SVU - "Undercover"

“Undercover” starts off with typical fare, but quickly shifts gears and make some surprising and welcome choices with race, casting and character.

The episode “Undercover” (original air date 4/15 – hope you got your taxes in!) starts with another typical minority casting issue. To try and meet quotas, these kinds of shows are full of incidental characters who can often be cast as minorities. It’s a great chance for any actor to work, but a tricky situation for black actors, as tonight’s episode shows.

During the cold open, a black cop haughtily tells Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) that the guy who committed the crime they’re investigating is standing over there and here’s the murder weapon. The cop is young and brash…and as Stabler kindly points out, doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about. We can tell from the first seconds of the episode (and the pattern of every Law and Order episode) that the guy in question didn’t commit this crime and the young cop prematurely calls a weapon a murder weapon when there is no murder to speak of.

A moment later, cooler headed (and white) Stabler simply questions the “perp.” I guess this young (black) cop couldn’t think that far ahead. Do we blame his youth or his race? You decide. Ostensibly, someone did. We’re just not sure what that decision was.

Is this a huge transgression? No. But it continues a pattern. And as I’ve said before: it’s not that this kind of casting happens, it’s just, why so often?

And it begs questions. What was casting notice? Did the execs know that they were going to give this role to a minority? If so, then why? If they didn’t, what was it about this black actor that made them decide to use him? His acting ability or their limited scope of what kind of cop makes this kind of dumb mistake.

A bit of a Catch 22? Perhaps. But these patterns continue. And it’s only fair to the character, the actors and the public to figure out why.

And back and forth it goes as the episode goes on. The victim (who isn’t dead, but who has been raped) is black. Something to note: rape is by and large and intra-racial crime. Typically, a white rape victim will have been raped by a white rapist. A black rape victim will have been attacked by a black perp. And so on and so forth. We will see in this episode if a) the crime in the show follows this pattern and b) if the crime turns out to be an empathy-inducing crime of passion or if it was a senseless act like a gang initiation.

I will give the show points for giving the black victim nice black (foster) parents. They are well spoken, kind and love their daughter. In fact, the other members of her family are nice characters. They have their flaws and foibles, but they are pretty well layered and the acting is strong.

Ooh, a twist. At 14 minutes in, we learn that the alleged attacker is white. This is out of the norm and based on some other exposition, he sounds like a real piece of work. He sells drugs, the victim’s mother was his supplier and the victim was his go-between. The guy raped her to teach her mom a lesson when she tried to get clean.

Another fun surprise is that the prison warden where the victim’s mother is incarcerated is a woman. This is nice touch because it allows the warden to be very hard on the mother without it being as abusive as it would be if the warden were a man. A man being as tough on the mother as the warden is would make it more difficult for an audience to sympathize with the position the warden is it. And sympathy for more than one party is what makes this franchise work.

Now all we have to do is get the directors and producers to extend some sympathy themselves.

Guess Who

I’ll admit. What I’m about to do isn’t fair. And I don’t mean unfair in the my-sister-took-my-cookie sort of way. I’m talking 2000 election results unfair.

I’m about to watch the 2005 Sony Pictures offering, Guess Who.

I watched the “original” version of this movie a couple of years ago. And felt good about myself for doing so.

I’m not expecting the same feeling to result from this movie.

Now, I love Ashton (see previous blog re: Just Married) and Bernie and that Zoe girl looks adorable. But the Spencer Tracy/Sidney Poiter/Katharine Hepburn film was important. A little cheesy at times. But important, thoughtful and clearly so.

This movie…isn’t.

But I’m giving it the chance to prove me wrong.

There’s a lot of potential for a comedy dealing with interracial relationships. I’m in an interracial marriage myself and there are really funny moments that come up. Involving hair, slang terms and accidental racism. It’s real stuff and that makes it a prime candidate for comedy.

Comedy is a great vehicle to discuss things that are important. To expose things that are tragic. To make something icky palatable enough for us to be able to think about and digest. There’s nothing wrong with making a comedic movie out of a heady, intelligent or thought-provoking topic.

