Dear HoneyBear,
It’s time. Fruits and recognition, and awakenings, and opportunities.
Once we go in and navigate our own pain, our own past, the past and present pain of family members and community, of ancestor-ship, we must tackle what is going on in this material realm. It’s chaos. It’s a mess. Disorder everywhere. Talking heads, comments this way and that. Fighting, backbiting, “who is up for re-election,” who didn’t get an award, what is democracy about, who appointed whom to a judgeship, where is our world headed, what are we going to do about the kids, the algorithms, and then, of course, we come to women’s bodies, and who owns them.
Well, this last one is a good question, is it not? I am a woman, and the word “woman” is not in the United States Constitution. Therefore, what are my rights?
This all seems tangential, perhaps, to the focus of this post today, which is celebrating the masterfulness of Viola Davis’s acting. It is not tangential, however. What we as humans do and know, is storytelling. We cling to our stories, even when a story isn’t suiting us, or it’s wrong. We create new stories, too. We become the story. We breathe in the story. And Viola Davis chooses roles that bring a heavy dose of sanity to a distorted world that is topsy-turvy. What she does is stand in her rootedness and strength and helps things get right-side up, even if only for the few hours you watch her on a screen.
(I am just wondering—do black women filmmakers have the marketing and production support to make 3.5 hour long movies that run in American movie theaters for months?)
(I wonder who has that kind of clout in Hollywood…making movies that are 3.5 hours long, in an era of such short attention spans?)
(Do you think the pope might talk to a black woman filmmaker about creating a movie about Jesus? So curious. How would she get her foot in the door for that meeting?)
Let’s start with Doubt.
Doubt (2008)
John Patrick Shanley wrote a very poignant play—then film—about a Catholic priest and a nun, and whether a priest has violated a young boy. The priest, Father Flynn, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, seems to have affection for an usher at the church, Donald Miller, the only black boy. The lead nun, Sister Aloysius (played by Meryl Streep), grows suspicious of Father Brendan’s motives. She might be harsh, but she does love the children and wants to protect them. She takes her role very seriously. Meanwhile, Father Flynn is such a good ol’ boy. Drinking wine, eating steak, and there is a power dynamic of male superiority in the church and surrounding community that Sister Aloysius isn’t pleased by. Yet she doesn’t know for certain if Father Flynn has done anything wrong. She finally decides to speak to Donald Miller’s mother with some questions and concerns. Enter Viola Davis.
Now, how many families tackle this topic of abuse and what might happen behind closed doors? Very few. How many people look the other way even if a little cold ice falls into the pit of their stomach with suspicion? Many. What Viola Davis brings to this role of Mrs. Miller is a bigger picture outside the scope of what Sister Aloysius knows or has experienced or can experience in her cloistered life. Love, attention, a lack of education, the struggle to feed oneself in an imbalanced society or rich and poor, white and “colored,” gay and straight. Some people don’t have the luxury to make an issue out of small concerns, do they? Watch Mrs. Miller’s tears fall and the clarity come in this one scene with Sister Aloysius. For a black mother living in the United States, there are different concerns, and they are large. For a woman married to an abusive husband, with a son who is different, there are even more particular concerns. Why would Sister Aloysius assume she is more intelligent, more able to see the big picture, than Mrs. Miller? This scene is so real.
The Woman King (2022)
The Woman King (2022), directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, is not just about representing a true and little-known story of a tribe of warrior women in West Africa, but also about celebrating what women can accomplish when they are rooted, united, and courageous. Viola Davis plays Nanisca, a warrior leader, for whom sexual abuse seems to have been a rite of passage. It is this way for other women, too, who become warriors. If we are not on an actual battlefield, we are often on a symbolic one.
I have been wondering so often, lately—what would it take for sexual abuse to stop, and for us to have the luxury of not having to educate young women about these dangers? After all, in the United States, in the 21st century, a man called president can order insurrections against democracy, bamboozle the supreme court to get a supposed “pro-life” vote, and all the while openly admit sexual abuse as his modus operandi.
What kind of women warriors are needed now, in 2024? What new ways might modern activism look?
Watch the eyes of Nanisca, the leader of the Agojie tribe, as she pursues attackers in order to protect her people. The eyes show everything in a good actor. The eyes take on the soul of the character, and it is how a viewer knows if the actor is in the soul, if the character is to be believed.
In the following opening scene, what we see in Viola Davis’s eyes is not evil or a desire to hurt anyone. The eyes show a recognition of what a warrior must become, the leveling gaze that is created from all that is known. Nanisca realizes what is at stake if she does not act, and what must be done to prevent more atrocity and brutality against her people. She does not act from ego or desire for hurting others. She is simply made to stand up and lead.
A true warrior is gentle and dignified even as she is fierce in battle. What Viola Davis is able to illustrate in embodying the energy of Nanisca is the force of truthfulness, where dignity stands alongside compassion, and one succumbs to the necessity of doing something important that she’d rather not have to do. A leader is not someone with big eyes and imbalanced passion who desires something. Leadership is in one’s nature. Nanisca does not fetishize winning a battle or killing others. She is not motivated by torture or blood—she just knows the depths of evil she is up against, and no one else can do what she is made for.
The Woman King is epic, and so human, and so relevant. If only we’d had Nanisca and her tribe of warriors during the Holocaust.
Air (2023)
Have you ever stopped and considered the power of a mother’s love? Is there any comparison, really? Nope. Nosiree.
Who’s your best advocate, your most in-tune marketing consultant?
Your mama. (If she’s a good one.)
In Air (directed by a man with a wild chin, Ben Affleck), Viola Davis plays the mother of Michael Jordan. In the film she is his mother, but in our hearts, she is the every-mom in our corner who is willing to step up and speak out and hold it all up against the forces of capitalism and old-white-boy-club-ism. You can’t put a price on her kind of love and intelligence. It goes beyond what Silicon Valley can come up with in an app.
This mom teaches us not to settle for anything flimsy, and she thinks beyond the “this is the way it’s always done” mentality. While advocating for the worth of her son, she is also recognizing her own worth, and her worth is in her voice. She’ll play the long game, take the harder road, because she’s made differently. She knows there is a history of bodies and labor and hard work being exchanged for coins when you’re black in the United States. How then, will she sit back and allow boys to just be boys? Instead, she encourages them to be men. That way, everyone gets a win and a new framework for business.
And a mercedes.
“A shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into it,” Deloris Jordan says.
Talk about turning Cinderella on its head. In this film, Viola Davis shows that the true savior is the mom’s influence, the princes are the salesmen, and the grand dance is not in a castle, but a basketball court.
Watch how beautifully feisty Viola Davis gets in this scene. You can’t argue with a woman this calm, centered, and sure. She stays the course, and keeps the love in her voice, even as she is sharing—in all humility—the way life really is.
I hear the whole country is paying a lot of attention to a football game later today, and the commercials of said football game. Yet if you want to spend some time with a true winner, you have all the nuts and bolts you need right here, HoneyBear, SugarPlum.
And thank you, Viola Davis, for staying the course.
Hugs,
Ms. Wonderful