Gendered representations of Africans in the French Hexagon: An Analysis of La Noire de... by Ousmane Sembene and Med Hondo's Soleil O

Gender and Representation Series

Gendered representations of Africans in the French Hexagon: An Analysis of La Noire de... by Ousmane Sembene and Med Hondo's Soleil O by Beti Ellerson

An analysis of Ousmane Sembene's La Noire de… and Med Hondo's Soleil O provides a gendered discourse on the psycho-social experiences of the protagonists of the respective films, a woman, Diouana in La Noire de... and the unnamed man in Soleil O. Hence, entering into the complex environments of their individual journey in France and the manner in which they interiorize and exteriorize their alienation and oppression as well as the strategies to free themselves within these vexed spaces. Released in 1966 and 1970 respectively, the films are set during the waning stage of colonial rule in Africa, embodying a gendered perspective of alienation and displacement at a time when African countries were only beginning to shed its political, social and cultural manifestations. The inner dialogue of both characters reveals the emotional upheaval caused by the colonial language and the physical presence of the black body in the French environment. Their anger, anguish and confusion reveals the colonial violence and the concomitant rage of the colonized. The two characters have quasi opposing behavior when dealing with their circumstance. And while this analysis does not suggest that their response is based on gender, it does offer insights into the manner in which two different filmmakers, both men, visualize a woman's and a man's divergent experiences in France, having arrived there for very different reasons.

In La Noire de…, the space--small and restricted--is confined to the apartment of Diouana's employers, the French couple; while the protagonist of Soleil O has access to many environments. He roams about the French spheres with much liberty. He wanders into the homes of the French residents, the courtyards, cafes, restaurants, offices and country houses. He is also able to exteriorize his rage and confusion in large outdoor surroundings such as in the woods, and along the railroad tracks. Diouana's spatial environment is established in the beginning sequence, when she arrives from Senegal to the French couple's apartment on the French Riviera. "Madame" guides her to the room that she will occupy, she introduces her to the Cote d'Azur through the window. From there they go to the kitchen. A cut to the bathroom begins the second sequence. Diouana's spatial environment consists of the kitchen, bathroom and her bedroom, while her access to France is only through the window view to the outside world.

These spaces are exploited cinematically in order to interpret the psycho-spatial interaction of the characters. Diouna's insights into French space derives from her living with a French family while the Soleil O figure gains access to intimate French settings through Hondo's focus from his point of view. He is allowed to enter these spaces as a spectator, while the observed remain unaware. The small, confining space describes the monotony and interiority of Diouana's psychological options to express her emotions and feelings. The relative fixity of the camera exacerbates the sense of ennui and internalized space. Sound is limited to the voices in conversation, the inner voice of Diouna, and the four types of music which set the rhythm and pace, as well as define the cultural context of the milieu. The pacing of Soleil O is often quick and hurried, sometimes frenzied; interpreting an angst and an agitated anger, despair, confusion and frustration. The protagonist's inner voice through voice-off, reveals urgency: he breathes heavily, he speaks quickly. At the film's end, he is enraged: shrieking cries, running frenetically to the thumping of the background audio. The camera cuts are frequent, interpreting his movements that search back and forth, sometimes aimlessly.

Both Sembene and Hondo use this spatial focus and pacing as a means to describe the emotional response to the protagonists' oppressive environment. Diouana's anger, humiliation and rage are expressed interiorly in much the same way as the composition of her space. In Soleil O, the character communicates his anger outwardly in an exterior space through the rage and indignation that he is able to express in an explosive manner.

In contrasting ways the two personages gradually experience disappointment, feeling duped by the failed expectations of their journey to France. The Soleil O character has been educated in the language and thoughts of the European. He has been taught to believe that he is equal and that he has an equal chance to work as his European counterpart. He intellectualizes his deception, his attitude toward France stems from his expectations that he has come to his metropolitan home: "Sweet France, I've come to you, I've come home." Similarly Diouana expresses her attitude toward France with excitement. While still in Senegal, she is elated when she finds a job: "I found a job, I found a job working for the whites." As she muses about her journey to France, she skips around joyfully singing: "I'm going to France, to France, to France!" Both characters see France as a journey to be made. Diouana's expectations of France derive from her direct experience with her employers while in Senegal; the Soleil O character learns through books, the French language, and Christianity: "One day I began to study your graphs and thoughts and speak Shakespeare and Rousseau."

The Soleil O character reads the job ads for accountant in the newspaper, going from place to place inquiring about the position, his mastery of the French-language enables him to challenge his prospective employers' rejection: "I know there is no discrimination in the land of liberty. I'm at home, we're equal. They taught me in school." On the other hand Diouana circulates mutely in the French-defined spaces of Dakar, silently presenting herself after a knock on the door, only for it to be slammed in her face. She rings the bell at the gate, a guard dog barks ferociously, she leaves quietly in despair. Her off-voice reveals that she has "gone up and down in the apartment buildings, and everywhere it is the same, no one wants a maid." While the Soleil O protagonist uses the formal job announcement system in his search for employment. Diouana hears about the "maid market" where Senegalese women sit in a designated area waiting for a white woman searching for a maid to pass by: "the sun set several times and as the others did, I came every morning and stayed until the evening."

