On Television – Page 7

Lena Dunham and the Creator’s “Less-Than-Perfect” Body On-Screen

Every time someone calls to question the fact that Lena Dunham parades her rolls of fat in front of her audience, we need to examine why they’re questioning it. Is it because they’re wondering how it serves the narrative of ‘Girls’? Or is it because they’re balking at “less-than-perfection” (according to normative societal conventions) in the female form?

This guest post written by Sarah Halle Corey appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

A lot has been said about Lena Dunham’s body. So much has been said, in fact, that upon a simple Google search of “lena dunham body,” I was overwhelmed with viable links to embed in this post. There are articles praising her positive body image and sharing of TMI, and other articles disparaging her for showing so much flabby skin, and even more articles questioning if we should even be talking about her body at all.

Dunham created and stars in the series Girls, a show on which she often presents her own naked body. She’s appeared naked on-screen countless times throughout the series’ five season run, and often in hyper-realistic situations: awkward sex, rolling out of bed in the morning, etc. And every time, Dunham’s “less-than-perfect” (according to normative societal conventions) body is showcased. It’s not uncommon for nudity to be a hot topic among media pundits and amateur critics alike. How much is too much? How much is too little? How does it serve the story? So when a supposed “less-than-perfect” naked body like Dunham’s is presented, it’s outside the norm and people rush to comment all the more because of that.

It makes sense that people love to discuss the bodies of actors: their bodies are displayed in front of us, something to observe and interpret just like the the sets and camera angles that are also presented on screen. Each frame of a movie or TV show is filled with choices that the director made, choices that the director wants the audience to see and connect to some meaning or vision. But what happens when the director makes herself – her body, specifically – one of those on-screen choices?

Every time someone calls to question the fact that Dunham parades her rolls of fat in front of her audience, we need to examine why they’re questioning it. Is it because they’re wondering how it serves the narrative of Girls? Or is it because they’re balking at “less-than-perfection” in the female form? These two issues often get conflated.

And then, when Dunham goes to defend her choice, she often needs to approach it from both perspectives. Dunham is both the creator and the creation itself, the sculptor and the slab of marble. So, not only must she defend the creative choice as a director, but also the existence of her own “less-than-perfect” body as a woman. Her defense is both an artistic one and a personal one.

In a way, Dunham’s predicament is representative of a lot of defenses that women creators find themselves being forced to make. Often times, female creators are seen as women first, creators second. The fact that Dunham puts her body, and thus a part of her womanhood, at the forefront of her art, just makes the defense all the more blatant for her. Women directors often need to take a stand to justify their art, and for Dunham that includes her body too.

By combining the director and her work into one, Dunham simply crystallizes the power of the creator in connection to her creation. Art is personal, and no one exemplifies that more than Lena Dunham.

Sarah Halle Corey is a writer, filmmaker, and digital content creator who produces work about pop culture, feminism, feelings, and everything in between. You can find her work at sarahhallecorey.com. Sarah is usually drinking way too much coffee and/or tweeting @SarahHalleCorey.

How Women Directors Turn Narrative on Its Head

Marielle Heller (‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’), Miranda July (‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’), and the women directors of ‘Jane the Virgin’ are infusing elements of whimsy into their work in strikingly different ways, but to similar effect. The styles they’re using affect the audience’s relationship with their stories and with the characters themselves by giving the viewer an insight that traditional narratives don’t provide.

This guest post written by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

Marielle Heller, Miranda July, and the women directors of Jane the Virgin are infusing elements of whimsy into their work in strikingly different ways, but to similar effect. The styles they’re using affect the audience’s relationship with their stories and with the characters themselves by giving the viewer an insight that traditional narratives don’t provide.

Marielle Heller’s film, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s hybrid graphic novel of the same name) depicts a coming-of-age narrative — a narrative that film audiences have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of times — in such a way that turns the genre into something fresh and spectacular. Our teenage hero is budding comic artist Minnie Goetze (English actor Bel Powley), who lives in San Francisco with her sister Gretel and her single, swinging mother (played by Kristen Wiig). Heller opens the film with a low angle shot of Minnie’s behind as she walks through a park and her voice-over narration reveals: “I had sex today: Holy Shit.”

Minnie’s narration certainly gives us a glimpse into her mind, her feelings, and her emotions. Heller uses this trope to good effect and doesn’t overdo it. But it’s not the voice-over that shows us our true Minnie. It is Heller’s use of animation that allows the audience insight into Minnie’s mind, because we see things come alive in the instant she feels them. Heller uses Sara Gunnarsdóttir’s original artwork and animation to let us “see” Minnie’s thoughts and feelings. Gunnarsdóttir’s work is certainly inspired by Gloeckner’s early original drawings, and some of those drawings appear in the film itself (Gloeckner was a consultant on the art and animation).

The art itself is excellent, but the way Heller uses it is the real magic. Minnie is a girl whose imagination makes the static things around her come alive — the drawings on her wall and in her diary, the stars painted on her bedroom walls and ceiling, the cover of Aline Kominsky’s comic. It’s an effective and creative narrative tool to develop Minnie’s character. But Minnie doesn’t just animate things she already sees; she also creates objects out of her feelings. Hearts appear in the bathtub as she thinks about Monroe (her mother’s boyfriend with whom she has an affair) and, later, flowers bloom out of the receiver as she talks to him on the phone; feathers cover her hands and body and give her wings as she feels empowered on an acid trip; fireworks light up the sky when Minnie and Tabatha kiss for the first time. These are beautiful, sweet, and romantic additions that emphasize what we already sense Minnie is feeling.

