The Awesomeness that is C.J. Cregg

I know I spend a lot of time ranting on this blog. It is important for concerns to be voiced, but even I get tired of my activist Facebook friends’ statuses from time to time.

I thought it might be nice to celebrate something, for a change.

Growing up, my bleeding-heart liberal folks loved the NBC drama The West Wing with a fiery passion. They said it got them through the Bush years. Considering I was between the ages of 7 and 13 when the show aired, it’s fair to say that most of the show went right over my head. So, as I stared down my hardest semester of college, I decided to add on the challenge of going through the seven seasons of The West Wing.

But enough about me.

I’m here to talk about the awesomely kick-ass character that is Claudia Jean Cregg, portrayed by actress Allison Janney on The West Wing.

A little background, if you’re not familiar with the show. As The West Wing follows the two terms of President Bartlet and his staff, C.J. Cregg acts as Press Secretary for Bartlet’s first term and half of second.

Okay…so what?

Well, let me just put it like this.

Reasons Why C.J. Cregg is Awesomely Kick-Ass

1.     She is the lone woman on the senior staff.

Though Donna (portrayed by Janel Moloney) will become a series regular in later seasons, she is never a senior member of the President’s staff. It’s just C.J. out there in the boys club, which pretty accurately depicts the landscape of women in positions of power. In fact, it wasn’t until the early years of the Clinton administration that a woman served as Press Secretary. That said, C.J. doesn’t spend the show being the “oppressed” woman. She faces discrimination and adamantly fights stereotypes, sure, but it does not become her M.O. She is widely respected by her colleagues, has important influence over the President’s decisions, and definitely has a seat at the table. She simultaneously represents the progressive, modern woman who has gotten to her position of power all on her own (bucking an all-too familiar trend) while still recognizing the struggles that women face in the workplace and in the world.

2. She is well-educated and extremely competent at her job, as well as being a likeable, sociable person.

Too often women of C.J.’s intelligence are either painted as a socially awkward nerd who would rather have their nose buried in a book than talk with another human being, or as a know-it-all bitch with severe emotional detachment. But as well as having the professional respect of her colleagues, C.J. is one of the most beloved characters by everyone on the show. She teases and jabs with her friends, but is incredibly compassionate in their times of trouble, acting as a shoulder to lean on. It seems silly to applaud a show depicting a woman who’s got brains and a heart, but in the years where generalized “ditzes,” “bitches,” and straight-up “hot messes” dominated our television screens, a woman who pretty much had it all together professionally and emotionally was a refreshing change of pace.

 3.  She is a great role model, but is not a woman without flaws.

      

She falls on the treadmill! She’s just like the rest of us.

Kidding aside, C.J. goes through a lot of emotional turmoil throughout the show’s seven seasons. She nearly loses her job when making an ill-advised remark under pressure. A one night stand with a married man comes back to haunt her. She constantly battles with the balance of her 24/7 job and her dementia-stricken father. The career vs. family conflict is not unfamiliar territory for female characters—and we almost always see the woman choose her family over her job (otherwise, she’s obviously selfish and overly ambitious). Thankfully, with C.J., this struggle is a never-ending one – kind of like life, right? She cannot just leave her job at the White House, but she tries with all her might to be there for her ailing father. The result is complicated and heartbreaking and poignant.

4. A WOMAN WITH ALL OF THESE TRAITS CAN HAVE A RELATIONSHIP, EVEN IF IT TAKES A WHILE FOR IT TO HAPPEN.

 Girl meets boy. Boy pursues girl, but girl realizes there are professional boundaries that cannot be crossed. Boy and girl agree mutually to not get themselves into trouble, and separate. Girl does not wallow for the rest of the seven seasons over boy, and meets and dates various other worthy men. Boy appears again in her life, and professional boundaries are no longer a problem. Boy and girl rekindle relationship and presumably live a happy life together.

Overall, C.J. Cregg is a character any actress would dream of playing, and that is a true testament to the writing of Aaron Sorkin and the performance of Allison Janney. She will forever be a beacon for truthful, beautiful female characters who don’t need be there only to be a love interest (sorry, Janel Moloney.) It turns out women like this (and surprise! There are a lot of women like this!) can be pretty interesting people to watch all on their own.

