February 2016 – Bitch Flicks

Attachment Mothering in ‘Room’

While both the novel and the film are sure to point out Ma’s anguish, ‘Room’ can be seen to paint a romanticized, sometimes insensitive and propaganda-esque…fantasy of immersive, attachment motherhood in which nothing else matters but the child.

This guest post is written by Scarlett Harris.

[Trigger Warning: discussion of rape, and sexual assault]

I remember a friend telling me that she fantasized about being in prison for a year as it was the only way she would have time to complete all her projects uninterrupted.

This anecdote immediately came to mind at a panel discussion after a screening of Room. The female audience member who asked the question recalled a book club talking point scribbled in the back of her copy of the 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue wondering if the author (who also adapted her book for the screen, and was nominated for an Oscar) idealizes the solitude of imprisonment. While both the novel and the film are sure to point out Ma’s anguish, Room can be seen to paint a romanticized, sometimes insensitive and propaganda-esque — later parts of the book, particularly Ma’s post-escape prime-time interview, politicize things like breastfeeding, the prison industrial complex and abortion — fantasy of immersive, attachment motherhood in which nothing else matters but the child.

When I reached out to panel member and Melbourne Writers Festival program manager Jo Case to expand further on her thoughts about Room, she said that the story “explores that mythical ideal of motherhood: all-encompassing, fully present, hyper-attentive. Completely child-focused. It’s our culture’s impossible (and usually untenable) ideal.”

Further to this, I found Room to be a pretty obvious metaphor for attachment parenting. Jack is still being breastfed at age five — though with a lax diet born out of captivity, breastfeeding makes sense. Ma is always there with Jack, relentlessly threading eggshells onto Egg Snake, fashioning Labyrinth out of toilet rolls, and encouraging Jack to use his imagination because what else is there to do in a 10 x 10 soundproofed shed. Attachment parenting can induce in parents the loss of their sense of self if and when the child goes off to school — or in Room’s case, Outside — and makes a life for themselves independent of the close knit parent/child union. Despite Ma’s relish at re-entering the world and thus, finding a semblance of her former self separate from Jack, their intense bond noticeably loosens the moment they arrive at the clinic (more so in the book than the film). Jack is then the one to look back at Room through rose-colored glasses and in the way the story is told post-escape, with the added impetus of being from Jack’s perspective, who can blame him: “Ma was always in Room” while he is often left to fend for himself “in the world” while Ma tries to make sense of her resentment (“Do you know what happened [to my high school friends]? Nothing. Nothing happened to them.”), depression and PTSD.

All we have to do is look at Jack’s heightened intelligence and his being placed on a pedestal in “saving” Ma to understand that he could be viewed as the ultimate fantasy for all those parents (all parents?) who claim their child is “special,” “gifted,” and “advanced for their age.” You know the ones.

I certainly do: my day job is at a cultural institution where I often hear from parents who insist that their children experience things aimed at kids twice their age and, in some cases, even at adults. Jack is familiar with stories well above his age level, such as The Count of Monte Cristo, told to him by Ma. His memory is impeccable and his literacy skills are strengthened by rereading the few books permitted in Room by Ma’s tormenter, Old Nick, and playing “Parrot,” a game that consists of repeating what Jack hears on talk shows and soap operas. In a society that often foists iPads and smartphones into its children’s hands, Jack’s upbringing is romanticized, especially in the early stages of the story when he is blissfully unaware that anything exists outside of Room and the make-believe world of TV (though Jack is permitted half an hour or so of screen-time, Ma is reluctant to grant more as “TV turns your brain to mush”) is real.

Donoghue is quick to deny this, though, telling Katherine Wyrick of BookPage:

“Nobody wants to idealize imprisonment, but many of us have such complicated lives, and we try to fit parenting in alongside work and socializing… We try and have so many lives at once, and we run ourselves ragged.

“Today parenting is so self-conscious and worried, so I wanted to ask the question, how minimally could you do it? … [Ma] really civilizes and humanizes Jack. … She passes along her cultural knowledge to him, from religion to tooth-brushing to rules.”

Room may be a very successful literary and filmic thought experiment for Donoghue. But it’s also a fantasy in which one of the biggest luxuries for parents — time — reigns supreme. In a recent parenting column on Jezebel, Kathryn Jezer-Morton writes:

“Time is one of the most valuable commodities in post-industrial capitalism. It’s valuable because it’s scarce; we run around acting so busy all the time, partly because our jobs are squeezing us for it, and partly because there are so many competing entities constantly vying for our time and attention. […]

“Spending the first 10 months at home with each of my kids was enormously empowering. By the time I returned to work, I was ready for the company of adults again; work even seemed easy compared to caring for a nonverbal person all day. The time we’d spent together absolved me of a lot of the guilt that many people feel when they first put their kids in the care of others. It also gave me the privilege of feeling confident — even a little cavalier! — about my parenting choices.”

Donoghue discusses similar ideas in an interview for The Independent upon the release of the book:

“It may sound outrageous, but every parent I know has had moments of feeling as if they’ve been locked in a room with their toddler for years on end. Even 20 minutes of building towers of blocks can feel like a lifetime. I’m not saying that Ma’s experience is every mother’s experience, not at all. … But there’s a psychological core that’s the same: the child needs you so much that you don’t fully own yourself anymore.”

Utilizing time for things other than child-rearing is often deemed the height of selfishness, for parents and the child-free alike. With Ma’s characterization comes a certain selfishness (or self-preservation) voiced by the post-escape prime-time interviewer who asks Ma whether she ever considered relinquishing Jack to Old Nick to drop off at a hospital in the hopes of giving him a better — freer — life. While I can see where the interviewer is coming from — and maybe in a perfect world, sure, Jack would have grown up under different circumstances — but he’s a five-year-old who challenges his mother’s assertion that there are two sides to everything (“Not an octagon. An octagon has eight sides.”) and can spell feces, for crying out loud! How many “gifted” children of a similar age but very different circumstances can we say the same of?

Ma may conceive of the great escape in order to get Jack out of Room but, as the Nova panel discussed, she’s also hoping he’ll be savvy enough to lead his rescuers back to her. Again, putting so much faith in a five-year-old could be considered delusional, but that speaks to the trauma of an abductee who’s been raped almost every day for the past seven years; a trauma that I couldn’t even begin to imagine and is for another article.

Conversely, when I watched Room for the third time with my own mother, she found Ma’s “gone days,” her forcefulness in preparing Jack to escape Room, and her depression and disengagement from her son upon release to “not be how a mother should act.” Brie Larson’s Ma is far more assertive and fleshed out in the film, whereas on the page she’s ineffectual, agreeing with Jack when he calls her “dumbo” when things don’t go to plan. As an intimate partner violence survivor herself, I was expecting from Mum more empathy towards Ma. But that’s the beauty and curse of storytelling, particularly in a narrative as controversial and emotional as Room — everyone responds to it differently.

I think Room can best be summed up by Case’s description:

“It’s a horror story not just because of the awful circumstances of [Ma’s] imprisonment — rape and kidnapping — but because it dramatizes one of the hardest aspects of motherhood: feeling trapped by routine and the demands of everyday parenting [and] feeling separated from the outside world in your own mother-child universe.”

In the case of Room, though, “this kind of motherhood saves the mother from her prison rather than trapping her in a domestic [one].”

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Interracial Relationships: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Interracial Relationships Theme Week here.

Interracial Relationships in Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Importance of Finn & Rey by Sophie Hall

To have a Black character like this to not only be the co-lead in an iconic franchise but to also include him in a healthy, positively portrayed relationship with a white woman is a brilliant statement. … Finn and Rey’s difference in race doesn’t put any limitations on what this couple can and do achieve.

Interracial Relationships on Grey’s Anatomy by Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman

While Grey’s Anatomy has a very large multiracial cast that leads to some impressive representation, its reluctance to discuss race doesn’t give it the opportunity to further explore intricacies of interracial relationships.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Is Doing Something Right: How One Workplace Sitcom Shows That Interracial Relationships Can Be the Norm by Laura Power

But because the people coming into any workplace in New York City are already diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, why would a cross-race relationship be bothersome? Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t believe it should be. From the first episode, this show presents interracial relationships as an unquestioned norm, and this is what makes it stand out from all other shows of its kind on television.

No Place For Us: Interracial Relationships in West Side Story by Olivia Edmunds-Diez

West Side Story could be read as a warning to Latinas: stay away from white men. If María listened to her older brother, obeying his wish to keep her obedient and virginal, María would be safe and free from grief. This notion is exceedingly disappointing, especially considering that there are not many Latina main characters in Hollywood movies.

Pinky and the Origins of Interracial Oscar-Bait by Hannah Graves

Pinky is best understood at the starting point for a new Hollywood trajectory for interracial relationships onscreen: the worthy Oscar-bait drama that claims to enlighten as it entertains and serves as a conduit for fostering tolerance in the presumed white audience.

Interracial Love in the Afternoon: Daytime Soap Opera Relationships by Rachel Wortherley

It is glaring that amongst soap opera supercouples, there are few pairings with people of color, especially interracial couples. … In 2016, interracial couples only scratch the surface of storylines on daytime television.

Colonialism in The King and I and Related Media by Jackson Adler

The King and I promotes colonialist and “white savior” attitudes. … Adding romantic interest to the story, showing King Mongkut as exceedingly admiring of Anna and portraying her influence in the court as more than it was, paints Western values and morals as superior to others, justifying colonialism by making it seem as though Eastern countries “need” the West.

Negotiating Race as the Female Indian Love Interest in Bend It Like Beckham and The Darjeeling Limited by Allie Gemmill

Both Bend It Like Beckham and The Darjeeling Limited examine Indian women and their romances with white men. Within the interracial relationships explored in these respective films, both Jess and Rita… are burdened with navigating deeply impressed racial boundaries as they move through a modern society.

Jackie Brown: The Journey of Self-Discovery by Rachel Wortherley

By not blatantly focusing on the racial disparity between Jackie and Max, it speaks volumes in regards to who the film is about. … It is silently implied that as a Black woman, she divorces her identity from the men in her life — including a man who, as a white male maintains a sense of privilege in society — and reclaims it for her own.

Blindness, Race, and Love in A Patch of Blue by Leigh Kolb

Fifty years later, portraying disability on screen with empathy and respect is still rare. Showing an interracial couple is also extremely rare (Green says that some people sent terrible letters to him about the kissing scene; in fact, it’s reported that in some areas in the south the scene was edited out for theaters). A Patch of Blue manages to weave together themes of disability, race, socioeconomic issues and family dynamics with beauty and grace.

