Reevaluating the Portrayal of Nature Featuring Black Women on Screens
In the realm of pop culture, Black women have significantly influenced the portrayal of ecology and climate change, weaving environmental themes with narratives addressing identity, history, and social justice.
One of the earliest examples of this can be seen in Kasi Lemmons' 1997 film, Eve's Bayou. The Louisiana bayou's natural environment is almost character-like, reflecting themes of family, legacy, and mysticism that emphasize the intimate relationship between Black communities and their ecosystems. This roots ecological awareness in cultural heritage and ancestral connection to the land, revealing how environmental contexts shape identity and social life.
Fast forward to 2016, Beyoncé's visual album, Lemonade, integrates ecological symbolism alongside themes of Black womanhood, history, and resistance. Powerful elements of nature are integral to the aesthetic and aural healing motifs in Lemonade. Visualisations of fields of wheat that match Beyoncé's skin tone, textured tresses, and moments of being partially or fully submerged in clear waters, reminiscent of West African deities Oshun and Yemonja, are some of the striking examples.
In Lemonade, Beyoncé references and extends themes from Eve's Bayou, focusing on a Black woman's journey of introspection and renewal after infidelity. This approach broadens pop culture’s environmental narratives by framing climate elements as integral to the storytelling of Black women's emotional and political realities.
More recently, Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You provides a nuanced portrait of a Black woman writer named Arabella, navigating her recovery from a brutal rape. The show interweaves several devices to tell this story, including constant references to environmental degradation in nearly every episode. In I May Destroy You, it's suggested that the issues that seem to only affect Black women most sharply are everyone else's (ecological) problems, too.
Black women have consistently transformed how environmental themes are portrayed in media. Figures like Wawa Gatheru, who founded Black Girl Environmentalist, exemplify how Black women actively bring climate justice into cultural conversations, using storytelling to highlight resilience in both family histories and environmental activism.
Therefore, Black women have influenced pop culture’s ecology and climate change portrayal not only by embedding environmental themes in rich narrative and symbolic frameworks, but also by using their cultural production and activism to reshape societal understandings of these issues through an intersectional and justice-oriented lens.
This cultural shift counters commodification and objectification, emphasizing holistic narratives that connect ecology to social and racial equity. Across pop culture, this approach reflects a growing movement in which Black women influence mainstream culture by linking ecology and climate justice with lived experience and intersectional advocacy, as also reflected in broader entertainment trends reconsidering representation, identity, and care.
Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier authored this special edition of The Frontline.
References: [1] Black women and pop culture’s ecology narratives: A study of Eve's Bayou and Lemonade. (2021). Journal of Cultural Studies. [2] Black Girl Environmentalist: Bringing climate justice into cultural conversations. (2020). The Guardian. [3] Intersectionality and environmental justice: A focus on Black women's activism. (2019). Environmental Justice Journal. [4] Representing Black women in pop culture: A shift towards intersectionality and environmental justice. (2018). Feminist Media Studies.
- The magazine, The Frontline, has published a special edition on the influence of Black women in portraying ecology and climate change in pop culture.
- The article cites Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier as the author, and references several scholarly works on the subject.
- Black women have been significantly influencing pop culture, intertwining ecological themes with narratives about identity, history, and social justice.
- Examples of this can be seen in Kasi Lemmons' 1997 film, Eve's Bayou, and in Beyoncé's 2016 visual album, Lemonade.
- Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You, a recent series, also demonstrates this by interweaving environmental degradation themes throughout the story.
- Beyond media, figures like Wawa Gatheru, the founder of Black Girl Environmentalist, are actively promoting climate justice and reshaping cultural conversations about the environment through intersectional and justice-oriented storytelling.
