The Great Multiplicitous Blackness Caper [Jumpin’ Jack Flash]

…it’s a gas, gas, gas.

Ashlee breaks out the tissues and nostalgia for 1986's Jumpin’ Jack Flash while Carolyn adds even more context for the broader discussions about Whoopi’s career in the mid-1980’s.

What backlash ensued?

Can we still look back in fondness and enjoy it today?

The answers may be as complicated as British intelligence spies, moles, and KGB meddling.

Dive into Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films by Donald Bogle

Bogle talks about Whoopi's roles and how she doesn't necessarily represent the Black diaspora. That's okay with us because we saw ourselves in her and Black women are dynamic and unique, just like Whoopi. 

Learn more about Whoopi’s career in Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film by Mia Mask:

Mask talks about how Whoopi Goldberg’s stardom is unconventional and to a degree, unprecedented because foundationally as a comedic actress and performer, she already defies convention of who is seen as funny and respected in the space, and doubled with her race and appearance. She defies "acceptable" femininity with her dark skin and natural hair (locs) which was not a everyday/common American style in the early-mid 1980’s.

Consistently, Goldberg has played characters that challenge assumptions and, to an extent, pushed back on racial stereotypes.

She’s also had to fight to be seen as desirable in films. A love scene was cut from the film, Fatal Beauty despite her protests.

“Closer reading of her star vehicles demonstrates the way her characters—and the situations in which they are place—trouble supposedly stable gender categories, critique notions of white identity, question whiteness as a social formation, and identify white racism.”

Carolyn on Twitter @vfdpixie
Ashlee on Twitter @AshleeTakesNote

Sound edits by Carolyn 

Graphics by Ashlee

 

Intro/Outro Music: I Got This by David Renda (felisyanstudios.com)