In the television season that concluded last year, show episodes directed by non-white women made up a whopping three percent of the total. White women, meanwhile, were a hardly-impressive 13 percent. It’s statistics like these that make the arrival of OWN’s drama “Queen Sugar” so compelling.
The series, based on the 2014 novel by Natalie Baszile and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey, Melissa Carter, and Ava DuVernay, follows the three very different Bordelon siblings dealing with their shared inheritance of a Louisiana sugarcane farm.
Each episode of the show’s first season was directed by, as DuVernay says, “a bad-ass woman director.”
The “Selma” director herself helmed the first two episodes of the drama, which do the heavy lifting of investing viewers in the lives of Nova (Rutina Wesley), a journalist with side businesses in fortune-telling and herbs; Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner), the high-rolling manager and spouse of an L.A. basketball star; and the intriguingly-named Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), a recent parolee and single dad struggling to support his young son Blue (Ethan Hutchison).
The first scene of the series is a clear statement about the show’s firmly female-centric ethos. The camera lovingly, unhurriedly follows Wesley as she rises from her bed, giving us an un-shy but never exploitative look at the muscular curves of her body and sinewy braids as she slips on her clothes in the early morning light. Her white male lover, almost an afterthought to our own gaze, embraces her after she’s up and helps her finish dressing. It’s a gorgeous scene worthy of the big screen, unsurprising given DuVernay’s film career (she’s next due to direct Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time” for release in 2017).
“Queen Sugar” retains that cinematic beauty throughout its first three episodes available for review, especially in scenes set on the Louisiana farm. DuVernay and third-ep director Neema Barnette (“Being Mary Jane”) suffuse their exterior shots with a lushness that occasionally recalls that of “True Detective” (also like that show, the writing here sometimes veers into the overly expositionary, a problem that lessens as the plot moves forward).
I don’t think this show could have picked a more perfect cultural moment to debut. “Queen Sugar” is a diverse, sophisticated portrait of an African American family that never loses essential respect for its subjects — even when they’re doing less than perfect things (mostly, it must be said, this applies to the men in the family). As Wesley said in an interview, “The way we’re approaching the black family, I think other races, other families in general are gonna be like, ‘I got an uncle like that.’ I just want people to start talking, to shed some light on the world. This is how we’re loving each other, how we’re treating each other.”
The show also expands beyond its initially soap-operatic beginnings of a family reunion, bringing in issues of activism, recidivism, prison treatment, and childhood gender issues (Ralph Angel’s son Blue is constantly carrying a black Barbie, which his dad seems not entirely comfortable with). But the most unique of these topics — something you won’t find in many other primetime dramas, unlike crime — is farming. In the third episode, Charley attends a meeting of local landowners and learns that the odds are stacked against black farmers when it comes to securing loans and setting prices.
This scene has an almost documentary feel, which is perhaps a nod to DuVernay’s documentary-making past and the fact that her six other female directors largely hail from the indie film world. In putting together “Queen Sugar,” the director deliberately set out to pave a way for talented indie directors to break into TV.
“‘We just never had the opportunity,’ said Tina Mabry, another renowned indie filmmaker who worked as a producer, writer, and director on the show. Her debut feature film ‘Mississippi Damned’ won top accolades at Chicago International Film, Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, and the American Black Film Festival. ‘And that is something that Ava provided all of us with. That opportunity to actually showcase the skill that she knew we already had but had not gotten the chance to due to our industry, which struggles with inclusiveness.’”
I think it’s unsurprising, then, that “Queen Sugar” encompasses so many stories and themes. That’s what happens when, like DuVernay, you set out to sign on talented fellow female storytellers rather than keeping the creative reins to yourself. She — and let’s not forget Oprah— may just be sending a message to the entertainment industry: Sisterhood is more powerful than ever.