‘We’re Not So Different’: Tradition, Culture, and Falling in Love in Bride & Prejudice by Becky Kukla

Though clearly based on the novel, Bride & Prejudice is a successful piece of transnational cinema, which uses the interracial relationship between the Bakshi’s second eldest daughter Lalita and white American Mark Darcy to discuss differences in race, tradition, and cultural imperialism.

Endearing Interracial Romance in Flirting by Grace Barber-Plentie

It’s a true rarity to see an interracial relationship that doesn’t have at least some element of suffering in it. In Flirting, on the other hand, most of the difficulties in Danny and Thandiwe’s relationship seems to come from the relationship itself, not the color of the star-crossed lovers’ skin.

On Indie Rom-Coms, The Duvernay Test, and Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong by Candice Frederick

It was Viola Davis who commented about the lack of substantial roles as love interests for women of color on the big screen. … We see that familiar and very white narrative unfold between an interracial pair in Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong, except this time it’s infused with cultural nuances that, while they don’t reinvent the wheel, offer a fresh perspective.

Colorism and Interracial Relationships in Film: ‘Belle,’ ‘The Wedding,’ and More by Atima Omara

Into the Badlands: Will Blasian Love Last? by Lisa Bolekaja

Into the Badlands, based on the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West, is set in a futuristic dystopian world where past wars have created a new feudal society. It’s gratifying to finally get an onscreen Blasian couple where they kiss, have sex, and get to have a real relationship.

What Parenthood Taught Me About Interracial Relationships by Livi Burke

I remember watching the scene in the episode “The Talk” where Crosby and Jabbar have their first conversation about the N-word. Crosby looked so caught off guard; he knows this is a racist word he’s not supposed to say, yet at the same he has no idea how to talk about this racial slur and its ramifications with his half Black son.

Animated Love: How Anime Produced Two of the Best Interracial Love Stories of All Time by Robert V Aldrich

Two of the greatest love stories in anime are interracial relationships. … While the industry as a whole generally eschews characters of color, that hasn’t stopped some series from featuring prominent people of color characters in narratively significant stories. This has led to interracial couples being featured in two of the greatest anime series of all time: The Super Dimension Force Macross and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

‘Spotlight’ on the Wrong People

‘Spotlight’ isn’t the kind of film that just changes some facts (though I never understand “based-on-a-true-story” films that do so: if you’re going to fictionalize their lives why not fictionalize their names too?), it’s one where the most basic plot summary contradicts what happened.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual abuse]

We’re winding down to the Oscar ceremony no thinking person is looking forward to. The Black director who should have been nominated last year, Ava DuVernay, and the Black director who should have been nominated this year, Ryan Coogler, will be in Flint, Michigan with other Black celebrities on Oscar night, raising funds for and drawing attention to the majority-Black community whose water was poisoned as a result of government misdeeds. I see some outlets still trying to pretend this ceremony is like all the others. Among the fluff articles about white nominees are ones that focus on the “real” people behind the film Spotlight, which is nominated as it has been at other galas (it swept last night’s Spirit Awards) for multiple awards, even Best Supporting Actress. (One writer posited that Rachel McAdams got a nomination for a performance that consists of her mostly listening, nodding and taking notes because she “dared” to wear unflattering chinos, just like a real reporter would).

Spotlight centers around the intrepid editors and reporters (the vast majority of whom are male) of The Boston Globe, claiming they are the only reason we know the extent of child sexual abuse perpetrated by Boston archdiocese priests and the cover-up by the archdiocese itself. For those of us who know the facts around this basic premise, the film plays as a long, elaborate, tedious lie. Spotlight isn’t the kind of film that just changes some facts (though I never understand based-on-a-true-story films that do so: if you’re going to fictionalize their lives why not fictionalize their names too?); it’s one where the most general plot summary contradicts what happened.

Instead of the investigation beginning, as it does in the film, with a powerful man looking solemnly into the middle distance and declaring “I know there’s a story here,” it began with a young woman reporter, Kristen Lombardi at the alternative weekly The Boston Phoenix, with the encouragement and guidance of her out, queer, news editor (previously a longtime reporter at Boston’s LGBT paper) Susan Ryan-Vollmar.

As has been reported elsewhere, Lombardi’s story was published nearly a year before the first “Spotlight” story and shares with it a number of “discoveries”. One of these “discoveries” is a turning point we see in the film: Mark Ruffalo’s Woodward-and-Bernstein-esque Mike Rezendes (in one of the few performances that has made me dislike the actor) interrogating an expert on sex-offender priests and inferring from his data that a far greater number of the offenders existed than anyone had previously thought. Not only did Lombardi do the interview with the same expert first, she also literally did the math to come up with the number of probable offenders.

Lombardi has been gracious in interviews, explaining, “I was aware that there was a bigger story that I couldn’t tell because I didn’t have the resources,” and that the ability to stick with the story week after week was something only The Globe could do. But she also wishes she had gotten some credit. Although repeatedly given the chance to acknowledge her contribution, editor Baron, (played by Liev Shreiber in the film: the real-life Baron has moved on to another, larger newspaper as one character in the film “predicts”) has steadfastly refused to do so. With at least one of his colleagues admitting that Lombardi broke the story, Baron’s continued silence seems like a tacit admission of guilt. In the film, Rezendes says that no one in town saw Lombardi’s cover story in The Phoenix, which is laughable considering the very streets we see the film’s reporters endlessly walking up and down would have had, at that time, on every corner big, bright, red boxes full of free copies of The Phoenix. Its cover story, including the one about Law and the cover-up, would be facing anyone on the sidewalk, through the box windows at each intersection.

Tom McCarthy, the co-writer and director, did interview Lombardi as research for the script, but he decided her role wasn’t important enough to include in the final cut of the film. Instead McCarthy decided to focus on white-guy, mainstream newspaper mythology, and that focus not only makes the film untrue, it renders it dramatically inert.

Nearly every scene of this film involves two (or more!) men of a certain age glowering at each other: over a conference table, a golf game or a shadowy bar like in some Saturday Night Live parody while spouting dialogue that could have come from a comic book.

“You’re going to give me their names and the names of their victims!”

“Are you threatening me?”

“They knew, and they let it happen!”

The film suggests, nonsensically, that Rezendes, Baron, and the lawyer who represented many of the victims, Mitchell Garabedian (played by Stanley Tucci) were willing to go against the Catholic Church because they were respectively, a Jewish bachelor who didn’t like baseball, someone from a Portuguese family and someone from an Armenian family: all so-called “outsiders”.

But the real outsiders were those who realized, before the scandal hit, that the Catholic Church was far from the benevolent institution each of the male characters in Spotlight seem to think it is at the beginning of the film. The people with ties to the Catholic Church were (and are) the same ones who shout at women as they enter Planned Parenthood and other clinics that perform abortions in Boston. Six years before the scandal broke, John Salvi had shot and killed people in two of these clinics in Brookline, the town next to Boston, and pointed to his Catholic beliefs as the reason.

Ryan-Vollmar would have seen firsthand, as a reporter for a queer paper, that the Catholic church had tried to block every state law (including, eventually, the one for marriage) that gave queer people the same rights as everyone else. And The Phoenix, like many alternative newspapers with roots in the 1960s was founded because mainstream papers like The Globe did not cover events or politics in ways that confronted the existing power structure.

Women, especially in the past, were much more likely to listen to and believe allegations of rape and sexual abuse perpetrated by men in power than… men in power were. One of the many omissions the film makes is that women, usually relatives of the victims, were among the very first whistle-blowers on the church’s cover-up of sexual abuse–and were ignored for years.

Spotlight goes so far out of its way to make its story all about white guys it should have all of us questioning every “based on a true story” film from now on. Let’s not let another smarmy white-guy writer-director shrug his shoulders, smile, and say he would have loved for women to play the leads in his film, but the “facts” got in his way.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg5zSVxx9JM” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Colorism and Interracial Relationships in Film: ‘Belle,’ ‘The Wedding,’ & More

This guest post by Atima Omara appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

Race, class, and love are at the center of Amma Assante’s beautifully made film Belle. It tells the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay, the biracial daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Sir John Lindsay, a British career naval officer who was stationed there. Unlike many children who were the product of a slave and a wealthy white man, Dido’s white father took her back to England to be raised with her wealthy white relatives. While set in England, the film is a poignant interpretation of interracial relationships in the 18th century and how color, particularly what shade of “black,” often factored into who you loved and found desirable, a dynamic that affects many portrayals of interracial relationships in film and television.

The unique life and story of Dido Elizabeth was discovered due to a portrait that hangs in Scone Palace that intrigued many, including Belle‘s British director of African descent, Amma Asante, who told NPR:

“You see a biracial girl, a woman of color, who’s painted slightly higher in the painting, depicted slightly higher than her white counterpart. She’s staring directly out at the painter, you know, with a very direct, confident eye. … So this painting flipped tradition and everything that the 18th century told us about portraiture.”

As in real life, Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) grows up best friends with her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). When they reach their teen years, as is par for the course with any British film reflective of young women’s lives of the period, it’s time to find a husband. As such, they are introduced to the sons of a prominent family nearby, the James Ashford (Tom Felton) and Oliver Ashford (James Norton).

Oliver takes a fascination with Dido, to the chagrin of his brother James. “One does not make a wife of the the rare and exotic, Oliver. One samples it on the cotton fields of the Indies,” James says, yet Oliver dismisses his comments and pursues Dido anyway. But even Oliver’s professed love for Dido and his subsequent proposal are filled with racist undertones, commenting how lovely and intriguing she is in spite of her African heritage. Dido eventually refuses to marry Oliver when she is assaulted by his racist brother and becomes aware that James’ racist sentiments are shared by his mother; that she is only tolerated due to the sizable wealth she inherits from her now dead father.

What elevates Dido to a status where she is even pursued by white men of the British upper class is mostly her money. For example, her cousin, Elizabeth, while white, inherits less money and as a result, is viewed as a less attractive prospect for men of the English gentry looking to make a solid match. Oliver’s comments to Dido highlight that she is palatable due to her mixed heritage, a racial preference known as colorism, a prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. If Dido had been as black as her mother, she would more than likely, no matter how wealthy, not have been a tenable mate for any member of the British upper class of her time.

The colorism Dido experiences is seen throughout different Western societies that had Black African enslavement as part of its world. Many stories of colorism also exist in American history and folklore and we see how it impacts romantic relationships and in American film and TV. For example, New Orleans hosted Quadroom Balls in the 19th century. The word “quadroon” refers to people of color with one white parent and one half-white parent. These balls encouraged multiracial women to form liaisons with a system of concubinage, known as plaçage, comprised of highly educated and socially refined women. They were unable to find Black men of their own social status, so they became the mistresses of white men.

