February 13, 2021 • 57 mins
Romantic comedies remain one of Hollywood's most segregated film genres. In this classic episode, Cristen and Caroline compare the development, tropes and racial tensions within monochromatic rom com worlds.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your production of I Heart Radio. So, Samantha,
we have been talking a lot about romance during this
February month, and in fact, we've had recent episodes on
(00:28):
women in Romance that had to become a two parter
because we had so much to say, so much to say,
and there's a lot more that could be said. In fact,
I know that you like rom commes. Have you kind
of always liked them? I think I do gravitate towards them,
but I don't know if I've always always liked them.
(00:49):
There's definitely hits and misses, and as I've gotten older,
I've watched less and less, but definitely I had the
classics that I would worked back to ye from like
a young age. Uh. I'm trying to think, because I mean,
if you look at like young stories or teen stories,
there's a lot of like romance ish Like in the
Green Gables one of my favorite movies, technically romance. They
(01:12):
grow up together. It's a coming of age story, but
it's her and Gilbert, you know, like like whether he
teases her throughout and then as she's an adult trying
to find that and in the second one, she has
his whirlwind romance with a very debonair you know, upper
class dude. Mm hmmm, so yeah, I mean, I guess
that's a romance. But it's one of my favorite movies.
(01:33):
Princess Ride always in one of my favorite movies, So
I guess. So yeah. And if you look at all
the Disney cartoons, yes that is true. We didn't really
talk about that, but a lot of the things we
grew up on in the in terms of those Disney
fairy sales, are romances. Uh uh huh. Well, yeah, I
(01:54):
don't really have that much experience with these things that
we talked about, but on this show we have discussed
at length, and in fact, past host Kristen and Caroline
did a four part series on rom comms and some
of the troops in them and some of the more
problematic troops in them, and we've rerun some of those already,
(02:14):
but if you want to go listen to them, they're
out there, and we want to rerun a classic episode
on black romantic comedies, So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never Told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
(02:37):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and this is part four of our series on romantic comedies,
and today we're gonna bust a rom comm myth that
only white people fall in love. Who knew? Who knew? Yeah,
we're looking at rom coms of color, you could call them,
(03:00):
really focusing though on black romantic comedies. And one of
the most stunning things to realize in reading for this episode, Caroline,
is how romantic comedies are one of, if not the
most segregated genres in Hollywood. Oh yeah, for sure, it's
(03:21):
it's romantic comedies starring black people are hardly marketed to
the white audience because so many people in Hollywood at
the executive level just assume that white audiences will not
be interested. But it creates that horrific loop of like, oh, well,
(03:42):
they're not marketing it to us, so I never developed
an interest in it, so I'm never gonna go see it,
And that just reinforces the executives assumptions that, oh, we'll
see larger audiences aren't going to go see these quote
unquote black romantic comedies, whereas rom coms starring white people,
of course, are not called white raw comms. They're called
mainstream right white people. Yes, white people are referred to
(04:05):
as mainstream audiences. Yeah. I mean even though, and this
is a whole other tangent that we don't really need
to get into. But if you just look at the
per capita ticket sales of who goes to see movies,
African Americans and Latinos per capita like by far more
(04:26):
movie tickets than so called mainstream audiences. So the whole
you know, all these marketing arguments I think are a
bit of a stretch sometimes. Um. But if we even
look at inter racial rom comms or romances, because some
of these movies were going to talk about kind of
straddle that line between rom com or just straight up romance. Um.
(04:47):
But even today, inter racial films, inter racial romances, whether
comedic or not, are considered taboo. Yah. Um. And I
think a good way to get into this conversation is
if we go to a Jet magazine piece from nineteen
ninety that really spelled out this issue. Um, it was
(05:10):
called why Blacks don't get romantic roles in movies? So
it's been years since I've seen Guess Who's coming to
dinner with Sydney Portier. Also, I can't remember the lead
actress's name, but her parents are played by Katherine Hepburn
and Spencer Tracy, classic romcom couple. So it's such a
(05:30):
great movie. But Sydney Portier was not permitted. His character
was not permitted to kiss, touch, caress, hug anything his fiancee. Yeah.
So that goes all the way back to the Hollywood Code,
I think enacted in four an anti missig nation rule,
essentially saying that people who do not have the same
(05:53):
skin color can not caress or kiss um. And this
was one reason, as we talked about in our episode
on the stereotyping and exotic sizing of Asian women, one
reason why a silver screen actress, Annime Wong was never
really able to break through and get all these leading
(06:16):
roles because per Hollywood rules, she could never kiss a
white man on screen. Yeah. So that was the Haze
Code that we talked about in our first episode. And
the reason that those uh like segregated couples rules ended
up embedded in the Haze Code was that the majority
(06:37):
of states in this country still had those antimsigenation laws
and so they weren't going to have their movies breaking
state laws, i e. They wanted to make as much
money as they possibly could, and if they risked showing
a movie in a state that would be against that,
then they'd lose money. And it's for that reason that
in the film Fatal Beauty, Whoopie Goldberg claimed that love
(07:03):
scene between her and co star Sam Elliott was cut
because of studio racism, because it would be too racy
to show those two having sex. But she made the
great point in that article. She was quoted in that
Job Magazine article is saying if he had put money
on the table at the end of our sexual encounter,
they would have left the clip in which is such
an indictment of Hollywood racism, but so true, so accurate
(07:28):
to people who just are attracted to each other having sex,
that's not okay if they're of a different race. But
oh if it were a prostitution scene, like we'll let
a black lady have sex with a white dude, well,
and even if it is, you know, two people of
color having sex. Willis Edwards, who was the former president
of the Beverly Hills a c P chapter, told Jet
(07:50):
Magazine that Hollywood has never wanted us to have love interests.
They feel it won't sell in Peoria or in Mississippi
were looked upon as comedians, not as p bowl who
have families and intimacy. Yeah, and we saw that, you know,
in our last episode on Sidekicks, that you get the
token black character who's typically two dimensional, some kind of
(08:10):
either sassy woman or spiritual guide of some kind, rather
than getting the actual three dimensional character treatment. Yeah. And
it was actually for that reason that Spike Lee made
the films Is She's Got to Have It in nine
nineties Mobida Blues because he figured that the only way
(08:33):
to change that situation was to just make the films
that he wanted to see. Um. And of course there
are black romantic comedies, there are black romances, um. But
the the segregation of the whole thing is really it's
just stunning to be over and over again because before
(08:55):
reading up for this episode and I am about to
show my whiteness, I'm even wearing a white button down
dress listeners, which is appropriate because I was not aware
of the depth and critical range of the black rom
com cannon that exists. And it's because when I had
(09:18):
been seeing, you know, showing those movies, it's like, oh, well,
those that's a black rom com. Okay, it's like we
we grow up you and are are white women. We
probably did not grow up watching black romantic comedies. Um.
In the same way, I have a feeling that there
are plenty of you know, women of color who are like, yeah,
I didn't grow up watching notting Hill and my best
friend's wedding. Um. But this episode for me was a
(09:44):
revelation in just how just how racist Hollywood is. Yeah.
I mean the only black romance I grew up watching
was how stelic At a groove Back, which is I
would not classify that as a rom com. But but
I think romance in this com vote though. Some romances
are going to count just because those kinds of movies
(10:05):
are so significant. Because hel Stella got her groove Back
definitely crossed into quote unquote mainstream audiences, right exactly. You're
the mainstream Caroline, Little Caroline. I'm the mainstream now dog. Um,
And so it makes sense that the roots. Kelly Goff
was super not happy. But when she saw New York
(10:25):
Magazine's list of the top twenty five rom coms that
had come out since when Harry met Sally and saw
that it didn't contain a single black lead film, and
not only did it not contain a single black lead
romantic comedy, but the reasoning for that that was provided
by the two white guy critics who wrote the list
is so ridiculous and and Goff appropriately skewers them for this.
(10:52):
So they basically said, or they did say, quote their movies,
this list needs. We have a couple of LGBT rom
coms on there, but we wish there could be more.
And while African American rom coms, as exemplified in films
like The Best Man in Waiting to Exhale and About
Last Night have thrived during this time, we couldn't agree
on any titles we felt were strong enough to warrant
(11:13):
inclusion on this list. And Golf is like, are you
kidding me? It never occurred to you, Uh, two white
guys who were like, I don't know how to pick
a black rom com, So I'm just not going to
talk about to maybe ask a woman or a person
of color for ideas. Yeah, um, or consider the fact
(11:34):
that maybe maybe just one Adam Sandler Drew Barrymore rom
com is enough, because No, Fifty First States is not
one of the best rom coms that has come out ever.
Since when Harry Met maybe one of the worst movies.
They also listed her, which feels like a stretch, and
also I Love You Philip Morris, which again it's like, okay,
(11:57):
in what way is her a better rom com than
The Best Man? Which, yes, listeners, I spent this weekend
watching The Best Man and The Best Man Holiday, and
let me tell you what a delight both of them were.
Because A. T. Diggs does follow suff I've never told
(12:19):
you on Twitter, and I kept just wanting to tweet
him how much I was really enjoying his film because
you just get to see day Diggs shirtless a lot,
but also Morris chestnut shirtless a lot. Um, there's just
a lot of really uh really handsome chests and jawlines
and those movies. But um, my objectifying, my sexual objectifying aside,
(12:45):
they were just really enjoyable ensemble films. Um, so yeah,
just seeing seeing that was they I mean, the fact
that there were no black lead rom coms in this list,
Like I said, it's bad enough, but to come out
and say, like, don't you hear yourself talking? Is my
(13:07):
question to these gentlemen, Like don't you hear the words
that you just said? Why don't you ask someone or
go watch them? Well, and it perpetuates the myth that
there are no good black rom com Yeah. Well, and
also it just perpetuates the point of view of the
white man being the norm, being the standard, because yeah,
(13:31):
like maybe they Okay, so maybe these guys did watch
a bunch of black lead romantic comedies. But if your
baseline for what is normal, good, funny, whatever, is only
ever going to be Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, like,
maybe maybe it's time to as critics and just as
consumers of media to broaden your horizon. Well, and a
(13:52):
lot of it speaks to just the marginalization of black
lead films, which is something that we've talked about before.
