‘Is God Is’ sparks social media discourse about Black women’s rage, trauma and who gets empathy
TheGrio...
As audiences debate the film’s violent themes and portrayal of Black men, others say the conversation reflects deeper truths about Black women’s pain and survival.
This weekend, a new film centering Black women’s rage debuted in theaters, and as expected some social media users quickly took issue with the project. “Is God Is” by Aleasha Harris, starring Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Vivica A. Fox, and Sterling K. Brown, follows two sisters as they embark on a murderous quest for revenge, confronting a charged, abusive family history that pushes them to unexpected lengths. Seeking justice for their mother, Harris tells theGrio that the play-turned-film’s storyline was something she needed.
“In case anyone has the needs that I had, if there are people who feel that in the face of so many stories in which a Black woman is being harmed, killed, I need the opposite. I need to have in the world a narrative in which a Black woman fights back, right, in which a Black woman’s rage and anger is given center stage and is no-holds-barred. That’s medicine to me,” she explained in an interview with theGrio. “’Is God Is’ is not a literal proposition. I am not saying that anyone should go and do these things, but I do think there’s a power to the spirit and to the psyche, to have this story as a touch point and a place where we can sit with questions around accountability, questions around the, again, the inherent value of Black women and girls.”
Young who plays Racine in the film added: “Because a lot of [Black women and girl’s] stories haven’t been told, and our history has been constantly and consistently buried, I think that a movie like ‘Is God Is’ is a righteous way for us to collectively be here together in all of our collective rage and joy, and the roots of the rage and the trauma to release.”
While her intentions behind the film were to show that “Black women and girls are to be loved and taken seriously,” some social media users took offense to the film’s tagline: “Make your daddy dead, real dead.” Waves of criticism across social media took issue with Sterling K. Brown’s polarizing portrayal of an abusive father who set his wife on fire.
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Contrarily, many users called out the unfortunate timeliness of this film. Just weeks before its release, Black communities witnessed back-to-back headlines of Black women being killed at the hands of domestic violence, raising awareness of the climbing rates of femicide, particularly Black femicide –a term for the intentional killing with a gender-related motivation.
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As one users pointed out: “Black people are not a monolith until its television and film and there’s a complex or inherently evil black character, then it’s ‘poor representation of us as a collective.’” While all male viewers may not identify with the way Harris’ film portrays Black men through Brown, Xavier Mills, Justin Ross, and Isaiah Cross’ characters, the reality is those characters mirror some men’s attitudes and actions, regardless of whether they’re ready to acknowledge that. And the same holds true for the different archetypes amongst the women in the film.
Ultimately, the various perspectives in the film contribute to its layered storytelling, which the film’s stars hope will spark conversations amongst audiences.
“This is just our love letter, too, to the complications of life and love, and our love letter to black women and girls, and showing that we don’t always have to have it together,” Monae told theGrio.
“I feel like the movie, hopefully, is an opportunity to enter into a conversation, to say, like, ‘you know what? I’ve never considered things from your perspective,’ and I think that’s the beginning,” Brown said in a separate interview with theGrio, reflecting on the film’s release coinciding with current events. “I don’t know if there’s some sort of end, but I feel like the beginning is really trying to understand somebody else’s perspective, especially between Black men and Black women.”
“‘Is God Is’ isn’t going to fix anything. It’s meant to just be a kind of salve, and it is a deep, old wound. It touches on the real, but I also hope that as people think about these horrible acts of femicide, they’re thinking deeply about the ways that the story touches on that. But it’s also a narrative, it’s a story that draws on things from real life and isn’t meant to band-aid any of that, because it can’t hold that. I just hope we can talk about it and look at things differently.”