The film The Courage to Love depicts a representation of this world. Vanessa Williams plays Henriette Delille, a historical multiracial woman of color expected to marry a wealthy white man as her mother had before her. These wealthy white men were attracted to quadroon women because they weren’t so obviously black and these women possessed the training and education to be partners to powerful white men. Some white men would slip away from the city’s balls for whites to attend these afterwards.

Like Oliver, these men of New Orleans who catered to the plaçage system exoticized women of color and by frequenting these balls and taking women of color as mistresses, cemented a colorism caste amongst the Black community that spread throughout the American South. It is important to note that not only did the plaçage system in New Orleans keep multiracial women a certain shade of “acceptable” black skin, but like Belle’s experience growing up with her white father’s noble family, African Americans who obviously were children of interracial relationships benefited financially, creating not only a caste system in the Black community based on the lightness of one’s skin but also on wealth.

These enclaves of lighter-skinned Black communities descended from interracial relationships have been shown in American film. Eve’s Bayou, written and directed by Kasi Lemmons (making her directorial debut), centered around a town in Louisiana’s Black community who claims descent from a French aristocrat and who founded the town of Eve’s Bayou. The residents are primarily lighter-skinned, mixed-raced people. The Batistes who are the center of that town are rather light-skinned with the exception of the father, played by Samuel L. Jackson.

In Harlem Renaissance writer’s Dorothy West’s book The Wedding, West writes about “The Oval,” an elite Black community that lives and summers on Martha’s Vineyard. While Eve’s Bayou was fictional, the Oval is an actual wealthy Black community. At the center of West’s novel adapted in to a film with the same name, a young Black woman named Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) and her fiancé, a young white man named Meade Howell (Eric Thal) come home to visit her family for the wedding in the summer of 1953. Shelby’s family is displeased that Meade is a financially strapped musician, but they are willing to make the most of it. Meade’s own family is displeased his fiancée and her family are Black, which further agitates Shelby’s family.

At the crux of it all are two issues: first, the Black community in which Shelby was raised, a community that is financially successful but primarily light-skinned, so much so, the Coles’ family maid comments “they are all high yellow up here.” Secondly, Shelby’s family questions her about whether this is the marriage she wants due to Meade’s family’s snub. The film centers around the present community reflected in interactions with neighbors and family and the past relationships of Shelby’s ancestors from both her parents and how they have impacted her family.

Shelby’s grandmother was a white Southern woman named Josephine (Margaret Welsh) who married an up and coming emancipated dark-skinned Black man, named Hannibal (Gabriel Casseus). Their daughter, Corinne (Lynn Whitfield), grows up emotionally traumatized from the fact she was never fully loved and accepted by her mother due to Corinne being part Black. Corinne’s emotional trauma is reinforced by her white Southern grandmother, Caroline (Shirley Knight), Josephine’s mother who always says to her great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, “Where is your sun bonnet?” — an item which protects their skin from getting darker. One imagines Caroline impressed upon Corinne, who she helped raise after Corinne’s parents died, the same colorist views.

The damage of this colorism wreaks havoc on Corinne’s emotional psyche, who gets an operation to stop herself from future pregnancies, worried that any future children will “look like her father” who was dark-skinned. Corinne’s two children feel its effects: Shelby’s sister Liz (Cynda Williams) is happily married to her doctor husband, Lincoln (Richard Brooks), however Lincoln is dark-skinned. It is clear when the audience is introduced to Liz and Lincoln something terrible happened between Corinne and her son-in-law; Lincoln refuses to attend Shelby’s wedding primarily because he does not want to deal with Corinne. When Liz begs him to come with her, Lincoln snidely says, “That’s right, you need me there to prove a point to your mother, that you are happily married and that your husband is not the barbarian she imagined…I will never set foot in that house. I wasn’t good enough for her then why should I be good enough for her now? I don’t see my skin getting any lighter.”

Perhaps Meade’s family’s snub, and her past mistakes allowed Corinne to be honest with Shelby telling her, “I know it’s harsh when I spoke about you being a stain on your in-laws’ sheets but it’s because I was a stain on my mother’s.” Corinne’s husband and Shelby’s father, Clark (Michael Warren) is affected by family expectations on race as well. Flashbacks show his young love for a dark-skinned Black woman, deemed not the proper image of a wife he needs as an up and coming Black doctor.

Much like Corinne’s parents, Clark’s parents also struggled with their relationship due to color. His father, Isaac Coles (Peter Francis James), a light-skinned man who was a successful doctor and his wife, Ellen Coles (Marianne Jean Baptiste) who is financially successful in her own right, is also dark-skinned. Ellen is also painfully aware of her darker complexion and that it could be a liability to her husband. As a result, Ellen often hides herself away. From his personal experiences, Shelby’s father Clark, worried that perhaps his daughter Shelby is feeling familial or Black society pressure her to marry someone like Meade. He asks her “who has she brought home” that isn’t white or light-skinned that were her dates. He urges her not to make the same mistakes he did.

There is an option for Shelby to marry an eligible Black man, Lute McNeil (Carl Lumbly), a charming newcomer to The Oval. While wealthy and successful, Lute is also a dark-skinned Black man. Shelby has a great relationship with Lute’s three children and despite her engagement, Lute persists in pursuing her and Shelby finds herself attracted to him. Shelby’s mother disapproves of Lute because of his dark skin and his new money. She tells him that despite his financial success, he will “never belong” to the Oval. In the end, Shelby chooses Meade — deciding that class and race are artificial constructs and that love only matters. While I agree with this contention of Shelby’s, one is left to wonder how much of this family baggage affected her in her choices of dating and love.

It is clear that in film and television, colorism still plays a role in relationships, whether interracial or non-interracial. People have criticized the many music videos of hip hop and R&B artists that feature light-skinned or ethnically ambiguous love interests. Hollywood also faces criticism as dark-skinned Black women are more regularly cast as asexual (desexualizing Black women, portraying them with no desires) and never able to find love.

We have come a long way in having honest conversations about this in film and television and even literature. Media has progressed in portraying women of color who are darker-skinned as desirable and sexy to Black and white people, such as Viola Davis’s portrayal of Annalise Keating on How To Get Away With Murder, where she has relationships with a white man, Black man, and a white woman. However, the fact that Davis’s character is still groundbreaking shows just how far we still have to go in representing all the hues of Black women without falling victim to colorism.

Atima Omara is a political strategist, writer, activist who has served as staff on eight federal and local political campaigns and worked for progressive causes. Her writings focus on gender, race, and politics but also how gender and race are reflected in film and popular culture. In her spare time, she reads, watches movies and documentaries, and attends film festivals when she can. Read more of her feminist-friendly film, TV, and media critiques, plus other updates at her personal blog. You can follow her on Twitter.

‘Into the Badlands’: Will Blasian Love Last?

‘Into the Badlands’, based on the classic Chinese tale ‘Journey to the West’, is set in a futuristic dystopian world where past wars have created a new feudal society. It’s gratifying to finally get an onscreen Blasian couple where they kiss, have sex, and get to have a real relationship.

Written by Lisa Bolekaja, this article appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

For the last few weeks, fans of AMC’s Into the Badlands have been waiting to hear if the series will be renewed for a second season. Its six-part first season story arc hooked a number of viewers who eagerly await more episodes of the dystopian, martial arts fantasy extravaganza. The show is a throwback to the action excitement of 1970s Kung Fu theater with large doses of mystery, adventure, beautifully choreographed fight sequences, and a forbidden romance at its core. I am a big fan and find myself constantly checking social media to see if I will be gifted with another season.

Into the Badlands, based on the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West, is set in a futuristic dystopian world where past wars have created a new feudal society divided up between seven “Barons” who run everything on various Louisiana plantations — harking back to images of a slave society and a brutally defined hierarchy. People pick poppy plants instead of cotton, and everyone’s clothing looks like updated Gone With the Wind duds, only cooler looking with lots of leather. Guns have been banished, and although people originally flocked to the various Barons for protection and guidance in a world turned upside down because of war, the “protection” eventually lapsed into forced servitude. There are townspeople; healers, merchants, bar owners, brothels etc., and then there is the warrior class who live on the plantations.

Under the leadership of the Barons are lethal trained killers known as Clippers. Children with the potential to become Clippers are called colts and go through military training in the martial arts. Everyone else who isn’t trained in the art of war is forced to work on the plantations growing the poppy plants that are harvested into opium. They are known as cogs. (read: slaves).

The top Clipper on any given plantation is known as a Regent, and action star Daniel Wu is Sunny, the baddest Clipper in all the Badlands. He has tattoos on his back for the number of people he has killed. Sunny’s Baron is the conniving and ruthless Quinn (Martin Csokas), a man determined to control all of the Badlands. Quinn doesn’t know that the other Barons are plotting to overthrow him, and his personal life is a hot mess (two wives who dislike each other, and a son itching to take over). He depends on Sunny’s loyalty and fighting prowess. All Clippers are beholden to and only live for their Baron. They are not allowed to marry, have children, or have personal lives outside of the Baron’s wishes. Everyone in this society lives at the discretion and bidding of the various Barons. To go against this hierarchy of power and position is to risk immediate death.

Orphaned as a child, Sunny only knows the life of a Clipper. When we first meet him, he has been dispatched on his motorcycle to check on a cargo of new cogs that have not arrived at Quinn’s plantation. Sunny finds that the cogs have been killed, their bodies still chained together and rotting on the side of a desolate road. He notices that there is a person missing from the shackled group of slaves and sets off to find Quinn’s stolen property.

This scenario sets into motion two events that change the course of Sunny’s life forever. The first event is finding and rescuing M.K. (Aramis Knight), a young teen who wears a mysterious pendant that represents a fabled city called Azra that lies outside of the Badlands. People don’t believe it exists, but Sunny recognizes the pendant as something that matches a compass he owns and has hidden away from his own childhood. Sunny is intrigued with M.K., curious to know why he was kidnapped and not murdered like the other cogs. The second event that shakes up Sunny’s life is that the forbidden romance he’s has been secretly having with Veil (Madeliene Mantock), a Black woman who works as a healer in town, has borne fruit: Veil is pregnant and she’s keeping their baby, rules be damned.

What makes Sunny’s relationship with Veil exciting to me is the fact that it is a unique interracial pairing between two people of color. And not just the usual (almost cliché) interracial pairing of a White person with a person of color that we often find in film and TV. (On the flip side, the real shocker would have been to cast a talented Asian actress as Sunny’s love interest. Two people of color from the same racial background who are in love and have a romance at the center of the narrative? What? I can only dream.)