In our episode it on black female film directors. Shout
out to Gina Blythe Prince in Love and Basketball by
the Way, which I also watched, Um, And I will
get to it in a second, Caroline, because I have
a lot of thoughts, um, But I have a feeling
(14:14):
there is this mainstream notion that black comedy is exclusive
only to Tyler Perry today, and that it is comedy
that is inaccessible and unrelatable to white audiences and is
um and and that is as good as it gets,
(14:35):
which really couldn't be farther from the truth, especially when
we're talking about classic rom coms, because surprise, surprise, other
white listeners. If we look at the mainstream heyday, the
white heyday of rom comms, starting with when Harry Met
Sally and into the nineties, you have a similar kind
(14:58):
of heyday happen ing in black lead rom coms as well,
or just some more rom with a little bit of
calm but more rom Yeah. And so you know, when
Harry met Sally came out launches the nineties modern neo
romantic comedy. A year before that, though, you have one
of my favorite romantic comedies in the world, Night Coming
(15:25):
to America with Eddie Murphy and his sidekick Arseneo Hall.
So good. It's got the it's the full I mean,
it's a full romantic comedy. It's got the happy ending,
it's got the the masquerade, the deception. Uh. And it's
a it's absolutely a black lead film. And see why
(15:46):
then is Coming to America, which I agree is absolutely hilarious. Um,
it's peak Eddie Murphy. Um. Why is that not in
those lists that are all over the Internet. I don't know,
because it's literally it fulfills just about every trope for
better worse that there is that's discussed in all the
(16:09):
rom com academia. I think it's because we have this
idea that a romantic comedy is inherently a white film.
I would agree, And you can have a white comedian
in a romantic comedy leading role and it's still a
mainstream romantic comedy. But you have a black comedian leading
a black lead romantic comedy and it becomes like a
(16:31):
black comedy or just a just a comedy rather than
what it is, which is a true romantic comedy. Well,
in one of those classics of the black lead rom
coms that I could not find anywhere on the Internet
to watch, which I'm really disappointed about, is Love Jones
from because it's sited over and over and over again
(16:53):
as the holy grail of black rom coms. Um, but
I couldn't find it listeners. I to be honest with you,
so I have not seen it. Um. But I did
watch The Best Man and of course then I had
to watch the follow up, The Best Man Holiday, um,
and also watched Love and Basketball and with all of these.
(17:13):
You see this uh familiar cast of romcom leads in
the same way that you see the uh Meg Ryan's
and Julia Roberts and Hugh Grants of White films with
Sna Lathan, Nil Long, Gabrielle Union, Morris Chestnut again, Ta Digs,
(17:34):
Ta Diggs forever? Um, are you gonna get that tattooed? H? Well,
you know what, after watching The Best Man The Best
Man Holiday, Um, if I had to play um uh
bang Mary kill with Morris Chestnuts, take Diggs and Terence Howard. Um,
(17:55):
I I think I would, Oh man, I would want
to look at Morris Chestnut for a really long time
and then but did I'd have to kill him and
then I would sleep with Tegg. But I would marry
Terence Howard. Yeah. I mean he's like he's he's the
bad boy in both of those films. Um, but Christina
(18:16):
wants did you hear that world? Kristin wants to marry
the bad boys. I mean he's just like he's just
got a certain charm um that that I really enjoyed.
And there was an interview over at indie Wire with
the director of Um of the Best Man, who was
talking about how it's funny to him that it's always
categorized as a rom com, because he was like, no,
(18:40):
this isn't so much a rom com. It's just an
ensemble film for me. But simply because of how white Hollywood,
you know, so like narrowly interprets black film. Um, it's
it's got to be a romantic comedy because there is
some comedy in it and some rom and some rom
(19:01):
and plenty of calm remedy. Yes, well, Kristen, the year
after The Best Man came out in two thousand, you
get Love and Basketball and you said that there was
more you had to say about that. Oh I got
so much to say. So Love and Basketball stars sinal
Athan and also um Alfrey Woodard, Omar Epps all star cast,
and it's a coming of age story, which I love.
(19:25):
And it's also Caroline one of the most feminist films
I have ever seen, hands down, from the get go.
It does play on some tropes of the sporty girl
gets a makeover from her sister and you know, catches
the neighbor boy's eye because suddenly it's like, you know,
the the librarian taking her hair down kind of moment.
(19:47):
But Monica sinal Athan's character is so self possessed from
the get go, knowing that not only is she good
at basketball, that she is better than the boys at basketball,
and she's so regularly focused on her drive. She doesn't
care about looking pretty, she doesn't care about, you know,
all of these other girls who are trying to, you know,
(20:10):
hook up with her neighbor who she's secretly in love with,
played by Omar Epps Um. And there's just all of
these really fascinating relationships too, between Omar Epps and his father,
who is a retired professional basketball player, but also Monica
and her mother, who is a stay at home mom,
who have a lot of tension between them because she's
(20:33):
not conventionally like girly enough, you know. But it turns
out her mom thinks that she doesn't have respect for her,
you know, as a stay at home mother. And they're
just like, I don't know, they're they're all these feminist
themes that come up, and and a lot of conversations
that felt very familiar as just a girl who has
(20:54):
grown up um and a lot of themes that we've
talked about on stuff mom ever told you before, And
it just so happened that it started an all black cast. Yeah,
feminist is not normally a word you hear thrown around
when people are discussing romantic comedies. No, not at all,
not at all, um. And that's why I, honestly, Caroline,
(21:16):
I wanted to call you so many times as I
was watching it, but it was a Saturday, and uh,
because because I wanted that should be a movie that
we perhaps live podcast or tweet or mystery Science Theater
three thousand. It's somehow because I want to watch it
with you, to share this movie with you, because I
(21:37):
really love it so much. We get some popcorn, hang out,
some sodas, some sodas and checks. Yes. Um. So in
addition to that, of course, you have classics like two
thousand twos Black Sugar, you have waiting to exhale two
can play it that game the Wood. I also last
(22:00):
night I tried to watch Boomerang from Eddie Murphy also
Eddie Murphy Young Chris Brown, Young Halle Berry, and I
could not. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I couldn't
do it. Um, I switched. Actually, definitely not a feminist film.
(22:20):
I was gonna say, um it was. I bet it
has a little bit of payoff more towards the end,
but there is only so much of Eddie Murphy as
a womanizer that I could take. Although it also um
co stars Eartha Kit who does do her signature catwoman
growl at one point, which was enjoyable. But yeah, coming
(22:42):
to America much better than Boomerang, so much better. But
the interesting thing is, oh, speaking of our last rom
com series episode on Sidekicks, that's a movie where kind
of like when Harry met Sally two Sidekicks, David Allen
Greer and Hallie Berry end up getting together. Does that
(23:02):
further the plot? Caroline, I didn't get far enough. I couldn't.
I couldn't tell you I hadn't. I've literally switched over
to uh to white Ville on Netflix watching Lady Dynamites
during white Ville. Isn't Lady Dynamite good? It's pretty good
so far. We'll have to do another episode on that.
We won't. We won't be talking about that, but uh.
In our introductory episode to this summer series, Ntreamented Comedies,
(23:27):
we did mention the film Meet the Patels, which is
it's more like of a documentary style. It's it's not
straight rom com but we bring that up to illustrate
that there are so few romantic comedy esque films out there.
I mean, let alone for a black audience, but like,
let's talk about how Indian audiences are not exactly represented.
(23:51):
Asian audiences in general are not very well represented when
it comes to romantic comedies. But I would love to
see Meet the Patels from Jada Patel follows her brother
Robbie on his exploits to find the love of his life,
although it's more his parents finding the life. Yeah, yes,
arranged marriage. Um. In two thousand four, there was sort
(24:14):
of a Bollywood Hollywood mash up remake of Pride and
Prejudice called Bride and Prejudice, which also sounds like something
I need to watch immediately. Um. You also have twenty
thirteens for Is this the first Asian American rom com?
Yes in this country obviously, and we should say that
(24:35):
we're talking about there are like no other rom com
starring people of color made in Hollywood and right, yes,
that is a good thing to specify. Yes, this is
very very Hollywood and US specific. Although I believe Bride
and Prejudice was made in the UK, but it's still
counted in the list because part of it took place
(24:56):
in the US. Yes, they traveled to U. They also
travel to England, so there's a lot of like globe
hopping going on. So I love traveling. We'll traveling panes. Yes. Um.
But yeah the week at the Wedding Palace, which doesn't
look great. But a lot of the commenters on that
website that we were reading defended it, saying that the author,
(25:19):
being a white person, just didn't have the same like
contextual information about Korean rom comms and culture to appreciate it. Yeah,
and for fans of Margaret Show, she does have a
cameo role in that. Um. And you're right. It was
critically panned, which is a bummer because it was at
least marketed as the first Asian American rom com. And
(25:44):
there are parts of it look really enjoyable, um, but
also parts of it that make it look tough to
get through. They're like, almost one too many twists. It
seems like, well to m Night Shamalani, but romantic and funny.
It exactly a little to uh rom com shamalan Nice.
(26:05):
We're coining all sorts of things all over the place,
But one thing that jumped out in contemporary conversations around
Hollywood and rom coms is the question of whether the
genre itself is dying. For instance, in Vulture, over in
New York Magazine wanted to know whether the rom com
could even be saved from breaking up due to Hollywood
(26:28):
financing more blockbusters instead of one offs, because those big
Michael Bay blockbusters end up making more money internationally, so
they're more enticing. You also have just the formula itself
being a little bit stale because of the rising age
of marriage, the dating landscape being completely disrupted by technology,
(26:53):
and millennials being arguably more concerned about ourselves than finding
someone else to make us happily ever after, because it's like,
I mean, if we can post the right thing on
Instagram and go viral, like wow, why do we need
someone else? It's the era of self care. It's perfectly put. Yes, um,
(27:15):
but I mean certain certain things, Kristen are being ignored
in the conversation about rom coms going bust, and that
is the fact. Well, it's related to what you said
at the top of the podcast, with black audiences and
Hispanic audiences in this country paying per capita a ton
to go to the theater. That Vulture piece from twelve
(27:38):
pointed out that that year's highest grossing romantic comedy was
Kevin Harts Think Like a Man, which raked in nine million,
but they said, quote never truly broke out beyond its
predominantly African American target audience. But that's one of the
most marginalizing statements you could make about Think Like a Man, which, yes,
(28:00):
was based on the Steve Harvey book I Think Like
a Man. Take him my head um, because to brush
it aside simply because a lot of people of color
came out to the theater to see it says a
lot about the problem that Hollywood is in, not the
problem that the rom com genre is. In my mind,
because that ninety one million dollar box office Caroline knocked
(28:23):
Hunger Games off its top spot. Yeah, So the fact
that you have a film that is bringing in so
much money, it is so successful, why do you care
who's going to see it? Like you should just be
noting how much money it's bringing in and it is
therefore successful. But somehow it's discounted because it's bringing in
an audience that's made made up largely people of color.
