Destruction & Creation in America: Whiteness and Class Consciousness in Nikyatu Jusu’s ‘Nanny’
Nikyatu Jusu’s debut film, Nanny, presents the viewer with thoughts on American exceptionalism, experiences of motherhood, race, and worker exploitation in a refreshing way and in a new voice.
These themes move above, while also working below and pushing narratives through metaphor—fire, water, and folklore help propel Nanny into a story that does not outright tell us its reasons, but moves us to them.
Director Nikyatu Jusu
Brief Synposis
Aisha is a single mother and undocumented immigrant from Senegal. We follow her as she begins a new nannying position for an affluent couple and their young daughter in New York City. Aisha faces many set backs as she pushes forward to earn enough money to bring her son, Lamine, to America.
American Terror
We meet Aisha (Anna Diop) as she prepares for her first day of work in Manhattan.
Aisha was a schoolteacher in Senegal, but her French fluency and teaching experience are only afterthoughts to her foremost utility to the family: housework and child rearing.
Amy (Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector) are parents to Rose, a five-year-old girl who likes to play hide and seek but is reluctant to eat the health food provided by Amy.
We immediately see a disconnect between Amy and Rose. Hints are sprinkled in throughout the film that point to Amy’s resentment of Rose—resentment for Rose’s more interesting taste buds, her close relationship with her father Adam, but most of all, a resentment that she gave birth to Rose.
An all-too-common phenomenon in married parents is that the mother is the one who sets rules, who nags, the one who must remain nurturing while also being the disciplinarian. Some men in these partnerships are “cool dads” rather than fathers, who weaponize their household incompetence and treat fatherhood as a hobby. Adam is no exception. While Amy works, Adam travels the world, sleeping with other women and photographing (i.e. exploiting) civil unrest in Black communities.
The Perpetuation & Exploitation of Black Pain
Amy and Adam represent much that is wrong with neo-liberalism: they work harder on an image of anti-racism, rather than dismantling it within themselves. For instance, Adam prides himself on his photographic journalism of police brutality in Black communities. He is proudest of the images he captured of a Black man with his fist raised high in protest while flames burn in the background.
However, he hosts a party later in the film wherein a white colleague fervently states that “burning shit down in your own neighborhood does not the help the cause.” No one pushes back on his sentiment; effectively showing that Adam and his friends are only comfortable with protest when it is in their realm of comfort and understanding.
Adam and Amy actively harm Aisha by not adequately compensating her for her work.
It is not only a disregard of women’s labor, but exploitation of an undocumented, Black woman’s labor.
A personal nanny is a luxury afforded to a certain tax bracket (same for their New York City loft); if you cannot afford to ethically support your employee, do not hire one. Of course this is not the attitude for many households; more importance is placed the ego boost of “affording” a Nanny.
Amy’s blind spots are painfully obvious when she tries to commiserate with Aisha over the “boy’s club” attitude of her workplace; Amy sees her victimization by her male co-workers as the same as Aisha’s oppression which Amy is actively upholding.
Whiteness & Cultural Contempt
While Aisha is not whole without her son in New York, she does have rich ties to her country of Senegal and its cultural customs through the friends in her life. She has a friend who does her hair, the woman who helps send her money to Lamine in Senegal, and she meets her new partner, Malik.
Aisha does not have her immediate blood family with her, but she has her culture and history that ties her to others. In contrast, Amy and Adam are the stereotypical American White nuclear family: insular, closed off, void of cultural anchors. Amy becomes enraged with Aisha when she learns that Aisha has been feeding her daughter food with spices, she believes spices dull the testbeds. Whiteness rejects influence from other cultures and searches for reasons to cheapen them.
Rose loves Aisha for everything Amy resents her for: her cooking, the way she plays with Rose, the African folklore she shares, and her overall romantic relation to the world. One interaction between Amy and Aisha that stuck out to me was the night Amy gives Aisha a dress to wear. Aisha tells is it is much too tight, while Amy responds “it’s perfect.” Aisha is shown changing back into comfortable clothing as soon as she can.
This shows both Amy’s ignorance towards Aisha’s discomfort and Amy’s comfort with, binding social norms.
Nanny confronts its audience with issues of grief, loss, power and its pitfalls, class solidarity, and oppression.
Nikyatu Jusu has created a film that looks at larger politics of oppression such as race, class, and immigration status, while also narrowing down to issues of personal relationships, family, and most of all, the relationship to oneself.
This Is Water
Aisha’s personal pain in the film is shown through the metaphor of water: water has the ability to give life and to heal, but it also has an immense ability to destroy, to drown, to sweep us away. Aisha struggles with these two sides of herself: the side that wants to keep her head down and work for what she can, and the side that pushes her to fight back; the side that shies from love, and the side that fights for vulnerability in her romantic life with Malik, a man who works near her. In the end she finds both: the courage to fight for what she is owed, and the strength to love Malik. When she ultimately faces a loss that threatens to destroy her, she harnesses a deep, guttural power that saves her.
