Touki Bouki and Black Girl: African Cinema Compared

Introduction: Africa and France as Opposing Worlds

Touki Bouki (1973) and Black Girl (1966) are experimental films from the late twentieth century. This paper offers a comparative analysis of both films with regard to their politics and aesthetics. Released within ten years of each other, the two films illustrate distinct yet related styles of filmmaking and narrative structure. Both pursue issues of freedom and bondage, the urban versus the rural, and differences in gender roles. The paper examines the content of each narrative as well as filmmaking elements such as editing, cinematography, soundtrack, and message to the viewer.

A primary dichotomy runs through both films: Africa stands at one end of a spectrum, and France — specifically Paris — stands at the opposite end, serving as a dreamland or wonderland. Both films explore the dreams of young Africans seeking a more independent and comfortable life than the often harsh existence in Senegal, a French-speaking country. The protagonists of both films are from Dakar, Senegal's capital city. All of them are dissatisfied, bored, and unfulfilled by life in Dakar, which is why they seek escape and a new beginning in Paris, the City of Light. In pursuing that dream, the protagonists encounter blunt and visceral lessons about choice and freedom. Despite their surface differences, the two films are ultimately linked in theme and mood.

Aesthetics and Visual Style

Black Girl (1966) is shot in black and white. The filmmaker had the option of shooting in color but chose deliberately not to, underscoring the themes and tensions of the narrative and of the characters' relationships. The protagonist, Diouana, has very dark skin — clear, healthy, and distinctly African in feature. On the day of her arrival in France, she wears all white. The extreme contrast between her dark skin and her white clothes and accessories is immediately striking. Her white employer wears a dark suit and dark glasses, creating further visual tension between his complexion and hers. Viewers may interpret Diouana's white clothing as her attempt to integrate into the white, European, French world.

At the dinner party the couple hosts, they and their guests discuss both their interest in and their disdain for African culture. The couple collects African art, attempting to connect with a culture through material consumption. The dark clothes worn by the "Monsieur" upon meeting Diouana may be read as yet another attempt by the white French characters to engage with African culture through objects. The couple consumes African cultural artifacts yet destroys an actual African person. They wish to connect with her culture while retaining the safe distance and privilege of the white European world. The contrast between black and white is an aesthetic choice that is repeated and deepened throughout the course of Black Girl, also known as La Noire de…

Touki Bouki (1973), by contrast, is saturated with color. Where Black Girl is intentionally monochrome, color is essential in Touki Bouki — so much so that the colors function as characters in their own right, and nature itself becomes a character. In Black Girl, most scenes take place within the city, and Africa appears only in Diouana's memory through flashbacks; the African countryside is rarely seen in the film's present tense. In Touki Bouki, the situation is reversed. The setting is predominantly African: the countryside, the desert, the beach, and the ocean are all richly present. Urban scenes are the exception, not the rule. This reversal is one of the most significant aesthetic distinctions between the two films.

Themes of Captivity, Humiliation, and Gender

Both films center on young Africans who believe a better life awaits them in Paris. In Black Girl, Diouana awakens — literally — to a nightmarish life of captivity and slavery. When the mistress hires her, she promises that Diouana will care for the children only. Instead, the couple demands that she take on the full responsibilities of a servant and maid. Both the husband and wife mistreat her, but it is the "Madame" who goes further than mistreatment: she tortures Diouana. While the film on a larger scale is a discourse on the tension between Africa and Europe, on a smaller scale it is a struggle between two women.

Though never directly stated, Madame appears to feel just as trapped and enslaved as Diouana does. This is why she displaces her frustration onto Diouana — she spreads her misery, wishing Diouana to share her suffering. Though the two women are separated by ethnicity and class, they are both women and thus share some of the same discrimination, prejudice, and violence that all women face. Because Madame holds a position of power, she expresses her desire for freedom by restricting Diouana's. Both women seek to exercise power in their own way. Madame exercises power over Diouana and over domestic matters, while Diouana exercises power over her own body: she refuses to eat regularly as a form of resistance against Madame's tyranny and as a strategy to avoid work. This pattern resembles the logic underlying many eating disorders, in which control over the body becomes the one domain a person feels they can call their own.

Madame relentlessly demands things of Diouana; Diouana is alone in France, with no friends and no family. As a result, her body becomes the only space over which Madame cannot exert control. Diouana is silent and outwardly obedient and does not resist Madame directly. Madame perceives her as weak — African, very slender, a servant — and takes every opportunity to wear her down and terrorize her. Diouana would rather go silent than speak her mind, and her silence functions as its own form of defiance.

Mory, the protagonist of Touki Bouki, is also terrorized and humiliated throughout the film. Mory and his girlfriend, Anta, dream of relocating to Paris for a more glamorous life than the one they lead in rural Africa. Early in the film, the leader of a gang of young men lassoes Mory off his motorcycle and pulls him into their vehicle. Grossly outnumbered and anxious, Mory is implied to suffer physical harm; the young men ultimately tie both him and the cow skull mounted on his motorcycle to the back of their truck. They drive through the city laughing while Mory fades in and out of consciousness — dehydrated, injured, and humiliated. Aunty Oumy further humiliates Mory throughout the film, emasculating him with her mockery and laughter. Humiliation and suffering are thus common threads between the two films, and the protagonists of both are driven by a desire to escape repeated degradation.

Conclusion: Shared Themes Across Distinct Films

While both films differ in aesthetics and plot, they align in theme as well as in the questions and issues they raise regarding Africa and Europe, Senegal and France. France represents freedom and the stuff of dreams for the Senegalese characters in both films. One woman's dreams are shattered by the reality of social hierarchy and economic dependence. A young couple sacrifices some of their integrity and ethics in their efforts to raise the funds needed for their move. Both films are gripping, thought-provoking, and tastefully executed. They express — directly and subtly — a tension and longing within the West African experience of which many Western viewers remain largely unaware.

References

Internet Movie Database. (2012). Touki Bouki & Black Girl. Retrieved March 26, 2012, from www.imdb.com.