Interracial Relationship

‘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.

Endearing Interracial Romance in ‘Flirting’

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.

This guest post by Grace Barber-Plentie appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships. Spoilers ahead.

It’s easy to assume as soon as a film starts with a pining white boy’s voiceover, that we’re in for the same tired story that we’ve seen a million times. A sad, pasty white boy is lonely and sexually deprived and meets a cool, edgy white girl that’s way too good to be true, but against the odds, falls for him. So far, so “adaptation of beloved John Green novel.” When John Duigan’s Flirting starts, it seems all too inevitable that this is the direction that the film is taking. And yet, to at least this viewer’s surprise, the film is actually a sweet and nuanced “coming of age” romance more in the awkward vein of Gregory’s Girl than any whiny love story we’ve been fed over the last decade. All that, and it features an interracial love story.

The film focuses on two same-sex boarding schools on either side of a lake in rural Australia. In one, is the film’s protagonist, Danny, star of Flirting’s prequel, The Year My Voice Broke. And in the other is new arrival Thandiwe, the daughter of a Ugandan academic who lectures in Australia. With Thandiwe’s arrival onscreen, the film becomes less the monologue of a whiny white boy, and more an interracial love story like few others that I’ve ever seen.

Let’s face it, in most stories of interracial love, similarly to those of gay relationships, something’s always gotta give. So much screen time in these films is given over to the suffering that comes with being in love with someone of the opposite race or gender (and god forbid your story is same-sex AND opposite race, you’re really doomed then), and a seeming inevitability that things are never going to last because of this. 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. Thandiwe’s race is, naturally (as the film is set in the 1960s) brought up time and time again by the couple’s peers, throwing various unimaginative insults at her. But the real challenges for the couple seem to be with their separate boarding schools, and the film sees them getting into various scrapes trying desperately to communicate with one another in an unimaginable time pre-mobiles and Facebook.

Even Danny, delivering a wistful voiceover, doesn’t fetishize Thandiwe’s blackness. Yes, he does fetishize her female form: “Sometimes I wouldn’t listen to what she was saying… Instead I’d be looking at her legs. They were very comforting,” he delivers in one such voiceover — but this seems inevitable from a horny teenage boy. In fact it’s Thandiwe’s knowledge that seems to really ignite Danny’s fire — the pair first really connect at an inter-school debate on whether academic pursuits can be held higher than others, in which Danny gives a droll speech on the pros of Rugby, and Thandiwe scandalizes her school by reciting lyrics to “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” and “Tutti Frutti” with a knowing smirk.

Thandiwe is a true joy to watch. She seems, for the most part, to have the upper hand in the relationship, and Thandie Newton’s performance refuses to let her become merely an object of desire. On discovering a Jean-Paul Sarte book in Danny’s room, she casually informs him that she’s conversed with the man himself, on the flaws of marriage of all subjects. She’s clearly an intellectual match for Danny, and never allows herself to be passive — when she wants something, she goes for it. It’s Thandiwe who initiates the relationship with Danny by asking him to the dance, and when it seems that he’s stood her up, she hunts him down. When it appears that Danny embarrassed her by reading out a letter she sent him to his classmates, it’s Thandiwe who cuts off contact and Danny that must woo her back. While nowadays perhaps, with characters such as Samantha White in Dear White People, and even “bougie” independent Black female leads in rom-coms like Love Jones and Brown Sugar, Thandiwe wouldn’t stand out, but in a small Australian film, she makes a hell of an impact. Thandiwe is as well-rounded a character as a girl in a coming of age drama can be — she has interests and passions outside of her male love interest.

As well as the unique character of Thandiwe, the innocence of Danny and Thandiwe’s relationship really makes it stand out from other films depicting interracial love. It’s very easy for these relationships to be fetishized not just by the characters in a film, but also by its directors. As surely any filmgoer will by now be aware of, the Black female body is a commodity that is sexualized again and again — one only has to think of the fact that the sex scene in Monster’s Ball, another film about an interracial relationship, starring the only Black woman to have ever been awarded the Academy award for Best Actress, Halle Berry. It’s become almost inevitable that any sex scene starring a Black woman will lewdly gawp at her simultaneously “perfect” and “taboo” female body, reducing her essentially to “tits and ass.” Flirting luckily takes a very different approach. In a deeply endearing scene in the middle of the film, Thandiwe and Danny sit on a wall talking, while Danny monologues via voiceover. When the film’s diegetic sound returns, the couple’s friends join them. “What have you two been up to?” their friends question them, shooting them inquisitive looks. “Oh, just flirting,” replies Thandiwe with a knowing smile.

When the pair do inevitably have sex, it’s very much the yin to Monster’s Ball’s yang. Thandiwe is forced to return to Uganda and before she is forced to part with Danny, they rent a motel room and have sex for the first time. While the motel room setting may immediately ring alarm bells in a viewer’s head and seemingly cue some kind of lewdly graphic sex scene — the last time I saw a motel feature in a film was one of the numerous explicit scenes in the brilliant Tangerine — it’s actually quite the opposite. The couple kiss in bed in their underwear, as the camera slowly pans away until the scene disappears entirely. The next time we see them, their shared state of post-coital bliss is interrupted by the headteachers of Danny’s school who have caught them. Tender and cutesy love scenes in “coming of age” films may be ten-a-penny, but it’s important to remember that these scenes are nearly always focused on white teenagers. To have one of these scenes featuring an interracial couple may not seem so much of a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but to play it contextually within the film industry, it is.

Much like couples in same-sex romance films, interracial couples rarely meet a happy end. And even if they do, it’s clear that their relationship may still be fraught with difficulties — take for example the couple in Amma Asante’s Belle. The film ends with the couple in a happy embrace, both finally acknowledging their feelings for each other; a lovely and sentimental ending, yes, and one that is perfectly fitting for a petticoat drama, but one only has to remember the time setting of the film, and the couple’s interracial romance, and their path to happiness becomes perhaps a little more fraught. Like the ending of Todd Hayne’s Carol, Flirting chooses a somewhat ambivalent ending that hints but does not solidify happiness. Danny waits for a message from Thandiwe in Africa, and just as he is at the point of almost giving up, she writes and tells him that she is hoping to see him again and tell him everything that’s happened to her. We never see the couple reunite, and in fact there’s no definite answer that they ever will. But, just as Carol’s half sad, half smile across a restaurant to Therese says more about the future of their relationship than words ever could, Thandiwe’s letter suggests rare hope.

Grace Barber-Plentie is a film student, writer, and one third of Reel Good Film Club, a film club dedicated to showing films by and about people of colour in inclusive and non-profit environment. Her passions in writing and programming are depictions of women of colour, issues of “high” and “low” culture, and the merits of Channing Tatum.