Why black women playing villains on screen are still controversial | film

IIn one scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Battle After Battle, Teyana Taylor’s character, Perfidia of Beverly Hills, is more focused on seducing Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson (then still known as “Ghetto Bat”) than on the bomb exploding just feet away from them. In another scene, she holds Sean Penn’s Stephen J. Lockjaw at gunpoint while simultaneously eliciting an erection. These are some of the rude and morally slippery choices made by Perfidia that have worried some viewers since the film’s premiere.

“I absolutely hate what this means for the representation of black women in Hollywood,” YouTuber and cultural commentator Joelzy said in a video posted the day after Taylor won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. “Too often, institutional forces reward us only for portraying stereotypical characters of black women. Battle after Battle was an offensive film.”

Goelzy’s criticism reflects one aspect of the controversy that has followed the film since its premiere last September, and which intensified after Taylor’s Golden Globe win. Perfidia only appears for about 35 minutes in the three-hour film, but her presence looms large in the story and in the conversation surrounding her. Across TikTok and YouTube, thousands of videos dissect character behavior and symbolism.

The controversy over Perfidia has reopened a familiar fault line in conversations about representation. When Black women play selfish, manipulative, or morally ambiguous characters, the backlash often extends beyond the performance itself and reaches into questions about what those depictions mean for the image of Black women on and off screen.

Recent television shows and films have presented many morally complex black heroines. Harper Stern in the industry is ruthlessly ambitious. Tashi Duncan in The Challengers is manipulative and calculating. Pansy Deacon from Hard Truths is so consumed by irritation and trauma that she lashes out at almost everyone around her; Annalize Keating in How to Get Away with Murder and Olivia Pope in Scandal operate in a morally gray area. In Nia DaCosta’s Hedda, the famous destroyer Hedda Gabler is also played by a black woman. For media scholars and entertainment industry observers, the intensity of these debates suggests that the range of moral possibilities afforded to black female on-screen characters may still be narrower than for many of their peers.

Many explanations have emerged, ranging from historical overcorrection to deep discomfort at seeing black women portrayed as flawed or sexually independent. Some industry observers say the severity of the reaction is due in part to a long and painful history. For much of Hollywood’s existence, black characters have been written through racist caricatures that reinforce harmful stereotypes and are used to justify false narratives about black life.

“As Black women, we feel a sense of excitement when we see certain characters on screen, and it can make us feel like our existence has been flattened,” Jamila Bell, a writer, content creator and actress who appeared in the comedy “Safe Space,” told Tubi.

For Kendall Cunningham, a culture writer at Fox, part of the reaction reflects a broader discomfort with seeing black women depicted in ways that challenge traditional expectations. “I think for some people, there’s a personal racial insecurity in terms of not feeling good about seeing black women playing in a kind of unflattering light, or a humanizing light,” she said. “People are not always comfortable seeing Black women portrayed as overtly sexual, flawed, selfish, or unmotherly.”

Part of the backlash comes from a long-standing framework that divides depictions of black characters into “positive” and “negative” representation, says Christine Warner, a Cornell University professor who studies racial representation in media. This framework, she says, is rooted in assimilation politics dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, when respectability was often framed as a strategy for social mobility. “There’s this idea that if we give our best, we’ll be treated better,” Warner said. “So representation is evaluated through the lens of good versus bad.”

In practice, Warner says, “positive” images often become shorthand for status or profession. Figures like Keating, Bob, and Stern may be morally complex, but their prestigious careers as lawyers, fixers, and financial professionals point to success. “When we rely on this kind of dualism, it doesn’t allow for the complexity of the characterization,” Warner said. Tony Soprano and Walter White are two criminals capable of violence, yet their inner lives and moral conflicts are treated as rich dramatic ground. “But when it comes to Black women, the pressure to represent something bigger than themselves can make accepting that kind of messiness more difficult. If you’re looking for ‘She’s a princess,’ or ‘She’s a witch,'” she says. What if they are combined? Because humanity is messy and people are messy, so what if I allowed these people to be their fullest selves.”

This tension becomes more apparent with the character’s sexuality. For some viewers, Perfidia’s overt sexual confidence reflects a much older stereotype, the “Jezebel” trope, which has shaped the image of black women in American media for centuries. But Taylor interprets the character differently. In a recent cover story for Vanity Fair, she pushed back on the idea that Perfidia is merely a sex object. “Someone else interviewed me and mentioned something about Perfidia and how people felt she was too hot,” Taylor recalls. “And I’m like, do you realize that the first thing we see of Perfidia is her holding a gun to a guy’s head and he calls her a beautiful thing? Are we watching the same movie? Perfidia kind of gets sucked into, ‘Oh, you think I’m hot?’ Well, I bet. Great if you keep doing what I’m doing all I have to do is show you a little tits or something.”

Online, some commentators viewed Taylor’s Globes win as a milestone, comparing it to Halle Berry’s Oscar win for Monster’s Ball, in which Berry has sex with a white man. The gist across social media was that major awards bodies tend to reward black actors when their characters endure suffering, humiliation or are morally degrading. Some agreed with this sentiment, while others warned that the system may be less specific to black performers than awarding cultural awards more broadly. Dramatic roles involving emotional intensity, moral crisis or personal breakdown have long dominated acting categories across the industry, Warner said.

“Hollywood tends to reward what they believe displays the best and worst of humanity,” she said. “It rewards heavy-handed performance. I understand the feeling that we can never win just for being cheerful, but I’d argue you’d be hard-pressed to find performances that are generally only given to ordinary people who are cheerful.”

The scope also means acknowledging the diversity of characters that exist within Black communities themselves, Bell said. She explained that if multiple black female characters appear in the same story, they should not all occupy the same narrative function. “They have to explore different ideas,” she said. “A character can be strong without that being the only thing about them. They can be sexual without that being the only thing about them.

Cunningham says the conversation ultimately comes back to a simpler point: that fictional characters are meant to reflect the chaos of real life. “We all know Black women who are annoying, frustrating or problematic,” she said. “So we shouldn’t be clutching our pearls when we see this displayed on screen.”