By Arturo R. García

With apologies to fans of Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, et al., by far the most pleasant surprise of this week’s Academy Awards nominee announcements was seeing Demián Bichir get nominated for Best Actor–alongside “conventional” choices like George Clooney and Brad Pitt–for his role as an undocumented single father in A Better Life. 

As Colorlines noted, Bichir’s nomination was one of several nods for Latinos in this year’s Oscar race: cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, also from Mexico, was nominated for Best Cinematography for Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life; Bérénice Bejo, a native of Argentina, earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her turn in the The Artist; Brazilian Sérgio Mendes was nominated for Best Song for “Real in Rio,” his collaboration with Siedah Garrett, of “Man In The Mirror” fame, from the animated film Rio.

But a look at some relevant figures further illustrates how painfully rare Bichir’s accomplishment is.

2: The number of Mexican-born nominees for Best Actor, with Bichir joining Anthony Quinn, who was nominated on two separate occasions, for Wild Is The Wind (1957) and Zorba The Greek (1964).

2: The number of white actors nominated for this category for playing Latino characters (Marlon Brando, 1952, Viva Zapata! and Spencer Tracy, 1958, The Old Man and the Sea).

47: The number of years between Quinn’s nomination for Zorba and Bichir’s nomination.

61: The number of years since a Latino actor born outside of Mexico and the United States was nominated for Best Actor; José Ferrer (born in Puerto Rico in 1912, before it became a U.S. territory) earned the honor in 1950 for Cyrano De Bergerac.

1: The number of:

• Latino actors (going into this year’s ceremony) to win Best Actor, with Ferrer taking the Oscar home.
• Latino actors born in the U.S. to be nominated for the category (Edward James Olmos, 1988, Stand and Deliver.)
• Latinas in Oscars history to win the Best Actress award (Rita Moreno, 1961, West Side Story.)
• Mexican-born actresses ever nominated in that category (Salma Hayek, 2002, Frida.)

0: The number of Latina actresses born in the U.S. to be nominated for Best Actress.

$1,759,252: Total domestic gross for A Better Life, per Box Office Mojo.

$75,524,658: Total domestic gross (as of Jan. 24) for Moneyball, starring Bichir’s fellow nominee Brad Pitt.

11,000,000: The total number of undocumented workers in the United States, as quoted by Bichir in a statement to US Weekly, as he dedicated his nomination to them.

6,650,000: Estimated number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. as of 2009, according to the Department of Homeland Security (PDF).

25-to-1:  Current odds of Bechir winning the Oscar, according to Vegas Insider.

By Guest Contributor Anurag Lahiri

During my four months of funemployment after grad school I became hooked on a list of TV shows. A couple of my queer desi friends had been raving about The Chicago Code a while back and when I finally watched it I enjoyed it. So of course when the same friends started tweeting about The Good Wife, and specifically about one character, Kalinda Sharma, I decided to take the hint and marathon it.

The same things drew me to both shows: aside from the suspense and drama, they’re both set in Chicago. As a girl from the Midwest, I enjoy watching a show whose city politics I can relate to.

There is a difference between the two shows though: Chicago Code was mostly special for me because Jennifer Beals was in it and, for an L Word fan, she will always be Bette Porter. Yes, even if she is playing a superintendent of a police department. On the other hand, I will gladly embrace Archie Panjabi as Sharma, a queer, desi, private investigator on The Good Wife.

When there are so few reasonable representations of South Asians in the mainstream media, my first reaction was pure excitement to see Panjabi playing a queer character. I am still extremely impressed that a TV network as mainstream as CBS came up with this character when many more underground producers haven’t been successful, in my opinion. Furthermore, the show hints at the complexity of South Asians with only one desi character/actress, which is more than shows like Outsourced have done even with a whole cast.

On the show, Kalinda’s personality is presented as being multifaceted; she is tough and opinionated. While these attributes are not often paired with Asian women on TV, they are often the reality for women who grow up being underestimated and under-appreciated.

Kalinda’s position–the very opinionated, privately queer, guarded desi girl–resonates very loudly with me:  when I was interning as a social worker in a criminal justice setting, much like her, I tried to stay private while others shared stories about their personal lives. Staff at my internship made heteronormative assumptions about me. The show challenges such assumptions about brown women, and people in general, while offering reasons for why women, regardless of sexual orientation, are often private in the workplace.

While I don’t necessarily believe that Kalinda’s work–digging up dirt for her boss’ law firm, Lockhart/Gardner–was ever underestimated, I would argue she was still under-appreciated. She regularly goes above and beyond to help the firm, yet she struggles to ask for a raise. I know that it takes a lot of thick skin and hard work to prove oneself in that type of environment.

I admire Kalinda for discussing race at work and her immigrant family background, yet refusing to be tokenized. She uses her knowledge and experience to enhance her work and her job, yet she remains in control of her identity. It’s very easy to be turned into a token when you speak up as a minority, so I have looked at Kalinda to see how she does it.

In real life, this balance is very difficult and tiring to maintain. In the U.S. it is especially difficult because South Asian women struggle to find appropriate mentors in the workplace. There are some peer support systems for women in professions like engineering, medicine and law, but it is a struggle if you feel you have no one to turn to for advice and a mentor. Being able to visually relate to a brown woman on TV is helpful for me and, I assume, other desi women who are trying to establish themselves in a workplace.

Aside from her professional character, I am also impressed with the treatment of Kalinda as a personal and sexual character. Kalinda’s sex life is exhibited as much as the other characters and, while the manner of it tip-toes around exoticism at times, it is impressive considering the frequent shaming of brown women’s sexuality on TV. The show speaks to me by creating a South Asian character in the media that does not feel the responsibility to prove her sexuality and womanhood to people. While Kalinda confidently told one interested woman that she “follows through” when she flirts, she pulled away from another as soon as she found out she is married.

I’m still struggling with this unnecessary need to validate my sexuality, since queer desis’ existence has so often been denied and mistreated. Healthy and realistic media representation, like in The Good Wife, can certainly help queer women like me. I now have a character on TV who is reminding me, each episode, to just be. These types of reminders help us come into our smoother, more natural identities. They also remind others that there is more than just tragic queer desis living double lives, and triumphant queer desis marching in Mumbai Pride.

With Kalinda, the show gives the U.S. public a chance to see how an adult desi can be confidently queer whilst handling her imperfections. Her personal vulnerability is not portrayed in a way to make her seem like the “weak Asian girl” archetype, but rather, it is acknowledged as a major part of her complex history. Her vulnerability is always bubbling under her surface, in her extremely rare smiles and tense stature. Her strength is also evident, and it took an extremely dramatic plot twist – which I won’t spoil here – for Kalinda to cry even once. Her mysterious past serves to complicate her character beyond her appearance and challenge the audience. Just like any woman of color, I hope people realize that while Kalinda’s strength is admirable, it may not have been gained out of choice.

From death row to deportation, the show takes on some difficult issues in a way that is accessible. I appreciate watching the characters challenge each other personally and politically, because they each add something meaningful, but I am clearly partial to Kalinda. I’m so accustomed to the media being an exaggeratedly unhealthy version of reality, especially for queer and minority people, so Kalinda makes me really happy. Panjabi has come a long way from playing “standard” desi roles to opening doors for much more.

By Guest Contributor Kendra James

[Note: The version of the film I saw was a screener in NYC about two weeks ago, and I'm writing this having not seen the final Jan 20th release. If anything has drastically changed (like –I hope-- the horrid opening credits sequence in bold, unevenly placed red text) I invite notes about that via comments!]

Based on this weekend’s box-office totals, a fair number of you might already have seen Red Tails, but for those who want to proceed without major spoilers, the basics:

• The summary, as provided by IMDB: “A crew of African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program, having faced segregation while kept mostly on the ground during World War II, are called into duty under the guidance of Col. A.J. Bullard,” is fairly accurate.
• There hasn’t been a movie screaming, “GEORGE LUCAS MADE ME!” this loudly since Attack of the Clones. Sometimes, it isn’t a bad thing. (And since Lucas, the film’s executive producer, recently claimed this is as close to Episode VII as we’ll ever get, maybe that’s what he was aiming for.)
• Red Tails features a wonderful young cast of black actors who should be on all our radars. You’ll feel better for having a little Nate Parker in your life– and don’t be ashamed if you have flashbacks to the first time you saw Will Smith in Air Force gear in Independence Day. It’s okay, you’re not alone.