(28:45):
It doesn't make any sense Hollywood. If we've learned anything
doing this podcast, one of the things that we've learned
is that Hollywood will fund the stuff that brings in money.
But is this an exception or I mean the dynamics
here are so confusing. I mean, well, it's all part
of cyclical marginalization based on this Hollywood idea that and
(29:10):
and and true to some extent that white people will
not go to see movies with black people, like those
stories are not for us, you know. And also there's
with that the snobbery of like, I mean those kinds
of movies, those aren't those aren't very good movies. Why
would we want to go see something like that? And
this is something that Indiana University telecom professor Andrew Jay
(29:33):
Weaver explored in the study the role of Actors Race
in White audiences selective exposure to movies. In other words,
Dr Weaver was looking at, you know, if if we
see too many people with dark skin on screen, will
white people just up and flee? And Weaver rights, it
(29:53):
becomes a vicious cycle. Producers are hesitant to cast minorities
and race neutral romantic roles be because of a fear
that the white audience will perceive the films as not
for them. But white audiences perceived romantic films with minorities
as not for them because they seldom see minorities in
race neutral romantic roles. And so then Hollywood get scared
(30:17):
about creating these, uh movies led by people of color, unless,
for instance, it's a known quantity, like a bankable star
Will Smith, A Whitney Houston. God, Whitney Houston in movies
is my favorite thing. I mean, I know, The Bodyguard
is a rom dram, not a rom com, but I
(30:39):
mean you've got that, You've got Waiting to exhale, You've
got the Preacher's wife. Oh god, what about Denzel? Has
Denzel starred in a rom com opposite a white female?
I don't think so, I don't know, but I mean
he's definitely like a mega movie star. He had that
He was the star in that admittedly terrible and not
because of him, but that airplane movie where he was
(31:02):
like the drunk pilot where and that's what it was called. Yeah,
which is totally I mean a huge movie star role
for for anyone. But um, yeah, I mean, I when
Hollywood does finally step on that step out on that
ledge it has to be with an actor actress who's
proven him or herself usually in music. Because you've also
(31:25):
got Queen Latifa, who's who's been successful in films, but
she's also been successful in music first. Same with Will
Smith saying with Whitney Houston well in j Lo Queen. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But there's so much more significance to this than just
Hollywood box office numbers, because this really is something we
should care about it because at their love and basketball best,
(31:49):
these are stories that we all of us need to see,
especially here in the United States, I would argue, because
there are stories of how black people love and that's
something that Chevandra Harris wrote about over at the Huffington's Post. Yeah,
I mean Harris refers to this as an overlooked aspect
(32:10):
of black culture. I mean, you know, Hunter Harris, writing
for anywyre In wrote that, you know, we've got slave
drama after slave drama coming out, and that's good. We
can't forget these things. We need the visibility of films
like Selma or Birth of a Nation absolutely, and that
gives roles to black actors, But like, where are the
(32:32):
films just showing us as as people? Normal people? Who
live normal lives and fallen and out of love like
anyone else. Yeah. Um, Chavandra Harris and that huff Pope
piece wrote with well rounded characters, big city backdrops, in
the perfect blend of drama, sex and comedy. They managed
to brilliantly capture the joyous pains and complexities and uniqueness
(32:54):
of Black men and women falling in, out and over love.
And that's so much contrast the kind of roles that
the Film Academy recognizes people of color for. And I
think it was Hunter Harris over at Indy Wier who
tallied up that nine of the ten black women ever
nominated for an OSCAR played a character who was either
(33:16):
homeless or on the verge of homelessness, and that thirteen
the twenty black OSCAR nominated actors played characters who had
been arrested. And more recently, I remember, I think it
was right after Sundance, when maybe it was Birth of
a Nation whatever. The Nat Turner um biopic that's coming
out received all of these rave reviews, and the sentiment
(33:40):
on Twitter was ya, because it's like, Okay, yes, these
are stories that need to be told, but can we
be shown as more than slaves please, um, And a
lot of this perpetuates the other ring of black relationships
(34:01):
and that kind of ordinary and extraordinary black love that
Hivandra Harris loves to see so much on screen. Um.
And this is going back to Hunter Harris at Indy
Wier who says that black relationships should be visible enough
to be ordinary and not always have happy endings. You
should be able to have a black Annie Hall or
(34:23):
a black five d Days of Summer. Um. That was
me adding that in there not Hunter Harris. Um. Although
who would the black Woody Allen be answer, I don't
want to know, because we don't need another Woody Allen Boom.
Harris goes on to say, there's no monolithic blackness, and
there ought to be more movies that appreciate that black
lives don't only matter, but contain multitudes. Black characters with
(34:45):
full romantic lives don't always need to end in a
punch line. And that's one of the reasons too, that
we are citing some more straight up ROMs than just
rom coms in this episode, and we're gonna look at
more of these tripe and formulas and caricature outlines that
exist in these romantic comedies. When we come right back
(35:06):
from a quick break, so Caroline, before we crack open, uh,
this genre. I want to make a note that of
the rom com scholarship that you and I have been loving,
(35:29):
a lot of them completely gloss over black romantic comedies. Yeah,
there was one paper that I could find, no two papers,
excuse me. There was one paper and one thesis that
I could find really examining black lead romantic comedies, even
in like the books, the full the books, fully published
hundreds of pages books, searching through them for citations and
(35:53):
explorations of the black rom com genre. Because do you
to the segregation of it, I would um describe it
as its own genre. There's nothing, there's like no acknowledgement.
It's like, yeah, you get so much scholarship on the
screwball era, the sex comedy era, and then as we
(36:15):
get into the seventies and eighties, like the nervous romances
and the like neo romantic comedy all starring white people,
completely ignoring that there is the parallel existence and flourishing
of black lead romantic comedies. Yeah, and like no history
that I could find, and listeners, if you, I know,
we have a lot of cinema buffs listening. If you
(36:36):
do know of a solid history of black rom coms,
please send it our way. I mean, you know, every
every black character that you had in the era of Screwball,
for instance, I mean the women were maids, the men
were like, if they were not some sort of servant
role character, they were going to be some like horrific
(37:00):
a trophy racist sidekick um who did nothing but allow
the main white character to make fun of him. So, yeah,
I would also be interested in a more academic take
on African Americans in romcom history. Yeah. One of the
earliest black lead rom coms that I could find discussed
(37:22):
at any length was nineteen seventy four's Claudine, starring Diane
Carroll and James Earl Jones Um, which people today take
issue with because it very much perpetuates the welfare queen
type of stereotype. But I couldn't find, yeah, any any
explanation or exposition on how more of those came to be,
(37:46):
because it seems like then from there, the nineteen seventy
four From there you get Eddie Murphy, who becomes so
popular that he can start making his own films, and
then you get Spike Lee. It's like, I guess maybe
it is the Spike Lee school of thought of like, well,
we just have to start making the films that we
want to see us in them. Yeah, And I mean
you do have Gregory Hines in there. You have that
(38:06):
quote from him that you sent me where he said,
when I got to be fifteen or sixteen years old,
I noticed that I wasn't represented. There weren't any black
people up there making love. That's from that Jet magazine article.
And I guess, yeah, I mean, I unless people can
can give us some more info, it does seem like
it's an issue of we've got to get these things
(38:27):
made ourselves. Well. It's very reflective of our conversation about
black female directors and filmmakers who are continually shut down
by the big machine Hollywood and just have to kind
of self fund um and indie make their films. But
thankfully we do have Karen Boudre of Indiana University, who
(38:50):
is a semiologist who has analyzed in depth the black
rom com genre, and she looked at how the typical
boy meat s girl, boy loses girl and then does
everything he can to regain the girl or girl regang
guy formula is often readjusted in black lead films, starting
with meat cutes. Those are not usually seen as much
(39:14):
in black rom coms because a lot of times the
romantic relationships are already established when we meet those leads,
so there isn't a ton of the development of the
falling in love necessarily and where so many of the
romantic comedy trips that we've discussed previously have revolved around
the withholding of sex, sex being this abstract future thing
(39:36):
that we never see, but that creates all of this
delicious tension. Bodre writes about how sex commonly either has
already happened in the black rom com couple's existence, or
it's something that happens like on the first date. We
also tend to see less emotional vulnerability from leading ladies,
(39:56):
who are often tougher than her white counterpart arts and
to that point, Black Hollywood producer Rodney Barnes, who has
made The Boondocks and Everybody Hates Chris, told I believe
it was the l a times that quote women are
painted as problematic and undesirable characters only seeking helpmates to
raise their child, and all their male counterpart has to
(40:19):
do is be sexy with no intelligence or moral values.
He simply has to take his shirt off, glisten, and
wait for the end credits. So it sounds like we
have some some issues here with this kind of rom
com formula, which Professor Boadrey says is really the long
(40:40):
shadow of racism being reflected on screen because we have
seen historically the comical devaluing and hyper sexualizing of black bodies.
So as a result, Boadre writes that, quote, black characters
are denied mature relationships that are culture revers and thus
the access such relation and ships bring to achieving heroic
(41:02):
or human status. And that's a pretty like grim portrayal
of things. Um. There are some who just think that
this different type of rom com formula that we're likelier
to see in black lad films just more accurately reflects
how people of color approach dating and love a little
(41:23):
bit differently. Um, But especially when you do look at, um,
the stereotypes that pop up in a lot of black
rom comms and the type of calm that you find
in the rom and the ratio of calm to rom
to dram to dram. Uh, it's hard to argue against,
(41:45):
you know, bo Boudre's theory that there is that long
shadow of racism, as she calls it, on the devaluing
of black bodies right and reinforcing stereotypes about hyper sexuality
of black people, or will in the stereotype type here,
the Jezebel, the Sapphire, what have you, that black women
(42:05):
are either going to be sassy, they're going to be angry,
they're going to be over sexed, you know, the cold independent,
the black version of the cold independent. Sandra Bullock in
like the proposal, and there was a piece over at
Bitch Media that was taking issue with the stereotyping of
(42:25):
women in black rom coms, um and like you said,
putting them kind of into those buckets of a Jezebel
temptress or the angry, emasculating Sapphire. Um, who Shelby in
the Best Man Franchise definitely embodies. Um. You also have
(42:46):
the matriarch who would also be Mia, I would argue
in the Best Man franchise, as well as uh, the
welfare queen. And while yes, those can be probably about stereotypes,
I do wonder if it's not also just a product
of just rom coms in general, because there's so much,
(43:08):
so much stereotyping. We've super tropy, yeah that we've talked
about of white leading characters as well. Yeah, and so
much of rom coms in general. So much of their
formula is I mean literally being formulaic. It's it's presenting
you with these outlines that you can easily recognize, so
it doesn't require hours of backstory and exposition. You just know, like, okay,
(43:33):
so I'm supposed to think that she's the slutty one
and he's the player, and like she's the cold career woman,
And that allows you to quickly move through the plot
and not have to be too confused about why these
two people are falling in love because you just know
from the get go. Oh well we just know they're
supposed to end up together. Yeah, I mean, and well
(43:54):
I just said two seconds ago, well like, well kind
of two wrongs make a right thing of like, well,
white ladies or stereotyped and rom comes to but of
course they don't come with all of that racist and
hyper sexualized baggage like in white rom coms. Even an
ice Queen is like tacitly permitted love. We still expect
(44:18):
to see Sandra Bullock in the Proposal, who I feel
like we've talked about more than anybody else in this series.
