La Noir de... -Amanda Carman

Pair B:
A major thematic element and motivating force throughout the film is pride, manifested in the personal pride of both Diouana and the mistress and, in a more abstract sense, the pride of the Senegalese as a whole.  The primary symbol for this pride, I feel, is the mask.  Diouana wears the mask as she is proudly celebrating her new job and hands it over to her employers when she takes the position.  In Senegal, the mask is just one of many relics displayed in the home, just as Diouana is just one of many servants in their employ.  However, once she moves to Paris, her mask is displayed prominently on the wall, the only relic of Senegal, and almost takes on the appearance of a hunting trophy.  Similarly, Diouana is the only servant in the Parisian apartment, and she is on display for the guests of her employers just as much as the mask is.  When she can't stand being a trophy for the family any longer, Diouana takes the mask back.  She and the mistress fight over it, and she is ultimately the victor.  As a parallel, she and the mistress fight over her duties; the mistress refuses her food if she doesn't work and she refuses work if she is not fed.  In this battle of pride, too, Diouana is the victor; she slits her throat in their bathroom so that there can be no mistake of how she felt about them, and she will live in their memories forever.

Though Diouana is a victor in the battle of pride, pride itself is not shown in a positive light in this film.  The pride of the mistress is the most obvious example.  She is driven by the need to keep up appearances in the house and in her family, and class distinctions are apparently very important to her.  She comments on Diouana's style of dress as being too formal for her station, and toward the end has her take off her heels so that she may remember that she is a maid.  Diouana is not the only victim of criticism; the husband must also bear rude remarks on his habits, particularly his drinking. Because of this all-encompassing need to keep up appearances, the mistress is at odds with everyone around her and is never truly at ease with herself through the film.

Diouana is also a victim of her own pride.  She meets a man shortly before leaving for Paris but when she's with him her mind is so preoccupied with fantasies of her soon-to-be elevated lifestyle that it prevents her from forming a real connection with him (I would argue that making love because he was pouting is not a real connection).  More importantly, her pride ultimately kills her.  To be sure, she made a profound statement with her death and, in the battle of pride, taking the money and leaving would have let the mistress win, but I'm not sure the benefits of winning this battle really outweighed the cost.  Taking the money and leaving would have been more humble, but she would also have been able to experience all the things she came to Paris to experience, and she would have had the chance to create a better life for herself.  If Diouana's experience is meant as a synecdoche for the experience of Senegal as a whole, particularly in response to the difficulties of creating a post-colonial identity, it serves as a warning not to let attachment to pride and tradition slit the throat of independence.

These images highlight the theme of pride as a constraint, contrary to independence.  The mistress in the first picture is wearing the European equivalent of a mask: large sunglasses which obscure her features and, in a way, mark her position in society.  Her lips are pursed, as they often are when she is displaying her dominance, and she is proudly faced almost full front.  Her head, however, is locked in a frame, giving it a trapped feeling in an otherwise open space.  The second picture features the mask, the symbol of Diouana's (and Senegal's) pride, also faced almost full front, but this character is in front of a chain-link fence, a fence style often associated with prisons or cages.