You go, girl. 

Trifecta

Hello, World!

The “real world” – that vast expanse that most young adults enter at the ripe old age of 22. Upon entering this world, we are expected to know how to act, how to interact, and, most importantly, how to survive. This world is daunting to all those who enter it. But imagine, if you will, a young adult entering this world staring down a 12% employment rate, and the chance of serious success being about the same as winning the lottery. This young adult also happens to be of color and a woman. She is ready to take on her industry and wants to be successful, but doesn’t want to be put in the same boxes that those like her are often confined to.

Good luck, kid.

Who is this determined, but naïve person? That would be me, a young adult (only at the much younger age of 21) about to graduate college with a Bachelors degree in Theatre and enter the bottomless ocean that is “the industry.” Musical theatre is my passion, so I might be able to avoid being one of the Hollywood types for a while. Alas, the Broadway world continues to become more and more commercial. The different mediums of theatrical art have blurred, and many of the “rules” that apply in the Hollywood world also apply to theatre actors.

The entertainment industry is changing, for sure – Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave, nominee The Help, and box-office darling Bridesmaids have started a trend towards movies that level the representational playing field. These films wouldn’t have been made ten years ago. Even with a great creative team, the “suits” (i.e. the men and women who have no ties to the project other than financial ones) would have said something along the lines of: “There’s no audience for it” or “It will never work.” It sounds ridiculous. With women and minorities clearly making up a significant portion of the American population, how would those movies “not work”? Unfortunately, these assumptions are made off of a bad mix of old stereotypes and, as with all things stereotypical, a hint of truth.

This obviously affects the careers of minority actors and actresses. It wasn’t until 2002 that the first African-American woman took home the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar (Halle Berry). There has not been an African American woman to win that category since then (and the only nominations being Gabourey Sidibe, Viola Davis, and Quvenzhane Wallis). It’s certainly not a morale booster for someone like me. This is supposedly the age of equality, but actors and actresses of color are still not getting featured in most mainstream movies, and when they are, the movies usually feature the race of those actors.

Well, instead of wallowing in a pit of despair, I thought I would make better use of my time and talk about it. I’d like to cover both broad and detailed facets of this fairly broad subject. Minorities are not exclusive to my personal traits of being a woman and being African-American. What is it like to be actor with a disability? What about actors who are LGBTQ? How do they navigate the treacherous waters of the industry?

I also want to do some digging to see how this conception of what is profitable and what is not profitable (in terms of actors to cast) came about. Where did these standards that minority actors are coerced into following come from? Finally, I want to see how much our culture has influenced the movies that get made. Is the fact that we still have this problem in 2014 a reflection of how unequal our society still is?

I don’t expect to answer every question I have, but I hope to at least gain a better understanding of the industry I am about to spend the rest of my life in. 

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Profile of a Blog: Racialicious

The subject of representation in the entertainment industry, or really pop culture in general, is a massive beast to handle. There are many areas of grey where crevices of opinion, discourse, and factual evidence thrive, leading to varied, pointed views on the matter.

So when I found Racialicious, a blog described as “the intersection of race and pop culture” in its headliner, I was immediately impressed at the sheer quantity of in-depth analysis of the role of race in popular culture, and also how race sheds light on gender, LGBTQ, and class issues as well.

The group of editors and correspondents at Racialicious are no slouches. Latoya Peterson, who is the current Owner and Editor, has had her work featured in Spin, Vibe, The American Prospect, The Atlantic Blog, Bitch Magazine, Clutch Magazine, Slate’s Double X, and the Guardian. Her background lies in digital media consulting, working for esteemed clients like NPR, Wikipedia, and Al-Jazeera.  Other members of the team are graduates from the likes of NYU, Occidental College, and the Rhode Island School for Design, and have had their work featured in Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and MSNBC. They are based out of cities all across the United States, and work together through the Internet to collaborate and discuss their many thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

The blog posts multiple times a month, varying from movie and television recaps, to re-blogs, to short posts on what they found on the Internet that day. The site has not been updated since February, but is otherwise completely up to date with the happenings in the industry and around the world.

