Both, in terms of media and cultural studies, some negative sterotypes of black people
along with its specific term of Angry Black Woman (ABW),has clearly shown that Afro-
American people and their actionsare being subjectively considered as the forms of
social deviance. „What Happened, Miss Simone?‟, a biographical documentary fllm,
depicts a nonfictionalstory about a word-class jazz musician, Nina Simone, who was
also an Afro-American woman and one of the most impactful activists in the era of Civil
Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968. This research focuses on the counter-hegemony

manifestation of Nina Simone‟s role and her journey stories through the nonfiction film.
By using twelve stages of Christopher Vogler‟s narrative analysis method: i.e. Ordinary
World; Call to Adventure (Inciting Incident); Refusal of the Call; Meeting with the
Mentor; Crossing the Threshold; Test, Allies, Enemies; Approach to the Inmost Cave;
Central Ordeal (Midpoint, Death, and Rebirth); Reward; The Road Back; The
Resurrection (Climax); and Return with the Elixir (Denouement), this research has
proved that an Afro-American woman on the nonfiction film can be successfully
represented as an organic intellectual alongside with its war of position in order to
oppose the hegemonic power of the invisibility and neutrality of white people on the film
industry, which is always being accepted as a fairness doctrine.However, the
ambivalence and the ambiguity of Nina‟s nonfictional role and story simultaneously
demonstrate its binary opposition of black people and its inadequacy to defy a
hegemonic power of white supremacy through the visual masterpiece.
Keywords: Afro-America, documentary film, counter-hegemony, narrative, stereotype

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