But Heller is smart to not let the animation just be sweet; she also uses it to bring us down to understand Minnie’s lowest points. When Minnie feels rejected after Ricky calls her “intense,” we see her self-portrait animated as a giant holding the tiny boy between her thick fingers and then tossing him down to the ground; when Minnie hears Tabatha and Mike talking, she imagines them as black and white grotesque heads and bodies pressing in on her claustrophobically as she realizes she is not just in the apartment to eat a grilled cheese sandwich. The animations make Minnie round, full, and a character whose emotions we, the audience, can truly know, and a girl whose story we can truly feel.

The women directors of television’s Jane the Virgin also use expected and unexpected devices to infuse whimsy. Max Thornton, writing about the series soon after it premiered in 2014, said that it has a “jocular self-awareness,” and this is absolutely true. But that silliness and breaking of the fourth wall is not only done to make us laugh, but also to tell a story in a way unlike any other.

The show uses an omniscient narrator (voiced by Anthony Mendez) and text that appears across the frame as though it is being typed immediately (complete with clicking keyboard sounds) to give backstory, explain character motivations, and stand in for what we, the audience, might be thinking. It allows us to know so much more than the characters know at any given time, but also to know just what Jane (Gina Rodriguez) is thinking and feeling. We are intimately connected to Jane, her feelings, and her story.

To date, there are thirty-eight episodes, or “chapters” of Jane the Virgin, each one using a combination of stylistic devices that include the aforementioned voice-over and text as well as dream sequences, imagination sequences, and animation. Although not every episode is directed by a woman, almost 60% are, and all episodes include a writing credit for show creator Jennie Snyder Urman. The second episode, directed by Uta Briesewitz, and the thirty-seventh episode, directed by Melanie Mayron, provide a good framework to look at how the show uses unconventional narrative devices to tell a great story with a specific and consistent style.

Whereas the pilot, directed by Brad Silberling, sets up the excellent premise, world, and characters of Jane the Virgin, it’s not until the second episode, “Chapter Two,” directed by Uta Briesewitz, that the women of the show (including Briesewitz herself) really start to fly their true colors. This episode brings up issues of family, class, marriage, and sacrifice — both the male expectation of a woman’s sacrifice as well as the reality of a woman’s sacrifice. These themes are introduced and navigated using flashback, imagined scenes, and animation, as well as, of course, tropes from and conscious references to the telenovela genre.

Michael, Jane’s fiancé, is so focused on the fact that Jane once kissed Rafael, that he mishears Rafael as saying, “I used to make out with Jane a lot.” Playing with reality and fantasy this way, Briesewitz gets us into Michael’s head and reveals his insecurities in a way dialogue doesn’t always do. As Petra, Rafael’s wife, explains the moment she realizes he stopped loving her, a single, magical, animated teardrop falls from her face and onto the ground. We feel for her character and our sympathy is reinforced as the narrator reveals that (after two episodes of lying) she is finally being truthful. All of these whimsical pieces make up an episode that illustrates the true strength and sacrifice of the show’s women: Jane changing her entire life to make her best decision about the pregnancy and telling Michael, “I get to be selfish now, not you”; Xiomara (Xo), Jane’s mother, sacrificing herself during Jane’s quinceañera by doing some embarrassing song-and-dance karaoke in order to save Jane from seeing her date make out with another girl; Xo standing up to Rogelio when he pushes her in an effort to meet Jane for the first time.

A more recent episode, “Chapter Thirty-Seven” directed by Melanie Mayron (who also plays the part of Jane’s new graduate school advisor), employs Jane the Virgin’s tried and true stylistic techniques to cover sub-plots dealing with post-traumatic stress, new motherhood and infant bonding, a woman’s need to be validated by other people, and romance between sexagenarians. Our ever-present omniscient narrator gives us the low-down on what’s going on in our characters’ heads, as well as, possibly, in our own heads as we watch. But there is added whimsy through animation: hearts float from Rogelio’s chest when he hears that Jane and Michael are back together and engaged to be married (nearly identical animation to what Heller used in The Diary of a Teenage Girl); Mayron uses flashbacks to show simultaneous narratives as Michael rescues Rogelio from his stalker-kidnpapper (remember: telenovela!), and then uses animated arrows to point to elements in the frame that Michael sees; green check marks appear whenever a scene has passed the Bechdel Test, and red X’s appear whenever a scene has failed; and finally, in one of the most (or least?) subtle, Mayron the grad school advisor character is telling Jane that she needs a “frame” for her work, and Mayron the director cuts to a scene with a literal frame of a shot on Rogelio’s telenovela. This woman knows how to have fun. (And can we give this episode extra credit for mentioning the Bechdel Test in the first place [as well as for mentioning book clubs and Family Matters]?).

It feels appropriate to leave Miranda July for last, since she seems to exist in her own wonderful world. Her films are both stylistically consistent and unique, and she uses whimsy in her writing and her directing in a way that helps her, her characters, and her audience deal with big, dark ideas.

Some might dismiss July as twee, but they would be making a huge mistake. July’s work is, perhaps, cute sometimes, at least on the surface. In her debut feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, July plays performance artist Christine Jesperson, who puts white ankle socks on her ears to get the attention of a shoe salesman named Richard (played by John Hawkes), and July has Richard’s six year-old son Robby catfishing a woman over instant messenger by telling her that he wants to “poop back and forth” with her, forever.

And those things are adorable, but July’s subject matter sure as hell is not. Me And You And Everyone We Know deals with connections and disconnections, with heartbreak and humiliation, with sex, with death. In the first five minutes of the film, Richard sets his own hand on fire in front of his two young sons. Soon later, a middle-aged man woos two teenage girls by posting hand-written signs in his living room window explaining the sexual things he’d like them to do to him, and to each other. And just as soon as Richard and Christine seem to have made an honest connection — a connection that is all Christine wants — Richard immediately turns on her, telling her that she doesn’t know anything about him: “I could be a killer of children,” he says, destroying their connection in a matter of seconds. July uses the sweetness, the innocence to offset the darkness of the film as well as make it an even more striking comment on humanity.

