Race & Ethnicity On TV

[DearEvette]

4 hours ago, MissAlmond said:

Now why did Sleepy Hollow creator, Philip Iscove take to Twitter streets declaring "Shipping nonsense! and how two people can just be friends blah, blah, blah" about fans shipping some couple on Hulu's The Bear? A show the man has nothing to do with! Guess Iscove thought nobody remembered his name. They did. Tweet deleted but the memory lives again

Yeah the shipping discourse between Carmy and Sydney on The Bear is interesting.  I don't know if any of The Bear creatives have weighed in (they'd be smart NOT to) but the whole thing has a 'been there, done that quality with some people saying 'There is no chemistry' and 'Why can't people just be friends' and 'They are giving sibling energy'  in response to people shipping the couple.

Now, to be fair I am not shipping Syd and Carmy per se I can see an argument for them being this great friend-partnership only, but the shippers are not pulling stuff out of their asses.  I don't know if it is the writing, the directing, the acting choices or just the actor chemistry, but Syd and Carmy have scenes that objectively read as UST. 

Which brings me to the race portion of all this because usually these kickbacks to 'can't people just be friends" and 'they are giving sibling" vibes tend to be loudest when one pair of the shipping couple is a black female. 

Which brings us to Iscove and yeah, he needs to just sit there and eat his food.  He has no credibility here.  Given how they fumbled the bag with their own couple, I would only trust them to tell me how NOT to have nice things.

[MissAlmond]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

Well for a decade he has been hearing from fans that his  not changing plans when he had lighting in a bottle and bulled forward with his initial plot of the 200 year love story. So he snaps back

I know Phil Iscove not out there snapping at anyone when he, himself, changed OG author Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane from a played as a fool by Brom Bones, Katrina, and probably the entire town of Sleepy Hollow.  

11 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

Which brings me to the race portion of all this because usually these kickbacks to 'can't people just be friends" and 'they are giving sibling" vibes tend to be loudest when one pair of the shipping couple is a black female.

Yeah, that was the discussion going on elsewhere when Phil Iscove inadvertently hashtaged himself into the conversation. Guess he picked the wrong day to talk about shipping. 

[Trini]

2023 Emmy nominations Diversity Report, at Variety.

[Spartan Girl]

So there was this one episode of the new season of The Proud Family where they tried to tackle colorism. Penny and the girls are all in a tizzy over some teen celebrity named Noah that attends their school, and are baffled that he ignores all of them and asks out Zoey. They hear it’s because he is only into white girls. Naturally, they are hurt and upset, but instead of realizing that Noah is a jerk and not worth their time, they immediately turn on Zoey, acting like she “stole” him from them. Zoey has no idea what’s going on, but that doesn’t stop them from disinviting Zoey from their party. It isn’t until Zoey shows up to their party and confronts them about why they’re being so awful to her that they finally tell her about what they heard…and Zoey automatically assumes that they’re just jealous. Huge fight ensues.

Eventually, it turns out the rumor about Noah’s preferences is true—and Zoey promptly dumps him because she doesn’t want anything to do with someone who would hurt her friends. But I can’t help feeling the message of the episode was kind of muddled. Were we supposed to see Zoey as the villain because her friends turned on her without giving her the benefit of the doubt? It’s understandable that Zoey wouldn’t believe them when they automatically treated her like crap BEFORE telling her what they were—not to mention they were practically asking “why else would he be interested in an nerdy girl like her?” before they found out the truth. Honestly, Penny and Dijonay don’t come off well when you realize that they already HAVE boyfriends while throwing themselves over that jerk.

So again, I applaud the show for talking about colorism, but again, they could have done it differently.

[Bastet]

Interestingly, the two best discussions of colorism I've ever seen on TV both involved Lorraine Toussaint -- an episode of Any Day Now and one of The Fosters.

[DearEvette]

One of my favorite and imo one of the better tv episodes re: colorism is the Season 1 episode in Dear White People that focused on CoCo. 

In the original movie, Coco was presented as this blonde weave, fake blue eyed dark-skinned girl who was not really given any context (she was played by Teyonah Parris).  Whereas the light skinned biracial Sam (played by Tessa Thompson) was centered in the movie and her embracing of her blackness is given all the nuance you could want.

ironically, of course, this set up is textbook colorism with the light skinned woman given all this agency and centering, and the dark skinned woman is kinda reduced to a self-hating one-dimensional character.

In the tv show, that gets redressed fabulously.  For one, the tv show version of CoCo (played by Antoinette Robertson) is soooo complex and brilliantly conceived.  IMO, she got the best character development and writing.  And her episode (all the characters got their own character centered episode in season one) was about how colorism affected her.  But also it puts into perspective how colorism has benefited Sam (played by Logan Browning) in ways that Sam never realized.  It is a nice bit of writing because CoCo is 100% aware of what is going on but Sam's light skinned privilege blinds her.

[Trini]

Lois Lane is Korean-American in the new animated series My Adventures with Superman (a super cute new take on Superman lore):

Personally, I've always thought that since "brunette" was lois' main physical characteristic, she could be played by a brunette of any race.

