THIS.

"The thing that sucks about Girls and Seinfeld and Sex and the City and every other TV show like them isn’t that they don’t include strong characters focusing on the problems facing blacks and Latinos in America today. The thing that sucks about those shows is that millions of black people look at them and can relate on so many levels to Hannah Horvath and Charlotte York and George Costanza, and yet those characters never look like us. The guys begging for money look like us. The mad black chicks telling white ladies to stay away from their families look like us. Always a gangster, never a rich kid whose parents are both college professors. After a while, the disparity between our affinity for these shows and their lack of affinity towards us puts reality into stark relief: When we look at Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, we see people with whom we have a lot in common. When they look at us, they see strangers."

--Cord Jefferson, Hipster Racism Runoff And The Search for The Black Costanza

(via Racialicious)

...This might actually sum up most of my problem with pop culture. Wow. 

Smh

So when I was checking FOX's website to see when Bones comes back (NOT TIL NOVEMBER WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!), I noticed that they have a new show coming out called I Hate My Teenage Daughter. And then I saw today that MTV is producing a new show called Dumb Girls which for all intents and purposes seems to be about a group of normal 20-somethings. I'm pretty sure I'm disgusted with the image of femininity being marketed by production companies right now; not that that should surprise me in any way.

SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHY

Tyler Perry is getting his own television station. WHO THINKS THIS IS A GOOD IDEA?! WHO?!?! I would like to know so I can go personally slap them, on behalf of advocates of social change everywhere. Because tell me, please, I beg you, tell me one good thing Tyler Perry has done for a Black person anywhere (his-worth-$350-million-self not included)?

Some of you are going to say he's funny. Some of you are going to say he's funny because he exaggerates the truth. Some of you are going to say he's funny because he tells the truth. I say he tells stories that he wants y'all to think are funny because y'all think they're true. Because okay, sure, I'm sure people like pistol-in-one-hand-Bible-in-the-other Madea exist out there in the world somewhere. I know that there are cracked out mothers and histories of abuse and family members who will tell you to sit there and take it. I have experienced black churches like the ones he depicts. Scenes that have taken place in the living room on House of Payne have taken place in real people's living rooms, I know. I KNOW.

But what I know more than any of those things is that there are MILLIONS of Black peoples who are nothing like this, and I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of this same monolithic image of the Black community being shoved down our throats and the community responding by placing the shover on a pedestal! He's like the new millenium's version of shucking and jiving, and I'll be damned if I sit back while we let him portray this slice of Blackness as THE truth rather than A truth. I'm going to try to list all the vicious stereotypes that I think he's perpetrating and, even worse, getting Black folks to identify with and internalize.

1. The class war between African-Americans is real, and middle/upper-class Blacks should be demonized. 
2. Relatedly, all middle/upper-class Black women should realize that men of their own social/educational status aren't "real men", and should fall in love with/marry blue-collar men.
3. A Black woman cannot be strong without being angry/violent. 
4. Relatedly, Black women are consistently in trouble with the law. 
5. Light-skinned Black women represent all that is good and right with the world, and dark-skinned Black women are inherently problematic. 
6. Dark-skinned Black women are inherently unattractive and sexually undesirable.
7. Thin, White, blonde womanhood is the ideal standard of beauty/femininity/desirability that all women must imagine themselves as exemplifying to have any sort of self-respect.
8. Womanhood is a role that can be appropriated, belittled, and dramatically over-emphasized by men for the enjoyment of the masses.
9. There is no such thing as a traditional family amongst Black peoples.
10. African-Americans who are not practicing Christians should be ostracized.
11. Known history of a criminal past or past dependence on drug abuse should have zero effect on whether you choose to let someone [back] into your or your children's lives.
12. Dark-skinned Black men are liars, while light-skinned Black men are saviors. 
13. Gay Black men are "on the down low," having unprotected sex, and spreading HIV to Black females.
14. Physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse are normal, standard elements of life as a Black woman. 
15. Black men are the greatest threat to Black women's health/lives, but also our only possible saviors.
16. Black peoples should leave all their problems to divine intervention.

That's what I came up with off the top of my head. I could probably keep going, but I have more posts to write. 

I will admit that there is most likely a grain of truth to each of these statements, but only in so far as you add "some" to every mention of Black peoples or any subset of Black peoples, and that you recognize that those same such "some _____" statements can be filled in by members of ANY SOCIAL GROUP IMAGINABLE. But no. We are presented with these ideas solely in terms of Blackness, and very specific "types" of Blackness at that, types which are marketed as being the end-all-be-alls of Blackness. There is no counter-narrative here. Awkward Black Girl ain't got a TV show. 

