“Just because we’re living in dangerous times doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enjoy the full pleasures of life. You know what I mean?”
This poignant dialogue between two Black women in Zeinabu irene Davis’s A Powerful Thang (1991) resonates deeply, even decades later. In a world often saturated with negativity, seeking joy and embracing life’s pleasures feels like a necessary act of self-preservation. Davis’s film, a narrative of Black love and connection, offers a cinematic escape, a form of Time Travel Movie that transports us to a different era and perspective.
But A Powerful Thang is indeed a journey back in time, released in 1991. Watching it now is not just viewing a film; it’s an act of cinematic time travel, allowing us to revisit a moment in film history and reflect on representations of Black life and love.
The Liberation of Looking Back Through Film
Film offers us a unique power: the ability to look, and importantly, to look back. Inspired by bell hooks’s seminal essay, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” we can understand cinema as a space for agency and liberation.[1] This “oppositional gaze” empowers viewers, particularly those from marginalized communities, to critically examine and challenge dominant narratives. Like time travel itself, this act of “looking back” through film can be profoundly liberating, freeing us from the constraints of our present circumstances. Even in the face of oppressive structures, hooks argues, the ability to control one’s gaze offers a pathway to agency.[2]
Watching A Powerful Thang, a film from over thirty years ago, evokes a sense of nostalgic appreciation. It provides a rare and joyous depiction of intimate connection and love between two Black characters, a narrative often absent in contemporary film and television. This cinematic time travel movie experience highlights how representations of love, especially Black love, have evolved—or in some ways, remained stagnant—over time.
Love, as bell hooks eloquently stated, is not trivial. In her exploration of love, she calls it “our hope and our salvation.”[3] Love is essential for social progress and healing. hooks’ dedication to writing about love, a central theme in her extensive work, underscores its significance. Yet, media landscapes often overshadow nuanced portrayals of Black love with images of violence and sorrow. Many cinematic narratives subtly suggest that love is a limited resource, accessible only to a privileged few.
Filmmaker Alile Sharon Larkin powerfully describes the scarcity of Black love in Hollywood cinema as “cinematic genocide.”[4] Black viewers, particularly Black women, have long utilized the “oppositional gaze” to navigate this cinematic landscape. This critical perspective allows for resistance against dehumanizing portrayals of Blackness and opens space for filmmakers like Zeinabu irene Davis to create transformative images of Black womanhood and Black identity.
A Powerful Thang beautifully portrays a community recognizing the importance of human connection and love. The film centers on Yasmine (Asma Feyijinmi), a writer and mother, and Craig (John Earl Jelks), a musician, in the early stages of their relationship. As they navigate their day, friends and family create a chorus of encouragement, urging them to embrace the “full pleasures” of their evening together. This shared anticipation, evident in Yasmine’s writing, dance rehearsals, and conversations, and in Craig’s barbershop visit and saxophone playing, underscores the universal desire for connection. Davis masterfully uses this communal anticipation to convey the multifaceted longing for love.
Even in the present, watching Yasmine and Craig’s anticipation unfold in 1991 Ohio is deeply affecting. We share their hope for something better, something liberating. bell hooks’ words resonate across time: “Looking and looking back, black women involve ourselves in a process whereby we see our history as counter-memory, using it as a way to know the present and invent the future.” This cinematic time travel movie experience becomes a tool for understanding our present and imagining a more loving future.
Still image from A Powerful Thang, depicting Asma Feyijinmi and John Earl Jelks smiling at each other, embodying the joy and anticipation of connection in the film.
Pleasure in the Past: Cinematic Journeys to Bygone Eras
Realizing that we are not confined to the present moment is profoundly liberating. Film and television offer pathways to experience love in its fullness by traversing time and space. We can journey back to 1898, albeit temporarily, to witness the joy of a Black couple embracing and kissing in the rediscovered short film Something Good—Negro Kiss (William Nicholas Selig, 1898). This silent film, lasting approximately thirty seconds, is believed to be the earliest cinematic representation of Black affection. It opens with a medium shot of a formally dressed Black woman and man, their hands intertwined, sharing affectionate kisses, laughter, and smiles. Their embodied connection is palpable throughout—kisses, hugs, eye contact, and playful hand gestures. Film scholar Allyson Nadia Field rightly calls this historic footage “one of the most important films I’ve come across.” This early time travel movie clip offers a glimpse into a past where Black joy and affection were captured on film, a powerful counter-narrative to dominant historical representations.
This historic display of affection echoes the sentiments of Lorraine Hansberry, the visionary artist, activist, and playwright. In 1964, reflecting on love among Black people, she invoked a sense of timelessness: “Love? Ah, ask the troubadours who come from those who have loved when all reason pointed to the uselessness and foolhardiness of love…Out of the depths of pain we have thought to be our sole heritage in the world – O, we know about love!”[5]
Something Good—Negro Kiss, by depicting the unbridled joy of Black affection, becomes an act of liberation through love. In a society steeped in anti-blackness, this enthusiastic expression of love is inherently rebellious, as noted by Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins.[6] This time travel movie segment provides contemporary viewers with a transgressive narrative from an era often defined by the inhumanity of Jim Crow segregation. It defiantly proclaims, “O, we know about love!”
Still image from Illusions, showcasing Lonette McKee and Rosanne Katon in a scene of connection and recognition between two Black women in Hollywood's Golden Age.