July’s second film, The Future, is even more stylistically interesting and uses techniques similar to Heller’s and the Jane the Virgin directors’ to tell a story about infidelity, depression, and death. And, strangely, it’s even cuter than Me And You And Everyone We Know. It’s narrated by a cat named Paw-Paw (voiced by July). Yes, you read that right: it’s narrated by a cat.

The cat is the marble that starts the entire Rube Goldberg machine that is The Future. Sophie (Miranda July) and her boyfriend Jason (Hamish Linklater) decide to adopt the cat, but he is injured and cannot come home with them for a month. This gives the couple the push to use that month as though it’s their last month living life as they know it: they quit their jobs, Sophie disconnects the Internet to focus on making dance videos, and she begins a secret affair with a man she calls on the phone spontaneously in an effort to pull herself out of a kind of depression.

And Paw-Paw the cat does a voice-over narration as he watches the clock, waiting for Sophie and Jason to pick him up. July turns that particular storytelling device on its head, but she doesn’t stop there. She also creates a personified crawling T-shirt (Sophie’s security “blanket”) that inches closer and closer to her until she must finally put it on (leading to an interpretive dance in the middle of her lover’s master bedroom). July also includes a scene where Sophie must deal with her disconnection from her friends and her former life, and she does this by showing the friends pregnant, then with infants, then toddlers, then teens, and so on until the children stand before Sophie, grown adults with their own children. It is of course, all in Sophie’s head, but the startling absurdity of the scene jars the viewer into understanding how helpless she feels in this moment.

Just as with Me And You And Everyone We Know, The Future tells a story that has been told before: people splitting up and being unhappy and then happy, and unhappy, and then finally — hopefully — happy again. But July uses an unconventional whimsy to show us life’s sweetness, its hopefulness, and, sometimes, its tragedy.

This is what women — at least the women at the helms of these films and shows — are doing so well. They are playing with story, with expectations, and with the genre of narrative film itself. And the playing is not always for fun, and it is not even always successful. But it is always appreciated.

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 and follow her on Twitter @chicagocommuter.

Fangirls, It’s Time to #AskForMore

In the battle to address the staggering gender gap in women directing for film and television, there is one huge untapped resource — the passion and organizing power of fangirls.

This guest post written by Alyssa Franke appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

In the battle to address the staggering gender gap in women directing for film and television, there is one huge untapped resource — the passion and organizing power of fangirls.

We all know the depressing statistics, we’ve seen the ACLU letter requesting an investigation into the gender biases in Hollywood’s hiring practices, and we’ve read the horrifying first-hand accounts of sexism and harassment. A long-term solution to the gender gap will probably require a combination of legal action and industry initiatives.

But fan activism can also play an important — even crucial — role. Fans can, of course, raise awareness of the problem within their communities. But even more importantly, fans have the ability to transform complex, industry-wide issues where responsibility can be hard to pin down into personalized campaigns where individuals who contribute to the problem can be held accountable.

You can see similar organizing happening already in fan communities, though these have largely focused on on-screen representation rather than behind-the-scenes representation. When studios have hired white actors to portray characters of color, Racebending has organized fan communities to protest the deliberate exclusion of actors of color and the whitewashing of beloved characters. Fans of Supernatural have confronted the writers of the show at conventions to hold them accountable for fridging nearly every female character on the show. And after a beloved lesbian character was killed on The 100 in yet another example of the “Bury Your Guys” trope, fans organized behind the hashtag #LGBTFansDeserveBetter to support LGBT fans, raise money for charity, and hold the creators accountable. The backlash grew so strong that showrunner Jason Rothenberg eventually apologized for the way the character was killed.

Whitewashing characters of color, fridging women, and sensationally killing off LGBT characters are problems which span the entire movie and television industry. But when fans had a specific instance of each of these problems to latch on to, they could begin to organize movements for change. In each case, fans raised the profile of the broader issue and were able to hold specific individuals accountable for contributing to those problems.

The same principles can apply when it comes to organizing fans to tackle the gap in women directors. When so many people have a hand in hiring directors, it is easy for everyone to shift blame onto someone else. Agents, networks, studios, producers, showrunners, and even actors are able to point fingers at each other and say that someone else is more responsible for the lack of women directors than they are. But as fans begin to notice the gender gap in their own fandoms, they can begin to hold specific individuals, studios, and networks accountable.

But first, fans need to be aware of how the gender gap impacts their own fandoms. After the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) began investigating the systemic discrimination against women directors in Hollywood, I started looking into how many women were directing my favorite TV shows. In October, I posted a series of graphics on Tumblr highlighting some of the most surprising results I had found.

The numbers were seriously depressing. Supernatural, with over two hundred episodes and one of the largest online fanbases, had only hired two women to direct an episode each (they’ve since hired one additional woman to direct one episode). Newer shows like Daredevil and Agent Carter had no women directors (and each show has only hired one woman director since my original piece was published). There were a few shows that had a smattering of women directors here and there, but there were often whole seasons without a single woman directing an episode.

Over twelve thousand notes later, fans are still sharing that post and adding on the number of women who have directed their favorite TV shows. American Horror Story, 0 women directors after sixty-three episodes. Hannibal, 0 women directors after thirty-nine episodes. Orphan Black, one woman directing only two of thirty episodes.

Even shows that are doing better than average are still depressingly below parity. Supergirl has had three women direct three of eighteen aired episodes. Jessica Jones had three women direct four of thirteen episodes. And Elementary has had five women direct fifteen of their ninety aired episodes.

Once fans are aware of the gender gap in directors for their favorite TV shows and movie franchises, they can begin organizing. And they are in a particularly unique position to challenge studios, networks, and creators. As television shows and media franchises have recognized the importance of interacting with fandoms for marketing and engagement purposes, they have also created spaces for fans to challenge and question them. And fans have proven to be particularly adept at getting attention for their issues thanks to that access.