So let's go back to the question, what good has come out of this for Black peoples? Maybe a few more Black women got tested for HIV. Maybe someone somewhere got the courage to leave her abusive relationship. Those are good things, yes, but do they have to come at the expense of demonizing and even-further-marginalizing subsets of an already marginalized people, widening gaps and strengthening tensions that already existed within the Black community, and silencing the voices of other sections of Blackness? I think not. Are any of the SIXTEEN DAMAGING IDEAS I just listed doing any good for anybody? I think not. IS. HE. FUNNY? I think not. I think he one of the most problematic Black men in the country, and at a time when I was just bemoaning the death of the Black sitcom/Black family show...this is THE OPPOSITE of what we need. I am thoroughly unconvinced any good will come from this endeavor. Someone stop the madness, please! 

HOLD THE MOTHAFUCKIN PHONE

So in recent weeks I'd heard a lot of buzz about this miniseries called "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl". Occasionally some of the blogs I read would post about it, and I would wonder whether this few minutes of my time was worth craning my neck awkwardly at work so that my headphones could reach the computer tower which is far as fuck from the monitor for no identifiable reason. The answer was always, "Eh, I'll go back to it when I get home." But then I would get caught up in other unread posts and other unwritten posts and Scrabble on Facebook and talking to my mom and forget all about Awkward Black Girl. 

I decided to remedy that this morning. BEST DECISION OF MY WEEK. This shit is FANTASTIC. The episodes keep getting longer and her life keeps getting more and more awkward and I LOVE IT. I don't always agree with her (for instance I love spoken word...but not that wack shit they were forced to sit through) and have no qualms about actually eating on a date, but I see a lot of myself in her. 

And I know from all the blogs that I've been reading that the creator of the show is having some funding issues, so I'm thinking about donating ten bucks or so. Every little bit helps, right? On the funding page she has a little description about why she created ABG, which starts off like this: 

"Why ABG exists:
Television today has a very limited scope and range in its depictions of people of color. As a black woman, I don’t identify with and relate to most of the non-black characters I see on TV, much less characters of my own race. When I flip through the channels, it's disheartening. I don’t see myself or women like me being represented. I’m not a smooth, sexy, long-haired vixen; I’m not a large, sassy black woman; an angry Post Office employee. I’m an awkward black girl.
And I’m not alone."

I had two very clear and very interesting reactions to this little introductory snippet to the reason for the show. Reaction number one: I, Maya Reid, of sound mind and body, must confess to you all right now that I have NO PROBLEM identifying with and relating to non-black characters I see on TV. Characters of my own race can be a little more touchy, because I don't see very many black characters--I see "real" black people on reality shows I refuse to watch, but as far as characters...as a kid, Sister Sister was my SHIT, I wanted to be the girl the Famous Jett Jackson liked, and it is still my dream to one day be as bougie as the Huxtables (without any of Bill Cosby's egregious classism in real life). As an adult, I was ALL OVER Girlfriends (like a black Sex in the City, for those who don't know) and still watch reruns regularly, and I can see bits of myself in The Game's Melanie and Nurse Hawthorne and her daughter. I liked the ambition and double-life led by the main characters in last fall's quickly-canceled Undercovers. Huh, that actually seems like a decent number of black characters I can relate to/identify with. But that wasn't my point here.
My point was that I see just as many bits of myself in some White women on television (Bones, Annie from Community) and even in men (House, Reid on Criminal Minds ). Until I came to Princeton, I spent my whole life relating more to White people than to other Black people, and I was okay with that. But the second biggest gift Princeton has given me (the first being a free $200,000 education) is the knowledge of and camaraderie with Black people who are LIKE ME. Because honestly, I'm pretty sure I didn't think that was possible growing up. I had stopped looking for it. 
But they're out there. I've found them at Princeton, and I've found them hailing from all over the country at Yale's Black Solidarity Conference, and I have to say, it is comforting, I suppose. Reaction number two: Based solely upon the legions of women responding to the series, and the fact that it was all over my blogosphere and even my friend C was talking about how much she loves it, THERE'S AN ARMY OF US. And that...seems like it would feel validating if I was still looking for validation. And it is refreshing to have another character to add to the people-who-look-and-think-like-me category. I think my favorite thing about this webseries, though, is the fact that race is often confronted openly in a way that doesn't ever happen on television. And THAT is something I can identify with.   

Stephen Colbert is winning so hard

in the game of my affections right now. 

I wanted to blog about these ads last week, but didn't know how to type STEREOTYPICAL, RACIST, and CULTURALLY INSENSITIVE in large enough letters. Or how to convey that I'm fucking sick and tired of women being told that their bodies aren't good enough at every damn turn. SUMMER'S EVE, YOU ARE CREATING A PROBLEM HERE TO INCREASE YOUR REVENUE (and exacerbating lots of other problems in the process). So much shaking my goddamn head here. 

