She (1965)

 

Back Before the Great Awakening (BGA), Hollywood released a slack spectacle from England's Hammer Studios titled She (1965).

The movie, which can be streamed on YouTube, starred the Swiss actress and model Ursula Andress in the eponymous role of the tragic queen of the fictitious East African nation of Kuma. Her name is Ayesha (same as the subject of Stevie Wonder's song Isn't She Lovely), but the queen is also called "She Who Must Be Obeyed," thus the name of the picture.

Because She bathed in a magical fire many years before, Ayesha has eternal youth, but, alas, She is alone, having killed her lover millennia before for cheating on her with a servant girl.

The picture also stars Hammer Studios horror features regulars Peter Cushing, as an archeologist, and Christopher Lee as Ayesha's majordomo, along with Bernard Cribbins as a wise-cracking sidekick and John Richardson as a handsome swain who catches the lonely queen's eye and heart.

Ayeshas is attended by two young Black women who are silent throughout, and her armies rule over a barbaric Black population called the Amahagger. In the 1888 source novel by H. Rider Haggard, the Amahagger is an all-female tribe. In both the book and the film, the queen is white and fierce.

The only female Amahagger with a speaking role was played by the Mexican actress Rosenda Monteros. Her father, Haumeid, was played by duskied British actor Andre Morell.

I remember seeing She when it was in general distribution back when I was a kid. Of course, back then major features played in the cinemas for months and months, were pulled back, sent to drive-ins, and then re-released to the same movie houses six months or a year later.

Movies were distributed widely across the U.S., North and South, which might account for why none of the Black characters in She had speaking lines or appeared in any role that was dominant to the white characters. In this way, She was perfect fantasy fare for Dixie during Jim Crow -- except for that Amahagger uprising against the mean queen.

It's all ridiculous storytelling in these enlightened days of the Great Awakening (GA) but serves as a reminder of how culture both reflects and shapes popular perspectives, as we see with BGA folks believing Black Africans are lesser beings, unworthy and unwelcome in the USA, and women really ain't nothing without a good man.