For all the red tape and controversy surrounding its release, Red Tails doesn’t explicitly touch upon race as much as it could. Yes, there are the requisite scenes where older, white members of the army tell Bullard (Terrance Howard) that negro pilots can’t ever be expected to fly proper cover for his white bomber pilots; a scene where one of the Tuskegee crew, Joe “Lightning” (David Oyelowo) Little, gets into a fight with white airmen inside their Whites Only soldiers’ bar; and be sure to listen for any and all references of “Black Jesus.” Race is certainly mentioned, and important part of the film. But given the time period, are there other racial issues they could have given a platform? And should the film be chastised for silencing the experience of all African-Americans of the era – specifically women?

More detailed SPOILERS are under the cut.

There’s a scene where Bullard is giving another one of his airmen, Easy (Parker) a lecture on self-pity and how easy could have it in life, after a mission gone wrong. Major Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.) stands behind him as the lecture continues, and when all three are framed together in the shot you begin to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, the movie is about to touch on not only black/White racism, but the dynamics of colorism within the black community and the advantages/disadvantages of having lighter skin. The shot frames it perfectly. You have two light skinned men lecturing a dark skinned man about the advantages he has and should take in life, yet it’s never mentioned that perhaps Stance and Bullard’s perceptions on life have been shaped by the lighter color of their skin.

The scene isn’t totally contrived – the actual commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen, Benjamin O. Davis, was similar in complexion to both Gooding and Howard, who seem to play dual stand-ins for him. But it represents a missed opportunity to touch on colorism, a topic that isn’t addressed enough in a public forum (until a magazine lightens Beyonce’s image, or Brian Stokes Mitchell is cast as -Gasp! – a black man on Glee, that is …). It wouldn’t have been expected for Easy to backtalk his commanding officers, but it would have been nice to see him bring it up later, perhaps with one of the other pilots. It’s not a nuance one might expect Lucas to grasp (does he even know the definition of the word?), but one would think the film’s co-writers, Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder and novelist/ media critic John Ridley, might have. Roger Ebert makes another suggestion in his review of the film, noting, “[Red Tails] could have done more than that, by more firmly establishing the atmosphere of the Jim Crow South that surrounded most of the airmen in their childhoods.” Had this background been established, perhaps the door would have been open for a discussion on what it meant to be a light-skinned African-American in 1944.

The movie’s one romantic subplot, an interracial relationship between Lightning and a white Italian, Sofia (Portuguese-American Daniela Ruah), also blows a chance to do something different. It would have been nice to see a young Black actress snag a role in this movie. A large group of men get a great platform here, why not a woman? (Easy scenario: one of the pilots is injured and is nursed back to health by a beautiful woman at an army hospital and they fall in love.) But, fine, the writers have other ideas, and as Lucas said during his Daily Show appearance, he was already having a hard enough time selling this film staring a bunch of Black actors, so he’s hesitant to also include a Black love story as well. So they decide that Lightning will woo Sofia, yet say nothing about the implications or realities (negative or positive) of an interracial relationship in this time. It shouldn’t not be in the film, and similarly shouldn’t be disregarded as a thing that would simply never happen in the time period . However, omitting any mention of it at all seems disingenuous for a film that is about the African-American experience.

Clutch Magazine recently asked if black women should boycott the film because of the lack of a black female love interest, in response to this post from What About Our Daughters? The African-American woman’s experience is often whitewashed and written out television and films. More often than not we’re sidelined to best friends and supportive sidekicks who don’t have backgrounds of our own that aren’t directly connected to the white star’s. Cinematically, we’ve been fairly silenced, and that makes the choice to eliminate the female voice from a movie centering around an African-American struggle to be all the more troubling. Some would say in its defense that this is a “war movie” and not a “chick flick,” and as such it didn’t need another love story (or any love story) in the script. Of course when this is said they’re conveniently forgetting films like Pearl Harbor, war films with predominantly white casts where a romantic subplot is common place and even expected.

The film could have benefited from a tighter script, and perhaps that would have involved cutting any and all romance from the plot. However, that they chose an interracial romance – no matter how poorly examined it is – is no reason to boycott the film. Red Tails is still a movie starring our own. While Howard and Gooding Jr. are already established in Hollywood, they’re still not offered the array of roles that their contemporaries are (let’s consider the widely diverging career paths of Gooding and fellow Jerry Maguire star Tom Cruise, shall we?). And Parker, Tristan Wilds, Elijah Kelly, Michael B. Jordan, and Marcus T. Paulk aren’t going to be given the same big-screen exposure as the heartthrob white actors their own ages. Personally, I left the theatre wondering when I’ll get to see Parker, Jordan, and Anthony Mackie (of The Adjustment Bureau and Man On A Ledge) all starring in a movie where they just get to be dapper as hell – you know, the same thing actors like Brad Pitt and George Clooney get to do in every other movie they’re in (that’s the point of the Ocean’s Eleven series, right?).

Having once worked in talent management, allow me to speak from professional experience: When you represent a black actor who isn’t a Denzel Washington or a Will Smith, you spend a lot of time scouring casting breakdowns looking for roles in television and film that fit. Normally an age and body type description is given and if a race isn’t specified it reads “Open Ethnicity.” But here’s the thing: a lot of times that means “anything but Black,” which you find out quickly when you call the casting office before submitting your client and ask if the role could go African-American. There’s almost always a pause and hesitation before the assistant on the other end of the line finally says, “… not exactly what we’re looking for, but you can submit anyway.” The reality is that dapper, good looking black folks are not something Hollywood assumes the American public wants, and if we boycott the one mainstream film out this year with an almost entirely black cast we’re doing a disservice and making it harder for any black actor/ress to find starring work.

When it comes down to it, Red Tails is a film with a story that deserved to be told back in1988 when Lucas first had the idea (though time only helped when it came to the superb special effects). It needed some editing, maybe a third or forth pass at the script, and a little polish, but it was an enjoyable film no better or worse than the equivalent white staring action movies that come out during the industry’s dead winter months. The only difference between this and other winter action films like Gina Carano’s Haywire or Denzel’s Safehouse is a predominantly black cast and 20 years of being kicked around Hollywood because no one wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole. And that’s the rub, isn’t it?

The film has its problems when it comes to race, and Lucas has put a potentially hurtful spin on its press while doing his best to promote it (talking more about the negatives of how difficult it was to make the film, rather than the things his already loyal fans would want to hear: He’s not making any more Star Wars films and this is the closest thing they’re going to get). It’s also in an interesting place in the general release market, in that it’s a film with an all-black cast that’s not a Tyler Perry film (or the like). It doesn’t get that built in Perry/Black film audience because it’s not your “typical” black movie, but it also doesn’t necessarily get the white male audience that makes up the majority of a war movie box office. Red Tails is something of a novelty in the mainstream box office, but the more of us who go out to support it, the less of a novelty all black casts become. That’s why I say this: Read this review and any others you want, but definitely go out and see the film.

Is “overweight underachiever with an endless arsenal of clever one-liners” a euphemism for sassy fat black girl? Why yes it is. Enter Sidibe, or Andrea, a student who cuts class, uses foul language, and proudly does not exercise. She is all attitude and doesn’t give a flying expletive what you think of it. When she was first introduced, I audibly expelled air – seriously? This again? Don’t we already have series’ with a largely white-cast flanked by sassy black tropes? Hiya, Mercedes from Glee, Donna from Parks & Recreation, Ava on Up All Night, Raineesha on the now defunct Reno 911!, Miranda on Grey’s Anatomy!

And please don’t say “quit hating”, I am a loyal fan of all of these shows, The Big C included. It is beautiful in its poignant portrayal of a woman living with cancer, yet deeply flawed in its characterization of a young black woman. To critique is to love, it comes from setting a higher standard of expectation, from a desire to push boundaries or at the very least, allow flexibility within tightly constrained norms. Alas, the overweight black, testy, unhealthy, irritated black woman archetype is far too normalized to even be given a second thought. Of course, the fact that actresses like Sidibe are given supporting roles in shows about confident, capable women is vital, but it too often comes at a cost: The show’s writers bestow upon Andrea qualities that have potential to give her depth, but ultimately she is more trope than fully realized.

