Savannah Parker
ABD 220
January 7, 2023
Critical Response One
When asked the question, “What is black love?”, my mind alludes to images of Nina and Darius in Love Jones (1997), Martin and Gina in Martin (1992), Mae and Michael in The Photograph (2020) and Issa and Lawrence in Insecure (2016). I also think of my parents, Myeesha and Damico Parker and the “black love” they come from. Each of these similar narratives, they come from the same seed but exist as different branches of a large tree; they all start with the reality of being human and black, and with the concept of being loved and giving love. While I’ve come to admire the stories that these narratives tell, the relationships I’ve observed and experienced off screen don’t fit the suggested frame. So far, my understanding of what it is to give and receive love, seems to be highly defined by what it’s not. As far as what is to be black and love, I haven’t begun to fathom what it is, because when I think of love, I don’t consciously do so with the fact that I am black, in mind. To contemplate the question of “What is black love?”, I need to understand all that’s being asked; What does it mean to be black? What is love? What does it mean for love to co-exist with and exist in a black person? What do I recognize as love and is it love or something posing as such? It’s important to acknowledge that what’s being called into question is loaded with various potentials, but to begin I’ll aim to understand the ways in which America recognizes Black People and Love.
The Netflix film Two Distant Strangers (2020) says a lot about police brutality against the African American community, specifically African American men. The film references the murders of father and son Eric Garner, as well as sister and daughter Breonna Taylor, each are human beings. Though, the film begins with a narrative surrounding love, closely resembling the opening of a romantic comedy. As the plot continues, viewers are quickly made aware that the premise of the film is not surrounding love, but hatred. In viewing the film with, in mind, the question of “What is black love?”, the film reflects a reality centered upon loves absence; where there’s an abundance of one thing, it makes it clear as to what it is not, or difficult to see what could exist in its presence. The American narrative of black people is rooted within an abundance of hatred, when this hatred is all, we’ve seen, all we’ve felt, and all we’ve received it can quickly become apparent just how far off hatred is from love, or how hard it is for love to exist in a space consumed by hatred. To understand what black love is, we’ve got to understand what is like to be personified as black and begin to acknowledge the many experiential factors that derive from such a label. The Hollywood portrayal of black love is often saturated in a tale of struggle or suffering, so much so that in many films the love that develops between the two black characters seems to only thrive upon the very suffering it derived from. Though it would be negligent to ignore the suffering that patriarchal, colonial practices and in turn American systems, have infringed upon the black community. Still, I pose the question can black people exist without the struggle? If black people can’t exist without struggle, then can black love exist with a lack thereof?
An elementary understanding of love is that it is supposed to feel good and true love is often described as euphoric, but good feelings are commonly equated to the feeling of comfortability; just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s good. Struggle and suffering are something that the black community is familiar with, and if not through experience, then through the stories they are told about themselves. Though America says otherwise, if black people were to re-imagine the ways in which love exist in their lives, the way they give and receive such, then, could black love exist without the societal and in turn experiential struggle that black people live with?