My mouth literally flew open when the show premiered on the east coast first and I saw a picture posted on social media of Sunny and Veil in bed together. The first reaction was, “Wow an AMBW couple on TV in bed together! Blasian love!”, and immediately afterwards I thought, “Damn, should I even bother to be invested in that relationship? They are probably going to kill her in the first episode.” I was bummed that my reactions were excitement about a Black woman being loved on, and then automatically assuming that she would be killed off because it has been proven that Black characters tend to be bumped off first. It’s tradition; this assumption about Veil’s immediate demise had levels to it.

Typically, women are used to motivate male characters into action, via revenge or to have someone to rescue. They exist as plot devices (with tropes like Damsel in Distress or Women in Refrigerators) to help the story move along. This problem is exacerbated at times when that woman is a woman of color because they are not often deemed as important as a white female character. If Veil had been white, in my mind, she may last a few episodes. But because she was Black, I girded my loins and waited for the big chop. This saddens me because by the time I was able to watch the entire show during its west coast broadcast, I had already prepared myself to let Veil go. And praise ye old Gods, Veil has survived all six episodes, and actually has some agency.

The rare pairings of an Asian male character and a Black female character has a tenuous history in cinema. The few films that even touch upon the slightest hint of a possible romance between AMBW couples has been disappointing. The two most recent films that my cinema friends and I still complain about is Ninja Assassin and Romeo Must Die. There was obvious chemistry between Naomie Harris and Rain. There was even a rumored shower scene between them that was supposedly cut. But Ninja Assassin just toyed with us, and fans of the film created fanfiction to fill in the gaps of romance that may have been there more overtly had Naomie Harris’ character been a white woman.

The travesty that is Romeo Must Die has always irked fans of that film. Jet Li and the late Aaliyah couldn’t even get a kiss at the end? All that sexual tension, and flat out cuteness together didn’t warrant a little lip action? It has been said that there was a kissing scene at the end that was cut because a test audience didn’t like it. I don’t know who was in that test audience that ruined the earned love scene of Jet Li and Aaliyah, but in the words of Sam Jackson, I hope they die and burn in hell. We were robbed.

The closest thing that I’ve seen that even tried to have a recurring Blasian couple was Flashforward (2009) with John Cho and Gabrielle Union. But then Cho’s character ended up getting a lesbian white woman pregnant on purpose and…yeah, that sucked.

There are other films and TV shows that have had AMBW pairings:

Virtuality (2009)

Robot Stories (2003)

Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (1999)

Cinderella (1997)

Fakin’ Da Funk (1997)

But it’s a nice surprise to see a deeper relationship between Veil and Sunny. It would be great if we could see more of their love scenes developed. The arrival of M.K. and Veil’s pregnancy have created an urgency in Sunny that tests his loyalty as a Regent/Clipper. Some of the writing of the show has me questioning why Sunny is so loyal to the unstable, villainous Quinn. Quinn murders Veil’s adoptive parents. Sunny tells Veil what happened when she confronts him about it, and yet he still goes back to work like “I can’t do anything.” Sunny finally making plans to escape with Veil and M.K. come a little too late. We needed to see him stand up for his woman and baby sooner.

Thank goodness Veil isn’t allowed to be a weak damsel in distress waiting for Sunny to save her. She works through difficult situations to keep herself and her unborn child alive when he’s not around. Veil even tells Sunny that she may or may not leave with him once he secures passage on a boat for them to escape. It’s a small moment that lets the audience know that she will make it with or without Sunny.

Sunny and Veil are set up to be a surrogate family for M.K. and the boy is pretty quick to pick up on the fact that the secret affair of Sunny and Veil is pretty obvious whenever they are near each other. M.K. himself has the beginnings of his own interracial romance with Tilda (Ally Ioannides), the Clipper daughter of a female Baron known as The Widow (Emily Beecham — one of my favorites on the show), which brings on another set of problems that mirror Sunny and Veil’s forbidden union.

Into the Badlands is an imaginative show that is here for fans of dynamic martial arts, and also kickass women. More than half of the main cast is made up of women full of agency who drive the series just as much as the men. My only criticism in that respect is that Veil is the only regular cast member who is a woman of color. I see a lot of female background extras that are women of color, (just like there are tons of men and boys of color on the show, even those with regular speaking roles), so it would’ve been nice to see another woman of color who is a major player. It’s pretty lazy casting to have six female speaking parts, and only one is a woman of color? And no, The Widow being a redhead does not count as diversity in women. They could have given us at least three women of color. Asian, Native, Latinx…so easy to do. But no. There’s just Veil.

The season finale left us with a cliffhanger. M.K. kidnapped again, Sunny tied up on the boat and what that means for his family’s safe passage out of the Badlands, and Veil left alone in town wondering what happened to her man. The six episodes were fast and furious fun, and I hope that Sunny and Veil’s relationship continues over the long haul. It’s exciting to see a handsome Asian male actor shine as the hero, be a sexually desired hottie, and NOT be a stereotype or sidekick to a white male character. It’s also gratifying to finally get an onscreen Blasian couple where they kiss, have sex, and get to have a real relationship. At least I hope so. C’mon, AMC. Renew Into the Badlands. The fans are waiting.

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja is a writer, screenwriter, and podcaster. She’s an Apex Magazine slush reader, a member of the Horror Writers Association, a former Film Independent Fellow and a Twitter fiend. You can find her posted up on the AMC Into the Badlands fan page waiting for word of Season 2.

What ‘Parenthood’ Taught Me About Interracial Relationships

This guest post written by Livi Burke appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

Growing up, I was often either one of the few Black kids in my class or the only one. So it would be no surprise that my attraction to good-looking white guys has always been so strong. When I was a young Jonas Brother-loving 13-year-old experiencing her first crush, I had no idea just how much impact race could have on my future relationships. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned about the unique and challenging aspects of interracial relationships.

TV series like Parenthood and The Fosters really helped show me what it would be like to be in a committed relationship with someone of a different race. Not only did I feel like I was learning so much by watching these shows for the first time, but I also loved the representation. The representation I saw was not just of people of color as a whole but also people of color coming together to love each other and start families together.

Now as much as I loved seeing my well-known love for vanilla onscreen, I did see some things in Parenthood that were not nearly as fun to watch. There were several times when Crosby’s very blatant ignorance of his white privilege unsettled me. It made me think of what would happen if I met someone who isn’t aware of their privilege. That person could make a great partner and even be a great parent but if they aren’t fully aware of their white privilege? Not a chance.

Parenthood is known for dealing with social issues, including racism. I remember watching the scene in the episode “The Talk” where Crosby and Jabbar have their first conversation about the N-word. Crosby looked so caught off guard; he knows this is a racist word he’s not supposed to say, yet at the same he has no idea how to talk about this racial slur and its ramifications with his half Black son. This scene became one of the many turning points of the show. Later, Crosby and Jasmine have a much more in-depth dialogue with Jabbar about racism and why the N-word is so hateful and offensive. This echoes conversations that many parents of color have had with their children. What made this discussion different to me was how this becomes a huge learning experience for both Jabbar and Crosby. When I watched this scene, I felt like I was seeing myself as a mom having that conversation with my future son.

In addition to showing examples of interracial families and adult relationships, Parenthood also depicted teens Haddie and Alex in a much different relationship that contained many relatable aspects. The moment that really stands out to me about their relationship is Alex’s arrest. When Alex picks up a drunk Haddie from a party, he gets into a confrontation with another high school student, whose parents press charges against Alex for the fight. As great as it was that the Bravermans helped him get the charges dropped, I know that if not for their help, Alex would have had to do time in jail. Why? Because Alex is a young Black man and racial bias is something that’s still very real in the U.S.

The biggest thing that I gained from watching the interracial relationships in Parenthood is that my future husband won’t fully understand what it is like to be Black in America. But as long as they are open to learning more about my struggles and aware of their white privilege, our relationship will remain strong. Just because our races and experiences may differ, it doesn’t mean we can’t still come together to love each other and raise a family.

Even though I didn’t exactly enjoy learning the hard lessons about race through these shows, I am very grateful that I did. I never thought that a family drama I started watching on Netflix when I probably should have been studying would become so much more than entertainment for me.

Livi Burke is a blogger, a student, and a long time coffee lover. Some of her biggest passions are writing, photography, and blogging. Her work can be seen on Thought Catalog, Coming of Faith, Bustle, and many other online publications. When she isn’t working on a new article or blog post, she is either rewatching Gilmore Girls or obsessing over her favorite Subway sandwich.

Animated Love: How Anime Produced Two of the Best Interracial Love Stories of All Time

Two of the greatest love stories in anime are interracial relationships. … While the industry as a whole generally eschews characters of color, that hasn’t stopped some series from featuring prominent people of color characters in narratively significant stories. This has led to interracial couples being featured in two of the greatest anime series of all time: ‘The Super Dimension Force Macross’ and ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena.’

This guest post written by Robert V Aldrich appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships. Spoilers ahead.

Two of the greatest love stories in anime are interracial relationships.

Now, to be fair, that might seem a little surprising. After all, while generally being (or at least seeming) progressive on an array of social issues, the anime medium as a whole has a strained relationship with people of color, with the general absence of characters of color as, sadly, just the tip of the iceberg. When characters of color do appear, they are often highly generic (read: racist) stereotypes, although some popular anime cross the line and employ straight-up blackface antics (looking at you, Dragon Ball Z).

While the industry as a whole generally eschews characters of color, that hasn’t stopped some series from featuring prominent people of color characters in narratively significant stories. This has led to interracial couples being featured in two of the greatest anime series of all time: The Super Dimension Force Macross and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Quick disclaimer: So, any discussion about race in anime needs to acknowledge the difficulties in identifying race in anime’s heavily stylized character designs. While some shows illustrate with more of an eye towards realism and racial distinctions can be made, most characters of white and Asian background are usually shown with nigh-identical features. This often makes distinguishing between the two races quite difficult (with nothing to say of distinctions between different ethnic groups within races). As such, it’s very easy for the token American woman to have largely the same facial features as her Japanese counterparts.

It’s for this reason that discussing interracial relationships can be a little tricky, simply because there are many more interracial relationships than first appears evident. For example, Aresene Lupin the Third (of Lupin III fame) is at the very least a quarter French (if not fully French), yet he is drawn with features comparable to fully Japanese characters (for example, his nemesis Inspector Zenigata). As such, his on-again/off-again dynamic with the patently Japanese Fujiko doesn’t seem interracial at all.

In Macross, the main protagonist Hikaru Ichijyo is drawn with features similar to his American friend Roy Focker, Russian captain Bruno Global, and even his Chinese pseudo-girlfriend Minmei.

This must be stated because it means that, technically, interracial relationships are actually quite common in anime; they are just very hard to distinguish. In order to draw attention to the very existence of interracial relationships, we will be discussing the very rare occurrences of a character of color not only being narratively significant (and not simply a one-off joke or a stand-alone episode), but involved with another equally narratively significant character of an obviously different race.