Julie Dash, another pioneering filmmaker, journeyed back to WWII-era Hollywood in her acclaimed short film Illusions (1982). Illusions directly critiques the racial and gender hierarchies of 1940s Hollywood, offering a counter-narrative that reclaims the history, culture, and practices of the film industry. Dash reimagines history to empower Black women, centering the narrative around the developing intimacy between Mignon (Lonette McKee), a studio executive “passing” as white, and Ester (Rosanne Katon), a Black singer hired to secretly dub voices for white starlets. In a time of exclusion and objectification, their connection becomes a source of visibility and power. When together, Mignon and Ester transcend the invisibility imposed by Hollywood’s discriminatory practices. In their shared moments, they listen, connect, and truly see each other. Drawing on bell hooks, this “direct unmediated gaze of recognition” becomes a powerful and pleasurable bond between them.[7] Illusions, as a cinematic time travel movie to the 1940s, not only critiques the past but also imagines a space for Black women’s agency and connection within it.
The Liberation of Limitless Love: Beyond Temporal Boundaries
Returning to contemporary narratives, the series Modern Love (2019-) prompts an “oppositional gaze.” Despite its progressive title, “modern” love, as depicted, seems accessible to everyone except women of color.[8] The series, while showcasing diverse expressions of love across age, gender, and sexual orientation, conspicuously omits women of color from its vision of contemporary romance. This absence highlights the limitations of the present in reflecting true inclusivity in love.
In contrast, the acclaimed futuristic series Black Mirror boldly includes Black women in its explorations of love. The “San Junipero” (2016) episode, a standout in the series, offers a joyful vision of love that transcends the usual constraints of time and space. While Black Mirror often presents dystopian futures, “San Junipero” is a beacon of hope, featuring Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a Black woman who finds and chooses love with Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) for eternity in a simulated afterlife.
“San Junipero,” the episode’s namesake, is a virtual beach town where time is fluid. The elderly can visit as younger versions of themselves, and individuals can choose to reside there permanently in the afterlife, selecting their preferred decade. Kelly and Yorkie’s courtship unfolds across different decades within San Junipero and between the virtual and “real” worlds. Kelly’s ultimate decision to stay in San Junipero with Yorkie signifies a choice for love unbound by time. The widespread acclaim for “San Junipero,” often considered the “best and most beloved episode” of Black Mirror, reflects a contemporary yearning for the revolutionary possibilities of love. This episode stands out as a significant time travel movie entry, using science fiction to explore the timeless nature of love.
The allure of speculative fiction, particularly Afrofuturism, lies in its ability to transcend temporal limitations in the search for liberation. Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” and numerous Afrofuturist works exemplify this. Afrofuturism, as scholar Hope Wabuke explains, “imagine[s] alternate possibilities of Blackness that can be lived in safety, creativity, and freedom,” going beyond the confines of the present.[9]
It is therefore fitting that Julie Dash, a pioneer in filmmaking, employed the transgressive, oppositional gaze within speculative fiction when creating Daughters of the Dust (1991). Daughters of the Dust marked a historic moment as the first feature film directed by a Black woman to receive theatrical release in the U.S. Similar to Illusions, Dash re-envisions the past in Daughters, placing Black women at the center of African American history. The film portrays multiple generations of women from a Gullah Geechee family on St. Helena Island at the turn of the 20th century.
Daughters of the Dust imagines alternative realities where love and connection transcend time. Dash herself posed “What if we could have an unborn child come and visit her family-to-be and help solve the family’s problems…what if we had a family that had such a fellowship with the ancestors that they helped guide them.”[10] Speculative fiction, through this lens, offers infinite possibilities to imagine, create, and experience across time. Love, in its many forms, is central to Dash’s narrative, exemplified by the newlywed couple in the film, constantly shown “making love, embracing one another, caressing whispering sweet nothings…every time we see the Newlywed Man and his Newlywed Wife, they are expressing their love.”[11] Daughters of the Dust, a cinematic time travel movie to the past imbued with speculative elements, emphasizes the enduring power of love across generations and beyond the constraints of time.
Embracing the possibility of love and its “pleasures of life” across time is liberating. Knowing that love from the past is not confined to history, and that a future filled with love is attainable, is empowering. While I don’t advocate for blind nostalgia, and recognize the value of present-day love stories, expanding our vision of love requires journeys into the past and future. By traveling back in appreciation and forward with hope, we broaden our understanding of love. My hope is that these cinematic time travel movie explorations of love, both past and future, will inspire more love, liberation, and much-needed social transformation in our present world.
[1] bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 131.
[2] hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” 116.
[3] bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love, (NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 225.
[4] Alile Sharon Larkin, “Black Women Filmmakers Defining Ourselves: Feminism in Our Own Image,” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 17, no. 2, 1983, p. 52, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2904417.
[5] Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words, Edited by Robert Nemiroff. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969), 256.
[6] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004).
[7] hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” 129.
[8] Trellie Saunders, “Amazon’s ‘Modern Love’ Is Inexcusably White,” NewsOne, October 24, 2019, https://newsone.com/3890725/amazon-modern-love-inexcusable-whiteness/.
[9] Hope Wabuke, “Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the Language of Black Speculative Literature,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 21, 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/afrofuturism-africanfuturism-and-the-language-of-black-speculative-literature/.
[10] Dash, Daughters of the Dust: The Making of an African American Woman’s Film (NY: The New Press, 1992), 29.
[11] Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust, 55.