The blog seems to have a fairly small, but vocal group of supporters. On a purely technical side, here are the blog’s popularity statistics according to blog search engine Technorati:

Technorati Authority: 523 (Rank: 1388)

Entertainment Authority: 85 (Rank: 4885)

Politics Authority: 83 (3324)

The blog is filled with great, detailed posts about all things pop culture. Two posts, of completely different length, that I found the most interesting were both about the world of television.

The first one I stumbled across was a recap of a Season 6 episode of Mad Men. The show, under the backdrop of the 1960s, tackles a number of political issues that polarized the nation at the time, but has been infamously reticent about race. In this recap, contributors bemoan the lack of developed characters of color, but also talk about how racism (as outlined in the show) shapes Mad Men’s unrelenting standpoint on feminism, and also how developed, supporting minority characters (like the closeted homosexual Sal, who was an employee of the firm in the show’s first seasons) can enhance the show. It’s a fascinating discourse about race, feminism, and sexuality, and, though they all have similar opinions, no one has the exact same response to the episode and discussion.

In a post that’s about three times shorter, contributor Tamara Harris briefly blogs about a web series on YouTube called The United States of Amani, which documents multiracial actress Amani  Starnes’ navigation of being “ethnically ambiguous” in Hollywood. The episode is only three minutes long, but reveals a lot about how Hollywood perceives race and its marketability.

Blog posts like these are why I know this blog will be incredibly helpful for me in my work. The blog does encapsulate all facets of pop culture, while my work is mainly focused on Hollywood and commercial theatre, and, obviously, mainly focuses on race, while I try to include all types of minorities. However, the articulation of the educated contributors has allowed the posts to be flourishing discussions on a very complex subject matter. The blog is catered to young, hip intellectuals with a love for pop culture, so even though many of the posts could be short, scholarly essays, the voice always stays colloquial and relatable.

Because of the sheer number of posts, I think that I will be able to delve into the more detailed aspects of the subject matter, and perhaps examine things that I wouldn’t have caught when first tackling this topic. No matter whether you’re examining it or not, you should head on over to Racialicious for a great discussion about representation in our constant, 24/7 media market. 

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Voice of the People (of Color)

Typecasting (across all minority lines), is an issue that is talked about more and more, but there are very few blogs that are dedicated solely to that issue. Pieces are routinely featured in entertainment sections of larger blogs, but won’t be brought up again for months. Finding blogs that routinely examine this issue (especially amateur ones) has felt like an excavation, and I thought I would have to cobble together some pieces from various different blogs for this particular assignment.

Then, late one night, as I toiled through blog search engine after blog search engine, I stumbled upon this beauty.

Stop Whitewashing is self-described as a blog that is:

“ a safe space for People of Color. We are here to inform, to educate, and to call out people who whitewash. We support and celebrate entertainment equality and will also speak out against racism not only in the entertainment industry but in canon works (books, graphic novels, etc.) and fandoms as well.”

The blog is mainly comprised of short posts either celebrating the accomplishments of POC in the entertainment industry, or condemning those who halt signs of progression. A good portion of the blog is re-blogging articles, videos, and GIF sets from other blogs that will occasionally breach this subject. The contributors, however, routinely respond to comments sent in to them, and we hear the voices of Stop Whitewashing loud and clear.

For instance, one commenter said the following:

“I’m sorry but do you realize that black people are OVERREPRESENTED in US media and culture right? That effectively a group that is 12% of the population, gets more support than all others? So we shouldn’t be concerned if Lupita Nyongo wins, but why a Hispanic Asian actress never wins. NHL is not diverse enough, but 85% of the NBA is black, few to no Asians, no Indians, no natives, few Hispanics at all. Music is black dominated, television, even movies now.”

One of the admins had a feisty, yet thoughtful response to this comment. She uses short, clipped sentences to convey an authoritative, occasionally sarcastic tone. It gives off a “girl, you don’t know where the hell I come from” vibe that commands respect from the commenter and the reader.

A favorite quip:

“Context lil’ anon, CONTEXT. Not everything you see is glitter and gold. It’s probably bloody with a little mix of coonery and buffoonery.”

Coonery is a nice rhyming synonym with buffoonery, but also harkens back to the harsh slur for African Americans in the 20^th century. It gives historical context to her answer, alerting the reader that this continues to be a problem in this day and age.