Andrea’s tepid story arc in season 1 is almost unbearable to watch at times: she has to attend Cathy’s summer school class because she’s failed it already, she’s hopelessly overweight, and she’s openly defiant to the one person who shows her kindness. Andrea is a supporting role, but there are three major tenets of the Sassy Fat Black woman trope that she personifies: her issues with weight, her hyper-awareness of race and “playing the race card”, and her rather antagonistic attitude toward everyone.

Andrea is fat: The underscoring of Andrea’s obesity is a central theme of her personhood in season 1. From the viewer’s perspective, her unhappiness with her body leaves her wrought with melancholy. In the pilot it’s established that Andrea is overweight, hates it, and Cathy wants to help her slim down; Cathy even offers to pay her $100 for each pound that she loses when she catches Andrea smoking to curb her appetite. “I’d rather be skinny and die young than be fat forever,” she declares. I wonder what it was like for Sidibe to recite this line even though she has openly declared her body-positive self image.
- From “‘The Big C’s’ Big Black Problem,” in Clutch Magazine

By Arturo R. García

Nobody said Sofía Vergara was sleeping with producers after Modern Family won a Golden Globe Sunday. Not with producers, anyway.

As you can see in the vid above, the joke starts around the 20-second mark, when Vergara, speaking Spanish, is mock-pulled by castmate Julie Bowen. At that point she announces that, because the Globes are an international award, her group’s acceptance speech for the Best Comedy/Musical Television Series would be done in Spanish and English. Which got laughs because, you know, Spanish. Or something.

Then the bit truly kicks off, with executive producer Steven Levitan “translating.” After they both thank the Hollywood Foreign Press, and Vergara thanks ABC Entertainment head Paul Lee and Disney CEO Bob Iger – was she thanking them for canceling Work It? One can only hope. But I digress – Levitan tells the audience she’s thanking the show’s writers, “who are so funny and so sexy.”

Then, Vergara thanks 20th Century Fox chairmen Dana Walden and Gary Newman, while Levitan continues, “Film actresses, please do them a favor at the parties tonight and give them your numbers.” Vergara thanks the whole production team, Levitan says, “They may look pasty and nervous and out of shape, but they’re the greatest lovers I’ve ever had.” With a rather sour look on her face, Vergara thanks the audience and presenters Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, and wishes everyone goodnight. Levitan, ever classy in front of his younger cast members, closes with, “Seriously.”

So there. Doesn’t that sound so much better in context?

As if that wasn’t enough, this remark by Vergara’s castmate Jesse Tyler Ferguson made E!’s list of “Great Quotes From The Red Carpet”:

Sofia’s always a lot of fun because she is really like her character, I mean she messes up English all the time. She has no idea. Like, she calls stewardesses on the plane “plane waiters.”

While it’s admirable for the cast and producers to publicly defending its gay characters, directing this kind of humor at Vergara – not at her character – in such a public setting undercuts that good will. Vergara’s television career started, let’s not forget, as a presenter on the Univisión travel show Fuera De Serie, years before that network became a power player in U.S. television circles. She’s played Mama Morton in a Broadway production of Chicago. And this year she will become the new face of CoverGirl cosmetics. By any measure, her professional journey deserves some respect on what’s supposed to be one of her industry’s biggest stages. Or would that be too Modern for this “family” to consider? It’s telling that Bowen was spared Levitan’s “jokes.” And it’s becoming more apparent – Vergara can do better than this. Let’s hope she does sometime soon.

By Arturo R. García

Hola mi gente. Seems like a few of you felt uncomfortable with a line my character said on #Workit. I understand your feelings. The show is a comedy and is meant to be viewed in that context. Soy Boricua de pura sepa. I am proud of our culture and I’ve always strived to uphold the positive image of my beautiful island and our people in both my career and personal lives. Pa’lante mi gente.
- Jan. 11 statement by Amaury Nolasco posted on WhoSay, as quoted on LatinoRebels

As his show Work It continued to get skewered by both activists and critics, Amaury Nolasco released the statement above in an attempt to defuse some of the tension.

To be sure, Nolasco’s in a tough spot, seeing as how he’s still under contract. But there’s no way not to consider the statement a missed opportunity. The best he could do here was to hide behind the “it’s a comedy” card, a tactic which is especially unhelpful when nobody’s laughing at any of the jokes – let alone the line, “I’m Puerto Rican. I’ll be great at selling drugs,” which he was forced to deliver in the premiere.

And make no mistake, the chorus against the show is growing. The New York Daily News’ Dolores Prida called it “gratuitously offensive and, worse yet, not funny.” And Time magazine has chimed in by collecting more scathing reviews of the program.

Nolasco’s bosses aren’t doing him any favors, either: after days of silence from ABC executives, ABC Entertainment head Paul Lee took a tone-deaf tack on the topic on Wednesday, according to Entertainment Weekly:

While talking to reporters at the annual Television Critics Tour in Pasadena [Wednesday,] Lee said he was stumped by a campaign from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Human Rights Campaign that accuses the cross dressing comedy of being harmful to transgenders. “I didn’t really get it,” he said. “I loved Tootsie. I still love Tootsie. I didn’t get it. But that’s probably me.”

But he clearly realizes the polarizing show remains a hot topic — which is why he began his morning panel with his idea of a joke: “So what do you think of Work It?” The Brit was loath to say exactly how he feels about the comedy’s (dreadful) performance so far, other than to stick to his original mantra about developing “ambitious” shows. “We thought there was room for a very very very silly show.”But apparently, there isn’t room for another light comedy.”

These continued public-relations gaffes have done little to stop what could be a sizable protest scheduled for 5:30 p.m. today at ABC corporate headquarters in New York City – specifically 77 W. 66th Street and Columbus Avenue. Organized by the National Institute for Latino Policy, the demonstration will continue calls for a public apology from ABC for the show’s content.

If any Racializens are going, we’d be very interested in hearing from you, be it on this thread, or by contacting us on Twitter or e-mailing your pictures and notes to team@racialicious.com.

By Arturo R. García

I won’t lie – I was skeptical when I first heard George Lucas was appearing on The Daily Show to promote his new Tuskegee Airmen story Red Tails. On the surface, it represented a missed opportunity: the film centers around four black characters, with a cast that includes Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ne-Yo – why weren’t any of them getting some face-time with Jon Stewart?

Lucas’ appearance ended up being a pleasant surprise. But, both he and Stewart left one important question hanging.

In the interview, Lucas reiterated some arguments he made to USA Today last week: Tails, it took 23 years for the film to reach the big screen, was an effort he financed himself – and one he said studios refused to get behind.

“I figured I could get the prints and ads paid for by the studios,” Lucas said, “and that they would release it and I showed it to all of them and they said, ‘No, we don’t know how to market a movie like this. It’s not green enough.’ They only release green movies.”

By “green,” of course, he means money-makers – and in Hollywood parlance, that really means … well, you know. Not Black.

Stewart, unfortunately, dances around the issue. He asks Lucas, “Is it because of the pedigree of it?” and talks about Lucas discussing it in terms of an “economic and political reality” without noting any of the factors that go into forming that reality. While Stewart would be quick to point out that he’s a comedian first and a “newsman” far down the list, it’s a moment that might have benefited from Stephen Colbert’s willingness to push the envelope. (Though Lucas sneaks in a nasty little dig: “It’s not Glory, where you have a lot of white officers run these guys into cannon fodder.”)

To his credit, Lucas admitted to USA Today that his efforts could have an adverse affect on black filmmakers:

“I realize that by accident I’ve now put the black film community at risk (with Red Tails, whose $58 million budget far exceeds typical all-black productions). I’m saying, if this doesn’t work, there’s a good chance you’ll stay where you are for quite a while. It’ll be harder for you guys to break out of that (lower-budget) mold. But if I can break through with this movie, then hopefully there will be someone else out there saying let’s make a prequel and sequel, and soon you have more Tyler Perrys out there.”

