Woman of the Month: All the Black Ladies Who Deserved Better

All the Black Ladies Who Deserved Better

In the wake of the most recent Black Lives Matter resurgence is a variety of stories being shared by Black actresses concerning their treatment on various film and television sets. Whether it’s coming from the fandom or the production crew, the stories have not been pleasant.

Everything from marginalization and harassment, to gaslighting and tokenism, to abuse and flat-out racist vitriol – these actresses and the characters they play have faced it all. I haven’t even watched all of the material depicted in the above image, but I know enough from cultural osmosis that many of the featured characters are forced into black female stereotypes: the Angry Black Woman, the Mammy, the Sexually Voracious Bad Girl (usually juxtaposed with a softer, kinder white woman), the Sassy Sidekick, the Magical Negro – even when the intent is slightly less offensive, archetypes like the Strong Independent Woman Who Don’t Need No Man carry their own tiresome baggage.

I’ve seen with my own eyes the way that fandom values whiteness, and the litany of excuses that arise when explaining why they don’t spend as much time engaging with characters of colour. The reason is often found in the Ouroboros nature of the fan/creator relationship: mandated storytellers don’t bother to develop their black female characters, fandom in turn doesn’t bother to create any original material around them, and so the writers take this as an indication that no one’s interested, further relegating these characters to the side-lines.

That, and – you know – racism. When the reverse is true, and white male characters are as bland as dry toast, fandom will still glomp onto them and put in the hard-yards to provide them with attention, adulation and creative content. With social media being the way it is these days, and the fourth wall becoming ever more tenuous, fans are well-aware that making enough noise on Twitter will see their demands met. And what they inevitably want is more of the status quo.

I had front-row seats to the ghastly treatment of Angel Coulby as Guinevere in Merlin, in which audiences responded with downright indignation that a mixed-race woman could play a character so deeply entrenched in our ideals of kindness, desirability and feminine power, not to mention the ongoing harassment of Candice Patton as Iris West on The Flash. In both cases, fandom’s ire is largely based in the fact that these women are paired up with white men who are (according to them) better suited to other white characters. Funny that.

Nicole Beharie has finally spoken up about her treatment on Sleepy Hollow that led to her decision to quit the show (I remain genuinely stunned that nobody realized Abbie Mills was that show’s drawcard, but then why am I still surprised at the inherent stupidity of racism?) while Amber Riley discusses how Black girls were considered expendable on the set of Glee. Sometimes frustration lies in black actresses being denied any strong narrative arcs of their own (as Vanessa Morgan, who plays Toni Topaz on Riverdale, points out) or how they’re never fully represented in promotion or at conventions (Rachel True has spoken about how she’s left out of The Craft cast reunions).

Let’s not forget the hideous reaction to Amandla Stenberg being cast as Rue in The Hunger Games (even more infuriating since Rue was described as black in the books) a response which bears no small resemblance to the news that Halle Bailey will take on the role of Ariel in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Ditto Anna Diop as Starfire in Teen Titans, or Noma Dumezweni as Hermione in The Cursed Child, or Quvenzhanè Wallis as Annie in the 2014 musical of the same name.

And all this is only scratching the surface. Also featured in the collage is the original Lavender Brown (Jennifer Smith), a character who was also played by Kathleen Cauley in Harry Potter, only for both black actresses to be replaced with a white one as soon as Lavender's role was expanded, Nathalie Emmanuel, whose character Missandei was a freed slave that was eventually recaptured and executed in chains, and Jasika Cole, whose role in Fringe required her to play endless support to the white characters, be denied any sort of arc or backstory of her own, and constantly get her name pronounced incorrectly as a joke.

Zoe Saldana manages to feature here three times, as a woman who is murdered by her abusive father to gain a MacGuffin, a communications officer who is constantly undermined by fandom for daring to be in a relationship with a white man, and a pirate girl who disappears without explanation after the first film in the franchise. Pick any of the women in this image, and I'll tell you how they were mistreated by the show or film they featured in.

Black women are underwritten, replaceable, fridged, ridiculed, overly-criticized and held to a higher standard than their white/male counterparts, and even when the writing itself respects them, you can bet that fandom will pick up the slack by insisting they’re Mary Sues, threats to whatever white ships they’re invested in, or that their presence is “just pandering.”  

And so it goes on. It’s exhausting and disheartening to see the same tiresome discourse emerge with each new fandom, as sometimes it feels like the same fans simply migrate from one franchise to the next, ever in search of the same dull dynamics, between the same cookie-cutter characters; a white audience that would rather project themselves onto other white characters than ever attempt to empathize with a black woman that breaks her mold, transcends the stereotypes, or dares to take centre-stage.

There’s not a huge amount you can do except pour love and attention on the characters that fandom shuns, and defend them in the face of their detractors. But I will say this: fellow white ladies, when it comes to representation in genre television and film… huzzah. That glass ceiling has been more or less shattered, with white woman taking on a wide variety of central roles. We’re Slayers and Ghostbusters and Jedi and Superheroes and Disney Princesses.

So please, when black women get the chance to step into the limelight, whether it’s joining Starfleet or gaining superpowers or singing about the world up above or kissing your white fav… don’t be a self-absorbed asshole. Your plate is already loaded. These ladies deserved better, not only from creators, but from fandom as well.