The trailers I saw for Guess Who indicated that while the filmmakers might have been aware of this concept, they were saving their A material for a different picture.

But like I said, I could be wrong. This might not be nearly as steppen fetchit as it feels at first blush. It might have something to say.

And as I blog while I watch, I’ll let you know if it does.

***

Bernie Mac is left-handed!! (sorry for the distraction. But I’ve wanted to be left-handed for a while. In life, about 10-12 percent of the population is left-handed. But nearly 50 percent of characters on television and in movies are left handed, indicating there’s something intrinsically more creative about being a lefty. Course, back in the day, they thought it meant you were a witch. And you were as likely to get burned alive as you were cast in the next touring company of “Much Ado About Nothing.”)

The first thing is that this movie has done within in the first few minutes, is done a decent job of showing the ethnic makeup of a major metropolitan city. I’m not sure what city they’re in yet—they have may have indicated with the Golden Gate Bridge or Lady Liberty or the Sears Tower, but I’ve been writing and I can’t catch everything!

Either way, there are actually minorities on the street! In business suits no less. Working. Something that the creators of Friends, Seinfeld and every other sitcom should take a look at.

And look at that, another few minutes into Act I, we’ve got an interracial couple making out in the background. White guy, Asian girl. Okay, so it’s a little bit of a fetish, but it’s nice to see some IR love going on.

Oh, in case you care about plot and not just my mad ramblings, the set up is that Bernie Mac’s going to meet his daughter Teresa’s boyfriend the same weekend he and his wife are re-exchanging their wedding vows. Teresa’s told him what a great job her boyfriend Simon has. And we’ve just learned that Simon quit said job.

And they appear to be in NYC.

Quick note comparing this movie to the “original.” We just found out that Ashton and Zoe (Simon and Teresa) are engaged and he has yet to meet her parents. Which begs the question…why not? Couples don’t get engaged that quickly anymore. Why wouldn’t they have met at least once?

I live several states away from my parents and though my husband and I were well on our way to being engaged, we did take a perfunctory trip home so everyone could meet just for good measure. And since my husband’s parents live nearby, I’d hung out with them a ton.

Anyway, the point is, that in the original, the girl who’s going to marry Sidney is impulsive. A free spirit. She’s blithe and beguiling and got engaged impulsively. Her character explains why the fiancé and folks haven’t met.

It’s not so much an issue of race relations on film as it is sloppy writing.

Simon also expresses confusion over a photograph in Zoe’s apartment that he would have ostensibly seen everyday.

It makes for a funny joke, but doesn’t make any sense.

The writing matters. Even in a comedy. Even in a romp. And especially when you’re making material for an audience that’s hungry for it. Just because they’re starving doesn’t mean you feed them scraps.

Oh, and a designer who says “oodles” and “fabulous.” But wait…he’s not gay! Hooray for a joke about stereotypes.

So far, pretty good. I must say I’m pleasantly surprised.

What? They’re only going down to Jersey? And they never met?

We didn’t need the cabbie telling them it’s going to matter that Simon’s white.

Okay, we’re coming to the middle of Act II and another family member, the grandfather, mentions out loud and awkwardly that no one told him that Simon was white. When I introduced my (white) boyfriend to my family, no one said out loud and awkwardly that they hadn’t been briefed on the fact that he wasn’t black. I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen. But it definitely feels disingenuous.

The problem with this movie is that because it’s the year that it is, it’s very hard to hang your hat on the “I don’t want my daughter dating outside of the race” hook. Especially with a family that’s so very Cosby. It’s funnier to just go with the odd couple Meet-My-Folks thing.

There’s nothing about Bernie Mac’s family that’s particularly ethno-centric. They’re both white-collar employees in a nice neighborhood. There’s no African art on the walls. Neither of them is an African studies or Harlem Renaissance professor. They’re just normal folks who live in diverse New Jersey…and who shouldn’t be that upset that their daughter is dating out of the race.