We still are fine with her falling in love, whereas
it might not be quite the same when you're playing
around with these more racist stereotypes, because Boadre says that
compared to black female protagonists, um, white ladies are usually
(44:42):
permitted more vulnerability, They're allowed to kind of evaluate the
qualities of their ideal mates and pick and choose more. Um.
She says, they're hedgemotic notions of black womanhood that portrayed
them as over sexualized and strong to the point of isolation.
Not to mention that some people are concerned that a
(45:04):
lot of the calm that you might see more of
a black lead rom com plays up the racist stereotypes
of just black foolishness as well. So it's like, well,
what are we really what are we really serving up here? Um?
Although again I would say that white lead rom coms
aren't flawless either. But again then you come back to
(45:28):
but racism. But racism, well yeah, but racism and also taboos.
I mean we mentioned misgenation and people's misgivings about interracial romances.
I mean, take a movie like Hitch. You know, we
we did mention this in our last episode, but you know,
Will Smith, a black man stars opposite even Mendez, And
(45:53):
that was rather on purpose because Will Smith broke it
down in an article in an interview where he basically said, uh,
you know, if I were to star opposite a black woman,
that would have been okay elsewhere in the world, but
not in the US, because then it would have been
a black comedy. If I had started opposite a white woman,
(46:14):
that also would have been okay in other parts of
the world, but not in the US because we're apparently
not there yet. So they got even Mendez, who's beautiful
brown but not too dark, and she's not black, and
hopefully this makes it universal, as all of the executives
were saying with their fingers crossed. Yeah. Smith even went
on to say that quote ironically, Hollywood is happy to
(46:35):
do it, I e. Like pairing up a black man
and a woman romantically if the film is about racism,
but they won't simply do it and ignore it. So
it was actually a really big deal when the comedy
thriller Focus came out. Not necessarily a rom Crom rom
Crom maybe more of a rom crom because they had
(46:56):
crime in it. Um. But it starred Will Smith opposite
Margot Roby, and it was the very first time Will
Smith got sexy with a white lady on screen. And
there was a piece in the Daily Beast all about
how racists we're freaking out about the movies quote unquote
(47:21):
race mixing. Oh come on, that was from um so
uh and Spike Lee two has said that interracial relationships
on screen are still like the number one taboo in Hollywood. Um.
But in terms of this, like j Lo is a
really interesting character to look at and one that Caitlin
(47:45):
Mortimer in her thesis Romantic Comedy examined. Yeah, j Loo
is interesting because she is allowed, so to speak, to
have interracial romances in Hollywood. But it's because she's like
safely ethnic. She's also one of those known quantities that
we mentioned earlier. She proved her popularity as a singer,
(48:05):
as a dancer, as a general entertainer, and so people
seem to have less of a problem with her romancing
people like Matthew McConaughey or Refines. But also considering the
historic hyper sexualization and fear of black men praying on
white women. Is it any wonder that it took until
(48:28):
for one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, who
also happens to be black, too, star romantically opposite a
white woman. I mean, that's how strong that racism is,
and that even even then there were concerns of race mixing.
I mean, I think that that taboo of a of
a black man opposite a white female romantic lead is
(48:53):
the biggest taboo of all because it confronts all of
those fears, which is shout out to the small screen.
One of the reasons why I really do love Broad
City oh so much for Alana and Lincoln's inter racial romance,
which I think Alana Glazer would like spittake if she
heard it described as an interracial romance um between her
(49:17):
and Hannibal Barris. But it's fantastic because it's just they
just like each other, like it is what it is.
There's no um. There doesn't have to be commentary or explanation,
exactly as I wish we would see from a rom com. Well, yeah,
because that's how real life is. Real life and real
(49:38):
love is. Sure, it's messy and complicated, but also once
you fall in love with somebody it's really no, no
big deal. Well in one movie I want to see that.
I do think it is more wrong than rom com
that came up a lot in things we were reading
about interracial romances on screen was Something New starring Sina
(49:58):
Latham who fall in love with a white gardener. Um.
He played by some handsome guy with like scruffy blonde
hair and crinkly blue eyes. You'd recognize him if you
saw him. Um, but apparently it's really good. I remember
seeing the previous when it first came out and rolled
my eyes a little bit. But apparently it's actually a
(50:20):
good example of kind of confronting those taboos. It is
pretty crazy, and I think that what willis Edwards that
former president of the Beverly Hills in a c P
said in that Jet magazine article still stands. And why
can't Hollywood seem to catch up to so much of
(50:41):
the rest of the country because they do still have
to play too, as he said Peoria and Mississippi, that
you still have so many people who are going to
vote with their dollars or vote by being awful on
Twitter about how they will not go see plotlines like that. Yeah,
but yeah, and um, I think maybe a sign of
(51:04):
our true cultural progress will be um when black rom
coms are just rom coms. The first thing that came
to mind as you were also saying that Caroline was
the movie Dope, which was so good you've only seen
bits and pieces of. But wouldn't it count as a
rom com kind of sort? I mean there's a romantic interest, Yeah,
(51:24):
I mean, but it's a great It's just a great movie,
and it was, and it was marketed as a mainstream
movie even though it had a black leading cast. Yeah,
it's funny because I literally never saw it marketed or
advertised or anything. I just my boyfriend and I watched
it on HBO. See. Also, man, technology is going to
change things, because you're right, Caroline, we advertising is even changing.
(51:48):
I don't. I don't see commercials for movies ever anymore
at all. So I don't even know what's coming out.
And that's funny because the first time I became aware
of Dope was because like one of those the posters
um on a like an abandoned building across the street
from a brunch place I was at, which Hi, did
(52:09):
I mention that I'm so white? Um? But now, listeners,
we really want to hear from you on this because
there there's so much in here to talk about, and
so many films that we didn't even have time to mention.
So we want to know your favorites and curious to
know your thoughts on the segregation of rom comms and
(52:32):
the marginalization of black rom comms in particular, and whether
we can ever kind of get over that, or if
we even should get over that. Mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or message es
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. I read I've got a
(52:57):
letter here from Mary Rose. She says a huge fan
of the podcast and especially loved your recent episode on
women in political campaigns. My first job out of college
was managing a state Senate race, and while it remains
one of my favorite jobs to date, it was also
an incredibly eye opening experience into everyday sexism. As campaign manager,
I worked more on political strategy and press relations than
(53:17):
on fundraising or field operations for which I hired staff.
Despite this, I was often confused for either my boss's
wife or his daughter when I attended events with him.
He was forty one at the time and I was
twenty two. Somebody even gave either drink order at a
campaign event once. As you discussed on the podcast, there
were also some misconceptions in general weirdness due to the
(53:37):
fact that I was a young woman working for a
middle aged male candidate, while my boss was as appropriate
and professional as they come. When I was first offered
the job, my boyfriend at the time suggested it was
because my boss had other intentions. Note he didn't remain
my boyfriend for long. I now work on pay equity,
and I've given a lot of thought to compensation on
political campaigns. I was fortunate to work for two elected
(54:01):
officials my first boss, as well as a female candidate,
who paid me very fairly, But the majority of my
friends who have worked on campaigns have done so for
free or for next to nothing, especially at the U. S.
Senate and presidential campaign levels. As you pointed out during
the episode, this hugely affects the demographic makeup of campaigns
and legislative offices, which in turn makes for policies that
(54:22):
don't represent the American electorate. The gender disparity in campaign
rules also exacerbates the wage gap for years to come,
considering that many of these campaign staffers will go on
to lateral positions in the Canada Legislative Office. Thank you
for highlighting many of the challenges facing women on political
campaigns and for discussing the implications of pay inequality in politics.
(54:44):
And well, thank you for writing in Mary Rose. Well,
I've got a letter here from Ben who says we
can also refer to him as Ben from Seattle. So
Ben writes, longtime listener, and I typically dig your work,
but I have to take you to task about the
Hillary in an episode, and specifically the comments made about
the quote no room for fear. One of you made
(55:07):
a connection between that quote and transphobic bathroom bills, and
I'm sorry. I think that's entirely unreasonable and and undermines
the very real historical record which shows her lack of leadership,
especially when it comes to fear. Please keep in mind
that both Bill and Hillary's political record on gay and
trans rights. It's absolutely detestable, and Hillary did not publicly
(55:27):
support full equality for gay Americans until very recently, and
anything else but full equality would be second class citizenship
and unconstitutional right. More to the point, fear is what
drove this country to an unnecessary war with Iraq, and
Clinton voted in favor of that war. Her voting record
is the same for the Patriot Act, another example of
how she is perfectly comfortable making room for fear to
(55:50):
advance questionable domestic and international policy. Could you please revisit
this issue and address this point. Indeed, Hillary Clinton's accomplishments
are outstanding and very impressive, but let's not pretend her
life as a fairy tale. She has made very serious
mistakes and needs to be held accountable. Firstly, I don't
see her as a leader. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand,
is definitely a textbook example of a leader. Perhaps she
(56:12):
should put a show together about her. So, Ben, thank
you for your thoughts. And Elizabeth Warren is a total
badass and she would be really fun to put an
episode on. I also think it's worth noting that we
stopped the episode so there is I agree Ben that
(56:33):
we we left out a lot and a lot of
people have written in you know, it's asking why we
didn't talk about ben Ghazzi and the emails, for instance,
But we made a very specific decision to address her
for lack of a better word, her quote unquote young
life leading up to when she first landed in the
(56:54):
White House, which was in ninety two. So obviously a
lot has happened since then, in including some questionable voting
records and some questionable support behind some policies, but that
will have to be for another episode. Yeah, I mean,
uh t L d R. There wasn't enough time, but Ben,
kudos to you for being informed and engaged, and thank
(57:18):
you for listening, Um and listeners. As always, if you
have thoughts to share with us, mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is where you can send your letters.