But Lucas also seems to be challenging – or at the very least, counting on – his well-established fanbase in selling the movie. Instead of distancing Tails from his defining work, Lucas says, “It’s exactly like Star Wars,” in terms of the size of the story he ultimately wants to tell, and later says, “This is as close as you’ll ever get to Episode VII.” Those efforts have carried over into social media; the official Star Wars Twitter account was posting images from the film’s premiere. And that now becomes the key question: will the Lucas fanbase rally around to support him? Or is it more willing to watch aerial dogfights when they’re based on a galaxy far, far away, rather than on a step forward in U.S. military history?

By Arturo R. García

When last we left the American Akira, the racebending had barely started: Garrett Hedlund was only being courted to play the lead character, Kaneda.

This week, thanks to Geek Tyrant and other sites, we got some more disturbing pieces of the puzzle, when this casting call for extras and stand-ins listed Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart stepping in as “Ky” – possibly because the character’s original name, Kei, was just too long for somebody’s tastes – and Helena Bonham-Carter playing Lady Miyako.

The casting call also shed some light on how the new version’s vision of “Neo-Manhattan” might play out. As “adaptations” go, it sounds like this Akira could hew as closely to this Akira as Jesus Christ Superstar did to the Gospels. Spoilers are under the cut.

Here’s a transcript of the plot summary:

Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel.

Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers.

Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

Depending on how many “liberties” are taken with the source material, this incarnation of The Colonel could be more of an antagonist to Kaneda and company than the original. If the latest rumors turn out to be true, and Ken Watanabe actually does play the character, the only POC in a principal role could be playing the bad guy. As our friends at Racebending said on Facebook, “This doesn’t sound like a terrible rehash of Airbender at all.”

Besides that, this summary – again, if it is indeed the plot of the new version – points not only to a whitewashing, but to a PG-13 dumbing-down of the original: Kaneda and Tetsuo are brothers? An adult Kaneda with a job? Akira as a villainous force? This isn’t even reprehensible anymore, it’s almost laughable. Unless this unnerving theory by Cracked Magazine’s Robert Brockway turns out to be right:

With all of these factors considered — the change in race, age, and location — there’s only one thing this live action version of Akira can be about. The same thing every other “meaningful” Hollywood movie has been about since the day it happened: 9/11.

Think about it: There’s a city, emblematic of its nation, that undergoes a great hardship, but after many years of struggle, they finally rebuild. Then a group of friends, their gang analogous to a controversial real life group, ostracized and hunted by the government, somehow causes the destruction of said city. It was an important moment in our history, and of course it deserves coverage. But why choose Akira to talk about it? Well, because Hollywood believes that the only disaster Americans can relate to is 9/11, but sometimes work is hard and it takes a lot of time, and that sucks. So instead of setting to work on an original script, they’re just going to up and steal a movie that perfectly captured what it was to be Japanese in a tumultuous period of history, and make it all about white people problems instead.

And if that’s indeed the case, I hope this film makes Airbender’s box-office take look like Avatar’s by comparison.

By Guest Contributor Alyx Vesey

Warning: this post contains spoilers

Like a lot of cult classics, Walter Hill’s The Warriors has gained new audiences over the years, while maintaining a firm base of die-hard fans. Given the title, it is clear that the focus is on one particular. But for me, it’s a real shame that the film isn’t called The Lizzies. I’d much rather see that film.

The other gangs in The Warriors, vying for turf in downtown New York City, are peopled by boys and men, with their concerns privileged. But it’s the Lizzies – the only all-female gang in the movie – who truly kick ass on camera, making their brief time on screen especially frustrating. Warriors Vermin, Cochise, and Rembrandt barely escape their run-in with the fearsome group, who work together to deftly outsmart them. Of the gangs the Warriors encounter during the film, the Lizzies are their most formidable adversary.

Their resourcefulness and physical prowess as a group is in marked contrast to D.J. who, apart from her languid speaking voice and fluency in street lingo, is fairly inconsequential to the plot. Another woman, Mercy, selflessly commits herself to the Warriors’ cause. The only other woman who comes close to sharing the Lizzies’ commitment to stomping out oppressive nonsense is an undercover police officer who arrests Warrior Ajax after he attempts to rape her. Think how much more powerful these individual characters would be if they followed the Lizzies’ example and worked together.

The film, based on Sol Yorick’s 1965 novel, embeds commentary about the civic blight brought on by urban decay and provides something of a counter to often-romanticized historical accounts of New York City during a period of near-total economic collapse. It also showcases Bobbie Mannix and Mary Ellen Winston’s impressive costume design, as each gang uses a uniform to establish (and, in many cases, stereotype) group identities. Its’ stylistic indebtedness to comic books is prescient, as well as indicative of American film’s ongoing relationship with comic and radio serialization. Film franchises continue to be built on the folklore of properties owned by Marvel and DC Comics. Directors like Zac Snyder incorporate comic book storytelling devices into their films. And people still dress up as Furies for Halloween.

But plenty of folks dress up as Lizzies too. What I find especially unfortunate about the Lizzies’ truncated appearance is that they are a multiracial all-female gang. Roughly a decade after The Warriors, it became increasingly commonplace to include at least one woman or girl of color in films and television programs in groups of girlfriends. Much of this could be attributed to attention toward multiculturalism and political correctness in the 1990s. Coinciding with the decade’s commitment to inclusivity, groups like the Spice Girls were notable for their inclusion of women of color, even though Mel B. was labeled as “Scary Spice.” But for the most part, musical girl groups remain segregated, particularly as they align with certain generic conventions. 60s-era girl groups like the Shangri-Las had a direct influence on rock music, and punk in particular. Their delinquent image also helped shape the identities of bands like the Runaways, the Go-Gos, and the Donnas. Peer groups like the Supremes emphasized glamour, wealth, and elegance.

Rather than dialog the Lizzies with girl groups, it may be more useful to think of the gang in New York’s musical context. By 1979, hip hop was reaching beyond the block parties and graffiti culture of the outer boroughs and beginning to intermingle with punk. It’s easy to obscure female involvement in East Coast American punk by overemphasizing contributions from Patti Smith, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth, as well as ignore some of punk’s problems with racial appropriation and fetishization that they inherited from the Beats. However, hip hop, Afro-pop, and reggae’s influence helped prioritize musical inclusivity and eclecticism, both in generic applications and instrumental collaborations.

Furthermore, a sister act from the South Bronx formed a year before The Warriors made its debut at the multiplex. Renee, Marie, and Valerie Scroggins performed under the name ESG. The first two letters stood for their birthstones, emerald and sapphire. The last initial represented their commercial aspirations to make gold records. What resulted was an inventive combination of expressive funk polyrhythms, eerie punk minimalism, and cavernous disco breaks that left such an impression on punk and hip hop artists while offering little in the way of financial compensation that the group released an EP in 1992 pointedly titled Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills.

As it remains something of a rarity to see girls establish homosocial bonds with their female peers in television and film, it is even less likely that media texts include girl friendships across racial categories. While I’m not here to bury the Spice Girls, I do believe the seeming inability to fully integrate mediated representations of girl groups speak to the racial politics of self-selecting friend groups. Feminism, at least in western countries, continues to practice racial segregation and tends to privilege the concerns of straight, able-bodied, middle-class, cisgender white women. This was a problem at the dawning of the American women’s rights movement when suffragists lobbied for white women’s right to vote while many within the ranks feared giving black people those same rights would weaken their efforts.

Feminism’s unwillingness to see its own white female privilege continues to play out in a variety of ways, whether in popular media, professional arenas, and even political activism. How else can we explain the presence of a protest sign at New York’s SlutWalk that featured both a racial slur against the African American community? How could something like this happen in a city of such racial and ethnic diversity as New York City?

Extrapolating further, how can a group representing diverse identity categories who gathered as part of an international movement to eradicate the subjugation and brutalization of women and girls be a fringe interest? As I wish that the Lizzies were central characters in The Warriors and hope that more media texts prioritize nuanced representations of multiracial homosocial bonding, I also encourage future films, television shows, and musical groups to take up and improve upon this challenge. One example I can think of is 1996’s Girls Town. A film about three New York City high school girls who become radicalized as a group after their friend commits suicide after being raped by her boss, Girls Town suggests the possibility that girls can establish bonds across racial and ethnic categories. If we continue to insist on more nuanced representations and form coalitions in our daily lives with these goals in mind, we may live in a world where the Lizzies get their own movie and that the girl gang members of color offer more than superficial concessions toward diversity.