Even though it resulted in no tangible changes, or even an acknowledgement from the creators that their narrative choices might have been damaging, Supernatural fans were able to draw awareness to the show’s terrible treatment of its female characters and publicly challenge the writer to justify his choices. And in The 100 fandom, access to the show’s writers on Tumblr and Twitter seems to have sparked genuine conversation between fans and the creators about the industry’s treatment of LGBT characters. This is particularly true of Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who wrote the episode that sparked the controversy and who has since been talking extensively with fans on his Tumblr to explain the process behind creating the episode and to reflect on their concerns.

Fan activism for more women directors could rely on similar tactics. At conventions, fans would be able to raise the profile of the issue in front of actors, writers, and showrunners — and by extension the studios or networks behind the show or movie franchise. And on social media platforms, fans would be able to use their access to creators and official social media accounts to apply pressure to address the gender gap in directors, spark conversation about the issue, and hopefully gain pledges to address the issue.

When I have discussed this issue within my own fandoms, I often receive feedback from other fans that specific shows or movies should not be held accountable for an industry-wide issue. While I agree that one show shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for the broader problem, I do think this argument misses the point that individual franchises should be held accountable for their contribution to the problem. Each franchise — and its related fandoms — should feel invested in attempting to correct the problem where they can. Incremental change is necessary to jumpstart broader changes.

And I am very aware that fan organizing alone cannot solve the gender gap for women directors. However, combined with the threat of legal action and pressure from within the industry, I think it can play a crucial role by keeping attention on the issue and maintaining pressure on key players in the industry. My hope is that our engagement would compliment efforts from within the industry, and that our efforts would be proof that consumers are aware of the gender gap and invested in seeing it addressed.

4am. Fight scene done. #GirlPower #Supergirl pic.twitter.com/3z9TVQepcx

— Lexi Alexander (@Lexialex) December 19, 2015

I write this piece with the explicit aim that it act as both a guide for organizers and a clarion call for fans.

If you are a woman director, or someone within the industry looking to organize around this issue, I encourage you to engage with fan communities. They are passionate, invested in their favorite franchises, and generally committed to improving representation on and off screen. We want to help, and we can be valuable allies.

If you are a fan, then consider this your call to begin advocating for better representation behind the scenes. We talk a lot about how we want our favorite franchises to do better when representing women and their stories, and one of the best ways to do this is to ensure that a diverse group of people are involved with the crafting of those stories.

Look up how many women have been hired to direct your favorite movies and TV shows. Raise awareness in your fandom. Organize around #AskForMore, or make a specific hashtag for your fandom. And at conventions and on Tumblr and Twitter, ask for more women directors. Be respectful, and remember that the person you are talking with may want to help and is possibly being stymied by someone else involved with hiring directors (it is an incredibly convoluted process, with multiple people involved). Instead of making accusations, ask what they are doing or will do to ensure that more women are hired to direct.

As a fangirl, I am deeply invested in not just the stories that my favorite movies and TV shows are telling, but also the environment in which those stories are created. I want the franchises I love to do better by the women working in the industry, and I’m willing to hold them accountable to make it happen.

Alyssa Franke is the author of Whovian Feminism, where she analyzes Doctor Who from a feminist perspective. You can find her on Tumblr and Twitter @WhovianFeminism.

Seed & Spark: To Web Series Or…

This is a guest post written by Molly Anne Coogan. Her webseries Things I Hate is currently crowdfunding via Seed & Spark.

I often get asked why I wanted to make a web series. Why not make a short film or put all those pages of a season together and make a feature? For starters, the show didn’t come into my head as a feature or as a short film. When I started writing, they came out as episodes and what I saw in my head was a show instead of a movie or a short; I wasn’t interested in squishing something into a box and I wanted to make what was in my brain.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wrote this show when I was overcoming some big health issues and I was ready to get my hands dirty and make something — I wanted some immediate gratification. There’s no middleman with a web series, no distribution deal to negotiate, no hurdle to getting it out into the world. You create an account, design a page, and upload. Clearly the process is not as simple as that, but you’re catching what I’m throwing, yeah?

There’s a certain kind of freedom in the web series form; there are fewer constraints and not as many rules as there appear to be in television or film. I was incredibly inspired by so many shows I saw all over the web that bucked the norm in terms of how they told stories and who they portrayed on camera. I loved how F to the 7th challenged conceptions about sexuality and what it means to be a woman; how Broad City basically owned the shit out of everything and unabashedly showed women doing what they wanted without apologizing while having a blast doing it; and how High Maintenance allowed each episode to be its own contained world and didn’t feel the need for a continuous plotline. All these shows have incredibly unique voices, vibes, and tones and each is stellar in their own way. Their uniqueness got my creative juices flowing.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42W_UWQPXok”]

The other benefit to a web series is the simple power of the Internet. You’re able to grow your audience, quickly connect, and find your people, whereas it’s much harder to do with other forms that have bigger machines involved. I had experience with the rapid-fire reach of the Internet when my sketch video “Nickelblock” from my comedy duo Moll & Rell went viral. We woke up one morning to the video having hundreds of thousands of views and being all over the front pages of The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Bustle, E!, and more. It was being talked about on the radio; I had friends from abroad telling me they saw it on publications overseas. It was wild and zany and so much fun, but also a totally different thing from a web series. It was a short, comedic tidbit as opposed to a show that you really have to sit and watch. “Nickelblock” was like a handful of candy whereas Things I Hate is more like a rich chocolate torte that you’ve got to take your time enjoying. Now I just want dessert…

I do feel is important to point out is that the line of what is “TV” and what is a “web series” is blurring with each passing day. I don’t own a television, but I “watch TV” because I own a computer. You can stream everything. In essence you could say that all television shows are web series because they’re streamed online. Perhaps they’re not made for the web at the start, but that’s where they’re ending up.

