{"id":68,"date":"2003-03-29T09:37:19","date_gmt":"2003-03-29T17:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/03\/29\/interracial-dating-and-angel\/"},"modified":"2003-03-29T09:37:19","modified_gmt":"2003-03-29T17:37:19","slug":"interracial-dating-and-angel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"Interracial dating and Angel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blueheron<\/a> is pleased by Gunn’s interracial one-night stand on Angel<\/em>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
Even better, this character has now had one romance and (in this ep) a one night stand, and in both cases, Whedon and company didn’t feel the need to find a color-matched woman for Gunn to be with.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Commander Sisko on DS:9 or Dr. Franklin on Babylon 5 (the only other two black characters on the sort of geeky adventure shows that I’ve watched in the past 5 years), both had appropriate color lovers, even if the lover was only on for one episode. <\/p>\n

Yes, it’s 2003 and inter-racial kisses are still considered mildly daring on TV.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

As one of Blueheron’s readers points out in comments, Blueheron isn’t very aware of TV outside of fantasy and science fiction, or he’d know that interracial romances are now relatively common. In fact, there’s even been at least one instance of backlash: Eriq LaSalle, who played Dr. Benton on E.R.<\/em>, demanded that the show write a positive romance with a black woman for Dr. Benton. As LaSalle told Ebony<\/em>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
I felt we were inadvertently sending a very strange message that I wasn’t comfortable with, which is: Here’s a successful black man who can only have dysfunctional relationships with black women. But, when he dates outside his race, he is more vulnerable, more open, sweeter, more romantic, sensual…”<\/div>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

I agree with Blueheron that it’s screwed up for Star Trek<\/em> to insist on intra-racial couplings; in a universe where it’s seemingly common for humans to date Vulcans, Klingons, Changlings, and all the other races with funny ears and forehead ridges, it seems odd that the characters are so fussy about skin color. But I’m not so thrilled with Gunn’s multiple inter-racial romances on Angel<\/em>; I can’t help but suspect that the reason he only has romances with white folks is that Gunn’s the show’s one and only non-white character.<\/p>\n

Of course, if they brought in a black actress just to be Gunn’s love interest, that would be problematic as well… since it would be clear that they hired her only<\/em> to give Gunn a black love interest.<\/p>\n

There is a way around this, of course, which is to create minority characters all the time<\/em>, incorporated into the universe. What if there were multiple<\/em> characters of color on Angel<\/em>, who appeared on the show in every single<\/em> episode? What if, instead of being a show about a white guy, his five white assistants (one in green makeup), and his one black assistant, it was a show with seven lead actors, and several<\/em> of them weren’t white?<\/p>\n

I know, I know… that’s just crazy talk.<\/p>\n

.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blueheron is pleased by Gunn’s interracial one-night stand on Angel: Even better, this character has now had one romance and (in this ep) a one night stand, and in both cases, Whedon and company didn’t feel the need to find … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,62,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buffy-whedon-etc","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}