The Super Dimension Fortress Macross

Released in 1982, SDF Macross tells the story of Earth’s sole interplanetary vessel as it defends against an alien onslaught using reconfigurable aircraft. The story spans multiple years and features a wide array of characters, from grizzled war veterans to wide-eyed and naive starlets. It tells the story of survivors trying to endure the hardships that come as the cost of war, both on a community and culture and on the individual.

Most fans in the west know of SDF Macross as the basis for the first chapter in Robotech (an American product splicing together three separate Japanese shows, including Macross, to produce one three-generation narrative). Some elements of the show were amended for American/Western audiences but the vast majority of the story remained intact, including the violence and realism (well, as much realism as one can have in a show about a transforming aircraft). It would be this story that would introduce iconic anime characters like Hikaru Ichijyo (Rick Hunter in Robotech), Misa Hayase (Lisa Hayes), and many more. While Hikaru/Rick would be the main character and the story would follow his life and romances, a supporting story would be told following the tender love affair between command officer Claudia LaSalle (Claudia Grant) and ace fighter pilot Roy Focker (re-spelled Fokker in the U.S. for some reason).

Claudia is the bridge officer in charge of weapons and navigation of the Macross (the giant space fortress that serves as the set and centerpiece of the show). She’s seen as a veteran officer and a mentor/big sister to other female characters in the show (especially Misa Hayase). She’s often the level-head in the bridge crew but also has a wild side as evidenced by her oft-referenced romantic life.

Opposite Claudia, we find Roy Focker. The ace fighter pilot for the humans against the early onslaught of alien forces, Roy seems to be the action hero of the first half of the story. At first glance, Roy is little more than an American stereotype. Tall, brash, and with copious blonde hair, he seems the antithesis to Hikaru’s Japanese stature and pacifist nature. This slowly evolves into a fully-formed character as we see Roy’s fraternal feelings for Hikaru as well as his romance with Claudia.

We see little evidences of Roy and Claudia’s romance throughout the first half of the show. They flirt after combat missions and we hear about their plans to see each other (events that usually transpire off-screen). In fact, our introduction to Claudia in the first episode includes Misa chastising her for her scandalous behavior with a night out with Roy the night before the big launch at the start of the show. Later, we see Claudia butting into Misa’s official exchange with Roy to tease him about his performance. All this builds to show an idealized relationship that includes passion and commitment.

And then Roy dies. (Uh…thirty-year-old spoiler alert?)

After a vicious dogfight with the alien ace pilot, Milia Fallyna (Miriya Parina Sterling in Robotech), Roy shakes off the suggestion that he go to the hospital. He instead retreats to Claudia’s apartment aboard the Macross. Despite coming out of a fight with her from an earlier episode, she makes pineapple salad for them during what should be rare quiet time together. Strumming away on a guitar, Roy slips from life on Claudia’s couch.

The pallor of Roy’s death hangs over the characters for the remainder of the show, affecting everyone in ways big and small. Claudia grows a bit melancholy in the wake of Roy’s absence but continues to soldier on. She clearly carries warm memories of Roy, as best evidenced when she advises Misa about her romance with Hikaru. During a late-season flashback, we are treated to a full episode of Roy and Claudia’s relationship when it first blossomed. We see Claudia as a stiff junior officer and Roy as a careless and callous fighter jock. They are at odds with one another until Claudia discovers Roy at her door during a rainstorm, determined to explain to her his feelings and to make her understand why he is who he is. Their love blossoms from there and becomes the stuff of legend.

Roy and Claudia’s relationship is not perfect. It is not ideal. It is tested constantly by the working lives of two professionals in tense situations with impossibly high stakes. Yet despite their backgrounds and despite their differences, their love for one another is undeniable.

To fans in the 1980s, tuning in on Saturday mornings, this was quietly subversive. In the west, television shows were (and still are) lacking people of color, except occasionally in a single token role. To see a Black woman in a leading role (whose name wasn’t Uhura) was something many fans still remember distinctly. But an interracial love affair? There were states in the US where that was technically still illegal! And here it was, not only on a beloved cartoon, but depicted beautifully, with the respect to be realistic but also the idealism to be wonderful.

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Whereas Macross would see Claudia and Roy’s love in the background of the larger story of humanity persevering against annihilation (as well as the far less satisfying love triangle between Hikaru and Misa and Minmei), 1997’s Revolutionary Girl Utena would put the interracial relationship front and center. It did this by not just involving the two main characters of the story, but by making their love the very centerpiece of the whole story.

The story of Revolutionary Girl Utena revolves around a sword-fighting contest at an elite private school where the prize for victory is the hand of the lovely and demure Anthy Himemiya. Anthy is of indeterminate racial background, but most guesses is that she is Indian or of Indian descent. While she is drawn with dark skin tones in the comic and early episodes of the animated series, Anthy’s skin tone is noticeably lightened in later depictions, most notably the 1999 feature film.

As the centerpiece of the series, Anthy is an initially enigmatic figure who appears to be little more than an abused damsel in distress, being passed around between the elites of the school. The heroine of the show, Utena Tenjou, more or less stumbles into rescuing her from the monstrous Saionji, resulting in the two being bonded to one another. Their relationship is extremely awkward at first, as much due to their same gender as well as simply being set in the adolescence of life, but their feelings slowly blossom as the series progresses, approaching thinly-veiled romantic overtones throughout the later episodes (and even explicitly stating a sexual dynamic in the film).

The issue of a sapphic connection between the two is very much a running theme in the story. Whispers of lesbianism are shared throughout the show, which makes the tomboy Utena uncomfortable and often explode defensively (at least initially). As the show progresses, the issue of same-sex love takes a backseat as the stakes raise for Anthy’s hand (and the inferred cataclysmic implications of her affection). Whatever novelty there is in their connection is lost as Utena fights for Anthy’s freedom and even her very life. When the final turn comes, the heartbreaking rejection that occurs leaves both characters transformed and arguably not for the better.

Fans of all persuasions gravitated towards the bold love story on display. As the world wrestled (and continues to wrestle) to address issues of gender and sexuality, where the words “gay” and “lesbian” were often still whispered, Revolutionary Girl Utena came out brashly, confronting these issues head-on. To do so while also tackling an interracial couple underscored the pervasiveness of many prejudices and preconceived notions. On full display was a love story that trumped many of the legends of old and simultaneously blew away every single reservation and preconceived notion along with it.

In both of these classic anime series, the racial background of the respective love interests is never made an issue. Nobody remarks to Claudia that her race is an issue in her seeing Roy. Nobody makes an issue of Anthy’s race or ethnicity as she dates Utena. Anthy and Utena don’t even see any real protest regarding their same-sex relationship (regardless of however real or imagined it is at the time). With regards to Roy and Claudia’s pairing, the only protests are internal to Claudia as the relationship begins.

While Claudia would largely disappear from the spotlight of Macross/Robotech fandom as the franchise moved on, Anthy remains a popular character, especially among non-white cosplayers. As a rare character of color in a major series, and as the cornerstone of that series, she’s seen as an icon and deservedly so. She has few peers among a vast sea of comparative homogeny when it comes to character types. While styles, personalities, and all manner of characteristics vary widely in anime, ethnicity and race seem rarely varied. Characters like Anthy and Claudia are welcome respites from that monotony.

That their relationships are unrestrained is even more noteworthy. Claudia’s relationship with Roy is never questioned, and certainly not on the bounds of their differing ethnicity. Anthy and Utena are likewise free from such criticisms (though, to be fair, they have far bigger oppositions in the story).

Anime is not free of racism. Anime, as a whole, has an uncomfortable dearth of characters of color. While that trend is changing, we still see a long way to go. It is comforting, if only a little, that what few characters are depicted and shown so prominently, are free of many of the restrictions of love we see in much of the world today. Claudia and Roy’s relationship is simultaneously realistic and perfect, striking the balance of believability and idealism that we look for in fiction. Anthy and Utena’s love starts accidentally and burns slowly, until it ignites like a flame. Their love story is the stuff of legend and will live on in the annals of great love stories in fiction, anime or otherwise.

With interracial couples sorely lacking in popular depictions in all media, it is comforting to find not only examples in anime (however admittedly rare) but to find sterling examples that inspire hope for any love, no matter the persuasion. Plus, these two love stories are set against dramatic swordfights and pronounced dogfights with transforming aircraft.

Robert V Aldrich is a novelist based out of North Carolina where he lives in denial about his bald spot. He can be found on Twitter at @Rvaldrich, Facebook, at his website Teach The Sky, and at parties talking to the dog. When he’s not writing, he works as a convention speaker, cancer researcher, and martial arts instructor.

Colonialism in ‘The King and I’ and Related Media

‘The King and I’ promotes colonialist and “white savior” attitudes. … Adding romantic interest to the story, showing King Mongkut as exceedingly admiring of Anna and portraying her influence in the court as more than it was, paints Western values and morals as superior to others, justifying colonialism by making it seem as though Eastern countries “need” the West.

Written by Jackson Adler as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

“Is the King and I racist, and is it time it was put to rest?” [sic] asks Dee Jefferson of The Sydney Morning Herald. While his article is inconclusive, I strongly believe that the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical as it exists now, and other Western media telling the same story, should be “put to rest.” The way that the story of Anna Leonowens teaching at the court of King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand) in the mid 19^th century is told in the West needs to be completely redone if it is to be told, because the way it is presented is both inaccurate and harmful. There is a reason The King and I (staged on Broadway in 1951 and adapted for film in 1956) and many other adaptations of the same story such as Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and Anna and the King (1999) either are or were banned in Thailand – because they are extremely insensitive to Thailand’s history and culture, and promote colonialist and “white savior” attitudes.

To say that The King and I and related media is racist is missing the point. This is because racism is a product of colonialism, often being an afterthought justification for stealing and controlling another peoples’ wealth, labor, and resources, or as a propagandist rallying cry to begin the colonization of another people and their land. Anna Leonowens is painted as the “white savior” in these adaptations, and shown inaccurately as the main influence behind the reforms implemented by Mongkut and his son Chulalongkorn.

Though Mongkut and Leonowens did respect one another and worked closely, a romance between them does not seem to have existed, and the invention of it in the media is a tool to better depict Leonowens “civilizing” Mongkut to the extent that he might be a “gentleman” and a romantic interest – albeit in a bittersweet “it would never work” way. Interracial relationships (however problematically written) are themes in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work, such as in South Pacific, as interracial marriage was a hot button issue at their time, not nationally legalized until 1967. Under the guise of being “progressive,” these works actually do an incredible amount of harm.