You can also tweet us at mom stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook and for links all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more about
rom coms and people of color, head on over to
(57:40):
stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. VI is it how
stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your production of I Heart Radio. So, Samantha,
we have been talking a lot about romance during this
February month, and in fact, we've had recent episodes on
(00:28):
women in Romance that had to become a two parter
because we had so much to say, so much to say,
and there's a lot more that could be said. In fact,
I know that you like rom commes. Have you kind
of always liked them? I think I do gravitate towards them,
but I don't know if I've always always liked them.
(00:49):
There's definitely hits and misses, and as I've gotten older,
I've watched less and less, but definitely I had the
classics that I would worked back to ye from like
a young age. Uh. I'm trying to think, because I mean,
if you look at like young stories or teen stories,
there's a lot of like romance ish Like in the
Green Gables one of my favorite movies, technically romance. They
(01:12):
grow up together. It's a coming of age story, but
it's her and Gilbert, you know, like like whether he
teases her throughout and then as she's an adult trying
to find that and in the second one, she has
his whirlwind romance with a very debonair you know, upper
class dude. Mm hmmm, so yeah, I mean, I guess
that's a romance. But it's one of my favorite movies.
(01:33):
Princess Ride always in one of my favorite movies, So
I guess. So yeah. And if you look at all
the Disney cartoons, yes that is true. We didn't really
talk about that, but a lot of the things we
grew up on in the in terms of those Disney
fairy sales, are romances. Uh uh huh. Well, yeah, I
(01:54):
don't really have that much experience with these things that
we talked about, but on this show we have discussed
at length, and in fact, past host Kristen and Caroline
did a four part series on rom comms and some
of the troops in them and some of the more
problematic troops in them, and we've rerun some of those already,
(02:14):
but if you want to go listen to them, they're
out there, and we want to rerun a classic episode
on black romantic comedies, So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never Told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
(02:37):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and this is part four of our series on romantic comedies,
and today we're gonna bust a rom comm myth that
only white people fall in love. Who knew? Who knew? Yeah,
we're looking at rom coms of color, you could call them,
(03:00):
really focusing though on black romantic comedies. And one of
the most stunning things to realize in reading for this episode, Caroline,
is how romantic comedies are one of, if not the
most segregated genres in Hollywood. Oh yeah, for sure, it's
(03:21):
it's romantic comedies starring black people are hardly marketed to
the white audience because so many people in Hollywood at
the executive level just assume that white audiences will not
be interested. But it creates that horrific loop of like, oh, well,
(03:42):
they're not marketing it to us, so I never developed
an interest in it, so I'm never gonna go see it,
And that just reinforces the executives assumptions that, oh, we'll
see larger audiences aren't going to go see these quote
unquote black romantic comedies, whereas rom coms starring white people,
of course, are not called white raw comms. They're called
mainstream right white people. Yes, white people are referred to
(04:05):
as mainstream audiences. Yeah. I mean even though, and this
is a whole other tangent that we don't really need
to get into. But if you just look at the
per capita ticket sales of who goes to see movies,
African Americans and Latinos per capita like by far more
(04:26):
movie tickets than so called mainstream audiences. So the whole
you know, all these marketing arguments I think are a
bit of a stretch sometimes. Um. But if we even
look at inter racial rom comms or romances, because some
of these movies were going to talk about kind of
straddle that line between rom com or just straight up romance. Um.
(04:47):
But even today, inter racial films, inter racial romances, whether
comedic or not, are considered taboo. Yah. Um. And I
think a good way to get into this conversation is
if we go to a Jet magazine piece from nineteen
ninety that really spelled out this issue. Um, it was
(05:10):
called why Blacks don't get romantic roles in movies? So
it's been years since I've seen Guess Who's coming to
dinner with Sydney Portier. Also, I can't remember the lead
actress's name, but her parents are played by Katherine Hepburn
and Spencer Tracy, classic romcom couple. So it's such a
(05:30):
great movie. But Sydney Portier was not permitted. His character
was not permitted to kiss, touch, caress, hug anything his fiancee. Yeah.
So that goes all the way back to the Hollywood Code,
I think enacted in four an anti missig nation rule,
essentially saying that people who do not have the same
(05:53):
skin color can not caress or kiss um. And this
was one reason, as we talked about in our episode
on the stereotyping and exotic sizing of Asian women, one
reason why a silver screen actress, Annime Wong was never
really able to break through and get all these leading
(06:16):
roles because per Hollywood rules, she could never kiss a
white man on screen. Yeah. So that was the Haze
Code that we talked about in our first episode. And
the reason that those uh like segregated couples rules ended
up embedded in the Haze Code was that the majority
(06:37):
of states in this country still had those antimsigenation laws
and so they weren't going to have their movies breaking
state laws, i e. They wanted to make as much
money as they possibly could, and if they risked showing
a movie in a state that would be against that,
then they'd lose money. And it's for that reason that
in the film Fatal Beauty, Whoopie Goldberg claimed that love
(07:03):
scene between her and co star Sam Elliott was cut
because of studio racism, because it would be too racy
to show those two having sex. But she made the
great point in that article. She was quoted in that
Job Magazine article is saying if he had put money
on the table at the end of our sexual encounter,
they would have left the clip in which is such
an indictment of Hollywood racism, but so true, so accurate
(07:28):
to people who just are attracted to each other having sex,
that's not okay if they're of a different race. But
oh if it were a prostitution scene, like we'll let
a black lady have sex with a white dude, well,
and even if it is, you know, two people of
color having sex. Willis Edwards, who was the former president
of the Beverly Hills a c P chapter, told Jet
(07:50):
Magazine that Hollywood has never wanted us to have love interests.
They feel it won't sell in Peoria or in Mississippi
were looked upon as comedians, not as p bowl who
have families and intimacy. Yeah, and we saw that, you know,
in our last episode on Sidekicks, that you get the
token black character who's typically two dimensional, some kind of
(08:10):
either sassy woman or spiritual guide of some kind, rather
than getting the actual three dimensional character treatment. Yeah. And
it was actually for that reason that Spike Lee made
the films Is She's Got to Have It in nine
nineties Mobida Blues because he figured that the only way
(08:33):
to change that situation was to just make the films
that he wanted to see. Um. And of course there
are black romantic comedies, there are black romances, um. But
the the segregation of the whole thing is really it's
just stunning to be over and over again because before
(08:55):
reading up for this episode and I am about to
show my whiteness, I'm even wearing a white button down
dress listeners, which is appropriate because I was not aware
of the depth and critical range of the black rom
com cannon that exists. And it's because when I had
(09:18):
been seeing, you know, showing those movies, it's like, oh, well,
those that's a black rom com. Okay, it's like we
we grow up you and are are white women. We
probably did not grow up watching black romantic comedies. Um.
In the same way, I have a feeling that there
are plenty of you know, women of color who are like, yeah,
I didn't grow up watching notting Hill and my best
friend's wedding. Um. But this episode for me was a
(09:44):
revelation in just how just how racist Hollywood is. Yeah.
I mean the only black romance I grew up watching
was how stelic At a groove Back, which is I
would not classify that as a rom com. But but
I think romance in this com vote though. Some romances
are going to count just because those kinds of movies
(10:05):
are so significant. Because hel Stella got her groove Back
definitely crossed into quote unquote mainstream audiences, right exactly. You're
the mainstream Caroline, Little Caroline. I'm the mainstream now dog. Um,
And so it makes sense that the roots. Kelly Goff
was super not happy. But when she saw New York
(10:25):
Magazine's list of the top twenty five rom coms that
had come out since when Harry met Sally and saw
that it didn't contain a single black lead film, and
not only did it not contain a single black lead
romantic comedy, but the reasoning for that that was provided
by the two white guy critics who wrote the list
is so ridiculous and and Goff appropriately skewers them for this.
(10:52):
So they basically said, or they did say, quote their movies,
this list needs. We have a couple of LGBT rom
coms on there, but we wish there could be more.
And while African American rom coms, as exemplified in films
like The Best Man in Waiting to Exhale and About
Last Night have thrived during this time, we couldn't agree
on any titles we felt were strong enough to warrant
(11:13):
inclusion on this list. And Golf is like, are you
kidding me? It never occurred to you, Uh, two white
guys who were like, I don't know how to pick
a black rom com, So I'm just not going to
talk about to maybe ask a woman or a person
of color for ideas. Yeah, um, or consider the fact
(11:34):
that maybe maybe just one Adam Sandler Drew Barrymore rom
com is enough, because No, Fifty First States is not
one of the best rom coms that has come out ever.
Since when Harry Met maybe one of the worst movies.
They also listed her, which feels like a stretch, and
also I Love You Philip Morris, which again it's like, okay,
(11:57):
in what way is her a better rom com than
The Best Man? Which, yes, listeners, I spent this weekend
watching The Best Man and The Best Man Holiday, and
let me tell you what a delight both of them were.
Because A. T. Diggs does follow suff I've never told
(12:19):
you on Twitter, and I kept just wanting to tweet
him how much I was really enjoying his film because
you just get to see day Diggs shirtless a lot,
but also Morris chestnut shirtless a lot. Um, there's just
a lot of really uh really handsome chests and jawlines
and those movies. But um, my objectifying, my sexual objectifying aside,
(12:45):
they were just really enjoyable ensemble films. Um, so yeah,
just seeing seeing that was they I mean, the fact
that there were no black lead rom coms in this list,
Like I said, it's bad enough, but to come out
and say, like, don't you hear yourself talking? Is my
(13:07):
question to these gentlemen, Like don't you hear the words
that you just said? Why don't you ask someone or
go watch them? Well, and it perpetuates the myth that
there are no good black rom com Yeah. Well, and
also it just perpetuates the point of view of the
white man being the norm, being the standard, because yeah,
(13:31):
like maybe they Okay, so maybe these guys did watch
a bunch of black lead romantic comedies. But if your
baseline for what is normal, good, funny, whatever, is only
ever going to be Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, like,
maybe maybe it's time to as critics and just as
consumers of media to broaden your horizon. Well, and a
(13:52):
lot of it speaks to just the marginalization of black
lead films, which is something that we've talked about before.
