The Wright Kind of Woman: Monica Wright's Representation of African
American Womanhood in "Love and Basketball"

Indhika Jayaratnam

When “Love and Basketball” was released in the spring of 2000 the sustained period of black filmmaking that began in the early 1990’s was well underway. The genre of all-black cast films had changed considerably during the decade, lending to the “Love and Basketball”-type film which mixes comedy and drama and focuses on the lives of middle and upper-middle class African Americans. Significantly, this trend to depict upwardly mobile lives has been accompanied by the emergence of the African-American heroine. While in the early 1990’s women were mainly portrayed as the sexual objects of men, the new “urban” comedy often showcases women in lead roles that are far more complex and multi-dimensional. These female protagonists have been crucial in moving the black film away from the hood and giving a voice to the otherwise unheard African American woman.

Yet the glossy finish and attractive stars that characterize the new “urban” comedy serves to discourage any critical analysis of how African American girlhood and womanhood are being imagined in mainstream culture. This essay attempts to use a mainstream black film – “Love and Basketball” - as a text where the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class are mapped out in subversive and groundbreaking ways. The movie’s main female character, Monica Wright, struggles to pursue her dream of becoming a professional basketball player (pre-WNBA) while also negotiating the boundaries and challenges of her love for Q – her best-friend and later lover. Through love and basketball, Monica is constructed as a strong, persevering, vulnerable, caring, and sexual woman. She transcends the dichotomy of standard depictions of African American women as either hyper-sexualized or objectified strong women. Instead, Monica straddles the complexity of being sexual and strong, girl and woman, lover and fighter, protector and protected.

It is interesting and significant that these tensions were played out in a commercial film that was both a success at the box office and on video. Audiences embraced Monica Wright as being both sexually and romantically desirable as well as a role model to young women. How does she appeal to the traditional “male gaze” as well as the contemporary “female gaze”? Does this make her less subversive or, in fact, does it make her even more rebellious as a mainstream character? I propose that it makes her more rebellious and subversive and, furthermore, highlights the need to create a framework for the analysis of contemporary African American film heroines and their ability to appeal to the “male” and “female” gaze of commercial markets.