By Guest Contributor Caroline Heldman, cross-posted from The Society Pages

Tower Heist (2011), the new movie starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, is the latest installment in blatantly racist movie-making. Stiller plays a high-end condo manager in Manhattan who bails out a local criminal (Murphy) to steal a stash of cash that one of the wealthy condo residents swindled from the condo staff. It’s been nearly thirty years since Murphy played nearly the same character in his breakout role in 48 Hours, and the fact that he is still cast as a jive-talking criminal speaks to how little has changed when it comes to the portrayal of black Americans in popular culture.

Hyperbolic racial stereotypes are still sooooo amusing for some.  As LA Times film critic Betsy Sharkey writes, ”Murphy and Stiller are a good pair, with Murphy once again mainlining his ghetto-comedy crazy and Stiller suited up for another straight-man gig. These are the kinds of roles they both do best, and their face-off in the front seat of an out-of-control car is worth the price of admission.” (Now reverse the names in this quote to see how racialized and racially offensive it is.)

Perhaps more disturbing is the way in which film critics are talking about this movie as a comback for Eddie Murphy  (“Eddie Murphy’s Road to Reddemption,” “Tower Heist: Murphy is Back on Top,” “‘Tower’ Heist Features Eddie Murphy Back in ‘Classic ’80s Form“). What does it mean when playing an insultingly stereotypical black criminal is deemed “redemption” for a black actor whose movies have grossed nearly $7 billion worldwide? And where, exactly, did Eddie Murphy go? The Shrek series grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide, while his Nutty Professor and Doctor Dolittle franshises grossed $428 million and $470 million, respectively. Murphy has appeared in a steady stream of successful movies in the past decade, including Dreamgirls for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

Closer examination of media critics’ analysis reveals a nostalgia for Eddie Murphy’s breakthrough role as a criminal in 48 Hours. Jon Niccum writes that inTower Heist “Murphy shows flashes of the aggressive, non-family-friendly persona that made him a superstar following 48 Hours. Aggressive?  Non-family friendly?

To summarize, Eddie Murphy grossing oodles of money as a successful director, producer, writer, and actor in films featuring him as a doctor, a veterinarian, a dedicated father, and the voice of a beloved donkey in the second highest-grossing animated film of all time is considered some sort of failure, but playing a jive talking felon is redemption. Huh?

There are many ways to interpret this — that Hollywood and movie critics (and many in society) are more comfortable with black actors playing damaging, stereotypical roles involving criminality, violence, and deviance (remember back in 2002 when Denzel Washington finally won the Oscar for playing a crooked cop?); that male actors are failures if they appear in family-friendly movies, regardless of how economically successful these movies may be; that to be considered successful, male actors have to appear in movies geared towards male audiences.

Whatever the reason(s), it is embarassing for Hollywood and its “critics” to continue to be so ignorant. Eddie Murphy called out the movie industry’s racism at the 1988 Academy Awards during his presentation of the Best Picture award: “I’m going to give this award, but black people will not ride the caboose of society and we will not bring up the rear anymore. I want you to recognize that.” Two decades later, Murphy finds himself riding the caboose, furnished by the creators of Tower Heist.

I really, really wanted to like CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley (which premiered last night) as well as Miss Representation, a documentary currently airing on OWN. Both, however, left me feeling the same way, which looks something like this:

A couple of synopses before I state why I felt this way:

Black in America 4 explores the rarely discussed facts and stories of Black people in digital technology, especially those who are inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Host Soledad O’Brien frames this through the stories of eight African American entrepreneurs who move into together as part of digital business owners Angela Benton’s and Wayne Sutton’s NewME Accelerator program, which provides Black entrepreneurs time and (relative) quiet space—and possible connections with venture capitalists—for their business ideas.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Miss Representation connects some of the dots between the stats, the personal stories, and media images about women and how those images affect not only those in the media— Margaret Cho recounts the fatphobia and other drama around her 1994 comedy All American Girl — but also those consuming the media, meaning the rest of us.

Now, I know that both shows are, respectively, very much Black Studies and Women’s Studies 101, presented as and for those who may know very little to nothing about either Black tech innovators and owners or media literacy and feminism. So, I can see both try to provide a “hook” for their audiences with that in mind. However, the way their respective creative teams frame their stories does both topics a disservice.

When I asked O’Brien about the aim of this installment at a preview screening, she said, “First of all, [Blacks] are clearly using the technology, but we’re not innovating the technology. And Silicon Valley keeps saying how colorblind it is. So, this part of the series examines that statement.”

Watching BiA4, I felt like I was watching O’Brien trying to mash a news report with a reality show. (“Watch what happens when tech-y Black folks get real…with Soledad O’Brien!”) I can understand that the NewME Accelerator was a good (and, from a seeing-news-as-a-business standpoint, a fiscally feasible way) for CNN to gather a group of Black tech business owners (and the non-Black people who attempt to help and/or comment on them) to tell a relatable narrative about the dearth of Black people in the field.  (BiA4 states early on that less than 1% of digital entrepreneurs are Black. The majority, it says, are white, young, Ivy League and first-tier university drop-outs, which, as pointed out in the post-screening Q&A screening I attended, is a privilege unto itself as far as starting businesses.) But I actually think a better way to tell both stories is to decouple them. If I could reconstruct the story, I would have had O’Brien, say, follow one or two Black digital entrepreneurs in depth as they attempted to get investors and utilized Benton and Sutton as pundits— along with angel investor/philanthropist Mitch Kapor, who directly refutes Michael Arrington’s claim of the digital ownership as “meritorious.” Or I would have followed the NewME Accelerator crew as the main subjects of a full-length documentary to air on CNN.

Also, another questionable point is how Asians and Asian Americans are considered in this report. The show starts off by saying that the tech-innovation worlds are “white and Asian.” Though the presence of Asians and Asian Americans should not lead to Arrington’s erroneous conclusion that the tech world is, therefore, “colorblind,” the presence of Asian and Asian Americans shouldn’t be discounted as failing to bring racial diversity to tech communities. The more subtle equation BiA4 makes, however, is “Black=racial diversity.”

At least BiA4 addresses, albeit imperfectly, race and racism in the tech field, Miss Representation — for all of the visually racial diversity (you see Cho, former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, Dreamworlds director Sut Jhally, media-literacy advocate Malkia Cyril, and Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, among others) — fails to talk about the issue of race and racism. When I asked why at a post-screening Q&A, the response was “We only had 90 minutes, though we’re planning a second movie to deal with race.” (Refer to image at top of this post.)

However, there were places in the film where race and racism could be mentioned, and it would have taken about 30 seconds. For example, a young Black woman talks about her hair and how media images make her feel about it. The narrator could easily say something like, “Far too many images we see in the media are of white women swinging long, flowing hair. Imagine how that would make a woman of color, whose hair may not do that, feel?”

I timed it: the quote took all of 15 seconds to read out loud. (I’ll be generous and give it about 30 seconds to account for dramatic voiceover.) Or even acknowledge that the majority of media images—both in the film and in entertainment itself, from news to shows to porn—are mostly of white women as both idealized and in variety of roles…and these are, quite a bit of the time, functioning in tandem. Again, all of a thirty-second voiceover or a statistic that could be one of many the film uses to further its argument on how the media hurts women and other people. The silence about race (actress Rosario Dawson is the only person who explicitly mentions “people of color”) — as well as class, gender identity, sexual identity, and  and physical ability, though the film does give a nod at how the media, especially television, fails to acknowledge women above the age of 35 as an audience or as characters — flattens the documentary’s discussion about women to the category of “woman,” as if female-presenting people all suffer from media images the same way. Of course, we don’t.

And I just quite can’t with Black in America 4 and Miss Representation.

Image credit: Bossip

By Arturo R. García

It was almost enough to make you say, F-ck The Muppets.

No sooner did Eddie Murphy give up his shot at hosting the Academy Awards in a heart-warming display of solidarity with Bro – I mean, Brett – Ratner than an online campaign recommending Kermit The Frog and friends get the job pick up some steam.

The Muppets hosting The Oscars? The most interesting part of that pairing would be figuring out which half should feel more insulted.