Mongkut hired Leonowens (who was ethnically English and East Indian, but claimed to be Welsh) to teach his children “English language, science, and literature, and not for the conversion to Christianity.” He himself already knew English (and Latin) and was well versed in Western culture. The image of Mongkut in the media is a stereotypical “barbarian” and “foolish” despot, despite the efforts of talented actors such as Chow Yun-Fat and Ken Watanabe to show a complex and thoughtful human being and leader. Women’s rights were improved under his reign. For example, unlike the story of Tuptim in the musical suggests, he outlawed forced marriages and released a large number of concubines to marry whom they chose. He respected the minds and wishes of his wives. When they met, Mongkut and his family treated Leonowens with kindness and respect, while she was often rude, condescending, or sarcastic to them. She strongly believed herself superior to the Thai people due to her being (part) English and a Christian, even telling members of the royal family to their faces, “I am not like you.”

The myth of she and Mongkut emotionally having a romance is quickly debunked due to various instances and examples of her enacting and making plain her biases and self-righteousness. One such instance was when she was asked by some female members of the royal family which prince she would find more desirable to marry were she to choose. She replied, according to her first autobiography, that they “are pagans” (Buddhist) and as such, “An English, that is a Christian, woman” such as herself “would rather be put to the torture, chained and dungeoned for life, or suffer a death the slowest and most painful you Siamese know, than be the wife of either” [sic]. The words “you Siamese” naturally show her condescending tone and attitude towards Thai people, insulting their intelligence and knowledge of the world.

Aspects of Leonowens’ autobiographies have proved to be exaggerated or fabricated, and seem to have been made to make herself look better and Mongkut look cruel. Various members of the Thai royal family, from Chulalongkorn himself to more to the present, have spoken out against both the inaccuracies in Leonowens’ works as well all media representations. One example of this is the alleged execution of Tuptim, featured in many adaptations (though she is whipped in the musical). Much of Tuptim’s story was fabricated, and she in fact was not executed, but became one of the wives of Chulalongkorn. Indeed, according to Mongkut did not believe in executions, considering them not in line with Buddhism.

However, Western adaptations have been more than ready to depict the Thai as “barbarians” or as “foolish” and Anna as the epitome of Western graciousness and, indeed, womanhood. Adding romantic interest to the story, showing Mongkut as exceedingly admiring of Anna and portraying her influence in the court as more than it was, paints Western values and morals as superior to others, justifying colonialism by making it seem as though Eastern countries “need” the West. Of course, Anna and Mongkut never kiss and hardly ever physically show their romantic interest, as to do so would “corrupt” Anna, the white woman, and put someone “lesser than” above her due to gender norms.

The fictionalized versions of this story are not only problematic in how they are written, but also problematic in terms of casting. As of 2014, white men are still being cast as King Mongkut, showing little has changed since Rex Harrison played the role in 1946. When an Asian man is cast, even in film adaptations, it is an actor who is not Thai, playing into the Western myth that all Asians and Asian cultures are the same. Except for Korean-American actress Anna Sanders, who played Anna on Broadway for a total of three performances in two days, the role of Leonowens has exclusively been played by white women, and often portrayed as blonde or redhead, despite the historical figure being part East Indian and having dark hair. This whitewashing is ridiculous, and shows how little white Westerners have changed in their self-righteousness and feelings of entitlement toward other lands and cultures.

All in all, the story of Anna Leonowens teaching at the Siamese court, as it has been told by Western media, remain colonialist and otherwise harmful. Even if Leonowens and Mongkut had a particularly deep and romantic relationship, which they did not, Leonowens’ white savior attitudes and Mongkut’s (historically inaccurate) verbal and physical violence would make that relationship a terribly abusive and volatile one. This would not be the kind of relationship to be valued, making even the most redeeming qualities of these adaptions problematic at best. I am not advocating that Leonowens’ and Mongkut’s stories be silenced and untold, but instead that they be told with honesty. This was a king actively working to keep his country free from colonialism, and this was a woman whose colonialist attitudes — which kept her from interacting well with those who treated her with respect — were probably due to internalized racist biases and fears regarding her East Indian heritage (a heritage she worked hard to hide). This is in fact a story that needs to be told, and hopefully many more (and more accurate) adaptations will be made in the future.

Jackson Adler is a transguy with a BA in Theatre, a Bitch Flicks staff writer, and is a writer, activist, director, teacher, dramaturge, cartoon lover, vegan boba drinker, and proud Gryffindor. His day job is at a theatre (live, not movie), and he uses a pen name as a precaution, since he’d rather not risk getting fired. He is white and middle class, and has to remember his privileges. He is also aromantic bi/pansexual, and has an Auditory Processing Disorder and a Weak Working Memory (which does not excuse when he forgets that he has lots of privileges). You can follow him on twitter at @JacksonAdler, and see more of his writing on representation and discrimination in the media at the blog The Windowsill.

Interracial Love in the Afternoon: Daytime Soap Opera Relationships

This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]

The concept of the “supercouple” on daytime television, colloquially known as soaps or soap operas, is a romantic pairing closely associated with the following: their ability to overcome obstacles (children with other people, baby swaps, paternity tests, kidnappings, and murderous villains); a multitude of marriages (including with each other); and their love withstands the test of time. In other words, viewers are invested in watching the various iterations of the same couple. Notable supercouples in daytime culture are: Luke and Laura Spencer (General Hospital), Victor and Nikki Newman (The Young and the Restless), Jesse and Angie Hubbard (All My Children), and Bo and Hope Brady (Days of Our Lives). However, it is glaring that amongst soap opera supercouples, there are few pairings with people of color, especially interracial couples.

In the 1980s and 1990s, daytime broke ground for tackling social issues such as: HIV, rape, abortion (most notable in the 1970s with All My Children’s Erica Kane), homosexuality, and race. One of the first interracial romances on daytime television that occurred on General Hospital between characters Tom Hardy (David Wallace) and Simone Ravelle (Laura Carrington) was so groundbreaking that they appeared on the cover of JET magazine in February 1988. However, their story is one of the many interracial romances that occurred, but did not graduate to supercouple status.

General Hospital of the 1990s saw the introductions of Jason Quartermaine (Steve Burton) and Keesha Ward (Senait Ashenafi). Jason Quartermaine was the “golden boy” who aspired to be a doctor like his father, legacy character, Alan Quartermaine. He was the hope the Quartermaine’s needed when paired against Jason’s alcoholic, older brother, A.J. Quartermaine. Keesha Ward, whose family history is linked to the Quartermaines (her grandmother, Mary Mae Ward had an affair with Edward Quartermaine, Jason’s grandfather, which resulted in the birth of a son, Bradley Ward) and she is also a “good girl” who aspires to be a lawyer. Their short-lived relationship consisted of Jason constantly vocalizing Keesha’s beauty and intelligence; their shared dreams, such as marriage; they also lost their virginity to each other. Through family legacy alone, Jason and Keesha had the makings of a supercouple. They’re both attached to established characters, their families disapproved of the relationship, and they were dealt tragedy.

Jason, being the golden boy, jumps into a car with his brother who is driving drunk. This results in an accident with Jason being in a coma, sustaining a severe brain injury, and ultimately losing his memories. Upon waking, he turns into an angry, violent person. He pushes his family away, including Keesha, and turns to mobster, Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Bernard). Jason Quartermaine transforms into who viewers know today as Jason Morgan. Each encounter between Keesha and Jason Morgan is painful. He insults her and she is reduced to tears and heartache. Gone was the purity, the sweet nature of their relationship. Keesha turns to A.J. and later, the character disappears from the canvas. Jason Morgan would move on with other women: Robin Scorpio, Elizabeth Webber, Brenda Barrett, and Samantha McCall. The latter of whom he now maintains supercouple status.

In a perfect supercouple soap scenario, Jason and Keesha would somehow reunite, if only for closure. Piece by piece, memories of Keesha would bombard his mind resulting in their passionate reunion. However, Keesha and Jason would have to tearfully say goodbye to each other because neither of them is the same person they were prior to his fateful accident. Like Tom Hardy and Simone Ravelle, if viewers in 2016 were asked about Keesha Ward, their reaction would be, “Keesha who?” While Keesha was a part of Jason Morgan’s former life, she was still a significant piece. Jason, being a young, white male in a highly privileged family and Keesha a beautiful, intelligent, Black woman demonstrated that when they were together, no one else mattered. The sort of innocence or goodness that sparked their relationship, almost cancelled out the historical implications of their grandparents’ affair — Edward Quartermaine taking a Black woman, Mary Mae as his mistress, but not wife. Their bodies belonged to no one else, they were committed to each other. For writers to not develop their relationship amongst their obstacle and ultimately slam the door without a sense of closure, is a disservice to invested viewers.

On CBS, there is currently a long standing interracial couple, Lily Winters (Christel Khalil) — daughter of legacy characters Neil and Drucilla Winters, and her husband Cane Ashby (Daniel Goddard). However, the presence of interracial pairings on The Young and the Restless has been few and far between. The eldest child and daughter of supercouple Victor and Nikki Newman, Victoria Newman (then played by Heather Tom), ended her marriage to Cole Howard. Upon discovering she is pregnant with Cole’s child, she decides to venture into a relationship with Neil Winters (Kristoff St. John) and plans to raise the child with him. However, once Victoria loses her baby, their short-lived romance also ends. Their relationship is also a “blink and you’ll miss it” moment in soap history.

But amongst the barrage of missed opportunities in the arena of interracial couples, Noah Keefer and Julia Santos on All My Children stand out. Played by Keith Hamilton Cobb and Sydney Penny, they became one of daytime’s first interracial supercouples. They checked all of the boxes: strife amongst their families because of Noah’s African American heritage and Julia’s Latina (Mexican American) heritage and being able to endure hardships. Noah’s identifying character trait are his long locks. He is not shown cutting them to conform to society, nor does Julia find curiosity with his hair. They exist with each other, as is. They are enough. While their supercouple status did not span decades, as seen with Erica Kane and Jackson Montgomery, Noah and Julia brought something refreshing to the pairing.

Their relationship begins with Noah Keefer rescuing a disfigured, runaway and tornado survivor Julia Santos. As he nurses her back to health, their relationship begins to grow. As friends, Noah supports Julia’s abortion (via rape by another man) and rescues her when she is kidnapped by her rapist. The couple also endures Noah being accused of murdering Julia’s rapist (by Noah’s vengeful ex-lover, Taylor) and they go on the run until he is vindicated. Eventually, they marry; Julia becomes a nurse, and Noah a photographer. But, like any good supercouple, they are put through another test. Due to an assassination attempt by Noah’s stepfather on Noah’s mother Rose, his sisters, and Julia’s lives, the characters are placed into the witness relocation program. As a result, Noah and Julia are written off the daytime drama. A decade later, Julia returns to Pine Valley alone with the sad news that Noah has been murdered. She is out to avenge her husband’s death. Once that is accomplished, Julia allows herself to move on. She has various relationships, adopts a child, and sadly dies. But, Julia will always be associated with Noah. What allows their romance to be fresh is that their pairing was largely absent of the ugliness that often plagues supercouples: the break-ups. Unlike Jason and Keesha of General Hospital, there was closure. We imagine that Noah and Julia are reunited in soap opera heaven.