What elevates this post from being just a snappy retort is the balance of sassiness with nuggets of straightforward reality. The admin wants the commenter to have learned something, so she gives credit to his comment while backing her side with hard evidence. It gives the post an intellectual, yet relatable quality, which gives the reader permission to accept the admin as well-educated and well-versed in the subject.

Despite not having a substantial amount of original posts, the re-blogged posts still reflect the voice of Stop Whitewashing. In this post, which was re-blogged from Policy Mic, the cheekiness comes out in full swing with the video “Typecast,” a parody of Lorde’s song “Royals,” putting the woes of non-white actresses to a catchy beat.

http://stopwhitewashing.tumblr.com/post/8082120288/chescaleigh-ever-wonder-what-its-like-to-be-an

Any song could have been used here, but the cleverness of “Royals” is that the original song tears into the opulent façade that pop and hip-hop music casts, and this parody does exactly the same in the case of Hollywood.

Representing the very true challenges for actors of color, we see the video point out the ridiculous reality that the main (white) lead can’t have two black friends, the Asian actress disregard the true origin of her last name in order to make it “whatever you want it to be (generically Asian),” all three actresses accept being typecast in order to get a job, and ultimately be passed over for a white actress because the roles of the three best friends were combined into one. The tone is down-to-earth and easily accessible to all (especially young people), but hopefully expands the view of the watcher of what modern entertainment really looks like (or doesn’t look like).

Overall, if you want a straight-up view of ethnic representation in pop culture with a mixture of hard facts and spunky personality, Stop Whitewashing is the place to go. 

Profile of a Blog: Racialicious

The subject of representation in the entertainment industry, or really pop culture in general, is a massive beast to handle. This is no black and white issue – it has many crevices of opinion, discourse, and factual evidence.

So when I found Racialicious, a blog described as “the intersection of race and pop culture” in its headliner, I was incredibly impressed at the sheer quantity of meticulous, in-depth analysis of not only race in popular culture, but how race gives a lens into gender, LGBTQ, and class issues as well.

The crew members at Racialicious are no slouches. Latoya Peterson, who is the current Owner and Editor, has had her work featured in a number of publications including Spin, Vibe, The American Prospect, The Atlantic Blog, Bitch Magazine, Clutch Magazine, Slate’s Double X, and the Guardian. Her background lies in digital media consulting, working for esteemed clients like NPR, Wikipedia, and Al-Jazeera.  Other members of the team are graduates from the likes of NYU, Occidental College, and the Rhode Island School for Design, and have had their work featured in Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and MSNBC. They are based out of cities all across the United States, and seem to work through the Internet to collaborate their many thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

The blog posts multiple times a month, varying from movie and television recaps, to re-blogs, to short posts on what they found on the Internet that day. The site has not been updated since February, but otherwise is completely up to date with the happenings in the industry and around the world.

The blog seems to have a fairly small, but strongly vocal group of supporters. On a purely technical side, here are the blog’s popularity statistics according to blog search engine Technorati:

Technorati Authority: 523 (Rank: 1388)

Entertainment Authority: 85 (Rank: 4885)

Politics Authority: 83 (3324)

The blog is filled with great, detailed posts about all things pop culture. Two posts, of incredibly different length, that I found the most interesting were both about the world of television, since that is a main factor of what I cover in my blog.

The first one I stumbled across was a recap of a Season 6 episode of Mad Men. The show, under the backdrop of the 1960s, tackles a number of political issues that polarized the nation at the time, but has been infamously prudish about race. In this recap, contributors bemoan the lack of developed characters of color, but also talk about how the racism outlined in the show shapes the show’s unrelenting takes on feminism, and how developed, supporting minority characters (like the closeted homosexual Sal, who was a employee of the firm in the show’s first seasons) can work in the show. It’s a fascinating discourse about race, feminism, and sexuality, and, though they all have similar opinions, no one has the exact same response.

In a post that’s about three times shorter, contributor Tamara Harris blogs about a web series on YouTube called The United States of Amani, which documents multiracial actress Amani  Starnes on how she navigates being “ethnically ambiguous” in Hollywood. The episode is only three minutes long, but reveals a lot about how Hollywood perceives race and how it is marketable.