But that's just me whining. Colbert did something so much better than whine. He launched a counter-attack [though I must say that the fact that simply making a very similar ad tailored to men reveals the ridiculous nature of the situation just goes to show how accustomed we've become to women's bodies being problematized in the media...]: 

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

 

OH. MY. GOD.

This could either be wonderful or terrible. Either way I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT!!!!

THE 90S WILL NEVER DIE. NEVERRRRRR.

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge--Day 24: Letter to Your Favorite Character from a Childhood Cartoon

Dear Chuckie Finster,

You were such a little nerd baby, with your chunky glasses and wild unruly ginger hair. As much as I wanted to identify with brave adventurer/explorer Tommy, I was always hiding behind my hands every time you were. You made me feel like being a little worrywart child was okay. And you hated clowns as much as I do. You were really close to your daddy, just like me, and you had asthma too. You were always getting into trouble for things that weren't your fault, just like me. I wanted to punch Angelica in the face on your behalf multiple times. I remember being kind of jealous when you got a sister. I was glad you weren't going to be lonely anymore, because I'd always thought you were kind of a lonely melancholy child like me, but somebody else got to spend all her time with you. All in all, even though you were always two as I got older and older, I always wanted to be your friend.

In fact, I've come to realize that my imaginary friend when I was 7 was based largely on you. His name was Melvin. He had orange hair and wore a purple shirt and dark green pants. He was older than me, maybe 12 or so, and he wasn't a wild adventurer either, but he looked out for me just like you looked out for Tommy and the twins.
Further confessions: I was even a little jealous of Samantha in All Grown Up! You hadn't changed at all and being my age-ish finally, I still thought you were absolutely adorable...but now in the if you were a real person I just might eat you up kind of way.

;),

Maya

http://widelantern.com/2011/06/diversity-stats-for-2011-2012-tv-season/

This link is simultaneously why I was really excited for Undercovers at the start of last fall's TV season, and most likely also why it failed so spectacularly that the producers didn't even let it carry out the season. #IwannaseemoreblackpeopleofcoloronTV

Black + White = Black?*

TV presented me with something interesting today. That doesn't usually happen, and it certainly doesn't usually happen on two back-to-back entirely unrelated television shows. So I was waiting for House to come on, right? And I was watching Wheel of Fortune to bide my time (I'm a BEAST at Wheel). And a black woman beat her opponents by a landslide in the end, including trips to both Hawaii and Alaska (woot woot!), and when Pat asked her who was in the audience with her today, she said her mom. The camera pans over to where her mom is sitting, so she can wave, and Pat sounds...confused for a moment until he realizes that her mom is the white woman waving at the camera, and says, "Oh, there she is!" sounding totally and completely surprised. And I can't even yell at him for being surprised, because I totally was too. 
Then House came on. We could tell by the previews for this week's episode that something interesting was going on between the two patients this week: one a middle-aged white drill sergeant and the other a black teenager who's been in and out of trouble and foster care. My friend guessed they were secretly gay lovers, and I had been willing to go along with that, because it's just the kind of plot twist House would go for, but *spoiler alert* it turns out they're actually father and son, in a totally unexpected Luke-I-am-your-father moment (Yes, it is possible to recognize Star Wars tropes without ever having actually seen Star Wars.)
And so twice in one night makes it more than a coincidence in my book. It makes it reminiscent of a social phenomenon. It makes me think of the "Mixed Race Movement" and my friends S and J who refuse to identify themselves as one race or the other. They are my black friends whom I cannot call non-white, and they often make me question whether I can call myself the same. It reminds me of how, a few weeks ago, my friend JW said that he can't tell when black people are Blasians; they just look black to him. I thought it was funny because I can pick the Asian features out almost instantly, because I'm so familiar with what the absence of them looks like. But no Blasian person could ever pass for just Asian. If TV says white mom plus black dad = socially black, and TV says black mom plus white dad = socially black, and society when scrutinizing Obama's presidential campaign said white mom plus African dad = not black enough, then what is blackness and where are the lines drawn?
Racial mixing is really interesting to me, especially in conjunction with a mixing of the socioeconomic classes. A strange creative part of me wants to turn The Little Mermaid into The Little Mulatta and still have her hoard her secret life away from her parents, sing "Part of that World", and leave the world she grew up in for something new and different (read: to her, clearly better). Oh, the things it would mean.

*That may be the title of a book or an article about mixed-race individuals, but I couldn't find it on Google so decided to use it. No copyright infringement intended.