In 2016, interracial couples only scratch the surface of storylines on daytime television. The slow burn, or the build up to romance is largely absent from love in the afternoon. Viewers are now reduced to watching three different couples, making love via split screen. Perhaps the problem lies at the root. Creators must take time to invest in characters that are representative of our cultural and racial make up, as well as, develop intelligent, and socially meaningful storylines. As viewers, we must demand to see people who make up the real world.

Rachel Wortherley earned a Master of Arts degree at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. She currently teaches English at Iona College and hopes to become a full-time screenwriter.

‘Pinky’ and the Origins of Interracial Oscar-Bait

‘Pinky’ is best understood at the starting point for a new Hollywood trajectory for interracial relationships onscreen: the worthy Oscar-bait drama that claims to enlighten as it entertains and serves as a conduit for fostering tolerance in the presumed white audience.

This guest post by Hannah Graves appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

Twentieth Century-Fox’s Pinky is far from the first Hollywood feature film that depicts an interracial relationship. Despite the evolution of various censorship codes that forbid depicting “miscegenation,” Hollywood has a rich history of mining the salacious or elicit potential from interracial pairing on screen, from Broken Blossoms to Duel in the Sun, Showboat to Imitation of Life. Yet, Pinky was quite distinct in tone from the films that came before it.

Produced by Fox’s studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck, Pinky was part of a spate of post-war social problem films that earnestly sought to address topical issues. Studios promoted these films as evidence that their medium was maturing, littering their advertising with exaggerated claims about the power of their pictures. As one of Pinky’s screenwriters, Phil Dunne, wrote in a New York Times article, “What we say and do on the screen in productions of this sort can affect the happiness, the living conditions, even the physical safety of millions of our fellow citizens.” Pinky is best understood at the starting point for a new Hollywood trajectory for interracial relationships onscreen: the worthy Oscar-bait drama that claims to enlighten as it entertains and serves as a conduit for fostering tolerance in the presumed white audience. It is a tradition that informs films from A Patch of Blue and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner to Monster’s Ball and the forthcoming Loving.

Pinky is about the identity crisis of Patricia “Pinky” Johnson (Jeanne Crain), a light-skinned woman of ambiguous mixed-race ancestry who has been ‘passing’ as white at her northern nursing school. Set in the late 1940s, the film opens on Pinky as she returns to her southern hometown and grandmother, Dicey (Ethel Walters), after feeling a marriage proposal from Tom (William Lundigan), a white Northern Doctor. Back in the South, Pinky reencounters the racism of her hometown and finds herself the victim of police scrutiny and sexual assault. She resolves to leave but finds herself reluctantly nursing a local white matriarch, Miss Em (Ethel Barrynore), who lives in the nearby planation house. Both Miss Em and Dicey challenge Pinky about her passing, arguing she is not being true to her authentic self. When Tom returns, Pinky informs him about her racial heritage and he reiterates his proposal, albeit implicitly on the condition they live away from both of their families and she continue to pass. Finding herself the sole inheritor of Miss Em’s vast estate after Miss Em dies, Pinky successfully fights for her right to the property in court. She decides to reject Tom’s proposal and converts the planation into a clinic for the local African American community where she resolves to live. An unequivocal hit, Pinky was Fox’s top-grossing film of 1949 and its three lead actresses all received Oscar nominations.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with Pinky. Mixed-race and racially ambiguous looking myself, I have always been fascinated by stories of racial passing. In the scheme of things, life turns out pretty good in Pinky, even if the film lacks nuance. Of course, colorism undergirds the film’s efforts to make its contemporary white audience relate to Pinky. Yes, Zanuck cast a white actress as Pinky rather than Fredi Washington or Lena Horne, rightly drawing criticism in the African American press. It is extremely unfortunate that a cranky white matriarch successfully instructs Pinky on how she should racially identity according to the “one drop” rule, a element even The New York Times recognised as paternalistic. And yes, I know, Pinky and Tom don’t end up together and their relationship is unable to thrive, presumably like the unaddressed interracial relationship that resulted in Pinky herself. However, unlike some of her tragic predecessors, Pinky doesn’t drown in a lake, fall off a building, or fall into prostitution because of a doomed romance. Instead, she gets to keep a large piece of property and embarks on a fulfilling career doing desperately needed work, even if the clinic gets Miss Em’s name on it. This is a big deal. It is also very different from Pinky’s fate in the film’s source material.

According to records held at the Library of Congress, and analysed in Thomas Cripp’s Making Movies Black, the NAACP was understandably nervous when they heard Zanuck wanted to adapt Cid Ricketts Sumner’s novel, Quality (1946), for the big screen. Serialised in the Ladies Home Journal, Quality was an offensively pro-segregationist novel with several racist stereotypes. Not least of which was Pinky who, in true tragic mulatto fashion, suffers Tom’s rejection immediately after he discovers her heritage. Things don’t get much better for Pinky from there; vengeful white locals burn down the property she inherits at the novel’s close. Perhaps this darker ending more accurately reflected the realities of race relations in the pre-Loving vs. Virginia South of 1949, but it wasn’t the story Fox wanted to tell about America (or release internationally) during the Cold War.

In their quest to fashion a more uplifting look at American race relations, Fox’s successive screenwriters tried to salvage the material, but often fell back on familiar tropes. Perhaps recognising the limited perspectives of his white male writing staff, or maybe just feeling increasingly under-pressure from those he consulted at the NAACP, Zanuck recruited a young actress, Jane White, to advise on the script. Jane was the daughter of Walter White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP. A Smith graduate, Jane found herself in a difficult position in her pursuit of theatre work: too light-skinned in appearance for the limited roles for Black women while racist hiring practices exempted her from consideration for white roles. Stuck in this limbo, she accepted the trip out West to consult on the Fox lot.

Working closely with Pinky’s second screenwriter, Phil Dunne, Jane revealed herself whip-smart, opinionated, forthright and funny. I have never had as good a time in an archive as I did at USC reading her notes chiding her male colleagues about their story’s failings. More is the pity that Fox failed to take up all of her suggestions; we might have had something really special if they did. However, Jane was able to make her colleagues see the limitations of the interracial relationship. She argued that Tom should not reject Pinky, as he did in Quality, but rather declare his loyalty to her. In the film, Tom admits that Pinky’s race poses “important problems” but decides they should “face them like rational people.” He explains that as a doctor and a scientist he does not believe “in the mythology of superior and inferior races.” While Pinky is unable, eventually, to accept his condition that they move out West to start their life together, he is very different from the brute of the book. In turn, Jane advocated for additional dialogue that would clarify for the audience how, at the end of the film, Pinky would be fine without this relationship developing. As Jane explained, Pinky’s life had a more important purpose than to be Tom’s wife and this needed to shine through. Ideally, Jane hoped that a young eligible Black man could wait in the wings to round off the love story. However, the limitations of mid-century interracial romance on screen came full circle: audiences and censors would not accept a white actress and a Black man embracing on screen, even if the actress played an African American character. The idea was scrapped. Although eight years later audiences got that embrace in another Zanuck production, Island in the Sun.

Pinky’s love story may seem mild now, but it is worth remembering its initial context; even the kiss between the two white actors who played Pinky and Tom was too controversial in some southern cities, prompting censorship and cuts. Pinky may offer a fairly cowardly white lover and a failed interracial relationship, but Jane White transformed a tragic mulatto story into a film where a heroine parts from her lover without tears to find emotional satisfaction in her professional accomplishments. This may be too chaste and self-sacrificing but it was a markedly better ending for a woman who passed and fell in love with a white man than those that came before and it laid some of the groundwork for depictions of interracial relationships that followed. In the midst of our current inclusion crisis in Hollywood, Jane White’s work serves as a reminder of what can happen when you get a seat at the table. She is why, whatever we might think about Pinky in the final analysis, it is worth remembering.

Hannah Graves is completing her Ph.D. in History at the University of Warwick. She is also the website editor and social media officer for the Women’s Film and Television History Network. You can find out more about her work here.

‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Is Doing Something Right: How One Workplace Sitcom Shows That Interracial Relationships Can Be the Norm

But because the people coming into any workplace in New York City are already diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, why would a cross-race relationship be bothersome? ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ doesn’t believe it should be. From the first episode, this show presents interracial relationships as an unquestioned norm, and this is what makes it stand out from all other shows of its kind on television.

This guest post by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

The worlds created for workplace television shows are perfect places for people from diverse backgrounds to come together and form a 9 to 5 family. The past decade has brought great workplace comedies to television, shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and recently Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Although The Office suffered from not enough diversity of its main characters, some new workplace comedies are racially diverse, especially Brooklyn Nine-Nine as four of the seven primary characters are people of color.

It’s because of this diversity that a workplace comedy has the ability to deal with interracial relationships as realistic and normal that race is not an issue for the characters. This approach is not a true reflection of society, and many would argue that race should be a talking point for two people embarking on an interracial relationship. But because the people coming into any workplace in New York City are already diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, why would a cross-race relationship be bothersome? Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t believe it should be. From the first episode, this show presents interracial relationships as an unquestioned norm, and this is what makes it stand out from all other shows of its kind on television.

A workplace television show has a leg up on other types of shows in terms of the variety of primary characters they can introduce; there is no familial/blood bond that must be adhered to, and a workplace cast, just like an actual workplace, will draw from multiple races, backgrounds, and ages. Other prime-time sitcoms, like Superstore on NBC, take advantage of this opportunity and star people of color, while others, such as the new Teachers on TV Land, fail miserably (Teachers, set in an elementary school in Los Angeles, stars six white women). A workplace television show can also exhibit greater realism in its characters’ personal interactions. Since there is usually such a diverse cast, opportunities exist to exploit conflicts and connections in a realistic way.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has set itself up for success on all fronts. First, co-creators Michael Schur and Daniel Goor cast their seven primary characters with two Black men, a Cuban American woman and an Argentinian American woman (two white men and a white woman round out the main cast). By starting with this type of diversity from day one, Schur and Goor ensured they would work some kind of interracial romantic relationships into the plot. Dating coworkers is frequently frowned upon (and most people will tell you it’s a bad idea), but the workplace is clearly where people meet, get to know each other, and sometimes hook up. And this makes great fodder for television. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t tend to portray its relationships — interracial or otherwise — as unhealthy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: almost all of the primary characters on the show have been in or are in some kind of healthy and/or monogamous, interracial relationship.

