Television shows featuring black women happily boo-ed up with their white male significant others are gaining traction and started to appear more frequently. But this increased visibility is also bringing some critique.
Last Spring the limited-run series (before it was picked up as a regular) ABC show “Scandal” featured actress Kerry Washington as a Washington D.C “fixer” who had been having an affair with the President of the United States. Some people had a problem with the fact that black female fixer was polished, professional, and single but had jumped into a liaison with a married man. (Spoiler: Kerry’s character had previously ended the affair.)
Having problems with the way a black woman is portrayed is one thing, but New York Times television critic Neil Genzlinger goes a step (or two, or three) further and sees something more sinister in the way black women’s relationships with white men are seen on TV. Genzlinger thinks those relationships look “suspect”–his word, not mine. And he hints that there might some sorta conspiracy theory underfoot.
As evidence of this possible conspiracy to portray black women and their relationships as suspect, he obligatorily cites “Scandal“. OK: A black woman; a white man; people getting greased to keep secrets. Yeah, I could see how “Scandal” might look a little shifty if you were looking hard enough. But if you are looking that hard, you’re probably looking too hard. There is nothing odd about the behavior of Washington’s character on the show and the President seems, well, presidential. Powerful men have been getting themselves caught up in all manner of craziness since the beginning of time, the only difference with “Scandal” is that the woman who the powerful man falls for happens to be black.
Genzlinger then cites “The Neighbors,” a new ABC sitcom about a neighborhood inhabited by space aliens. In the show, a mixed-race woman and her white husband do truly weird things, like cry through their ears and talk using pedantic speech. Yeah, the couple is weird, but they’re aliens–they’re supposed to be weird! Considering that I just finished watching the entire third season of the SyFy channel’s now-defunct show “Battlestar Galactica” which features a white man–who is fully human–married to an Asian woman who is one-hundred percent alien, I’m having a hard time with the suggestion that the mixed-raced alien couple on “The Neighbors” is somehow particularly weird due to their ethnic combination.
Finally, the columnist mentions another new ABC series “666 Park Avenue,” centered around Gavin and Olivia Doran, played by Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Williams. The couple are the owners of a demonic New York apartment building named the Drake. Again, I have to ask: What is the connection between the couple being interracial and the fact that the show is about the supernatural? From where I’m sitting, there is no connection.
Lets allow these television shows to either rise or fall on their own merits, no crazy conspiracy theories needed.
[Source: The New York Times]
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Jamila Akil is a senior editor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil or email her at jamilathewriter-at-gmail-dot-com.
Guys I actually have a username and have been dying to post again, but cannot for the life of me remember what it is!
Anyway, I just read the article. I see your point of view, but from his point of view, he may not have been taking into consideration the fact that black women have not been represented, in such a high profile - non-superfluous, (less than insulting) way before on network television or for the masses. He was likely looking at it from his point-of-view because I read the tone as, "Stick a black woman with a white guy and that's supposed to be synonymous with weird?", as opposed to the "Stick a black guy with a white woman and you just get the most adorable, loving couple you'll ever see!". The "weird" is his problem. I pretty certain that is the case. I might be wrong, though.
Here's the excerpt:
"Many of television’s worst infestations — newscasters with hairpieces; reality shows with “Extreme” in the title; commercials featuring talking lizards, cats or infants — began quietly. Early attention or government action might have stopped them, but then ubiquity set in, and suddenly they were a fact of life.
So let’s look at some nascent TV trends that may or may not be trends. Perhaps they’re mere coincidences, but it’s never too early to stamp out a possibly phantom problem.
SHE’S BLACK, HE’S WHITE, THEY’RE WEIRD - Interracial couples have been common on television for a while, but one particular blend is looking suspect. Conspiracy theorists, begin taking notes now.
On “The Neighbors,” a new ABC sitcom about a neighborhood inhabited by space aliens, the lead extraterrestrial couple, played by Toks Olagundoye (who is of Nigerian and Norwegian descent) and Simon Templeman (a very white British guy), are not exactly normal. They cry through their ears; he bears the children; and now and again they transform into their true bodies, which look like something from the “Star Wars” bar scene.
Over at “666 Park Avenue,” another new ABC series, Gavin and Olivia Doran, owners of a possessed New York apartment building named the Drake, are played by Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Williams. Security deposit? Yeah, one month’s rent and your soul.
And let’s not even mention how often the government has almost been brought down on yet another ABC show, “Scandal,” by hanky-panky between the white president (Tony Goldwyn) and his black damage-control consultant (Kerry Washington). Subliminal message received, ABC.
BLADDER HUMOR - A year ago television comedies were reveling in their ability to say “penis” and “vagina.” They still are, but lately there’s a new brand of crotch humor in town: urine gags.
On the season premiere of “New Girl” this week on Fox, the torch was passed, as it were, from organ to fluid in an exchange between Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Schmidt (Max Greenfield), a character who has just had a cast removed from his penis and has arranged a party to celebrate:
Schmidt: “Tonight is about one man’s functioning penis.”
Jess: “I wouldn’t say functioning. I saw what you did to the toilet seat.”
(GENZLINGER, New York Times, September 25, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/arts/television/series-like-the-new-normal-and-new-girl-set-bad-trends.html?_r=1&
I included the NEW GIRL excerpt so you, the reader, could get a sense of the article (and because it was funny)
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