In the end, the movie was fine and mostly forgettable. I still love Ashton. And Zoe seems like she’d be fun to have on set. (see my blog next December about the latest “Untitled Paramount Picture” for more on that).

This film’s biggest offense was its writing. Which was sloppy. A little on the nose at times and generally not inspiring.

At the end of the day, my only concern is less complaint and more confusion. Why tie it to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. All that does is tick off people like me who appreciate the original for what it was. And teach the newer generation who hasn’t seen GWCTD that there is nothing to be gained from a serious discussion about race relations. That it’s okay to make racist jokes over the dinner table. That there might never have been a time when the subject of an interracial relationship was incredibly taboo and in fact, quite punishable.

On one hand, it’s great that more and more kids today are lovely shades of coffee with cream. Most of the people I know are in IR relationships. But to make such lighthearted conversation of a topic that people at one time were killed over just doesn’t do anything for anyone involved.

There’s nothing wrong with the movie that this movie is. A Meet the Folks for gentiles who are a few years younger than Ben Stiller. This is a fine movie to make. But to tie it to a classic like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is insulting to both films.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner spent the movie discussing societal issues. Guess Who is spending the movie discussing through innuendo how long Simon can...go. Which is fine, but definitely not an homage to Hepburn, Poitier or Tracy.

Make the movie. Just don’t tie it to the first one.

Christina

Seeing Christina Aguilera au natural and au baby bumpy made me think of something.

No, not the artistry and “bravery” of Demi Moore’s 1991 Vanity Fair cover to which Ms. Aguilera paid homage.

It made me think how fucking hard it is to be a woman.

Thanks to the magazine/advertising/media/entertainment industry, we’re told that not only should we look amazing and be impossibly thin during normal, non-stressful times in our lives; but we should also be preternaturally good-looking and poised when we’re carrying another human being inside of our bodies.

Pregnancy is hard.

And not just because now you have to chuck your cinched-in-the-middle -coats to find empire-waisted clothing to wear 24/7. But because your body is being taken over by another living creature.

I think in that delicate time, women should be forgiven their stretch marks, bad hair and swollen feet.

But far be it from these magazines to celebrate the true beauty of the miracle of life. Instead, they airbrush out lines on the skin, acne caused by hormonal changes, stray hairs caused by the same and probably even make the smile a little smilier when asking someone carrying an extra 20 pounds in front of them to pose sweetly.

The magazines have something right, though. Pregnancy is beautiful. But not because you can hide the flaws that occur on the body while you’re incubating life.

Pregnancy is beautiful because of what it signifies. The joining of two people into one person. A clean slate for them both.

Closer than sex, are mother and child in the womb. Though a man may be inside his lover; he never lives there. He stops by for a while and leaves. But the womb is a child’s home. The mother’s blood is their blood. The mother’s breath, the child’s breath. An intimate nine-month hug between mother and child. A connection that no one else will experience or understand.

It’s a fucking miracle.

Pregnancy is beautiful because it signifies hope. Hope that the new child will be unmarred. Hope that the parents can correct the wrongs done to them and give a new life a better chance at life. The chance at life at all. Hope that even though in this age of 50-percent-divorce rates and wild amounts of phychotheraputic medication, that maybe this time, with this child, it’ll be okay.

This is not to say that the magazines should highlight the physical manifestations of the stress of pregnancy. But ignoring them insults us all. It cheapens the amazing, wondrous, miraculous moments it took to get us all here. The moments it took to give us the chance to give someone else the chance and hope they make the most of it.

Shark: "In the Crosshairs"

If this was an homage to the fact that we were all surprised that the DC snipers were shooters-of-color, they missed their chance. The show had a chance to discuss why perhaps different groups of people commit different types of crimes, but instead fell back on old stereotypes that firmly cemented fears and assumptions.

Episode starts with a mysterious shooter picking people off on a highway. The bullets used are traced back to a gang member. Because the shootings seem so random, the attorneys figure that it's a gang thing. In the gang the bullets are traced to, new members are inducted by shooting an innocent.