The paternal figurehead in Precinct 99 is Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher), who is openly gay, Black, and married to white college professor Kevin Cozner (played by Marc Evan Jackson). Captain Holt and Kevin have a long-term, monogamous, and, frankly, kind of boring marriage. It’s a wonderfully realistic relationship and keeps the tone of the show grounded in the writers’ opinion that there are other, perhaps more pressing problems in any given romantic relationship than race. The goofy man-child of Precinct 99, Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg), also has a history of dating outside of his race. In Season 2 he falls for Sophia Perez (Eva Longoria), an attorney who matches him in goofiness and his love for Die Hard. After Jake and Sophia split up, he and coworker Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) start a will-they-or-won’t-they dance that is a staple of workplace TV. Jake and Amy finally get together in the last episode of the second season (Amy broke up with her white boyfriend, Teddy Wells [Kyle Bornheimer] mid-season), and the two have spent the majority of the third season enjoying a committed romantic relationship. Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), for multiple episodes in Season 2, dates Captain Holt’s nephew Marcus (Nick Cannon). Rosa and Marcus’s relationship is especially interesting, since many interracial relationships on television — in comedies and dramas — involve a white man and a woman of color.

Portraying a variety and consistency of interracial relationships is not the only thing that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is doing right; it’s also using these relationships to allow the characters to grow and learn things about themselves. Even when the relationships don’t work out — Jake and Sophia; Rosa and Marcus — the characters mature as a result of the experience. The splitting of both couples is done with a gentle hand, if not with a bit of heartbreak for all involved. Rosa wants to immediately dump Marcus because she doesn’t know how to deal with his interest in her. When she comes to grips with the fact that it’s okay to show affection, she allows the relationship to move forward in a healthy way. Even when Rosa breaks up with Marcus, she tries to go about it as gently as possible (with help from her equally stoic captain) because she realizes that although she doesn’t want to date him, she doesn’t want to hurt him. Captain Holt and Kevin’s marriage grows stronger after Kevin (who was concerned about Holt’s new job leading the 99, given his struggle against homophobia at all levels of the police department) realizes that the other police officers at the 99 are not going to bully, torture, or otherwise discriminate against Holt because he is gay. They are instead going to rally around him because he’s an excellent police officer and leader.

The writers of Brooklyn Nine-Nine focus more on the characters’ needs and motivations than on the social constructs or prejudices that might make an interracial relationship unwelcome or politicized. By writing well-developed instead of flat characters or stereotypes, they let race play second to the characters themselves. For example, in Season 3, Jake brings Amy home to meet his mom, but the idea that they’re an interracial couple doesn’t concern anyone; and why would it? Jake just learned that his estranged father is back and now dating his mother; and people-pleaser Amy is concerned with making a good impression on Mrs. Peralta (Katey Sagal), and helping Jake work things out with his dad. While race is something people of color must think about when navigating the real world (due to racism, white supremacy, etc.), the episode again supports the idea that, as individuals (and as families), we frequently have more to worry about than the color of a significant other’s skin.

Is this approach perhaps more idealistic than it is realistic? Yes, it is. In fact, the show’s optimism stretches to all of the relationships in the show: the marriage of Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) and his wife Sharon (Merrin Dungey) gets tense when Sharon gets pregnant with their third child, but because of their foundational stability, they’re okay; Captain Holt is a true father figure and mentor to everyone serving under him; Amy and Rosa have nothing in common but have slowly become good friends through their workplace bonding; and Jake and Charles have one of the sweetest male friendships on TV (maybe ever). It doesn’t seem that a show full of characters that like each other so much would be so funny, but it is; and this is good news for anyone hoping that television’s approach to interracial relationships (and maybe all relationships) becomes so normal that we have nothing more to write about.

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects. Follow her on Twitter at @chicagocommuter.

“We’re Not So Different”: Tradition, Culture, and Falling in Love in ‘Bride & Prejudice’

Though clearly based on the novel, ‘Bride & Prejudice’ is a successful piece of transnational cinema, which uses the interracial relationship between the Bakshi’s second eldest daughter Lalita and white American Mark Darcy to discuss differences in race, tradition, and cultural imperialism.

This guest post by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

The late 90s, early 2000s saw a boom of Jane Austen inspired adaptations hitting our screens. Clueless, Emma, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the later 2005 Pride & Prejudice are just some of the well loved movies which are pretty much straight translations from the book itself. This phenomenon is still going on (audiences just love Jane Austen) with the recent release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which is another, rather different take on the classic novel. There’s one Austen inspired film, though, which stands out above all the others: Bride & Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha, 2004). Instead of keeping it traditional with the era, nationality of the characters or even the country in which the original novel is based — Bride & Prejudice transports the story to India and introduces us to the Bakshi sisters. Though clearly based on the novel, Bride & Prejudice is a successful piece of transnational cinema, which uses the interracial relationship between the Bakshi’s second eldest daughter Lalita and white American Mark Darcy to discuss differences in race, tradition, and cultural imperialism. Of course it features a lot of singing and dancing, as any film dedicated to exploring social commentary should.

Writer and director Gurinder Chadha is renowned in her filmmaking for focusing on Indian women reconciling their culture and traditions with modern day living, usually prompted by the female protagonist living in the UK. Bride & Prejudice is no exception to this, apart from the location. The film primarily takes place in the Bakshi’s hometown of Amritsar but the family travels to Los Angeles, London, Windsor and Goa throughout the film — making the film a truly eclectic mix of both Bollywood and British Cinema. Chadha builds on the existing identity crisis within the original Pride & Prejudice and adds into the mix the clashing of cultures, expectations and a transatlantic love story. The story closely follows the novel; Elizabeth is replaced with Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), younger sister to Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar) and older sister to Maya and Lakhi. Lalita and Jaya meet Balraj (the Mr Bingley character, played by Naveen Andrews) and Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) at a spectacular wedding. Jaya and Balraj fall for each other in the first instance whereas (true to the novel) Lalita and Will spend the rest of the film misunderstanding each other, fighting and eventually declaring their love for one another.

Whilst we already know from their first meeting that Lalita and Will are going to end up together, a fascinating dynamic between them speaks volumes about the imperialist relationship between India and Europe/USA. It is through their relationship as people from two wholly different cultures that the film is able to explore just how perversely the West treats Indians and Indian culture. Whilst Jaya and Lalita are accompanying Balraj and Will on a trip to Goa, Will tells Lalita that his family plans on building a hotel in the area. He expects her to be pleased, assuming that she will be happy that his business will bring jobs to the area. Lalita, instead, is furious and talks at length about how the tourism industry is destroying the more rural parts of India. Lalita explains to Will that she can only see how the big hotel companies are draining the culture out of India, and that they want the experience of India without the Indian people. “Five star comfort with a bit of culture thrown in? Well, I don’t want you to turn India into a theme park.” We trust Lalita as our protagonist and we understand her views — the comparison between her home town of Amritsar and the beautiful tourist resort of Goa is proof enough that what she is saying is true. There is a clear divide in opinion about what Will Darcy believes is good for India, and what Lalita (the person who actually lives there) believes. It’s by no accident that Will Darcy is a white man trying to tell Lalita that he actually knows better than she does. Lalita herself mentions the history of British Imperialism within India, and accuses Will of doing the same with his family’s hotel business. Bride & Prejudice, although predominantly a feel-good film, doesn’t hold back with it’s thoughts on how Europe and America have systematically exploited the Indian people and land, and indeed continue to do so.

Throughout the film, the Bakshi parents’ main motivation is to marry off each of their daughters to a suitable husband. As Bride & Prejudice is an amalgamation of both British and Bollywood cinema, Will can almost be seen as a surrogate for Western audiences watching the film. Specifically, his view on arranged marriages. The arranged marriage is a slightly foreign concept for many viewers in Europe/USA in comparison to those watching the film in India, who would (generally) be more knowledgeable and understanding of the situation. Will speaks out about the concept, in a similar vein to how most Americans would feel — remarking how the idea of an arranged marriage is ‘backwards.’ The irony here of course is that in the original novel, the marriages are pretty much arranged for both Elizabeth and Jane. At least, their mother (in both Bride and Pride) is set on finding suitors for both girls, and each girl would only be allowed to get married with the permission of their father. The irony runs even deeper, when Lalita discovers that Will’s own mother is arranging him a marriage back in Los Angeles. Whilst Lalita accepts the differences and similarities within the two cultures, Will is unable to see past his ignorance and superiority to understand that the two of them are not so different or that the idea of an arranged marriage is not ‘backwards.’

Bride & Prejudice uses stylistic elements from both traditional Bollywood cinema with English dialogue and Western references as a metaphor for the interracial relationship between the two main characters. The visuals marry both types of cinema: we are treated to large scale dance numbers that are performed in English, or accompanied by a gospel choir on a beach in LA. If the technical elements of the individual national cinemas can come together, then so can Lalita and Will. The discourse within the film is almost postcolonial via the character of Lalita herself — she encompasses the traditional nationalism by performing traditional Bollywood choreographed sequences with her sisters and undergoing the conventional ‘love story’ narrative. Yet her views and opinions about the world she lives in are incredibly modern (particularly the song ‘No Life Without Wife’) which puts her at a unique crossroad.

Of course, these themes are surrounded by extravagant dance numbers, catchy songs and comedic dialogue. Despite its family-friendly, light-hearted approach, Chadha doesn’t hide the ideas about cultural imperialism. Bride & Prejudice proves that a film can be playful and funny but also make serious comments on race, tradition and culture. Its message is slightly diminished by the reconciliation of Lalita and Will at the end of the film — mostly because it takes very little time for Lalita to suddenly decide that Will is actually a nice guy. Most of Will’s niceness stems from the fact that the character of Johnny Wickham is worse than Will, putting him into a much better light in the Bakshi’s eyes. He does redeem himself and one of Bride & Prejudice’s accomplishments is that Lalita does not have to compromise her views and meet him halfway, like so many other flawed couples have to do. It is Will who changes his opinions completely and refuses to allow his family to build a hotel, much to Lalita’s happiness. It is coy, and the film ends with the double wedding of the two eldest sisters (as in the novel) but coyness doesn’t mean that it doesn’t speak volumes about the cross-cultural barrier that Lalita and (mostly) Will had to navigate around.

Recommended Reading:

Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice: A Transnational Journey through Space & Time by Elena Oliete Aldea

Becky Kukla lives in London, works in film production, likes G&T’s, and watching every Netflix original series ever. She blogs about on-screen representation at her blog Femphile and writes for Film Inquiry.