“Have you got any soul?”: reinterpreting High Fidelity’s relationship to Black cultural production

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses textual and discourse analysis to examine the interpersonal dynamic between Rob and Cherise in High Fidelity (Hulu 2020), two Black female characters at the center of a gender- and race-flipped TV remake of Nick Hornby’s (1995) novel and Stephen Frears’s (2000) film. It centers Cherise in the frame by examining how she opposes her secondary status as a supporting character with her undervalued critical and creative acumen, traits she shares with her white male literary and cinematic counterparts but activates differently as a Black woman. It situates Cherise and actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s interpretation of the source material through the practice of cover singing. Though covers are often dismissed as unoriginal, reinterpretation is particularly useful for Black female performers who transform other peoples’ songs as a tactic against artistic marginalization, one that allows them to critique institutional racism and sexism. This acuity implicates the media industries’ limited imagination for Black female characters and the performers who bring them to life. Thus, Cherise and Randolph reveal the work ahead to bring Black female characters into focus by embellishing the margins of a story and challenging an adaptation process that was not designed to center them.