When reading Diawaras book and her descriptions of different depictions of black life and characters in independent and Hollywood films, especially when she says that in Hollywood films, black people cannot just love or hate each other, or enjoy their lives without references to the white world, but there always has to be something exotic about them, and that the otherness is really stressed. In this sense, I was reminded of the films She's gotta have it by Spike Lee and Angel Heart, a Hollywood film starring Robert DeNiro, Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet. Both films have black characters and a love story, but Lee's film depicts its characters as just regular people. The black female has simultaneous relationships with three different black men, and the film largely deals with the resulting conflicts and problems. The film makes no references to white culture, still the characters are diverse enough to provide a chance for identification to the viewer.
In contrast, Lisa Bonet's character in Angel heart is a young voodoo priestess in New Orleans, who serves as a way for Mickey Rourke's character to access the 'other world', the black society in the south, and who ultimately also becomes his love interest.
Both women in the films are young, beautiful and present a certain sexual hunger, but the presentation of black womanhood in both films differs, because Nola in Lee's film is totally in control of the situation, and it is her who sets the rules for the relationship, making her independent and self-conscious, whereas Epiphany in Angel Heart mainly serves as an exotic alien character in the film, who represents black culture as being entirely different from white culture, and the film heavily plays on the interracial relationship between the two characters. It is depicted as if the relationship was almost another adventure for the white character.
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