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 20th
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.
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.
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