Blog posts like these, and many more on the website, are why I know this blog will be incredibly helpful for me in my work. The blog does encapsulate all facets of pop culture, while my work is mainly focused on Hollywood and commercial theatre, and, obviously, mainly focuses on race, while I try to include all types of minorities. However, the articulation of the well-spoken and educated contributors has allowed the posts to be flourishing discussions on a very complex subject matter. The blog is catered to young, hip intellectuals with a love of pop culture, so even though many of the posts could be short, scholarly essays, the voice always stays colloquial and relatable.

Because of the sheer number of posts, I think that I will be able to delve into the more detailed aspects of the subject matter, and perhaps study things that I wouldn’t have caught when first breaching this topic. No matter whether you’re studying it or not, you should head on over to Racialicious for a great discussion about representation in our constant, 24/7 media market. 

Vaguely Ethnic White (and Black) Girls

Think about the musical West Side Story for me. Not ringing a bell? Ever heard this song before? Or this one? Or this one (or at least seen Anger Management)? There it is.

Now, think of Maria, the beautiful Puerto Rican girl who falls for WASP Tony. Maria’s speech is rich with trilled Rs and bits of colloquial Spanish. Latin beats are resonant throughout Leonard Bernstein’s score, and are fully present in the songs that she sings. So naturally, Maria should be played by a Puerto Rican (or, at the very least, a Hispanic), right?

Enter actress Natalie Wood, born from Russian immigrants and blessed with Western European looks, a movie star who is arguably most famous for her portrayal as…Maria in the 1961 movie version of West Side Story.

Okay, okay. But that was 1961. It was pre-Civil Rights movement, and it’s a wonder that a musical (and movie) with such strong racial themes, and its lesson of tolerance, was even made.

Cut to 2014. Me, attending an audition for the musical In the Heights in Anaheim. If you’re not familiar with the musical, the show takes place in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, home to a diverse group of Hispanics from various Latin cultures. The musical deals with the struggle of identity, of what traditions you accept as your own and what traditions you start on your own.

So, in other words, race is a fairly important part of the show.

To my surprise and pure amusement, I walked into the lobby of the rehearsal studio seeing a whole lot of Aryan faces, a few looking vaguely ethnic enough to maybe pass as Latina, and maybe one or two real Latinas.

Cue a text to one of my friends, who I had texted earlier with worries that my presence (as a biracial African American-Caucasian) might come off as offensive: “Lolz, lolz, LOLZ to all these white girls here.”

I was simply baffled that these girls thought that they were right for a show that literally has no white characters – not to mention that, dressed in short cocktail dresses, teetering in high, high heels, and hair perfectly curled into gentle ringlets, these girls looked more suited for 90201 rather than el barrio of Washington Heights.

But I thought back to the conversation I had earlier with my friend.

Who was I, a mixed girl showing up to audition for characters whom are explicitly of a race that I am not a part of, to judge?

Because I am mixed, I am blessed with the gift that is “racial ambiguity.” Most people, upon first meeting me, do not know what race I am, and this means I am able to submit myself for a multitude of ethnic roles. I’ve been to Puerto Rico, and the natives thought I was a native. So I figured I would have no problem walking into that audition convincing the auditors that I was Hispanic.

And I didn’t.

But where is the line?  A girl with blonde hair and blue eyed would look completely out of place, but a girl with dark hair would not, necessarily. All of those girls that I scanned over with such contempt could have Latin blood running through their veins for all I know, and maybe those genes just aren’t visible ones.

On the flip side, however, it’s always disheartening to see roles that are meant for a certain race taken by those who aren’t of that race, particularly when it’s roles that are meant for people of color and are taken by those who are not. Of course, it is sometimes a matter of who comes out to the audition (and more importantly, who doesn’t), but the representation of POC is so small in the theatre. Ethnic ambiguity is a blessing for the actors who have it, but it can be another restriction of parts available for those who don’t.

It’s certainly not a black and white issue (pun completely intended) – who is really at liberty to limit an actor’s freedom of artistic practice (within reason, of course)? But at what (and who’s) cost comes that freedom?

Anyway, I hope that I get the opportunity to channel my inner Latina on the Los Angeles stage this summer. But, if I do, I will remember and honor the culture that I am representing, even though it is not my own.

UPDATE:

I got a callback for a part that requires lots of Spanish. ¡Ay, Dios Mio!