We have only two weeks left in our Things I Hate Seed & Spark campaign. If you’re a fan of ambitious, hilarious web series made by filmmakers easily distracted by sweets, join our team, and spread the word.

Molly Anne Coogan is a maker of all things. As an actor she’s worked with Ars Nova, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The O’Neill Theatre Center, The Civilians, TheatreWorks California, CBS, TBS, and more. She is one half of the comedy duo Moll & Rell known for their viral video “Nickelblock,” which Molly directed and co-wrote with her comedy partner Arielle Siegel. As a writer her work has been produced or developed by The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ars Nova, SPACE on Ryder Farm and The 52nd Street Project. Her web series, Things I Hate, which she created, wrote, produced, and stars in premiered February 2016 on The A.V. Cluband features actors from The Knick, Girls, and Orange Is the New Black. She loves photo booths and the word “burgled.” She refuses to pass a lemonade stand without buying a glass. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Jonathan Anderson.

A Joyful ‘Mavis!’ Plus Q & A with Director Jessica Edwards

Director Jessica Edwards includes plenty of the Staples’ less familiar music (which still sounds fresh and striking: I predict most people who see this documentary will quickly add a Staples Singer channel to their Spotify and Pandora selections) as well as photos and TV clips from their appearances stretching back to the 1950s. Although Pops had a smooth, clear voice, Mavis usually had the lead vocal even at the beginning. Like Amy Winehouse her style and virtuosity were already an adult’s when she was still a young teen.

Written by Ren Jender.

At one point during Mavis!, the new documentary about legendary soul singer Mavis Staples that is airing on HBO this month, we see an old clip of Staples’ father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples who founded The Staples Singers, the family group that brought fame to all of them. A host of a TV music show asks the tired question: how does he feel about performing secular music after years of performing at churches as a gospel group? With no malice or a second’s hesitation Pops answers that he thinks of the “freedom songs” they sing as exactly the same as gospel: simply “the truth.”

Watching Mavis Staples in the film, still touring at 75, after more than 60 years on the road (she remarks about one of their early records that no one could believe a petite 13-year-old girl was the lead singer: they thought her strong, low voice was a man’s) we can’t help noticing she seems to have inherited both Pops’ good nature (though band members tell us she lets them know when she finds their performances lacking) and his certainty. Her band, now made up of white musicians decades younger than she is, her older sister, Yvonne, and a woman in her late thirties/early forties with a nose ring in a T-shirt that reads “Black Weirdo,” still performs an a cappella gospel song to warm up before going onstage.

Director Jessica Edwards includes plenty of the Staples’ less familiar music — which still sounds fresh and striking: I predict most people who see this documentary will quickly add the Staples Singers to their music selections — as well as photos and TV clips from their appearances stretching back to the 1950s. Pops had a smooth, clear voice, but Mavis usually had the lead vocal even at the beginning. Like Amy Winehouse, her style and virtuosity were already an adult’s when she was a young teen.

Although the Staples family was based in Chicago, Pops had been part of the Great Migration from the South. He grew up in the same part of Mississippi as some of the great blues legends who influenced his own style of guitar playing, making it distinct from other gospel musicians. In the 1950s and 1960s, rock and roll radio stations played gospel music after midnight, which Bob Dylan explains, is how he discovered the Staples Singers, as did other white musicians of the era. Some of the songs we hear with Pops on lead have more than a passing resemblance to more familiar radio hits from white rock and roll bands in the 1960s. Levon Helm, of The Band, tells us their own harmonies were directly influenced by The Staples Singers.

When the Staples and Dylan appeared on the same stages (including on an early TV musical omnibus) Mavis and Dylan had a puppy-love romance — and Pops expanded their repertoire. After first hearing “Blowin’ in the Wind” he told Mavis and the rest of the family, “We can sing that song.” He was particularly struck by the lyric, “How many roads must a man walk down/ Before you can call him a man?” When Pops, a man who had fled the Jim Crow South when Black men were still called “boy” sang those words, they were especially poignant.

Pops also attached the group early on with the Civil Rights Movement, becoming an acolyte of Martin Luther King in 1955, at a time when one of the white experts interviewed tells us, “Very few gospel singers took an interest in Civil Rights.” Pops began to write songs inspired by the movement including “Why Am I Treated So Bad?” one of Dr. King’s favorites.

Like a lot of other performers with a similar background, Mavis traded an audience that was once nearly entirely Black (as in a terrific clip we see of the Staples Singers live performance in Watts Stax, a filmed all-star concert and fundraiser for the pre-gentrified Oakland of the early 1970s) to one that is now, we see at appearances like the Newport Folk Festival, nearly entirely white. Mavis still mentions Dr. King to them and seems to see her continued performing as a way of elevating those who hear her music. She tells them and us, “I’ve weathered the storms. I’ve fallen down and I’ve gotten back up.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-orbaWz5yRQ” iv_load_policy=”3″]

When Mavis! was shown as part of the Athena Film Festival, the director of the film, Jessica Edwards, fielded questions from the audience. The following is a transcript of that Q and A, edited for concision and clarity.

What was it about this story that made you want to make this film?

Jessica Edwards: It was really Mavis that made me want to see this movie and therefore make this movie. I had seen her perform in Brooklyn, in Prospect Park a couple of years ago and I had known a little about this soul-era Stax stuff, but I went to the show that night and I left feeling rejuvenated. When I went home to watch the documentary, so I could learn more about her, there wasn’t one.

Can you tell us more about what you learned about her as you were making the movie?

JE: The incredible thing that I found about her was that her and her family really touched on almost every genre in the history of American music: anything that influenced the way that music is made now. She influenced all these makers that then became paramount in terms of what American music became, like Bob Dylan. And Dylan himself has influenced so many people. You think about him listening to the family late at night and then what he became, the idea that she was so part of this fabric of music in this country.

