Tag Archives: Lesbian Characters of Color

After 50 Years, Dr. Who Casts First Lesbian Companion

Science fiction needs more queer women.

In sci-fi, women mainly exist to wear revealing outfits, shoot space guns and provide sexual frustration for the male protagonist. Very few sci-fi movies or TV shows pass the Bechdel test. If there happens to be a queer female character, she’s likely to die within a few episodes, or will probably be a shallow character with a D-cup. Probably both.

Dr. Who, one of the most popular shows on British television, is taking a step in the right direction. The show follows an extraterrestrial Time Lord called “The Doctor” who explores time and space in a British police box.

Dr. Who show started in 1963. It’s retained its longevity by having the doctor “reincarnate” with a new personality and new sidekick every time the writers get tired of the lead male actor. The current doctor is Peter Capaldi.

But finally, the sidekick – ahem, “companion” – is going to be a queer woman. And not just a queer woman, but a queer woman of color. In other words, something rarer than a unicorn on TV.

If you’re worried about the queer woman being relegated to a sidekick, don’t worry. On this show, a sidekick isn’t a lackey, like the pathetic LaFou whom Disney is touting as their first gay character. The Doctor’s companion is like the Watson to his Sherlock – beloved, insightful and, in this case, very attractive.

Pearl Mackie will be playing the companion, Bill Potts. She told the BBC, “It’s important to say people are gay, people are black – there are also aliens in this world as well, so watch out for them.”

Rumors are swirling that the next doctor may be a woman, another first in the show’s 50-year history. Could there be romantic tension on the horizon if Potts and the doctor find each other very attractive?

I hope so.

I sincerely hope so.

Dr. Who returns on April 15.

‘Master of None’ is the Diverse Comedy Show of Your Dreams

Let’s not beat around the bush: Hollywood has a huge diversity problem. From whitewashing existing characters of colour and all-white cast ensembles, to shows that are tragically heterosexual, there are a lot of deep-rooted problems in Tinseltown.

But, helping to challenge that is Netflix.

And while the streaming service may not be able to ‘diversify’ the problem singlehandedly (nor should it embrace diversity solely for that reason), it’s a blessing for those who want their media content to more closely resembles and resonate with them.

Case in point: Master of None. After falling in love with Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation and with his various stand-up comedy specials, he has now co-written a half and hour comedy show for Netflix that focuses on, pretty much all of the things that may be relevant to you and your interests.

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A good example of that is the episode “Indians on TV” in which Aziz (as New York-based actor Dev) accidentally gets a racist email from a studio head prompting an insightful and very funny conversation about how television studios won’t put more than one minority in anything for fear of making it an ‘Indian show’ or a ‘black show’. It also touches upon the use of make up changing an actor’s ethnicity as we have white actors playing characters of colour (or even light-skinned people of colour playing those with darker skin, e.g Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone in the upcoming movie, Nina)

Another good shout is “Ladies and Gentleman” in which Dev’s girlfriend Rachel, his friend Denise (who is black and a lesbian) clue Dev and Arnold (another member of their friendship group) in on what’s it like to live in the world where men are constantly ignoring women or outright treating them badly.

And there’s the episode “Parents” where Dev and Brian take their parents to dinner to learn about their immigrant stories and how they came to America.

While these would be Very Special Episodes on any other show, with Master of None it feels organic and, well, normal.

As a woman and/or as a person of colour, these are absolutely conversations that have been had at some point and because they’re written with knowledge and empathy it doesn’t feel like you’re being sold a storyline by someone who typed ‘feminism’ or ‘immigration in the 1960s’ into Wikipedia.

Perhaps Master of None can lead to another conversation there, not just about seeing characters like yourself, telling stories you relate to, on TV but for studios to embrace that behind the camera too.

For example, just like in the show, Aziz’ parents (who play his parents in Master of None too) emigrated to the States from India and the fact that Denise is gay (a character whose sexuality, by the way, is an important part of her identity but is never played off for laughs) is because out writer and comic Lena Waithe told the team behind the show what she’s really like, stories of her life, and Aziz and Alan [Yang who co-wrote the show with him] asked “why shouldn’t [Denise] just be gay?’”

Overall, it’s a very funny show that’s highly relatable for about 501 reasons. All 10 episodes of Master of None are currently available on Netflix so go and watch that right now and cross your fingers that it gets another season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFvb3WKISk

How Television Can Solve Hollywood’s Lack of Diversity

Did you watch the Oscars last month? I didn’t, not because I don’t love a good celebrity shindig – especially when there are cameras and copious amounts of alcohol involved – but because if I wanted to see a mostly white, mostly male group of people in power award other mostly white people then I would turn on the news or simply look at the world around me.

In an awards season where Dear White People took on the issue of white people, black culture and racial microaggressions, when Selma looked at the civil rights movement and countless other films about people of colour captivated audiences, the Academy (the group of people who decides who is nominated for and who wins at the Oscars) conveniently engaged its ‘whites only’ tunnel vision.

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Despite all of the astonishing achievements of by actors of colour in Hollywood in the past year, not a single actor of colour was even nominated in the lead or supporting categories. It’s one thing to snub actors of colour but to not even invite them to the party? Hollywood, that’s cold.

The conversation that the controversy has created has been great, however. #OscarsSoWhite trended on Twitter and critics and and moviegoers alike have all being asking the question of ‘why’ and also ‘how’ of Hollywood’s stark whiteness.

The why can be answered with ‘Hollywood is racist’, as despite the the fact that Latino@s and black people are the two fastest growing groups of moviegoers, Hollywood is still quick to ignore or gloss over their stories.

This is especially obvious in the cases of things like The Hunger Games when despite the series of books saying that Katniss isn’t white, the multi-million dollar movie franchise decided to take some real, racist creative license and casted a white actress for the role instead.