But at least Muppets fans are coming at this from a place of honest – if at times overbearing (wokka wokka!) – enthusiasm. It’s been more disappointing to scan around other sites and see the same basic wishlist of prospective replacements:

• Stephen Colbert/Tina Fey
• Neil Patrick Harris
• Somebody associated with Glee
• Nobody at all
• Not to be outdone, the Huffington Post also nominated a muppet, albeit one with his own talk show.
• And one black person

With such a lack of creativity from normally creative people (Tracy Morgan? Oprah? Chris Rock?) you’d think Ratner was still doing the show! O-HOHOHOHO!

But seriously, folks. We here at The R can do better than that – especially since Rick Perry’s botched his audition last night. And our nominees are …

Samuel L. Jackson & Denzel Washington
Pros: The POC Pacino and DeNiro. Who in the hell would pick Tracy Morgan over a) the world’s highest-grossing actor and b) Denzel F’ing Washington? They can do classy, they can do funny – really, so can anybody on our list – and both have the critical and popular chops to command respect in this kind of setting.
Cons: No, really, go ahead and find one.

Will & Jada Pinkett Smith
Pros: If we’re looking for a husband-wife duo to anchor the proceedings, how about a guy who’s not far behind SLJ in the bankability chart and a star in her own right? If nothing else, you’d think they would have better chemistry than Hathaway and Franco, right?
Cons: Who would be more awkward for the Smiths to bring out – their kids or their basketball team?

George Takei
Pros: To the hipster demographic, he’s America’s Other Funny Gay Guy. But more importantly, he’s gone from part of an old sci-fi show to become one of Hollywood’s more strident advocates, and with his years of service to the business, it’s hard to imagine many people who would cherish this job more.
Cons: “Too” tied in to the bygone days of the Star Trek franchise.

Rosario Dawson, Zoe Saldana, Gabourey Sidibe & Rashida Jones
Pros: You want a young, multi-talented female ensemble? We got you – with an Oscar-winner in the group, to boot.
Cons: One word – RENT.

Danny Pudi & Donald Glover
Pros: The saving graces of a TV show that’s a critical darling – and one that simultaneously lampoons and sends love letters to cinema almost every week. Bring the Community writing team aboard with them and the comedic potential is tantalizing.
Cons: They’re two supporting players on a low-rated TV show, and neither has a hit film to his credit. And for heaven’s sakes, don’t let Glover rap.

John Cho & Kal Penn
Pros: They’re like Glover and Pudi, but with big-screen bonafides. Philip at You Offend Me, You Offend My Family says they’d make great co-hosts for Saturday Night Live, but why limit our ambition? (Another bong-dream: Cho/Penn + Glover/Pudi + NPH = a comedy Voltron to carry the next 2-3 years’ worth of shows.)
Cons: Made their name playing arch-stoners. This would be like Cheech & Chong awarding The Deer Hunter the Best Picture award in ’79.

Idris Elba
Pros: What better way to confirm Elba’s arrival as a power player for Hollywood’s future?
Cons: Most notable roles up to this point have been a comic-book character and a drug dealer. Stuffy ol’ Oscar would rather deal with talk-show hosts.

Angela Bassett
Pros: Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe winner, class for decades.
Cons: Hasn’t had a hit in years. But hey, that didn’t stop Ratner and Murphy, did it?

Edward James Olmos
Pros: Emmy and Golden Globe winner, and the first U.S.-born Latino Oscar nominee for his work in Stand & Deliver. And hey, how frakking cool would it be to see him get the whole arena to yell, “SO SAY WE ALL!”?
Cons: Like Takei, his sci-fi ties would work against him.

Olivia Munn
Pros: If geek is indeed chic in Hollywood now, there’s not many other people you could hire to validate that fact. And hey, isn’t karma a funny thing, Mr. Ratner?
Cons: She’s still better-known for her work at G4′s Attack Of The Show than anything she’s done on the big screen. And unfortunately, karma might be funnier than Munn, too.

By Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, cross-posted from Televisual

From Blacula to Sleep Dealer, filmmakers of color have always been interested in science fiction and fantasy. But these days in Hollywood, sci-fi/fantasy films demand big budgets, and it seems like only Will Smith and Denzel Washington are powerful enough to greenlight a genre film starring an actor of color. The rare project that pushes boundaries can often go unnoticed: stellar alien invasion flick Attack the Block won over critics but couldn’t find an audience here in the States (please see it!).

Of course, on the web, things are different. While most web series are comedies and soaps, a number of creators are bucking conventional wisdom and creating stories for the black, latino and Asian sci-fi fans.

Last month, Al Thompson’s Odessa won big at the New York Television Festival — a development deal with SyFy — and released a well-financed drama, Osiris. Odessa follows the story of a father and daughter with super powers running from the bad guys whose experiments created their abilities; Osiris follows a man who is immortal.

While those two series are among the more sophisticated series to hit the web, I’ve been noticing a string of shows over the past two years looking to break the sci-fi color line. As costs for simple special effects go down, independents can afford to simulate space ships, alien worlds and laser beams. And creators are using low-cost production to diversify the space in numerous ways, adding female leads and blending genres (horror, comedy, thriller, surrealism).

There’s an artistic tradition here. From Samuel Delany to Octavia Butler, sci-fi has long attracted society’s outsiders, who use the imaginative potential of fantasy to create utopian or dystopian worlds and interrogate contemporary culture and politics.

And the audiences are there, enough so that most high profile sci-fi TV shows and films take pains to include at least one character of color. Star Trek (TV and movies) is the classic example, and continues today with shows from Alphas and Falling Skies to Battlestar Galactica and now even Game of Thrones (look out for season two!).

Below I’ve listed what shows I could find in alphabetical order. Please let me know if I’m missing an important or great series out there!

Black Box TV: This anthology series features regular, standalone episodes — a la The Twilight Zone – some of which are led by actors of color. The successful series was created by Tony Valenzuela. For all episodes, click here.

Chick: In Chick, the protagonist Lisa leaves her loser boyfriend to pursue loftier dreams. She hears about a secret academy that trains superheroes, and the story progresses from there. While obviously a narrative of female empowerment, creator Kai Soremekun wanted to story to have multiple layers. The series — whose first season spanned an impressive 20 episodes — is prepping its second.

Chutes And Ladders: A brother and sister discover they can travel through time and embark on an adventure in search of their parents. Episodes are available on KoldCast.

Cursed: This series about an angel incarnate (and single mom) put on Earth to “prove her goodness” should be debuting soon.

A Demon’s Destiny: The Lone Warrior: Kennedy (Devin Rice) is a half-demon sent to Earth to save the world — from demons. The effects-heavy series is inspired by anime. For all 20 episodes, visit the show’s website here.

Episode 1: The Case For Tuesdays from Dominion Series on Vimeo.

Dominion: This noir detective series starts with a mystery of shady “shimmer men.” Episodes — and lots of minisodes — available here.

Infamous: Joey Barto and Greg Washington created this stylized noir-like series about John, who wakes up in the first episode without any idea who he is. He starts to realize he has powers, setting a dark mystery into motion. For all episodes, click here.

Lumina: Lumina is a Webby Award-winning and Streamy-nominated web series that debuted in the fall 2009 on KoldCast TV. Lumina is a fantasy series of sorts, exploring the story of a woman named Lumina whose life is disrupted when she finds a man in her mirror. Created by Jennifer Thym, the director’s next feature film, Bloodtraffick, stays in the genre with a story about a “sexy Asian female vigilante and a has-been American cop at the crux of a holy war between angels and vampires.”

Odessa: Odessa follows the story of a father and daughter migrating from small town to small town, escaping a “program” which performed experiments on them. Creator Al Thompson describes it as Enemy of the State meets The X-Files. The series will last for ten episodes, each about six minutes. Previously picked up by BET.com, it recently won big at NYTVF.

Osiris: Part detective series, part supernatural thriller, the eponymous lead in Osiris resurrects roughly thirty minutes after fatal attacks. The series will run for ten episodes starting this month. Episodes can be found here.

Rhyme Animal: This urban thriller about a DJ with a taste for cannibalism has strong horror and surrealistic elements. Rhyme Animal, created by Jorge Rivera, who frequently collaborates with star Al Thompson, was a finalist at numerous web series competitions and awards, including Indie Intertube, Clicker, ITVF, NATPE, and HBO/NYILFF. Episodes are available here.

