Julie Dash Illusions

Julie Dash had a mission statement as a filmmaker that set out to redefine how we see African American women on screen. Their wants, their desires, their needs, theirs joys and sorrows. Dash wanted to be able to see African American women share spaces previously only reserved for men and white people. TV tropes such as riding into the sunset successfully, things you just didn’t normally get to see these women do. This imbedded issue suggests that they couldn’t do these things, which is the fundamental problematic blight on society and earlier film. Dash believed in showing the world that women live full lives, exciting lives, worthy stories and important voices to be shared. And told on their own terms, crucially. Cinema had an inexplicable tendency to reduce women to simply reacting
We think of this deception as just a necessary means with film classics like Singn’ In the Rain (1952). But what Illusions (1982) does is expose its twisted and detrimental uses which cannot be ignored. Dash provided a larger discussion on black presence in early Hollywood. My previous notions on such a topic was on the injustice of what I felt as an actual lack of presence but my viewing of this film broadened my mind to think what if I’ve been experiencing this oppressed group’s presence more than I first realised. The film follows this theme by telling a story of exploiting black talent from behind a curtain. Black singers voices dubbed over white actors to be exact. Behind this curtain is the real deserving star, and I couldn’t help but relate this to the man behind the curtain, the Wizard himself, in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Except here, the black talent is behind the curtain, projecting the image of the white actor. Dash pulls down the curtain and early Hollywood can try to tell us to “pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain” but this film