In our episode it on black female film directors. Shout
out to Gina Blythe Prince in Love and Basketball by
the Way, which I also watched, Um, And I will
get to it in a second, Caroline, because I have
a lot of thoughts, um, But I have a feeling
(14:14):
there is this mainstream notion that black comedy is exclusive
only to Tyler Perry today, and that it is comedy
that is inaccessible and unrelatable to white audiences and is
um and and that is as good as it gets,
(14:35):
which really couldn't be farther from the truth, especially when
we're talking about classic rom coms, because surprise, surprise, other
white listeners. If we look at the mainstream heyday, the
white heyday of rom comms, starting with when Harry Met
Sally and into the nineties, you have a similar kind
(14:58):
of heyday happen ing in black lead rom coms as well,
or just some more rom with a little bit of
calm but more rom Yeah. And so you know, when
Harry met Sally came out launches the nineties modern neo
romantic comedy. A year before that, though, you have one
of my favorite romantic comedies in the world, Night Coming
(15:25):
to America with Eddie Murphy and his sidekick Arseneo Hall.
So good. It's got the it's the full I mean,
it's a full romantic comedy. It's got the happy ending,
it's got the the masquerade, the deception. Uh. And it's
a it's absolutely a black lead film. And see why
(15:46):
then is Coming to America, which I agree is absolutely hilarious. Um,
it's peak Eddie Murphy. Um. Why is that not in
those lists that are all over the Internet. I don't know,
because it's literally it fulfills just about every trope for
better worse that there is that's discussed in all the
(16:09):
rom com academia. I think it's because we have this
idea that a romantic comedy is inherently a white film.
I would agree, And you can have a white comedian
in a romantic comedy leading role and it's still a
mainstream romantic comedy. But you have a black comedian leading
a black lead romantic comedy and it becomes like a
(16:31):
black comedy or just a just a comedy rather than
what it is, which is a true romantic comedy. Well,
in one of those classics of the black lead rom
coms that I could not find anywhere on the Internet
to watch, which I'm really disappointed about, is Love Jones
from because it's sited over and over and over again
(16:53):
as the holy grail of black rom coms. Um, but
I couldn't find it listeners. I to be honest with you,
so I have not seen it. Um. But I did
watch The Best Man and of course then I had
to watch the follow up, The Best Man Holiday, um,
and also watched Love and Basketball and with all of these.
(17:13):
You see this uh familiar cast of romcom leads in
the same way that you see the uh Meg Ryan's
and Julia Roberts and Hugh Grants of White films with
Sna Lathan, Nil Long, Gabrielle Union, Morris Chestnut again, Ta Digs,
(17:34):
Ta Diggs forever? Um, are you gonna get that tattooed? H? Well,
you know what, after watching The Best Man The Best
Man Holiday, Um, if I had to play um uh
bang Mary kill with Morris Chestnuts, take Diggs and Terence Howard. Um,
(17:55):
I I think I would, Oh man, I would want
to look at Morris Chestnut for a really long time
and then but did I'd have to kill him and
then I would sleep with Tegg. But I would marry
Terence Howard. Yeah. I mean he's like he's he's the
bad boy in both of those films. Um, but Christina
(18:16):
wants did you hear that world? Kristin wants to marry
the bad boys. I mean he's just like he's just
got a certain charm um that that I really enjoyed.
And there was an interview over at indie Wire with
the director of Um of the Best Man, who was
talking about how it's funny to him that it's always
categorized as a rom com, because he was like, no,
(18:40):
this isn't so much a rom com. It's just an
ensemble film for me. But simply because of how white Hollywood,
you know, so like narrowly interprets black film. Um, it's
it's got to be a romantic comedy because there is
some comedy in it and some rom and some rom
(19:01):
and plenty of calm remedy. Yes, well, Kristen, the year
after The Best Man came out in two thousand, you
get Love and Basketball and you said that there was
more you had to say about that. Oh I got
so much to say. So Love and Basketball stars sinal
Athan and also um Alfrey Woodard, Omar Epps all star cast,
and it's a coming of age story, which I love.
(19:25):
And it's also Caroline one of the most feminist films
I have ever seen, hands down, from the get go.
It does play on some tropes of the sporty girl
gets a makeover from her sister and you know, catches
the neighbor boy's eye because suddenly it's like, you know,
the the librarian taking her hair down kind of moment.
(19:47):
But Monica sinal Athan's character is so self possessed from
the get go, knowing that not only is she good
at basketball, that she is better than the boys at basketball,
and she's so regularly focused on her drive. She doesn't
care about looking pretty, she doesn't care about, you know,
all of these other girls who are trying to, you know,
(20:10):
hook up with her neighbor who she's secretly in love with,
played by Omar Epps Um. And there's just all of
these really fascinating relationships too, between Omar Epps and his father,
who is a retired professional basketball player, but also Monica
and her mother, who is a stay at home mom,
who have a lot of tension between them because she's
(20:33):
not conventionally like girly enough, you know. But it turns
out her mom thinks that she doesn't have respect for her,
you know, as a stay at home mother. And they're
just like, I don't know, they're they're all these feminist
themes that come up, and and a lot of conversations
that felt very familiar as just a girl who has
(20:54):
grown up um and a lot of themes that we've
talked about on stuff mom ever told you before, And
it just so happened that it started an all black cast. Yeah,
feminist is not normally a word you hear thrown around
when people are discussing romantic comedies. No, not at all,
not at all, um. And that's why I, honestly, Caroline,
(21:16):
I wanted to call you so many times as I
was watching it, but it was a Saturday, and uh,
because because I wanted that should be a movie that
we perhaps live podcast or tweet or mystery Science Theater
three thousand. It's somehow because I want to watch it
with you, to share this movie with you, because I
(21:37):
really love it so much. We get some popcorn, hang out,
some sodas, some sodas and checks. Yes. Um. So in
addition to that, of course, you have classics like two
thousand twos Black Sugar, you have waiting to exhale two
can play it that game the Wood. I also last
(22:00):
night I tried to watch Boomerang from Eddie Murphy also
Eddie Murphy Young Chris Brown, Young Halle Berry, and I
could not. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I couldn't
do it. Um, I switched. Actually, definitely not a feminist film.
(22:20):
I was gonna say, um it was. I bet it
has a little bit of payoff more towards the end,
but there is only so much of Eddie Murphy as
a womanizer that I could take. Although it also um
co stars Eartha Kit who does do her signature catwoman
growl at one point, which was enjoyable. But yeah, coming
(22:42):
to America much better than Boomerang, so much better. But
the interesting thing is, oh, speaking of our last rom
com series episode on Sidekicks, that's a movie where kind
of like when Harry met Sally two Sidekicks, David Allen
Greer and Hallie Berry end up getting together. Does that
(23:02):
further the plot? Caroline, I didn't get far enough. I couldn't.
I couldn't tell you I hadn't. I've literally switched over
to uh to white Ville on Netflix watching Lady Dynamites
during white Ville. Isn't Lady Dynamite good? It's pretty good
so far. We'll have to do another episode on that.
We won't. We won't be talking about that, but uh.
In our introductory episode to this summer series, Ntreamented Comedies,
(23:27):
we did mention the film Meet the Patels, which is
it's more like of a documentary style. It's it's not
straight rom com but we bring that up to illustrate
that there are so few romantic comedy esque films out there.
I mean, let alone for a black audience, but like,
let's talk about how Indian audiences are not exactly represented.
(23:51):
Asian audiences in general are not very well represented when
it comes to romantic comedies. But I would love to
see Meet the Patels from Jada Patel follows her brother
Robbie on his exploits to find the love of his life,
although it's more his parents finding the life. Yeah, yes,
arranged marriage. Um. In two thousand four, there was sort
(24:14):
of a Bollywood Hollywood mash up remake of Pride and
Prejudice called Bride and Prejudice, which also sounds like something
I need to watch immediately. Um. You also have twenty
thirteens for Is this the first Asian American rom com?
Yes in this country obviously, and we should say that
(24:35):
we're talking about there are like no other rom com
starring people of color made in Hollywood and right, yes,
that is a good thing to specify. Yes, this is
very very Hollywood and US specific. Although I believe Bride
and Prejudice was made in the UK, but it's still
counted in the list because part of it took place
(24:56):
in the US. Yes, they traveled to U. They also
travel to England, so there's a lot of like globe
hopping going on. So I love traveling. We'll traveling panes. Yes. Um.
But yeah the week at the Wedding Palace, which doesn't
look great. But a lot of the commenters on that
website that we were reading defended it, saying that the author,
(25:19):
being a white person, just didn't have the same like
contextual information about Korean rom comms and culture to appreciate it. Yeah,
and for fans of Margaret Show, she does have a
cameo role in that. Um. And you're right. It was
critically panned, which is a bummer because it was at
least marketed as the first Asian American rom com. And
(25:44):
there are parts of it look really enjoyable, um, but
also parts of it that make it look tough to
get through. They're like, almost one too many twists. It
seems like, well to m Night Shamalani, but romantic and funny.
It exactly a little to uh rom com shamalan Nice.
(26:05):
We're coining all sorts of things all over the place,
But one thing that jumped out in contemporary conversations around
Hollywood and rom coms is the question of whether the
genre itself is dying. For instance, in Vulture, over in
New York Magazine wanted to know whether the rom com
could even be saved from breaking up due to Hollywood
(26:28):
financing more blockbusters instead of one offs, because those big
Michael Bay blockbusters end up making more money internationally, so
they're more enticing. You also have just the formula itself
being a little bit stale because of the rising age
of marriage, the dating landscape being completely disrupted by technology,
(26:53):
and millennials being arguably more concerned about ourselves than finding
someone else to make us happily ever after, because it's like,
I mean, if we can post the right thing on
Instagram and go viral, like wow, why do we need
someone else? It's the era of self care. It's perfectly put. Yes, um,
(27:15):
but I mean certain certain things, Kristen are being ignored
in the conversation about rom coms going bust, and that
is the fact. Well, it's related to what you said
at the top of the podcast, with black audiences and
Hispanic audiences in this country paying per capita a ton
to go to the theater. That Vulture piece from twelve
(27:38):
pointed out that that year's highest grossing romantic comedy was
Kevin Harts Think Like a Man, which raked in nine million,
but they said, quote never truly broke out beyond its
predominantly African American target audience. But that's one of the
most marginalizing statements you could make about Think Like a Man, which, yes,
(28:00):
was based on the Steve Harvey book I Think Like
a Man. Take him my head um, because to brush
it aside simply because a lot of people of color
came out to the theater to see it says a
lot about the problem that Hollywood is in, not the
problem that the rom com genre is. In my mind,
because that ninety one million dollar box office Caroline knocked
(28:23):
Hunger Games off its top spot. Yeah, So the fact
that you have a film that is bringing in so
much money, it is so successful, why do you care
who's going to see it? Like you should just be
noting how much money it's bringing in and it is
therefore successful. But somehow it's discounted because it's bringing in
an audience that's made made up largely people of color.
(28:45):
It doesn't make any sense Hollywood. If we've learned anything
doing this podcast, one of the things that we've learned
is that Hollywood will fund the stuff that brings in money.