One of the things that impressed me is that you portrayed her and her music and kind of the intersection of music, culture and politics. Was that a conscious decision on your part or was it just an outgrowth of who Mavis was?

JE: You know the Civil Rights Movement didn’t end for Mavis in 1968. For her, the Civil Rights Movement is now. For me music is culture. I’m not a very religious person, but music is a spiritual experience for me and always has been. The idea that music can facilitate change in a way that some other things can’t, that was really solidified for me. The message of Dr. King was not completely mainstream in the mid-fifties and Mavis and her family were instrumental in terms of this grass-roots movement of going from church to church to church in the South and bringing these messages of equality.

How much was Mavis involved the making of this film?

JE: Mavis didn’t see the film until it was finished. In fact, it took her a while to get on board. She was like, “I’ve been talking to the press forever. I don’t need to do this. Like, nobody wants to hear about me.” But when we started to talk to her about the kind of film we wanted to make and how it really was not only her legacy, but the legacy of her family and the legacy of their music, she came around. She trusted us. I offered to come to Chicago and screen it for her before it was screened publicly. And she said, “Nah, I’m gonna watch it with the people.” Then she sat in the theater with a thousand people and watched it for the first time. That was a little nerve-wracking for some of us. But she loved it. The first time she watched it, she doesn’t really remember what it was. All these memories just kept flooding back. I sat directly behind her, and the first time Bob Dylan comes on the screen and he says all these wonderful things about the family, she just started giggling like she was 15 years old. She watched it more recently. We screened it in Chicago a week or so ago and she came up to me after and she was like, “I finally saw the movie, this time. It was really good!”

I have a question about process from the inspiration to okay, now how do I get this to really happen?

JE: This movie took about two and a half years to make which in documentary-land is incredibly fast. It’s like a snap of the fingers. And basically, once she agreed I went and visited her and we would drop in on her on the road. We would film the show. We would spend some time backstage. And then we would go back to Chicago when she was home. The way I structured the shooting was, we did it for her 75th year. Otherwise I would still be shooting. The woman is touring all the time and I’d never end the movie. The movie is also self-financed. Luckily, we have HBO as a broadcast partner. They’re like a fairy godmother of documentary films.

I almost like cried at the moment where Mavis is listening to the song Pops played and she’s getting choked up. How are you able to get such intimate, candid moments without feeling like you’re getting in the way?

JE: I think people who’ve made a hundred films will have the same question. This is my first feature length film and I always feel nervous in those situations, but my DP, he was, like, ruthless, so, as nervous as I was, he’d be like, “Just keep filming.” I hired people who have done this way more than I have, so I could learn so much. So the next time I do this, I won’t ever cut either. Whether you’re filming something that’s too intimate or not, ultimately you can make the decision of whether you’re going to use it later. It’s much better to have it, because you don’t know whether you’re going to need it. In that particular scene, I was sitting underneath the soundboard. I wanted them to talk to each other, not talk to me. I knew that I’d have to ask them questions at the same time to get them talking. I was crying my eyes out, bawling under the sound board like a baby. And as soon as we got that scene, I knew that we had a movie.

I just wondered if you could speak to the finances of the movie, how did it work out for you? And what’s next for you?

JE: I have a production company and the executive producer of this film is my partner, like my baby-daddy partner. We work together on a lot of stuff, so he raised a lot of money through commercial work basically while I was shooting. So he would work on commercial jobs which would pay for this film. It opens the question of sustainability especially if you live someplace expensive like Brooklyn. But I knew, if we felt this passionate about Mavis and because she has so many fans, people would want to see the movie. We’ve had such a wonderful response. I feel like we made the right decision to be late on our rent a couple of months. Now I’m doing a lot of work with 360 Video. I really am enjoying the challenge of making something really short and non-linear. There are a couple of documentaries in the pipe, but for every one you make you have to pitch ten, so I think I’m, like, at six. It’ll hit any minute.

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 inThe Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

‘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

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 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.

Interracial Love in the Afternoon: Daytime Soap Opera Relationships

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.

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.

‘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.

Interracial Relationships on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

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.

This guest post by Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

It’s been more than a decade and Grey’s Anatomy still thrills us with harrowing medical mysteries, last minute life-saving surgeries and, of course, surgeons hooking up in on-call rooms and falling in love from across the OR table. The TV series has always been as much about its surgeons’ personal lives as it has been about the medicine. With an ever-growing cast of colorful characters, it’s no wonder why the show still pulls great ratings week after week. The show has been praised numerous times for its diversity, heralding Shonda Rhimes for her use of colorblind casting, not assigning a specific race to the characters she writes, which created a racially diverse fictional world. While colorblind casting promotes a greater variety of races on screen and normalizes diversity, erasing a character’s color can lead to other issues; issues made all the more noticeable in the heart of Grey’s Anatomy’s most prominent narrative: relationships.

From I Love Lucy‘s Lucy and Ricky to Boy Meets World‘s Angela and Shawn, interracial relationships aren’t new to television and have been on the rise in recent years. From 30-minute comedies to hour long dramas, interracial relationships are becoming more common to see on TV. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mindy Project, The Walking Dead, and The Fosters to name a few all feature interracial couples that are fundamental to their shows. However, Grey’s leads the pack by miles on the amount of interracial pairings featured in comparison to shows that can boast only one or two. Granted, it’s easier for Grey’s Anatomy to contain a multitude of interracial relationships because of its famed colorblind casting. The cast has been racially diverse since its inception in 2005 and a cornerstone of the show is the tumultuous relationships the surgeons have with each other, so it only makes sense that the two would overlap. 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.

