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“Most of the women I saw on TV didn’t seem like people I actually knew. They felt like ideas of what women are.”
– Shonda Rhimes
Because of the creation of the hit television show, Scandal, Shonda Rhimes is seen as both a heroine and the devil’s daughter sent to brainwash black women into dating white men in the black community.
Nevertheless, she’s created a platform and carved out niche in a cutthroat market. We can consider Shonda Rhimes a female Tyler Perry in a certain regard. She’s prominent for her dynamic writing and screenplays and has a fan base that will argue you to the death if you speak badly about her or what she created. That’s what I want for myself soon!
A part of maturity is growing and learning to look at things holistically.
When Scandal first dropped, I was one of the main folks debating that it was counterproductive to the image of black people, acting as if my mere words and staunch disdain for the show would stop new episodes from airing.
Now I see Scandal for what it should be viewed as, an entertainment show. The problem isn’t the fact that a show like Scandal is on T.V., but the fact that there are no alternatives in place that tell a different narrative.
Can we really hate Shonda for being successful at what she does? She did put a black woman as the face of one of the most popular and groundbreaking shows on television to date. She’s powerful and a boss in her own regard. She just happens to be in an affair with the white president.
Would I have gone with that storyline? Probably not but it works for her and I’m happy that she’s seeing prosperity off of the shows that she’s created! Many people aren’t like me though.
Take, for example, Alessandra Stanly.
For those of you that aren’t aware of Mrs. Stanly, she’s a television critic for the New York Times. She’s a prominent award-winning journalist and has been in the field for years, finally getting her big break in 2003 with the New York Times.
Is she any competition to a woman the magnitude of Shonda Rhimes? Not in her wildest dreams! But, she had some rather disparaging remarks about the characters that Rhimes creates.
“As Annalise, Ms. Davis, 49, is sexual and even sexy, in a slightly menacing way, but the actress doesn’t look at all like the typical star of a network drama. Ignoring the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to, Ms. Rhimes chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful than Ms. Washington, or for that matter Halle Berry, who played an astronaut on the summer mini-series ‘Extant.’”
In the lines above from the article, it seems as if she’s condemning Shonda for casting Viola Davis as the leading lady in her new series “How To Get Away With Murder.” Because of her darker skin tone and older age, Mrs. Stanly views Viola Davis as “less classically beautiful” than Kerry Washington. Pointing that out appears to me as a non sequitur, as she’s talking about the mentalities of Shonda Rhime’s leading black female characters in the article, not how they look. She even brought out Oprah Winfrey and the ever-beloved Claire Huxtable from The Cosby Show to somehow show how Shonda Rhimes is “resetting the image of black women” — as if we give a flying flip what she has to say!
Who cares that Viola doesn’t look like a leading lady in her eyes?
Viewers are coming to be engulfed in the storyline and entranced by the characters. The last time I checked, this wasn’t the Miss America competition. Besides, Viola Davis isn’t ugly. She’s just of age. I’ve yet to see anyone say anything about the quickly aging and wrinkled Sandra Bullock, who’s still pulling in movie roles. So she’s her typecast of a leading lady? Is her definition of a leading lady racially synonymous or age specific? I’m guessing it’s racial since she took the liberty to point it out.
I could go on and on reading between the lines and analyzing the seemingly racist venom behind her w
ords but’s it’s already been done.
I’m here to further cememnt the case that I made last Sunday, saying that young black men and educated black women are the most hated subsectors of people in society. Constantly, successful black women are typecast as angry when they enter into “traditionally male” dominated fields. I made the case last week that the theory of black feminism made no sense, seeing that black men have never subjugated or oppressed black women. Black women are almost worshiped in the black community as a matter of fact!
If anything, the energy used to argue and troll black men on Facebook and Twitter should be used to knock pseudo-journalists like Mrs. Stanly and Rush Limbaugh down to size.
Even at your highest point, they’d still rather see you as house slaves and maids. And if you have to be on television, you need to be high yellow bright and “classically beautiful”. Would she view Garbrielle Union or Taraji P. Henson as ideal leading ladies. Are they “classically beautiful”? I bet she hates Lupita Nyong’o!
Mrs. Stanly is making a mountain out of a molehill and blatantly insulting Shonda Rhimes, using rhetoric that’s so deplorable and easy to debunk that it’s funny.
We can view this as a manifesto of sorts. She is up in arms about two shows that have aggressive, business-oriented black woman leads and is vilifying them. I wonder what her goal was, seeing that Rhimes will still have millions of fans tuning in next Thursday to see “How To Get Away With Murder.”
Hey, I hope she enjoys her weekend being dragged through the mud!
– 30 –
The cover to my novel, The Diary Of Aaliyah Anderson. It’s due to come out in late October. You can preoder now at:
http://www.dcbookdiva.com/#!product/prd15/2583730071/the-diary-of-aaliyah-anderson-(pre-order-only)
or
http://www.amazon.com/Diary-Aaliyah-Anderson-Randall-Barnes/dp/0988762196/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408812333&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Diary+Of+Aaliyah+Anderson
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