Semi-Dead Episode 1: “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em…Eat ‘Em!” from Semi-Dead on Vimeo.

Semi-Dead: Before zombies became super trendy after The Walking Dead, Chris Wiltz created this horror-comedy, spending his own money filming this buddy comedy about two roommates in living in Los Angeles after it’s been overrun with zombies. Each guy has a very different reaction to the event: one, Joe, “goes into survival mode,” while the other Chris, goes about his life as if nothing has happened. Episodes are available here.

Sheroes: Charlie’s Angels meets blaxploitation (plus superpowers) as black women try to save the world. Episodes available here.

Status Kill: This sadly only three-part series — episodes here — combines comedic social networking with an assassin storyline.

Stream: Whoopi Goldberg, of Star Trek fame, has always been a fan and supporter of sci-fi — not to mention quirky TV projects. Stream – distributed here on FearNet – focuses on Jodi (Goldberg) who is struggling to uncover the mystery behind the hallucinations she’s had her whole life.

Vexika: Easily among the most insane fantasy web series online, Vexika went mildly viral and became a bit of cult phenomenon from its unhinged storytelling, campy graphics and mainstream media exposure on G4. Episodes are available here.

Back when Warner Bros. greenlit their Americanized Akira movie everyone was buzzing that Tron Legacy star Garrett Hedlund was the lead contender for the role of Kaneda. Now it seems he’s been offered the part. Gah.

Listen, we don’t have anything really against Hedlund, he’s nice to look at on screen and his acting certainly wasn’t the only reason Tron Legacy failed so dreadfully. But come on, Hollywood, this is just boring. Can we at least consider an Asian actor, just one? And are we really going to call this guy Kaneda? Or are you going to Americanize all the Japanese names as well? Will Shotaro Kaneda be turned into Kenny, and Tetsuo Shima into Timmy?

- From “Garrett Hedlund offered lead role in Akira. Crap,” by Meredith Woermer

By Arturo R. García

Big thanks to our friends at Racebending for sharing this with us – it’s our panel from San Diego Comic-Con, “Diversity and Fandom 102: How You Can Make A Difference,” in its’ entirety. From left to right, our panelists were:

• Racebending’s Michael Le served as moderator
• Actor Dante Basco (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
• Showrunner/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman)
• Author Malinda Lo (Huntress)
• Professor Henry Jenkins from the University of Southern California (CivicPaths Project)
• Phil Yu, from AngryAsianMan
• And that’s yours truly at the far end in the tie, looking slightly flustered at being among such a group of sharp folks.

And don’t forget, if you’re in the NYC area this weekend, Latoya and Andrea will be hosting a meet-up Sunday, Oct. 16, at Jing Fong in Manhattan, at noon. Enjoy the vid!

Number of Awards Handed Out Sunday Night: 25
Number of POC Winners: 0
Number of Individual Acting Nominees: 81
Number of POC Nominees: 6*
* Idris Elba (Luther, The Big C) scored two nominations
Number of Writing Nominees Outside Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series Category: 30
Number of POC Nominees: 1
Number Of Individual Writers in Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series Writing Category Nominees: 97
Number of Individual POC Writers In That Category: 6

Hooray for Hollywood, amirite?

By Arturo R. García

A new report from the Directors Guild of America indicates that the going is getting tougher for female and POC directors in television.

The DGA’s study, which covered more than 2,600 episodes produced during the 2010-11 TV season, revealed that white males directed 77% of the episodes for the 170 shows included, a 2% increase. White women and POC males directed 11% apiece, with POC females directing just 1% of episodes during the season.

The L.A. Times noted that the DGA’s report comes less than a month after a study released by San Diego State University showed a double-digit drop in the amount of female writers and directors on prime-time series, and six months after a Writers Guild of America study found evidence of a growing disparity in pay between white and POC television writers.

The DGA’s study singled out nine series who hired no women or minorities to direct episodes this past year:

• Bored to Death (HBO)
• Burn Notice (TVM Productions/Fox)
• Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
• Fringe (Warner Bros.)
• iCarly (Uptown Productions/MTV/Viacom)
• Justified (Woodridge Productions/CPT Holdings/Sony)
• Leverage (Leverage Productions)
• Victorious (Uptown Productions/MTV/Viacom)
• Weeds (Weeds Productions)

Another 16 shows – including True Blood and Supernatural, which have been covered on Racialicious – were cited for hiring women or POC to direct less than 15 percent of their episodes. Only three shows – ABC’s The Middle (Warner Brothers), and HBO productions Hung and In Treatment – had a woman or a POC at the helm for more than 50 percent of their episodes.

Sons of Anarchy executive producer Paris Barclay, a member of the DGA’s diversity task force, told the Times, “It’s not enough to just give lip service to the idea of increasing diversity behind the camera. These programs are so far failing to live up to their promise. So we’re going to take the discussion straight to the people on each show who make hiring decisions.”

According to Roland S. Martin, that might not be an idle threat; the new DGA collective bargaining agreement will allow the Guild to meet “with executives responsible for hiring at the individual show level.”

The prospects were even more dim for first-time directors who weren’t white. POC men and women combined to constitute only 9 percent of the 130 new directors hired in the 2009 and 2010 seasons.

“We’ve heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don’t want to take a chance on a new director,” DGA board member Lesli Linka Glatter told Variety. “But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it’s just that most of them are white males.”

At this point, it should go without saying that all the women referenced are white, as per usual. But whatever! Victory! More women on television is a reason to be thrilled, right? That is, until I see what’s being lauded:

Cummings’s multi-cam sitcom, Whitney, has an awful pilot, full of cynical innuendo, and yet one scene—sexual role-playing gone south—showed a glimmer of something, a dank, self-mocking Sandra Bernhard–esque allure. Sue me, but I can’t help rooting for Cummings, who seems to have something to say about the survival skills of damaged women, even if she hasn’t quite figured out what it is yet.

Luckily, Cummings’s other show, CBS’s 2 Broke Girls, which she produced with Sex and the City’s Michael Patrick King, has more potential. It stars the luscious Kat Dennings (from Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and Beth Behrs, playing waitresses at a greasy spoon in Williamsburg. Dennings wears knee-high boots and a working-class sneer; Behrs is a newly broke heiress. As the self-reliant cynic, Dennings is fantastic, making the most of acrid punch lines like “That’s not what rape feels like!”

Now, where have I heard about 2 Broke Girls, before? Oh, that’s right – Racebending:

The character, “Rice Lee,” is portrayed as a stereotypically backward and socially stunted Asian immigrant, who is repeatedly mocked and corrected by his white co-workers (including Max, one of the titular “broke girls.”)

LEE
Hello today. I have check for you.
MAX GLANCES AT HIS PANTS AS SHE TAKES THE CHECK.

MAX
Thanks, camel toe.

LEE
What means camel toe?

SHE POINTS TO HIS CROTCH WHERE THE PANTS ARE HIKED UP. HE LOOKS DOWN, EMBARRASSED.

LEE(CONT’D)
Oh. Okay.

Lee can’t wear his pants correctly, can’t speak English properly, and doesn’t understand the concept of holidays. Because it’s not like Koreans wear pants, take English in elementary school, and celebrate holidays like Christmas.

In short, “Rice” is a disaster of a character, like something out of a Long Duk Dong time machine. It’s such a shame given CBS was recently honored for improving the representation of Asian Americans on television, and just sponsored Banana II, the Asian American bloggers conference.

Angry Asian Man has more:

I’ve talked to several people who know a little something about what’s going on behind the scenes, and I’m told that the character has actually been re-written and re-tooled, largely based on the negative reaction to the original script. That’s positive news, right? Right? I don’t know.

I don’t know exactly what that means for the character, because as originally conceived, he needed one hell of an overhaul. I mean, that was seriously venturing deep into Long Duk Dong territory. It wasn’t pretty. But if someone’s at least trying to fix this mess, I’m willing to wait until fall to find out if the character still totally sucks. I guess we’ll have to see.

But these critiques are largely missed by the people cheering for women fronted shows. Nussbaum, in New York, spares just a sentence to describe the classic Hollywood racism we will be treated to this fall: “The script is uneven—the ensemble of stock ethnics gave me a migraine, as it did in several of these shows, all of which star model-pretty white women—but the show did a surprisingly good job at capturing a postcrash Brooklyn zeitgeist.” Sigh.

