When watching the homegrown webseries The Foxy Five one word comes to mind: Groooovy!
The series, created by Jabu Nadia Newman (a student at the University of Cape Town), portrays the different narratives of the challenges faced by five young, black millennial womxn and their struggle to reach consensus regarding intersectional feminism.
You’ll find the hippie, the revolutionary, the intellectual, the pan Africanist and the sexually liberated womxn; providing an array of personalities, yet relatable in its execution.
The six episodes of approximately 15 minutes each are aesthetically recognizable by the use of Blaxploitation.
Being introduced to me by my awesome English Studies lecturer (shout out to Dr. Nadia Sanger!), its viewing was met by the class with mixed feelings. Many have felt that the representations are exclusive in its dialogue and rather than promoting intersectionality contributes to the already-existing gap. In addition, it had been pointed out that the representations lack educational value because of its humoristic approach, counterbalancing its didactic potential.
In my opinion, the show achieves its potential as it addresses current issues such as sexism, patriarchy, white supremacy, the LGBTQ movement, street harassment...the list goes on! Also, the humoristic approach in the execution of the content is really not that bad. It proves that learning does not necessarily have to take place in a classroom setup, which is quite cool and refreshing. As long as the messages do not get lost along the way!
So go ahead, click on the links below and start binging. It’s far out.
Quick 101 on possible unknown terms:
Intersectional feminism: “A form of feminism that aims to include all women and recognize that race, gender, identity, sexual orientation, ability and class all influence how much and in what ways women are oppressed.” (Jue 2016)
Blaxploitation: “An American genre emerging in the 1970s which featured majoritarily black casts and immediately recognisable aesthetics.” (Chienin 2017)
