Posted in: Movies | Tagged: Comics, entertainment

"Don't You Know Black Women Don't Talk Like Us?" And Other Horrors When Creating A Female Superhero Movie

At the Powerful Victims: How to Write a Female Superhero panel at Nine Worlds in London over the weekend, filmmaker, producer and writer Sarah Barker talked about her question to create a female superhero movie. It's one that's happening,  Second City, coming from Garden Gate Arts.

The journey has been a long and hard one. Barker took the assembled audience through much of her process, as she interviewed other filmmakers to discover what worked, what didn't what advice she could take and what mistakes she could avoid.

She also wanted to look at the unfortunate traps and tropes that other female super-characters had fallen into in an attempt to avoid them, from Joss Whedon on Black Widow to Kurt Busiek on Janissa, she detailed a number of them, and invited audience members to come to the front to read out the character's dialogue.

When creating Aaliyah, her own lead superheroic character for Second City, she talked to lots of people, actors, writers, producers… and heard plenty of horror stories.

One English actor of East Asian heritage told Sarah how she had auditioned for a role for a major broadcaster's drama, to be asked, after reading for the part, if she could read it again in her own language. Not only a presumption, the actor didn't speak any other languages, but it seems they were looking for a little translation on the cheap. So she just made it all up. And got the part.

It was only a week away from filming, during a script read through that she put her hand up and confessed that what she'd been saying wasn't actually in Mandarin and was just made up words. No one had thought to check – or to provide an actual translation.

Another actor of similar origin talked about repeatedly being auditioned on the off-chance she might know some "kung fu".

And there was the actor who, when she refused to fully masturbate a male actor for a scene, was told by the executive producer that she was unprofessional not to do so.

The greatest intake of breath from the audience, however, was probably the high ranking female producer that Sarah talked to about Second City who asked her "what makes you think you can write a black woman, don't you know they don't talk like us?"

But Sarah did find a company interested in the projects, Garden Gate Arts. And, intending to create a character who wasn't formed by a past she had no say in, was likeable without being Supergirl-perfect, and avoiding cliche, she decided to "cheat" and get actors on board early to create a believable character.

Let's all meet Aaliyah… as portrayed by Dear Jesus's Nansi Nsue.

Plenty more to come…

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