Another show we are supposed to look forward to? Girls, by Lena Dunham. The creator of Tiny Furniture nicely parlayed the film buzz into a show focused on 20something New Yorkers. But if this tweet is any indication of what she finds funny…

…expect more of the same old, same old.

We deal with this all the time, considering that content that is brilliant and amazing on one level can also be horrific and stereotypical on another. (Hello, In Living Color.) And if we boycott absolutely everything, we don’t give creators time to grow, change, and get better. But lines are continuously crossed, and it is eroding the tentative gains that nonwhites in entertainment have fought for. Since our greatest power as consumers is the power of veto, it is important to support shows we’d like to see and ignore or actively boycott ones that promote racism and sexism in entertainment. But the lines can get really blurry.

Harold and Kumar is a great example of this.

We’ve had a ton of conversations around the Harold and Kumar movies, especially in reference to how racial commentary was often insightful and hilarious, but a lot of the gags involving women presented the same one-dimensional sexist stereotypes. Here are some of the articles (comments lost, unfortunately):

GQ Writer Compares Harold and Kumar to “The Happy Go Lucky Negro” Caricature
Addicted to Race 88: What Harold and Kumar says about race and gender
Open Thread: Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
East West Talks to John Cho About Race and Hollywood [Cho-licious]

So, we had a dilemma. Do we support two talented actors, playing roles that are not stereotypical about Asian Americans in a major studio film? Or do we boycott because their treatment of gender in the films left a lot to be desired?

Archer, an animated show on FX, provides the same sort of tensions. About 80% of the time, the humor employed about race is hilarious and fairly subversive. This is a bit complicated by the fact that the writer, Adam Reed, is a white dude – though, admittedly, one who demonstrates he’s beyond a surface level understanding of race. Mitigating factor: Aisha Tyler joined up as Lana, which takes the humor to a whole other level.

The other 20% of the time? Hot mess and Asian stereotypes. And I don’t even know how to talk about the “Mulatto Butts” song:

And while Archer is blisteringly funny from a references/intelligent humor perspective, many of the female characters are basic archetypes – in a show where all the fun is taking these one-note characters to ridiculous heights. But we will discuss that a bit more when season 3 premieres.

Back to the fall tv line up.

The worst part of all this is that the 2 Broke Girls show actually seems like it would be pretty cute, in that How I Met Your Mother kind of way. The trouble is, when shows throw in racist stereotypes trying to be edgy since we’re post racial and all (a hallmark of hipster racism) a lot of times, they don’t know what they’re doing. You see, to make a joke about society, you have to understand how society works – and add some new and insightful observation. And in a lot of these shows, they are cracking jokes alright – but they are the same jokes that have been in play since the dawn of racism. Which is why you have characters named “Rice Lee” who fit every single Asian stereotype ever put on celluloid. It’s why in the promos, you have the same throwaway characters – if I never see a large, sassy black woman in a position of authority being mean to a defenseless little white girl again, it will be too soon. (Didn’t like it in Love Bites; don’t like it in the Whitney promo). It’s a lazy way to create a secondary character and a way to wring cheap laughs from the racist crowd.

But it’s also alienating. The producers have told Racebending they are retooling the character – Marissa at Racebending asked us to request screeners, which we won’t do.* When the show comes on, we will see what the changes are – at this point, we all know actors, especially POC, need all the work they can get. But this kind of laziness shouldn’t be rewarded with viewership. It isn’t enough just to point to the gender of the creator, I care about the quality of representation on screen. And just like we don’t need women created and fronted shows that pander to sexism, we for damn sure don’t need shows that use racism to shore up weak writing.

—

* We don’t really review screeners for the same reason we don’t try to review books anymore – no one has the time. As long as Racialicious is a side project for all of us involved, we’d rather focus our energies elsewhere. If it’s compelling enough, we will check it out on TV.

(Thanks Lilah!)

There have been thousands of words written about Stockett’s skills, her portrayal of the black women versus the white women, her right to tell this story at all. I won’t rehash those arguments, except to say that I found the novel fast-paced but highly problematic. Even more troubling, though, is how the structure of narratives like The Help underscores the failure of pop culture to acknowledge a central truth: Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help.

The architects, visionaries, prime movers, and most of the on-the-ground laborers of the civil rights movement were African-American. Many white Americans stood beside them, and some even died beside them, but it was not their fight — and more important, it was not their idea.

This isn’t the first time the civil rights movement has been framed this way fictionally, especially on film. Most Hollywood civil rights movies feature white characters in central, sometimes nearly solo, roles. My favorite (not!) is Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning, which gives us two white FBI agents as heroes of the movement. FBI agents! Given that J. Edgar Hoover did everything short of shoot Martin Luther King Jr. himself in order to damage or discredit the movement, that goes from troubling to appalling.

Why is it ever thus? Suffice it to say that these stories are more likely to get the green light and to have more popular appeal (and often acclaim) if they have white characters up front. That’s a shame. The continued impulse to reduce the black women and men of the civil rights movement to bit players in the most extraordinary step toward justice that this nation has ever known is infuriating, to say the least. Minny and Aibileen are heroines, but they didn’t need Skeeter to guide them to the light. They fought their way out of the darkness on their own — and they brought the nation with them.

–Martha Southgate, The Truth about the Civil Rights Era

By Guest Contributor Jabari Sellars

Superhero movies routinely take liberties with established storylines and characters, with famously mixed results. But even with all the disappointment recent efforts brought to theatres, this summer offers one final comic-book adaptation with the potential to cleanse the palette.

Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The First Avenger hits theatres on July 22nd in hopes of joining Iron Man and The Dark Knight as financially successful comic book adaptations that earn the acclaim of critics and fans alike, bridging the gap between generations of comic-book lore and bringing characters and messages powerful enough to interest audiences beyond Cap’s customary fanbase. It would seem impossible for First Avenger to satisfy everyone, but one way the film could earn some goodwill from both fandom and mainstream audiences would be to introduce the man who was Captain America before Steve Rogers, Isaiah Bradley.

As shown in Robert Morales and Kyle Baker’s 2003 series Truth: Red, White & Black, Bradley actually preceded Rogers in surviving test doses of the Super Soldier Serum procedure. In the story, based on the tragic accounts of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments of 1932, Bradley was the only one of a group of misled African-American soldiers during early World War II to do so; his comrades suffered from issues of rage, depression and suicide, or were killed in action.

While the perfected serum was then given to blonde-haired, blue-eyed Steve Rogers, who was then promoted as a symbol of American military exceptionalism, Bradley was court-martialed after going on a mission against the command of his superiors while wearing a Captain America uniform. Bradley was subsequently imprisoned and tortured during the 1960s, and left a shell of his once energetic and talkative self.

Isaiah’s legacy of heroism would survive into the modern Marvel Comics universe. His son, Josiah X, wore the stars and stripes as a member of The Crew, a team led by War Machine. And Isaiah’s grandson, Elijah Bradley, has emerged as perhaps the best-known hero in the family, thanks to his exploits as Patriot, in the various Young Avengers series. Elijah has also been very vocal about the treatment his grandfather received from the government – even reminding Steve Rogers himself of the debt he owes Isaiah:

Including Isaiah in First Avenger – even as an “easter egg”-type mention – would fit in with Marvel Studios’ approach of using some story ideas and character depictions from the more modernized, more diverse Ultimate Marvel Universe; depicting Nick Fury as an African American male and Thor as a mental case with illusions of grandeur are plot devices taken directly from the works of Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis.

But even with that source material, there’s still a significantly small number of heroes of color found in the movies. Acknowledging Isaiah adds authentic diversity to a film that, aside from Derek Luke’s small part as Howling Commando Gabriel Jones and Samuel L. Jackson’s inevitable after-credit cameo, is completely white – a setting that ignores the sacrifices of thousands of Black and Hispanic U.S. soldiers during the real World War II, and the discrimination they still had to fight after returning home.

Other recent Marvel-based movies have handled diversity inconsistently: in Thor, Heimdall’s race was changed, while X-Men: First Class embraced the title of socially conscious historical fiction without discussing the most important aspects of the 1960s. First Avenger wouldn’t have to resort to any revisions – one black man’s sacrifice is already part of the Captain America mythos, and that should be respected.