Everbody is a pariah.

The title of my blog post for this week is taken from an interview I found of Pariah director, Dee Rees. In her interview, Rees explains how Pariah is the story of her coming out experience. One of my favorite parts of the interview, and the film itself, is how unconcerned Rees is with her critics or with people who might be completely ignorant to the lives of LGBT people of color. The interviewer asks questions like, "Do you worry about people going in thinking the movie will be dark and melancholy, or do you like that they can be surprised by it?" and "What made it difficult to get your story out there?" The interviewer seems to expect Rees to discuss why she did not cater to a white, heterosexual audience when telling her story, but Rees simply says, "We didn't make the film to prove anybody wrong or spite anybody, it's just a story that needs to be told."

Rees is right about that. Personally, I had never seen a story like Alike's (Dee Rees, by extension) told in a major film production. While part of this lack of personal knowledge is the result of my own intellectual laziness (as Lorde says, it's not the job of oppressed people to teach their oppressors), the absence of queer people of color from popular culture is also to blame. It even took me several Google searches to find statistics about the absence of black LGBT individuals from the film and TV industries. Tragic. I did, however, find one article in The Root that sheds light on their abysmal lack of representation in the film industry. The article states, "The Los Angeles Times took an exhaustive look at the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- the voting body that decides what is, and perhaps more importantly what isn't, culturally legitimate film. The study found that of the 5,795-member body, 94 percent are white and 77 percent are male; only 2 percent are African-American and less than 2 percent are Latino. In other words, the industry is white and male."
This explains why movies like The Help are more apt to gain notoriety than realistic portrayals like Pariah.

Considering that LGBT people of color are rarely allowed cultural visibility on a large scale, Pariah is a breakthrough film on many levels. The film reveals the experiences of individuals who live in the space where race, gender and sexuality intersect. When discussing intersectionality, it is important to remember what Dr. J said in class today. Understanding queer people of color does not mean crediting them with "five more oppression points" because of the various facets of their identities that are marginalized by society. Considering people like Alike, the main character of the film, as "black and a female and a lesbian" would minimize her experience. She lives in the intersection of all three of these systems of oppression and we as viewers and as allies must comprehend how these forces interact to produce unique circumstances for people like Alike.

Needless to say, I am extremely grateful that we watched this film in class. I would love to hear others' reactions to Pariah and whether others have seen similar films. Additionally, I am curious about how others understood the intersection of race, gender and sexuality in the film. What do we gain by discussing intersectionality as opposed to deconstructing systems of oppression separately?