos of race included in the film. Adolescents would most likely leave with a superficial understanding of the film.
This super human “strength” that Black women are expected to have can be problematic. The constant Mystification gives Black women a supernatural quality. According to Beauboeuf-Lafontant (2003), the Black woman represents a deviant, not fully human womanhood, reinforcing this idea that they are supernatural beings. As a result, the “strong Black woman” archetype can be seen just as weak and problematic as the historical Mammy character types. Get Out does an amazing job of revealing the pseudo-progress of black women in film, whether intentionally or fortuitously.
*BibliographyOmitted