And Jimmy Olsen and Perry White are African-American in this version as well, but this isn't the first time DC has 'racebent' those characters.

[akg]

18 hours ago, Trini said:

Lois Lane is Korean-American in the new animated series My Adventures with Superman (a super cute new take on Superman lore):

She's so cute! After the speculation after the casting (she's voiced by Alice Lee who is Korean-American), I'm so happy they confirmed this.

[Scarlett45]

On 7/22/2023 at 3:50 PM, Bastet said:

Interestingly, the two best discussions of colorism I've ever seen on TV both involved Lorraine Toussaint -- an episode of Any Day Now and one of The Fosters.

I’m not familiar with the one from any day now, but I do remember Lorraine Toussaint in The Fosters! I vaguely remember that conversation. She is a national treasure so I don’t doubt it was brilliant. 

[PerformingArtist]

On 8/10/2023 at 8:49 PM, Scarlett45 said:

 

On 7/22/2023 at 4:50 PM, Bastet said:

Interestingly, the two best discussions of colorism I've ever seen on TV both involved Lorraine Toussaint -- an episode of Any Day Now and one of The Fosters.

I’m not familiar with the one from any day now, but I do remember Lorraine Toussaint in The Fosters! I vaguely remember that conversation. She is a national treasure so I don’t doubt it was brilliant. 

 

It truly was. I remember her on both shows. Fantastic.

[Trini]

On 6/20/2019 at 2:38 AM, Trini said:

On 6/19/2019 at 11:26 PM, paulvdb said:

‘Mixed-Ish’: Mark-Paul Gosselaar Joins ‘Black-Ish’ Spinoff On ABC In Recasting

He will play Bow's father

I don't know what it means, but it's kind of interesting that this is the third time in the past few years (after Pitch, and The Passage) that Gosselaar has been paired with a black, female co-star for a series.

... And with Found, make that the fourth time M-PG is starring in a show with a Black, female lead. However, this time it's a very different type of role than the others.

[arc]

On 6/19/2019 at 8:26 PM, paulvdb said:

‘Mixed-Ish’: Mark-Paul Gosselaar Joins ‘Black-Ish’ Spinoff On ABC In Recasting

He will play Bow's father

So catching up on this, just curious, given that Gosselaar is mixed, was Gosselaar's character white or mixed himself?

Edited January 19 by arc

[Raja]

16 minutes ago, arc said:

So catching up on this, just curious, given that Gosselaar is mixed, was Gosselaar's character white or mixed himself?

I don't recall it coming up on the show 

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, arc said:

So catching up on this, just curious, given that Gosselaar is mixed, was Gosselaar's character white or mixed himself?

No.  His father was played by Gary Cole and his mother who appeared in one Episode was played by Jane Kaczmarek.  The kids called her 'White Grandma.'

[Trini]

I had read this a while ago and meant to bring it up here, as an example of Black actresses experiences with getting proper hairstylists:

From 'It's Possible: An Oral History of 1997's "Cinderella"':

Quote

Craig Zadan: The one thing we didn’t know would be such a major issue was black hair. We hadn’t hired any black hair dressers. So we had pushback, especially from Natalie Desselle — she was the one who threw up her hands in exasperation because she didn’t want the hairdressers that we had.

Neil Meron: We were like, "Why is she crying? Over her hairdresser?"

Craig Zadan: And we said, "Debra help!"

Debra Martin Chase: We had black hair stylists for Brandy and Whitney. But we didn’t have, well, black hairdresser money. But God knows I understood Natalie’s complaint, so we went and found one.

 

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, Trini said:

I had read this a while ago and meant to bring it up here, as an example of Black actresses experiences with getting proper hairstylists:

From 'It's Possible: An Oral History of 1997's "Cinderella"':

 

I stll don't understand why hairdressers don't know how to style hair for black women. Their whole job is hair. The more styles you know the more customers and money.  

[janie jones]

On 1/20/2024 at 9:37 PM, andromeda331 said:

I stll don't understand why hairdressers don't know how to style hair for black women. Their whole job is hair. The more styles you know the more customers and money.  

I totally agree and I also don't understand why schools don't require you to demonstrate the ability to work with a variety of hair types in order to complete the program.

[Raja]

58 minutes ago, janie jones said:

I totally agree and I also don't understand why schools don't require you to demonstrate the ability to work with a variety of hair types in order to complete the program.

Perhaps they teach the state test?

[possibilities]

Racism, that's why. 

[janie jones]

I mean, yes, racism, but how do they justify it?

[Raja]

12 minutes ago, janie jones said:

I mean, yes, racism, but how do they justify it?

We are tasking lawyers to update standards on  state testing. Safety is one thing, the other stuff is hard to quantify 

[Trini]

Okay, actually this was really lovely; interview with the Black women behind Hallmark's new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility -- and yes, they talk about hair!

 

[DearEvette]

Ok how cool that Kara Saun is the costume designer.  She came in second in the very first season of Project Runway.

Edited February 23 by DearEvette