So they find the leader of the gang.

And of course he's a scary ass black man. Not only is he a scary ass black man, but they pull him off of a girl he's graphically banging when they arrest him (see the post on Traffic for more on that).

Now LA has plenty of gangs and yes, many of th gang members are black. But there's Latino gangs as well as Asian and White Power thugs. Either of those could have been represented by the producers of Shark, but they fell back on the scary ass black man. (SABM)

As they question the SABM, they find out that he is totally unrepentant for crimes he's committed or acts perpetrated on his behalf by gang members he's supplied with weapons and ammo.

Finally, the killer is revealed and he turns out to be a) while and b) killing with purpose.

Now, it's fine that the killer is white. My beef is with the motive.

On procedurals, when a crime is random, violent, without merit and terrifying, it's usually done by a minority.

When the crime is a crime of passion, somehow justifyable or there's just a momentary loss of judgement, the perpetrator is typically white.

Watch some shows, you'll see the pattern.

When the crime is done by a gang member for revenge or sport, the perp is of color.

When the crime is committed by some rich person for love, the perp is white.

The (white) perp is classy, articulate, schooled.

The SABM is thuggy, uses more slang than not and can't muster up a sense of decorum.

And thus was the case with this episode of Shark. The perp, we learn, has anger management issues and shot the first guy because he found out his wife was having an affair with him. Thus, he has a "real" reason. The love of his life betrayed him and he was exacting revenge.

This is in quite a contrast to the SABM that we met at the top of the episode who killed for sport.

And this distinction that is made over and over again by cop and lawyer shows is a scary thing.

Size Matters

So, this isn’t really about minorities, but it is about a group of “my people.” It’s about women. Women slightly outnumber the men in the US and due to a desire to get through the rest of this blog and the clunkiness of Google in this particular search, I’m not going to throw up a specific number.

So women aren’t a minority, but they are treated as the lower class when it comes to men/women issues.

I’ll blow past the wage issue because I’m not well versed enough in it to know more than the basic “women earn less than men” bullet point. So feel free to fill in whatever reason floats your boat. I think there’s a lot to be said about women’s naturally less aggressive nature, the tendency of people at the top (men) to be more comfortable putting people like themselves at the top with them, and the fact that women take more time off than men to raise kids.

Interesting, though, that women outnumber the men on your average college campus.

But moving on to something I know more about and which will lead nicely into my rantings.

The roles for women in television and film are historically frustrating to annoying. A quick survey of the roles for which actresses were awarded the Academy Award show that we like our women oppressed and sexual. Female driven movies are few and far between. And television shows with strong and complex roles for women have only started to become part of the norm in the last couple of seasons.

It’s not news that the media holds women to an impossible standard. And at once claims to tout women looking like “real women” with curves and breasts and everything, while photoshopping the crap out of America Ferrera so she looks camera ready for her Glamour magazine close-up.

I remember being appalled back in 1998 or so. When NBC became the prime time leader with Friends and Will and Grace and watching the girls on those shows wither down to sticks as they became more popular. It’s like there was a direct and inverse correlation between the shows’ ratings and Jennifer Aniston’s body fat.

Even on the lowest key of levels, I was so sad to see how much weight one my favorite comediennes has lost since becoming a regular player on Saturday Night Live.

Men, again this isn’t news, aren’t held to the same standard. According to the powers that be, it’s totally reasonable for Jim Belushi to have an impossibly skinny, gorgeous wife. Same with Kevin James (who I totally love!). Lead actors in movies are allowed to be comedically cute enough. Floppy and mussy. Unkempt and untraditional. Not someone you’d ask into bed, but if they were there, you might not kick them out. While their lady friends have to be actually and terribly gorgeous.

So…I was not surprised, but I was upset when I watched the weigh-in of The Biggest Loser. My husband has really taken to this show and I like reality TV more than I (or my career as a scripted television writer) would like to let on, so I watched the two hour extravaganza with him.

The first hour is all very inspiring and makes me want to quit my day job so I can work out with logs and run through sand and lift my workout partner over my head and such.