But is this an exception or I mean the dynamics
here are so confusing. I mean, well, it's all part
of cyclical marginalization based on this Hollywood idea that and
(29:10):
and and true to some extent that white people will
not go to see movies with black people, like those
stories are not for us, you know. And also there's
with that the snobbery of like, I mean those kinds
of movies, those aren't those aren't very good movies. Why
would we want to go see something like that? And
this is something that Indiana University telecom professor Andrew Jay
(29:33):
Weaver explored in the study the role of Actors Race
in White audiences selective exposure to movies. In other words,
Dr Weaver was looking at, you know, if if we
see too many people with dark skin on screen, will
white people just up and flee? And Weaver rights, it
(29:53):
becomes a vicious cycle. Producers are hesitant to cast minorities
and race neutral romantic roles be because of a fear
that the white audience will perceive the films as not
for them. But white audiences perceived romantic films with minorities
as not for them because they seldom see minorities in
race neutral romantic roles. And so then Hollywood get scared
(30:17):
about creating these, uh movies led by people of color, unless,
for instance, it's a known quantity, like a bankable star
Will Smith, A Whitney Houston. God, Whitney Houston in movies
is my favorite thing. I mean, I know, The Bodyguard
is a rom dram, not a rom com, but I
(30:39):
mean you've got that, You've got Waiting to exhale, You've
got the Preacher's wife. Oh god, what about Denzel? Has
Denzel starred in a rom com opposite a white female?
I don't think so, I don't know, but I mean
he's definitely like a mega movie star. He had that
He was the star in that admittedly terrible and not
because of him, but that airplane movie where he was
(31:02):
like the drunk pilot where and that's what it was called. Yeah,
which is totally I mean a huge movie star role
for for anyone. But um, yeah, I mean, I when
Hollywood does finally step on that step out on that
ledge it has to be with an actor actress who's
proven him or herself usually in music. Because you've also
(31:25):
got Queen Latifa, who's who's been successful in films, but
she's also been successful in music first. Same with Will
Smith saying with Whitney Houston well in j Lo Queen. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But there's so much more significance to this than just
Hollywood box office numbers, because this really is something we
should care about it because at their love and basketball best,
(31:49):
these are stories that we all of us need to see,
especially here in the United States, I would argue, because
there are stories of how black people love and that's
something that Chevandra Harris wrote about over at the Huffington's Post. Yeah,
I mean Harris refers to this as an overlooked aspect
(32:10):
of black culture. I mean, you know, Hunter Harris, writing
for anywyre In wrote that, you know, we've got slave
drama after slave drama coming out, and that's good. We
can't forget these things. We need the visibility of films
like Selma or Birth of a Nation absolutely, and that
gives roles to black actors, But like, where are the
(32:32):
films just showing us as as people? Normal people? Who
live normal lives and fallen and out of love like
anyone else. Yeah. Um, Chavandra Harris and that huff Pope
piece wrote with well rounded characters, big city backdrops, in
the perfect blend of drama, sex and comedy. They managed
to brilliantly capture the joyous pains and complexities and uniqueness
(32:54):
of Black men and women falling in, out and over love.
And that's so much contrast the kind of roles that
the Film Academy recognizes people of color for. And I
think it was Hunter Harris over at Indy Wier who
tallied up that nine of the ten black women ever
nominated for an OSCAR played a character who was either
(33:16):
homeless or on the verge of homelessness, and that thirteen
the twenty black OSCAR nominated actors played characters who had
been arrested. And more recently, I remember, I think it
was right after Sundance, when maybe it was Birth of
a Nation whatever. The Nat Turner um biopic that's coming
out received all of these rave reviews, and the sentiment
(33:40):
on Twitter was ya, because it's like, Okay, yes, these
are stories that need to be told, but can we
be shown as more than slaves please, um, And a
lot of this perpetuates the other ring of black relationships
(34:01):
and that kind of ordinary and extraordinary black love that
Hivandra Harris loves to see so much on screen. Um.
And this is going back to Hunter Harris at Indy
Wier who says that black relationships should be visible enough
to be ordinary and not always have happy endings. You
should be able to have a black Annie Hall or
(34:23):
a black five d Days of Summer. Um. That was
me adding that in there not Hunter Harris. Um. Although
who would the black Woody Allen be answer, I don't
want to know, because we don't need another Woody Allen Boom.
Harris goes on to say, there's no monolithic blackness, and
there ought to be more movies that appreciate that black
lives don't only matter, but contain multitudes. Black characters with
(34:45):
full romantic lives don't always need to end in a
punch line. And that's one of the reasons too, that
we are citing some more straight up ROMs than just
rom coms in this episode, and we're gonna look at
more of these tripe and formulas and caricature outlines that
exist in these romantic comedies. When we come right back
(35:06):
from a quick break, so Caroline, before we crack open, uh,
this genre. I want to make a note that of
the rom com scholarship that you and I have been loving,
(35:29):
a lot of them completely gloss over black romantic comedies. Yeah,
there was one paper that I could find, no two papers,
excuse me. There was one paper and one thesis that
I could find really examining black lead romantic comedies, even
in like the books, the full the books, fully published
hundreds of pages books, searching through them for citations and
(35:53):
explorations of the black rom com genre. Because do you
to the segregation of it, I would um describe it
as its own genre. There's nothing, there's like no acknowledgement.
It's like, yeah, you get so much scholarship on the
screwball era, the sex comedy era, and then as we
(36:15):
get into the seventies and eighties, like the nervous romances
and the like neo romantic comedy all starring white people,
completely ignoring that there is the parallel existence and flourishing
of black lead romantic comedies. Yeah, and like no history
that I could find, and listeners, if you, I know,
we have a lot of cinema buffs listening. If you
(36:36):
do know of a solid history of black rom coms,
please send it our way. I mean, you know, every
every black character that you had in the era of Screwball,
for instance, I mean the women were maids, the men
were like, if they were not some sort of servant
role character, they were going to be some like horrific
(37:00):
a trophy racist sidekick um who did nothing but allow
the main white character to make fun of him. So, yeah,
I would also be interested in a more academic take
on African Americans in romcom history. Yeah. One of the
earliest black lead rom coms that I could find discussed
(37:22):
at any length was nineteen seventy four's Claudine, starring Diane
Carroll and James Earl Jones Um, which people today take
issue with because it very much perpetuates the welfare queen
type of stereotype. But I couldn't find, yeah, any any
explanation or exposition on how more of those came to be,
(37:46):
because it seems like then from there, the nineteen seventy
four From there you get Eddie Murphy, who becomes so
popular that he can start making his own films, and
then you get Spike Lee. It's like, I guess maybe
it is the Spike Lee school of thought of like, well,
we just have to start making the films that we
want to see us in them. Yeah, And I mean
you do have Gregory Hines in there. You have that
(38:06):
quote from him that you sent me where he said,
when I got to be fifteen or sixteen years old,
I noticed that I wasn't represented. There weren't any black
people up there making love. That's from that Jet magazine article.
And I guess, yeah, I mean, I unless people can
can give us some more info, it does seem like
it's an issue of we've got to get these things
(38:27):
made ourselves. Well. It's very reflective of our conversation about
black female directors and filmmakers who are continually shut down
by the big machine Hollywood and just have to kind
of self fund um and indie make their films. But
thankfully we do have Karen Boudre of Indiana University, who
(38:50):
is a semiologist who has analyzed in depth the black
rom com genre, and she looked at how the typical
boy meat s girl, boy loses girl and then does
everything he can to regain the girl or girl regang
guy formula is often readjusted in black lead films, starting
with meat cutes. Those are not usually seen as much
(39:14):
in black rom coms because a lot of times the
romantic relationships are already established when we meet those leads,
so there isn't a ton of the development of the
falling in love necessarily and where so many of the
romantic comedy trips that we've discussed previously have revolved around
the withholding of sex, sex being this abstract future thing
(39:36):
that we never see, but that creates all of this
delicious tension. Bodre writes about how sex commonly either has
already happened in the black rom com couple's existence, or
it's something that happens like on the first date. We
also tend to see less emotional vulnerability from leading ladies,
(39:56):
who are often tougher than her white counterpart arts and
to that point, Black Hollywood producer Rodney Barnes, who has
made The Boondocks and Everybody Hates Chris, told I believe
it was the l a times that quote women are
painted as problematic and undesirable characters only seeking helpmates to
raise their child, and all their male counterpart has to
(40:19):
do is be sexy with no intelligence or moral values.
He simply has to take his shirt off, glisten, and
wait for the end credits. So it sounds like we
have some some issues here with this kind of rom
com formula, which Professor Boadrey says is really the long
(40:40):
shadow of racism being reflected on screen because we have
seen historically the comical devaluing and hyper sexualizing of black bodies.
So as a result, Boadre writes that, quote, black characters
are denied mature relationships that are culture revers and thus
the access such relation and ships bring to achieving heroic
(41:02):
or human status. And that's a pretty like grim portrayal
of things. Um. There are some who just think that
this different type of rom com formula that we're likelier
to see in black lad films just more accurately reflects
how people of color approach dating and love a little
(41:23):
bit differently. Um, But especially when you do look at, um,
the stereotypes that pop up in a lot of black
rom comms and the type of calm that you find
in the rom and the ratio of calm to rom
to dram to dram. Uh, it's hard to argue against,
(41:45):
you know, bo Boudre's theory that there is that long
shadow of racism, as she calls it, on the devaluing
of black bodies right and reinforcing stereotypes about hyper sexuality
of black people, or will in the stereotype type here,
the Jezebel, the Sapphire, what have you, that black women
(42:05):
are either going to be sassy, they're going to be angry,
they're going to be over sexed, you know, the cold independent,
the black version of the cold independent. Sandra Bullock in
like the proposal, and there was a piece over at
Bitch Media that was taking issue with the stereotyping of
(42:25):
women in black rom coms, um and like you said,
putting them kind of into those buckets of a Jezebel
temptress or the angry, emasculating Sapphire. Um, who Shelby in
the Best Man Franchise definitely embodies. Um. You also have
(42:46):
the matriarch who would also be Mia, I would argue
in the Best Man franchise, as well as uh, the
welfare queen. And while yes, those can be probably about stereotypes,
I do wonder if it's not also just a product
of just rom coms in general, because there's so much,
(43:08):
so much stereotyping. We've super tropy, yeah that we've talked
about of white leading characters as well. Yeah, and so
much of rom coms in general. So much of their
formula is I mean literally being formulaic. It's it's presenting
you with these outlines that you can easily recognize, so
it doesn't require hours of backstory and exposition. You just know, like, okay,
(43:33):
so I'm supposed to think that she's the slutty one
and he's the player, and like she's the cold career woman,
And that allows you to quickly move through the plot
and not have to be too confused about why these
two people are falling in love because you just know
from the get go. Oh well we just know they're
supposed to end up together. Yeah, I mean, and well
(43:54):
I just said two seconds ago, well like, well kind
of two wrongs make a right thing of like, well,
white ladies or stereotyped and rom comes to but of
course they don't come with all of that racist and
hyper sexualized baggage like in white rom coms. Even an
ice Queen is like tacitly permitted love. We still expect
(44:18):
to see Sandra Bullock in the Proposal, who I feel
like we've talked about more than anybody else in this series.