Out of the 39 major, plot-related relationships that have been featured on Grey’s since season one, 14 of them have been interracial, putting them just over 35%. Comparatively, according to the Pew Research Center, in 2013 interracial marriages were at a record high of 13%. Not every interracial pairing is or has been married, but the percentage of interracial couples on Grey’s is pretty substantial in comparison to both real-life statistics and other television shows.

Despite the diversity of the cast, the majority of the characters are white and the majority of the relationships have one white person in them. According to Vulture, it would seem that “interracial pairings in popular culture still tend to necessitate one white person.” There have only been two interracial relationships on the show that weren’t half white; Cristina’s tumultuous broken engagement to Burke and her on-call room hook ups with her intern Shane Ross in season 10. Callie, the only Latinx character on the show, has also only ever slept with, dated, and married white people, while Cristina, the only Asian American main character on the show, has dated, hooked up with, and married men of different races.

Just like every relationship in Grey-Sloan, every interracial relationship is laced with explosive drama; Grey’s Anatomy has never shied away from important and sometimes uncomfortable topics. Cristina and Owen’s relationship is full of disagreements and tense arguments over their different stances on having kids and her subsequent abortion. Callie and Erica catalyzed Callie discovering her sexuality. Callie and Arizona share similar problems to Cristina and Owen: both couples disagree (at least initially) over children, and both couples deal with a partner’s infidelity. Jackson and April argue about how to raise their children and deal with her enlisting in the army, leaving him to deal with his grief over the death of their son by himself. Jo and Jason break up after Jo kicks his ass, with a brief dialogue about male victims of domestic violence. Strangely enough, although Richard faces some subtle racism in “The Time Warp,” when an attending tells him that “ten years ago, [he] wouldn’t have even been allowed in this program” after arguing about whether or not to treat a patient with AIDS, race isn’t a factor when it comes to his relationship with Ellis Grey. Their relationship also leads to myriad other problems, including Richard’s alcoholism, the tension over the two each cheating on their respective spouses, and eventually, more relevant to the present time in the show, how Ellis’s cheating and her relationship effects Meredith’s own life.

From Cristina and Owen’s explosive argument over her abortion to Arizona’s occasional annoyance with Callie’s bisexuality, these couples deal with a wide spectrum of issues. It isn’t like serious and sometimes touchy subjects are off-limits inside of these relationships. So why is race never discussed?

The show doesn’t usually avoid difficult or complex situations (in fact, it more often than not capitalizes on them), which is why it’s so bizarre that after 12 years, the instances race has come up in an episode can be counted on one hand. A recent season 12 episode, “Something Against You” had a subplot where Maggie tells Amelia to check her white privilege. It was certainly progressive, but not necessarily a bold move considering the caliber of handling racism and race relations and discussions elsewhere on television. With other instances being a patient bearing a swastika tattoo in season 4 and Bailey teaching Derek about Zola’s kitchen in season 8, dialogue on race hardly ever enters the personal lives of the surgeons. After a decade of skirting around the subject when brought up, and for the most part ignoring it completely, I wouldn’t be surprised if Maggie’s speech remains the last and only in-depth discussion regarding race we see at Grey-Sloan Memorial.

The avoidance of discussing race on Grey’s Anatomy makes the representation of interracial relationships on the show incomplete and unfinished.

Interracial couples comprise over a third of the romantic relationships that have appeared on the show, but never does the nature of the relationship come up. Mentions of race are already few and far between and these rare conversations never occur between or about an interracial pairing. Interracial relationships happen so frequently and race is already treated as such a low-key subject on the show that the relationships are characterized by the personalities of the couples and their subsequent personal (and medical) drama rather than racial and cultural differences or misunderstandings. The roles these characters play are essentially racially neutral on purpose, so racially specific conversations and problems aren’t created.

Because the show doesn’t address race, the positive and negative aspects intrinsically attached to interracial relationships are missing. Characters don’t learn about their partner’s differing culture and aren’t shown a new perspective through the lens of their significant other. Ethnocentrism goes unconquered because these characters’ ethnicities are erased inside of their narrative. There are no story lines of a characters’ parents and families being resistant or dismissive of the relationship because of their race. There’s no subtle racism in the snide, judgmental comments of friends. There are no instances of one’s race being used against them by their partner, like other identities have been bitterly brought up in arguments, like Arizona inferring Callie’s bisexuality makes her untrustworthy and Jackson calling April’s Christianity unintelligent. These interracial relationships don’t exist to push a commentary about themselves onto the audience.

Even Sandra Oh, who played Dr. Cristina Yang for 10 seasons, said she wished race was brought up on the show more. She told KoreAm Journal, “It bummed me out because I feel like, this could be a great story idea, or even like a joke. But [Grey’s Anatomy’s producers] would not go for it, because it was a show choice.”

For such a large dynamic on a show as diverse as Grey’s Anatomy, it is a bit odd that the ever-present relationship drama never revolves around race.

This is neither good or bad. The argument can be made that it’s commendable that interracial and same race relationships are made to be equal, none are shown to be more superior or inferior in quality than the other based on race. Sex and love are treated just as importantly as the medical drama these surgeons deal with everyday and is explored just as intricately. Because of the series’ reluctance to bring up race, no problems inside of interracial relationships differ from same race relationships. Every couple faces the same incredibly dramatic roller coaster (or carousel, if you will), race notwithstanding; butting heads over surgeries, living together, jealousy, cheating, and everything in between.

Grey’s Anatomy definitely displays interracial relationships more frequently than other shows. While it’s not up to one show to single-handedly address or fix every single iteration of racial issues, it does bear a responsibility to retain a modicum of believability within the parameters it set for itself.

One aspect I can appreciate is that Grey’s Anatomy approaches what could be perceived as polarizing social issues non-politically. Queer relationships, interracial relationships, multiethnic families, and co-parenting, all different types of romantic and familial relationships, are normalized and substantially accepted by both the characters on the show and the audience. So why stop pushing the envelope at examining race, especially when interracial relationships already act as the perfect vehicle to carry out the discussion?