Diouana's daydreams are in the form of muses, of flashbacks to Dakar, relating past events that lead to her journey to France. She feels increasingly isolated, imprisoned, she becomes despondent. The dreams of the Soleil O protagonist take him back to a prior scene at the beginning sequence of the film, a melange of metaphors linking symbolisms, of uniform, religion, country and culture. He wakes in a sweat, panting uncontrollably. He tears through the mattress, overturns the bed, leaving the room in disarray. He rushes through the streets. He runs along the tracks, he repeats over and over: Africa, Africa, Africa! He runs faster, as screams torment him and pounding sounds pressure him to find a release.

Diouana's only link to Africa is the mask that she presented as a gift to her employers while still in Dakar. She takes it from the wall, and again muses about Dakar. Her ultimate refusal and resistance comes when "Madame" attempts to reclaim the mask. Diouana refuses. In her final break with the job and all its trappings, she refuses the money that "Monsieur" counts out to her. Falling to her knees, she sobs silently. In the finally encounter in French space for the Soleil O character, he witnesses a family lunching outside at their country home, as the children throw food at each other and play on top of the table. He walks away, then starts to run, his screams tear through the air, the camera cuts to images of Malcolm X, Lumumba, Mehdi Ben Barka and Che Guevera. He looks around, he searches, he stops breathlessly and lets out a final scream. He sits and rests surrounded by these images, as if to have found peace. A fade to a blank screen with the words: "to be continued".

While preparing her suitcase, Diouana recounts the mistreatment that she has endured, especially by "Madame". As she enumerates the litany of misdeeds, she repeats "never again". She dresses, coifs her hair continuing to recall the list of offenses. Leaving the room and the camera frame, she goes to the bathroom. The door shut, the camera cuts to the inside, revealing her lifeless body in a bathtub filled with bloody water.

In the last sequence, "Monsieur" arrives in Dakar with Diouana's suitcase and the mask--symbolism marking the return of Diouana's soul to Africa. The mask atop her belongings is rediscovered by the same little brother from whom Diouana initially takes it in the beginning of the film. With the mask to his face, he walks steadily behind "Monsieur" who frantically attempts to leave, as if to rid Africa of colonial oppression.

In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon asserts that the "effective disorientation of the African entails recognition of social uneconomic realities." He further states that the presence of an inferiority complex stems from the double process of economic and internalization or epidermalization of inferiority. In The Wretched of the Earth, he prescribes a three-stage process in the evolution of the liberated black self: one, assimilation; two, awareness; and three, rebellion. Language in both films is a key force in the alienation of the characters. Fanon says that "to speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization…Every colonized people--in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality--finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is with the culture of the mother country" (Wretched of the Earth). Diouana's ability to express this language is muted, while the protagonist of Soleil O is armed with the tools of this civilization. It is perhaps for these differences that the two characters have contrasting responses to their alienation. The former becomes inward and self-destructive, the latter becomes more and more outward as his screams and howls provide a release for a pent-up rage. And more importantly he is able to verbally articulate his alienation.

Fanon continues: "the black man who arrives in France changes because to him the country represents the Tabernacle; he changes not only because it is from France that he received his knowledge of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire…France creates round himself a magic circle in which the words Paris, Marseille, Sorbonne, Pigalle become the keys to the vault. He leaves for the pier, and the amputation of his being diminishes as the silhouette of his ship grows clearer" (Black Skin, White Masks). Diouana arrives in France on the ship Ancerville, her mutation is evident in her polkadot dress, wig, and high heel shoes, her dress within French spaces. The character of Soleil O arrives by train, having already penetrated the interior of France as he approaches the capital. His mutation has already taken place, as he is stripped of his African name and taught the civilization of France. This describes as well the first phase of Fanon's three-stage process. The protagonists have assimilated the culture of the dominant power.

The second phase reveals a conscious-raising of the characters, they become disturbed. Diouana begins to make a mental note of the acts of betrayal she experiences from her employer: she is given an apron to wear, she is told to take off her high heel shoes, she is called lazy, she has not visited France as she was promised. The ultimate gestures in response to these acts of betrayal is to retrieve the African mask that she gave to her employers as a gift and to refuse the money presented to her for her work. In Soleil O the protagonist assembles a similar list of actions: his job hunt, his search for housing, the general response of the French to his presence, the hypocrisy of their notion of equality. His final refusal comes after a dream, during which the French currency that has been attached to his body begins to burn. He attempts to tear it off, a symbolic destruction of imperialist capitalism.

The third phase, the fighting stage or rebellion, perhaps is less apparent in Ousmane Sembene's character than that of Med Hondo. Although Diouana's suicide may be interpreted as the final rebellion against her employer: the ultimate refusal to be a slave. Sembene, however, at the end, employs the mask--which has watched over Diouana throughout the film--as the ultimate weapon to oust the presence of the colonizer. And significantly, the mask is held by the young boy, symbolic of the future. The protagonist of Soleil O attains the fighting phase amid the revolutionaries, Malcolm X, Che Guevera, Mehdi Ben Barka and Patrice Lumumba, who were in their time "the mouthpiece of a new reality in action" (The Wretched of the Earth).