We still are fine with her falling in love, whereas
it might not be quite the same when you're playing
around with these more racist stereotypes, because Boadre says that
compared to black female protagonists, um, white ladies are usually
(44:42):
permitted more vulnerability, They're allowed to kind of evaluate the
qualities of their ideal mates and pick and choose more. Um.
She says, they're hedgemotic notions of black womanhood that portrayed
them as over sexualized and strong to the point of isolation.
Not to mention that some people are concerned that a
(45:04):
lot of the calm that you might see more of
a black lead rom com plays up the racist stereotypes
of just black foolishness as well. So it's like, well,
what are we really what are we really serving up here? Um?
Although again I would say that white lead rom coms
aren't flawless either. But again then you come back to
(45:28):
but racism. But racism, well yeah, but racism and also taboos.
I mean we mentioned misgenation and people's misgivings about interracial romances.
I mean, take a movie like Hitch. You know, we
we did mention this in our last episode, but you know,
Will Smith, a black man stars opposite even Mendez, And
(45:53):
that was rather on purpose because Will Smith broke it
down in an article in an interview where he basically said, uh,
you know, if I were to star opposite a black woman,
that would have been okay elsewhere in the world, but
not in the US, because then it would have been
a black comedy. If I had started opposite a white woman,
(46:14):
that also would have been okay in other parts of
the world, but not in the US because we're apparently
not there yet. So they got even Mendez, who's beautiful
brown but not too dark, and she's not black, and
hopefully this makes it universal, as all of the executives
were saying with their fingers crossed. Yeah. Smith even went
on to say that quote ironically, Hollywood is happy to
(46:35):
do it, I e. Like pairing up a black man
and a woman romantically if the film is about racism,
but they won't simply do it and ignore it. So
it was actually a really big deal when the comedy
thriller Focus came out. Not necessarily a rom Crom rom
Crom maybe more of a rom crom because they had
(46:56):
crime in it. Um. But it starred Will Smith opposite
Margot Roby, and it was the very first time Will
Smith got sexy with a white lady on screen. And
there was a piece in the Daily Beast all about
how racists we're freaking out about the movies quote unquote
(47:21):
race mixing. Oh come on, that was from um so
uh and Spike Lee two has said that interracial relationships
on screen are still like the number one taboo in Hollywood. Um.
But in terms of this, like j Lo is a
really interesting character to look at and one that Caitlin
(47:45):
Mortimer in her thesis Romantic Comedy examined. Yeah, j Loo
is interesting because she is allowed, so to speak, to
have interracial romances in Hollywood. But it's because she's like
safely ethnic. She's also one of those known quantities that
we mentioned earlier. She proved her popularity as a singer,
(48:05):
as a dancer, as a general entertainer, and so people
seem to have less of a problem with her romancing
people like Matthew McConaughey or Refines. But also considering the
historic hyper sexualization and fear of black men praying on
white women. Is it any wonder that it took until
(48:28):
for one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, who
also happens to be black, too, star romantically opposite a
white woman. I mean, that's how strong that racism is,
and that even even then there were concerns of race mixing.
I mean, I think that that taboo of a of
a black man opposite a white female romantic lead is
(48:53):
the biggest taboo of all because it confronts all of
those fears, which is shout out to the small screen.
One of the reasons why I really do love Broad
City oh so much for Alana and Lincoln's inter racial romance,
which I think Alana Glazer would like spittake if she
heard it described as an interracial romance um between her
(49:17):
and Hannibal Barris. But it's fantastic because it's just they
just like each other, like it is what it is.
There's no um. There doesn't have to be commentary or explanation,
exactly as I wish we would see from a rom com. Well, yeah,
because that's how real life is. Real life and real
(49:38):
love is. Sure, it's messy and complicated, but also once
you fall in love with somebody it's really no, no
big deal. Well in one movie I want to see that.
I do think it is more wrong than rom com
that came up a lot in things we were reading
about interracial romances on screen was Something New starring Sina
(49:58):
Latham who fall in love with a white gardener. Um.
He played by some handsome guy with like scruffy blonde
hair and crinkly blue eyes. You'd recognize him if you
saw him. Um, but apparently it's really good. I remember
seeing the previous when it first came out and rolled
my eyes a little bit. But apparently it's actually a
(50:20):
good example of kind of confronting those taboos. It is
pretty crazy, and I think that what willis Edwards that
former president of the Beverly Hills in a c P
said in that Jet magazine article still stands. And why
can't Hollywood seem to catch up to so much of
(50:41):
the rest of the country because they do still have
to play too, as he said Peoria and Mississippi, that
you still have so many people who are going to
vote with their dollars or vote by being awful on
Twitter about how they will not go see plotlines like that. Yeah,
but yeah, and um, I think maybe a sign of
(51:04):
our true cultural progress will be um when black rom
coms are just rom coms. The first thing that came
to mind as you were also saying that Caroline was
the movie Dope, which was so good you've only seen
bits and pieces of. But wouldn't it count as a
rom com kind of sort? I mean there's a romantic interest, Yeah,
(51:24):
I mean, but it's a great It's just a great movie,
and it was, and it was marketed as a mainstream
movie even though it had a black leading cast. Yeah,
it's funny because I literally never saw it marketed or
advertised or anything. I just my boyfriend and I watched
it on HBO. See. Also, man, technology is going to
change things, because you're right, Caroline, we advertising is even changing.
(51:48):
I don't. I don't see commercials for movies ever anymore
at all. So I don't even know what's coming out.
And that's funny because the first time I became aware
of Dope was because like one of those the posters
um on a like an abandoned building across the street
from a brunch place I was at, which Hi, did
(52:09):
I mention that I'm so white? Um? But now, listeners,
we really want to hear from you on this because
there there's so much in here to talk about, and
so many films that we didn't even have time to mention.
So we want to know your favorites and curious to
know your thoughts on the segregation of rom comms and
(52:32):
the marginalization of black rom comms in particular, and whether
we can ever kind of get over that, or if
we even should get over that. Mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or message es
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. I read I've got a
(52:57):
letter here from Mary Rose. She says a huge fan
of the podcast and especially loved your recent episode on
women in political campaigns. My first job out of college
was managing a state Senate race, and while it remains
one of my favorite jobs to date, it was also
an incredibly eye opening experience into everyday sexism. As campaign manager,
I worked more on political strategy and press relations than
(53:17):
on fundraising or field operations for which I hired staff.
Despite this, I was often confused for either my boss's
wife or his daughter when I attended events with him.
He was forty one at the time and I was
twenty two. Somebody even gave either drink order at a
campaign event once. As you discussed on the podcast, there
were also some misconceptions in general weirdness due to the
(53:37):
fact that I was a young woman working for a
middle aged male candidate, while my boss was as appropriate
and professional as they come. When I was first offered
the job, my boyfriend at the time suggested it was
because my boss had other intentions. Note he didn't remain
my boyfriend for long. I now work on pay equity,
and I've given a lot of thought to compensation on
political campaigns. I was fortunate to work for two elected
(54:01):
officials my first boss, as well as a female candidate,
who paid me very fairly, But the majority of my
friends who have worked on campaigns have done so for
free or for next to nothing, especially at the U. S.
Senate and presidential campaign levels. As you pointed out during
the episode, this hugely affects the demographic makeup of campaigns
and legislative offices, which in turn makes for policies that
(54:22):
don't represent the American electorate. The gender disparity in campaign
rules also exacerbates the wage gap for years to come,
considering that many of these campaign staffers will go on
to lateral positions in the Canada Legislative Office. Thank you
for highlighting many of the challenges facing women on political
campaigns and for discussing the implications of pay inequality in politics.
(54:44):
And well, thank you for writing in Mary Rose. Well,
I've got a letter here from Ben who says we
can also refer to him as Ben from Seattle. So
Ben writes, longtime listener, and I typically dig your work,
but I have to take you to task about the
Hillary in an episode, and specifically the comments made about
the quote no room for fear. One of you made
(55:07):
a connection between that quote and transphobic bathroom bills, and
I'm sorry. I think that's entirely unreasonable and and undermines
the very real historical record which shows her lack of leadership,
especially when it comes to fear. Please keep in mind
that both Bill and Hillary's political record on gay and
trans rights. It's absolutely detestable, and Hillary did not publicly
(55:27):
support full equality for gay Americans until very recently, and
anything else but full equality would be second class citizenship
and unconstitutional right. More to the point, fear is what
drove this country to an unnecessary war with Iraq, and
Clinton voted in favor of that war. Her voting record
is the same for the Patriot Act, another example of
how she is perfectly comfortable making room for fear to
(55:50):
advance questionable domestic and international policy. Could you please revisit
this issue and address this point. Indeed, Hillary Clinton's accomplishments
are outstanding and very impressive, but let's not pretend her
life as a fairy tale. She has made very serious
mistakes and needs to be held accountable. Firstly, I don't
see her as a leader. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand,
is definitely a textbook example of a leader. Perhaps she
(56:12):
should put a show together about her. So, Ben, thank
you for your thoughts. And Elizabeth Warren is a total
badass and she would be really fun to put an
episode on. I also think it's worth noting that we
stopped the episode so there is I agree Ben that
(56:33):
we we left out a lot and a lot of
people have written in you know, it's asking why we
didn't talk about ben Ghazzi and the emails, for instance,
But we made a very specific decision to address her
for lack of a better word, her quote unquote young
life leading up to when she first landed in the
(56:54):
White House, which was in ninety two. So obviously a
lot has happened since then, in including some questionable voting
records and some questionable support behind some policies, but that
will have to be for another episode. Yeah, I mean,
uh t L d R. There wasn't enough time, but Ben,
kudos to you for being informed and engaged, and thank
(57:18):
you for listening, Um and listeners. As always, if you
have thoughts to share with us, mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is where you can send your letters.
You can also tweet us at mom stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook and for links all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more about
rom coms and people of color, head on over to
(57:40):
stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more on
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