The Watermelon Woman

Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s work, “Sex in Public,” argues that aspects of heterosexuality are ingrained in everyday culture in America-in the products we buy, the language we use and the media we consume-but many of these aspects do not focus on sex. On the other hand, mainstream focus on “queer culture” is visible only through sources that do center on sex, in pornographic stores or even queer sex education. This cultural fixation on the sexual aspects of queer life suggests that the lives of queer people are in fact focused on sex. However, this is not the case, as suggested in Cheryl Dunye’s film The Watermelon Woman. The film explores various aspects of identity and how they intersect, by exploring Cheryl’s life as a black lesbian juxtaposed with her findings about the life of the Watermelon Woman, Fae Richards. The character Cheryl’s interactions with her friend and coworker Tamara, love interest Diana, and other contacts she makes in her search for information about the Watermelon Woman showcase the existence of a “queer counterpublic,” made up of the spaces where queer people can congregate to explore their history, tell stories, or exclaim their pride in their identity. This is seen when Cheryl and her coworker travel to search in the CLIT archives, and when they videotape a cultural performance for their side business. The narrative develops Cheryl’s obsession with documenting the life of the Watermelon Woman as beginning with a fixation on her portrayal of a stereotype, the mammy, but lacking in focus on the bigger story of her life and the other aspects of her identity. Her interaction with June Walker, Fae Richard’s later partner, exposes this inconsistency in her approach and provides Cheryl with the tools to rectify her focus and approach her documentation of Fae Richard’s life from a new angle.