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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » "Beautiful Black Creature" -- Black/White on FX

   
Author Topic: "Beautiful Black Creature" -- Black/White on FX
Katarain
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Have any of you been watching this program on FX? The second episode was on last night. I caught a little over half of it. The premise is that 2 families, one white and one black, live together and go on these excursions with white or black makeup on.

The show is interesting, although the ways that they do things can be annoying. The scenarios they come up with are quite contrived, sometimes, and they fail to get to the meat of the matter way too much. When the black father buys golf shoes at a professional shop as a white man, the salesman actually opens the shoe and puts it on him. The black father was very surprised, saying this had never happened before, even though he had bought professional golf shoes before. He acknowledged that it could have been a coincidence, but he can only go on his own experience. What they failed to do, which would have been very interesting, was have him go in to buy shoes twice--once as a white man and once as a black man several days or a week apart. I think his makeup was good enough that the salesperson wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. The difference in treatment would have been all the more obvious and less tenative then. Or maybe there wouldn't have been any difference at all.

The white family they chose, however, seems to have been a very wrong choice. While the daughter is nice and normal, the parents are anything but. I'm talking about their personalities, but first, about the father's appearance. Without make-up, he looks like he comes from an Indian heritage. With black make-up, he just looks it even more. I don't believe they're really getting a real black/white experiment from him.

Now about personalities and mindsets...

The white father uses every excuse to use the N-word. When he is in black makeup and participating in a black focus group, he makes up a story about being called an N by someone. It was ridiculous. Later, when he's in conversations at home, he'll repeatedly say N in ways like, "I'm just waiting to be called an N," etc. The black family tells him that won't happen. He also insists that if you act courteously and don't expect poor treatment, you won't be treated badly. He basically doesn't believe in racism. He has stated that he does believe that the black father has experienced it, but he doesn't know if it happened because he expected it to happen. He thinks its all in their heads. He goes shopping once and the other guy tries to point out the racism, but he dismisses all of it. And really, it probably wasn't. Again, the experiment is pointless. They're going to the wrong places and doing the wrong things. The white father should do the shoe experiment that I was talking about above.

And finally, the white mother, for which I made this post in the first place. First, she calls the black mother a bitch. I can understand this (I missed this part, so my opinion is based on their continual rehashing later in the episode), as it seemed to be based on a dialogue game that they were reading from. She was trying to speak in vernacular and got it very, very wrong. She had said something like "Yo, bitch!" But later....

Later was another story. The white girl had "come out" to her black poetry group that she was white. They had had mixed reactions, but accepted her gracefully and came over to the house for a poetry reading session. The party was going quite nicely, and the poets were reciting their creations. The white mother was moved and stood up to recite her impromptu poetry. It started out all right. She was complimenting the talent of these young people and the leaders of the group in flowery words. You could tell she was moved. It all changed when she moved on to one particular young woman. She told her that she was a Beautiful Black Creature. The room was silent and stiff and she didn't even seem to realize it. The party broke up after that, as suddenly everybody had to go.

Later, the white and black families are sitting there, hashing it out--but not really hashing it out. The black mother spoke of being very embarrassed (I was embarrassed just watching it!), but they never explained WHY what she said was so wrong. The white mother tried to explain how she had nothing but good intentions and she was misunderstood. The white father started talking about how things like this always happened between the races because one person says one thing meaning it one way and another person takes it to mean something completely different.

Well, what they never actually got around to doing was explaining something that probably shouldn't have needed explaining--but it did. Because I believe that the white mother had good intentions. I believe that she was moved and wanted to pay a compliment. Someone needed to tell her that this woman was talented because she was talented. The "black" qualifier was unnecessary, and it was unlikely that she would have called a talented white poet a "beautiful white creature." In addition, while she probably meant "a creation and child of God," she should have known that creature was the wrong word to use--especially with the history of blacks being considered nothing but beasts of burden, instead of intelligent human beings. If only she had said, "You are such a talented, beautiful woman." Who's going to find a problem with that? (Unless said by a misogynist surprised man?)

Basically, I want them to do real experiments for the people to really experience the different treatment of the races, and I want them to not leave so many things unsaid. I want them to explain instead of being offended.

So have any of you seen this show? Any thoughts?

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Olivet
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I heard a commentator remark on this on NPR yesterday. I think this is the link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5282206

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Katarain
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Thanks for the link, Olivet. [Smile] I think there are definite biases on both sides, with both families. I can just think of so many things they could do to get real results and really educate viewers. I guess everything really is just a ratings grab.
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Shanna
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I was really excited about the show after I caught some previews on Oprah's show. However, it bothers me that its going more for entertainment than education. I was expecting more since apparently the show was coming from a producer of '30 Days' which I love.

I really like Rose and it would have been better to find some families more along her line of thinking. She went into her poetry class believing she could still be herself in black makeup but she began to realize that there are possibly some cultural/racial differences she hadn't expected. I was impacted by her concerns that the friends in her class may not have liked her either because she was white or because she was herself.

But as her parents spend very little time with black people, they are the wrong mentality for examinging the subtle and profound issues of racism. They're still struggling, and failing, to grasp the most basic concepts of race relations.

As for the black family, next week looks promising. It seems we'll be getting some interesting interactions between parent and son. The fact that Nick seems to embrace the 'stereotypical black hiphop' lifestyle seems to upset his parents abit. If, somehow, the discussion plays out completely, we could be in for some insight into race, culture, and stereotypes.

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Katarain
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Very much agreed. [Smile]

I'm not sure I'll tune in next week. I don't want to be continually disappointed. I just wish they had picked normal white people... I think most of us (and here I mean me) wouldn't be so clueless... and... odd.

Edit: According to the articles I was reading, the show is heavily edited--sometimes presenting situations unfairly and out of context.

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Olivet
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Sorry I couldn't offer more discussion, but I don't get TV. So I have not watched it and probably won't. I tend to download episodes of Lost or 24 (they are easy to find because they are popular) but I don't get much else.

It seems that it could be a forum for some interesting insights, but seems unlikely to live up to that potential. That's just sad.

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Xavier
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Like Katarain and Shanna, I was impressed with Rose. Though I've only seen the first episode. If I do see the show again, it will be to watch her experiences.

Her and the black father have the most convincing make-up in my opinion. Rose's is especially good, and she manages to look very natural in it, as opposed to most of the others.

I agree with what other people have said about the white parents. I really don't think they are very representative of average white people. The dad has an agenda, and the mom has some very strange ideas of racial relations.

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