The Black Woman As Marker of Hypersexuality in Western Mythology: A Contemporary Manifestation in the Film The Scarlet Letter

Abstract

Despite criticisms of the film The Scarlet Letter as engaging in historical revisionism of representations of blighted groups in society, a critical examination of its symbolic language reveals that the film draws on, and circulates, centuries-old Western symbolism and mythology of black sexuality. The article undertakes a review of Western iconography surrounding black sexuality in nineteenth-century Europe and shows how it manifests itself in the interaction of race and sex in contemporary American mythology. The article attempts to show how the iconography of black sexuality undergirds signification of the narrative relationship between the main character and her black servant in the film. The article argues, from the perspective of potential multiaccentual interpolation of the audience, that even a polysemic interpretation (from the hegemonic male gaze or a subversive female gaze) of the text still reveals blackness as a marker of difference and hypersexuality.