It’s not every week I get to deal with race in an entertainment editorial, and some of you might wonder why I’m not talking about this in “Sunday’s Sermons,” but I feel strongly that this needs to be addressed.
It’s the same old song-and-dance. Hollywood casts mostly white actors, and people complain that Television isn’t diverse enough, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, I used to kind-of feel my eyes glaze over whenever this topic was brought up, but there’s been a radical shift in programming over the last decade. For one thing, there are now approximately 5,000 channels to chose from as to where only three existed as little as thirty years ago. For another thing, “the racial troubles” (as the Jim Crow South was known by people who tried every way in the world to keep from talking about something demanding to be talked about) aren’t really an excuse anymore, since we have a black president, and it’s a little far-fetched that people would get so uncomfortable with the idea of a black-led TV show that they won’t watch. Right?
Well, wrong apparently, because supposedly-liberal Hollywood is still doing it. Today, I’ve chosen to focus exclusively on television, but I could write an entirely separate item about movies, where Viola Davis struggles to get cast in anything but a Tyler Perry film and Zoe Saldana had better not have a flop if she expects to keep headlining movies. Even more than TV, people have been screaming for more diversity in movies, and Hollywood answered by…exporting every white guy in England, Ireland, Canada, and Australia here. Not the kind-of diversity anyone was talking about.
On Television, white women have just had their best year ever. Of the 24 new shows that debuted in the Fall, SIXTEEN were headlined by women. That’s a two-to-one advantage over shows headlined by men, and a few of the ones headlined by men (like A Gifted Man or Terra Nova) had much more appeal to women than, say, New Girl, Two Broke Girls, or literally any show that pretends a thirty year old woman is a “girl” held for men. In fact, the only true, out-and-out action-y “guy’s show” was Person of Interest, and I still think you’d have an easier time getting women to watch that than you could get men to watch Whitney.
Revenge, Ringer, Hart of Dixie, okay anything on the CW, Unforgettable, Prime Suspect, Pan Am, and plenty more in the Fall. Plus, Missing, GCB, and Fashion Star in the Spring. Where are the 24s or even the NYPD Blue’s? Harsh, gritty “guy’s” shows that men watch. It’s true that young men are mostly watching ESPN or playing video games more than watching scripted TV (or even reading books, which is why young adult books cater almost exclusively to girls over boys), so I can’t blame TV networks for programming to an audience that will show up.
Still, a show like “Once Upon a Time” should once and for all rebut the often repeated but wholly false accusation that there’s just no good programming for women. The CW and ABC program almost exclusively to them, CBS, NBC, and even Fox favor them over male programming, and what are Lifetime, E!, VH1, Oxygen, Own, Bravo, USA, etc. if not channels catering to women?
BUT this TV season should also disprove the also-often repeated but wholly false accusation that “it’s just as hard for a white actress as a black one, it’s hard for women period.” Of the SIXTEEN out of 24 shows this Fall that featured an actress in the lead role, ALL of them were white actresses. In fact, this was one of the most painfully un-diverse seasons in recent memory. There was not a single black, Hispanic, or Asian lead character in any of the Fall’s new shows. And only Terra Nova (God bless it) featured a non-white female co-lead as the lead character’s wife was Indian.
Now I’d be derelict in my duties if I didn’t mention that ABC has Kerry Washington starring in “Scandal,” but that show hasn’t debuted yet, so there’s no telling what kind-of impact (if any) it will have on the TV landscape. Part of me feels that if you’re waiting until the first week of April to premiere a new show, you’re already setting it up to fail. Still, whether that show succeeds or fails, it shouldn’t be the be-all, end-all of whether black actresses are allowed on Television. We’ve seen just about every white actress in Hollywood strut out to headline a show whether she really has the chops or not (hell, Smash’s Katherine McPhee or Whitney’s, well, Whitney), so why make Viola Davis work for it?