As for the ‘how’ the Oscars ended up being so biased, many critics are chalking it down to the popularity and success of films like 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained, Life of Pi and Beasts of the Southern Wild (which all featured people of colour in lead or main roles) in previous years. Many feel that as Hollywood ‘threw people of colour a bone’ with that previous acknowledgement, they feel that their work is now done and that people of colour will be satisfied.

This year Selma was snubbed almost across the board (although it won for Best Original Song and it was nominated for Best Picture) despite everyone who saw it having raved about its brilliance. British actor David Oyelowo (who plays Martin Luther King Jr.) explained in an interview with Variety that:

“We’ve just got to come to the point whereby there isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy — a notion of who black people are — that feeds into what we are celebrated as. Not just in the Academy, just in life generally. We have been slaves, we have been domestic servants, we have been criminals, we have been all of those things. But we have been leaders, we have been kings, we have been those who changed the world.”

In short, unless the media shows people of colour being let down, trodden on or oppressed, Hollywood just ain’t that interested.
Unless it comes to television.

One prevalent argument coming out of the debate is that television is the next frontier of diversity. This television season alone we saw the mostly-Hispanic TV show Jane The Virgin grace our screens, recent debut Empire focuses on a massively wealthy black family in the music business, How To Get Away With Murder features a no-nonsense black, female lawyer surrounded by several fearless people of colour and black-ish also focuses on a rich black family looking to fit with their white counterparts.

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Television has been an absolutely joy to watch these coming months as we’re no longer forced to put up with monotonous white men at the helm, for the sake of a glimpse of a bitpart black woman – we now have a plethora of brilliant, POC-featuring media gracing our screens each and every single night of the week.

So why does TV get it right while the silver screen cannot?

Part of the reason behind the recent emergence of people of colour on television (this year at least) is because it’s driven by business decisions and a need for variety. It’s a well known fact that services like Netflix are steadily chipping away at cable TV viewership and on top of the ease of TV watching that Netflix offers us, it’s also filling a serious diversity gap.

Just look at Orange is the New Black which has a cast almost entirely made of women who are flawed and funny, racially diverse and also aren’t just straight or cisgendered either.

Orange is the New Black 02

Given that traditional TV networks need to compete and need to offer us something different and better than the many mostly white and male protagonists that have been littering our screen, it makes sense for them to finally do right by ethnic minorities and put some non-white faces on TV.

It should also be noted that black people watch more TV (in the United States) than white people (Nielsen estimates that black people watch at least two hours more each week) so that may also have been a driving factor.

The statistics aren’t perfect though and while it’s beautiful that TV is becoming more diverse, there’s still lots of work to be done. For example, queer people of colour are still a rarity and there are still plenty of shows that are still mostly white and definitely not representative of the people who are watching them.

As for the hope of TV’s prowess rubbing off on Hollywood, it may take much longer than one awards season to right those racially homogenous wrongs. It’s not just the casting directors of Hollywood that are racist – or just plain ignorant – towards people of colour but it’s the whole damn hierarchy.

It is notoriously difficult for non-white filmmakers and actors to breakthrough to the big leagues and be considered for the same opportunities as white people. So unless those at the top want to make a real, serious change, things may be stuck like this forever.

The ball is rolling now and it will not stop until finally, the media on offer represents the people who are actually watching it.

Two New Lesbian Characters of Color Hitting Mainstream TV

Thats correct, our TV screens are starting to see more lesbian visibility and lesbian characters of Color.

New TNT action drama – ‘The Last Ship’, features out lesbian Lt. Alisha Granderson, played by Christina Elmore.

On her new role and character, Christina says

“I knew that she was a woman in her mid-twenties, that she was a Lt. in the navy and her job was often as the officer of the desk, to take the orders that the captain gives and give them to the helmsmen that steer the ship, and that she was smart and serious and a lesbian.

And those were the facts I had about her. And so going in it was a process for me, sort of learning about her with everyone else. Every time we get a new script, it’s like, ‘Oh here’s a little more of a taste of who she is.’ But because she hasn’t had much things happen to her — she doesn’t talk much about her personal life — I’m able to sort of invent it a little bit on my own and in my head. So that’s been exciting. And the writers are really open to suggestions and ideas and have been sort of — we’ve been doing it together, seeing what she’s like as we go.”

Christina Elmore

The other new character will be coming to TV this fall. Comedian/actress Erica Ash will play a lesbian named Mary Charles (M-Chuck) on the new Starz half-hour comedy Survivor’s Remorse.

Survivor’s Remorse,” a half-hour comedy, follows Cam Calloway, a basketball phenom in his early 20’s who is suddenly thrust into the limelight after signing a multi-million dollar contract with a professional basketball team in Atlanta. Cam, and an unforgettable group of characters, wrestle with the rewards and pitfalls of stardom, love, and loyalty.

On her character, Erica said…

“Her family is very accepting. She’s very lucky to have that and not have to deal with that struggle internally. It makes her a much stronger person to be able to face the world and say, ‘Hey, if you have a problem with it, it’s your problem, not mine.’ So I’m actually very proud to play this character for that reason.”

Erica Ash

She has also said about the role, that her being a lesbian is never made a big deal of; it simply exists without question.

“I definitely think that there’s something for everyone in the show and my character being a lesbian just adds another nuance,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a big crazy thing. That’s who she is and that what I think a person who loves someone wants to be—just allow them to be! And not make it like when someone’s black or white—it’s just who they are. It doesn’t need to be set aside as something big or, ‘Ooh, let’s tiptoe around it!’ She just is a lesbian and she moves forward in that and people who watch it, especially my gay and lesbian audience and community and friends, will watch it and think, ‘Right on!’”

Erica Ash