We’ve gone through a few films by now and we are screening our first movie with black women in major roles. This got me thinking about the previous movies that we have watched. What if the main character was an African-American woman? A Chinese woman? Another race? While I was looking for scenes from Klute (1971) on YouTube, I stumbled across what I assume were videos of rising actresses (?) performing monologues based off of Jane Fonda’s script of Bree Daniels.  This video is one of the ones I found:

Do you think that changing the race of a character can add or take away from the role? I felt that there may be more depth to this monologue when I listened to it. Yes she did not say the exact same words or speak in the exact same way, but she is portraying one of the psych sessions that Bree has with her therapist. The depth that I mentioned before could be in part, due to the fact that we are of similar racial background and so I could identify more with her as the character of Bree. On the other side however, I thought of the stereotypes (that are true for some) that are placed on many women of colour: low income levels, chaotic family situations, single motherhood, adultery, rape,  lack of education, lack of opportunity, prostitution. In my opinion, changing the race may cause the audience to add more depth to Bree’s character. In the movie Klute, we are not given much background on Bree outside of her call girl life. Would changing the race simply add closure however? And is that a good thing? What I mean by that is, would say, the typical audience member, justify her situation based on her race and using the generalizations above? Do you think the role of a fairly good looking white woman living as a call girl is realistic in this world today? How about during the 1970s when this film came out?