There is a memorable scene in the 2003 film Something’s Gotta Give where Harry, played by then 66 year old Jack Nicholson, refers to Erica, played by then 57 year old Diane Keaton, as a “woman to love.” In the film Harry is a playboy who dates women under the age of thirty. He then finds himself falling in love with his current girlfriend’s mother Erica, a divorced playwright.

The film is paramount in many ways but in one particular way was director Nancy Meyer’s decision to base the plot around an extraordinary kind of woman. Keaton herself voiced in her 2004 Golden Globe award acceptance speech thanking Meyers for making her, then at 57, a “woman to love.”

Romantic comedies seldom go against the formula established by directors and writers of the early days of film. Much of the formula has been to make a woman to love in film, she has to be young, attractive, white, and in many ways, fit a stereotype found in many of the works of William Shakespeare, a pawn in the much larger plot. A woman to love carries the film without really saying or doing much.

But in the case of Something’s Gotta Give, Diane Keaton’s character Erica Barry is one of those anomalies. An anomaly that begs the question of changing the dynamic of a woman to love and the diegetic life she lives.

Many scholars have argued the role of African Americans in film. Of those, there are the chosen few who argue to role of African Americans in romantic comedies. When dealing with such, what is the dynamic when the woman to love is a Black woman? Can a Black woman be a woman to love in a romantic comedy? If so, what examples and/or obstacles must she endure to remain in this archetype?

Is there such thing as a Black romantic comedy? The Best Man (1998), Something New (2004), Deliver Us From Eva (2003), Love Jones (1997), Just Wright (2010) , How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998); could these be classified as romantic comedies? If so, should it be a coincidence that neither of these films have even come close to the magnitude of well-known masterpieces such as Annie Hall (1977), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), What Women Want (2001).

Films are interpretations of reality; the writer and/or director’s perspective of the human experience. Since the early days of film, those perspectives and interpretations have been largely defined by white men and women. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that when dealing with films of romance, there is, in the words of writer/director Shonda Rhimes, an assumption of whiteness and niceness for women. Annie Hall is a beloved character because she’s nice, she’s quirky, she’s white, and dares never to challenge Woody Allen’s character. Sally is a nice girl who just needs to get laid, as evident in the iconic restaurant scene. The woman to love has been soaked in these aspects but when dealing with women of color, particularly Black women, it is a whole new criticism.

Well-known film scholar Donald Bogle argues that the Black leading lady has been categorized into several main archetypes; Mammy, a supporting role as evidenced by Hattie McDaniel’s character in the 1939 iconic film Gone With the Wind; Jezebel- the black equivalent to the whore or fallen woman; and, most recently, Sapphire or what is presently referred to as the “angry black woman.”

The main argument could then turn into this idea that Black women can’t be the woman to love because they don’t fit the image in any of these categories. How could Gabrielle Union be a woman to love in Deliver Us from Eva when she plays a sassy, evil, man-eating older sister Eva? How can Angela Bassett be a woman to love when she is a divorced mother flirting with a man twenty year younger than her in How Stella Got Her Groove Back? Why would a Black woman over 50 need to be a woman to love?

These are the arguments that color the perception of African American women in film. This is how we have defined a Black woman to love. Can this be changed?