Misrepresentation In We Real Cool

“Perhaps what complaining black males want the world to hear is that envy and desire are not aspects of love.” - Bell Hooks, “We Real Cool” For centuries black men have been objectified and dehumanized by the patriarchal world around them. Whether it be on television, in porn, or in published print, men of color are constantly challenged of their masculinity, sexuality, and acceptability by the privileged class. By using examples from the critically acclaimed drama Nymphomaniac; Volume Two by Lars von Trier in addition to literary contextual supporting evidence, this paper acts as an exploration of the overall misrepresentation of colored men as sexual beings in media. This misrepresentation can be specifically seen via the lack of representation …show more content…
More often than not, dark skin black men are chosen to represent colored communities as a whole and fall subject to dehumanization. Hooks looks back in time to say “black male bodies were not coming to the new world obsessed with sexuality; they were coming from worlds where collective survival was more important than the acting out of sexual desire, and they were coming into a world where survival was more important than sexual desire” (64, Hooks). Keeping this in mind, society has now been trained to perceive black men (especially dark skinned men) as lust-less beings. This assumed lack of affection leads to stereotyping black men as literal sex objects (large penises) and nothing else. In the film, the African men referred to as the “Dangerous Men” (who have no names) suffer from stereotyped physical appearances. They are large, strong build, dark skinned, gangster-dressed men with extremely large penises. These features aided in hyper-sexualizing their bodies, especially during their intimate sex scene with Joe. Contrasting her frail, white, and petite body with their oversized dark bodies immediately put them in a role of visual dominance. In addition to this, the use of a language barrier as stated before takes away any sense of common humanity that could have been shared between the audience and the two men. They become a figure of sex to viewers, rather than a relatable character. The choice to make them speak an African dialect throughout their sex scene disassociates the english audience, making the two characters seem even more animalistic rather than humanistic. Creating an animalistic perspective of these men creates a racial profiling for all people of color; the darker the black, the further from human. This under five minute scene creates a whirlwind of racial components,