Grey’s Anatomy certainly isn’t known for its realism; no hospital witnesses as many life-altering disasters and miracle cases as Grey-Sloan Memorial, so it may not be the best place to go looking for an accurate portrayal of…anything, really. But there’s something to be said that the large ensemble of characters have tread around the issue for so long. Grey’s Anatomy is racially diverse in physical representation only, with narrative and storyline inclusion regarding race nearly non-existent.

Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman is a freelance entertainment writer who is obsessed with an absurd amount of television shows. She is an advocate for accessible entertainment and sometimes develops websites. You can find her at @heycheyennehey on Twitter or cheyennecheyenne.com.

Ladies and Gentlemen, ‘Master of None’ Is the Series We’ve All Been Waiting For

You don’t have to look further than the comments section on any website to see that people with more power routinely try to decide what people with less power have the right to complain about. It’s something that happens in every discussion about inequality, but it’s so rare for that to be the topic itself that I was actually shocked when it was in “Ladies and Gentlemen.”

Written by Katherine Murray.

If you haven’t had time to catch up on Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series yet, prepare yourself to be delighted.

Ever since it dropped in November, Master of None — created by Ansari and Alan Yang — has racked up critical praise. The comedy follows Ansari’s character, Dev, as he navigates his dating life and fledgling acting career in New York City. But what sets it apart is the diversity of its characters, and the insight it offers into day-to-day microaggressions related to race and gender. Master of None offers us a point of view that’s hard to find on television, and does it in a smart, entertaining way.

One of the episodes that has attracted the most attention is “Parents,” which focuses on first-generation Americans trying to navigate relationships with their immigrant parents. Ansari cast his real-life mother and father in the episode, and the story struck a powerful chord with viewers who had never before seen their own experiences as children of immigrants reflected in popular entertainment. Another episode, “Indians on TV,” highlights racist stereotypes and casting in mainstream media, calling out real-life examples, both obvious and subtle.

Master of None has received less attention for the way it approaches gender, but the first season shines on that front, too. Dev’s group of friends includes funny, smart people from many different backgrounds, including a straight white man and a Black lesbian woman who have roughly equal importance in the story. His relationship with his one-night stand turned girlfriend, Rachel, is respectful and emotionally mature – they act like equals at all times, and like each other because they have the same sense of humor, interests, and values. In the episode “Hot Ticket,” Dev agonizes over setting up a date with a really attractive waitress, only to discover that he hates her personality. It’s an idea that could have gone wrong, but the character and her awful personality idiosyncrasies are so specific that it doesn’t come off as a statement that beautiful women are X, Y or Z, so much as a statement that it’s not possible to know whether someone is a desirable date until you’ve spent time talking to them.

The most feminist episode of the first season, though, is “Ladies and Gentlemen,” in which Dev is surprised to learn that his girlfriend and female friends are constantly the targets of aggressive behavior from men. Like “Indians on TV,” “Ladies and Gentlemen” starts by highlighting broad, obvious forms of aggression, before drawing attention to subtler types of discrimination that even well-meaning people engage in.

“Ladies and Gentlemen” opens with a scene that cuts back and forth between Dev and one of his female co-stars leaving a cast party at night. Dev and his male friend, Arnold, share a pleasant conversation and cut through the park to save time. Dev’s co-star looks like she’s in a horror movie and ends up getting followed to her house by some asshole who tried to buy her a drink earlier and got mad when she turned him down. He hammers on her door demanding to know why nice guys like him never have a chance.

After Dev finds out about what happened, he hears similar stories from all the other women in his life. The stories are based on the real-life experiences of female staff writers, and they’re completely familiar to any woman watching the show, right down to the detail where you can’t post a picture of eggs on your Instagram without some strange guy showing up to harass you.

Armed with this new information, Dev and his female friend, Denise, make a citizen’s arrest when they catch a man jerking off on the subway. Dev becomes a hero to all the women at the bar, who start buying him drinks and telling him about the awful things that guys have done to them. Later on, while he’s still basking in the glow of being an upstanding feminist, one of Dev’s male coworkers stops by the table and introduces himself to all the men, while ignoring the women completely. Rachel and Denise point out the sexism of the situation and Dev dismissively tells them that they are being too sensitive and making a big deal out of nothing. He’s then confused about why Rachel is upset with him.

What follows is an amazing scene – also based on real-life experiences – where Rachel and Dev walk home together and she explains in an articulate but believable way, why it’s hurtful and offensive for him to tell her that her own assessment of a thing that just happened to her is wrong. It’s like the final scene in the Louie episode “So Did the Fat Lady,” except without being so problematic. In the end, Dev concedes that Rachel knows more about what Rachel just experienced than he does, and says he will try harder to listen, from now on.

It’s one of the single greatest moments I’ve seen on a TV show – and maybe the only one to directly address this exact, frustrating, aggravating, hard-to-articulate issue head-on. You don’t have to look further than the comments section on any website to see that people with more power routinely try to decide what people with less power have the right to complain about. That very act – that presumptuous attempt to unilaterally define the boundaries of what is and isn’t up for discussion; what we can and can’t feel offended by; what we can and can’t disagree about – that very act is, itself, an attempt to protect and reinforce the power structures we were trying to complain about in the first place. It’s something that happens in every discussion about inequality, but it’s so rare for that to be the topic itself that I was actually shocked when it was in “Ladies and Gentlemen.”

Non-traditional networks like Netflix and Amazon have opened new frontiers in terms of what a TV show can be and whose stories are profitable enough to be worth telling. Master of None is an example of the very best these new frontiers have to offer – a funny, insightful, well-produced series that broadens the range of experiences depicted on television and adds something new to the cultural discussion.

The good news is that Master of None was just officially renewed for second season, expected to show up in 2017.

Staff writer Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.