The second hour is the weigh in. the contestants come in. The girls in a sports bra and spandex. The guys in loose fitting shorts and t-shirts.

SIGH.

So…on a show that’s ostensibly about getting healthy and feeling better about yourself, they put the girls in outfits that reveal just exactly how unhealthy they are. And let the guys hide their bulk from the cameras.

Now, before you tell me that the guys have to take off their shirts for the weigh in and what’s under their shirts can be pretty shocking, let me get there…

The girls are not only in belly revealing outfits, they’re in tight outfits. Outfits that cling to every indent and roll. Outfits that clearly let you see pretty much exactly what these ladies would look like without clothes at all. While the men enjoy moments of detailed physically anonymity—hiding in their baggy clothes that are much more forgiving.

The women have to stand for all intents and purposes in their underwear for the entire hour of the ceremony. While the men only have to take off their shirts for the couple of minutes of the weigh in. Then when the men step off the scale, they get to put their shirts back on and we forget exactly what they looked like under their clothes. While we’re told every second what’s going on with the women’s bodies.

The message that it sends is strange. The men can essentially look okay at their size—they’re hidden under dark, baggy clothes. They have the general shape of a guy, so they look okay. But the women are put on much more display and consequently made to feel much more shame for their shape. Especially in an age where women’s sexuality on TV is the only thing that will keep them there.

What would be the harm in putting the women in something more modest? Why do the guys get to hide their bellies, but the women’s are there to flop over their tight biker shorts for the whole hour? Their arms are exposed. Their bellies. Their thighs. All areas that as a woman, I can tell you I worry about constantly. The men get to hide. They get to be modest. The women are on display.

Like I said, when some of the guys take off their shirts, the effects of their lifestyle are startling and I’m not saying I want to stare at that for an hour either. I feel super self conscious with my body, I can only imagine what it must be like for the nearly 400 lb Rez. It’s not like guys are totally immune from the arrows of our society’s ridiculous beauty standards.

So why not treat both sexes with respect on the show? You can buy loose fitting, light weight workout wear. Something that would be modest, but not affect the weigh in weight. Or simply weigh the clothes before the weigh in and adjust the weight accordingly.

Putting the women in clothing that flatters—whatever size they are—is a more effective way to build those women’s self images and put them on a path toward healing and restoration. Rather than shaming them on national TV.

The show purports to be about being healthy, not about looking good. So neither the men nor the women should have to put that much skin on that much display. But I guess when it comes down to it, the show isn’t about the contestants at all, but about ratings and giving the public something to talk about in the morning. Whether that’s the workout or the sideshow factor, I suppose to the suits, it doesn’t much matter.

Traffic

Rewatching this movie. Was really into it…until the 1:37:31 mark.

I guess the scene I’m about to tear into should be mitigated somewhat with the fact that Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman are good guys. Nice characters and great actors.

But at the 1:37:31 mark, we’re introduced up close and personally to the character who will probably resonate as the worst to our American sensibilities. And he’s black. And effing the s out of a white girl so she can score some drugs.

In a movie filled with people who are doing questionable things, you might ask why this guy stands out to me as worse than the others. Or why he is disserved by being black.

Let’s start with the fact that Americans are weird about sex. That’s a pretty subjective way of saying the equally subjective statement that we’re Puritanical hypocrites, but we are. Raunchy sex in movies typically illustrates the worst that someone can do or the lowest that someone can go.

If you take the psychology of serial killers at the prestigious USC film school, you’ll learn that serial killers are often impotent or at least struggle with the sexuality in some horrible way that leads them to kill.

Virgins survive in horror movies. Girls who have sex don’t.

It’s all over the language of the screen. Sex is bad. Even though rates of unplanned pregnancies and STDs continue to be on the rise in the US (among affluent communities at that) we still as a nation pretend that and enjoy art that acts as though sex is reserved for base people and creates base things.

So when we see Michael Douglas’s daughter having sex done to her by this muscular black man, we know that things aren’t just bad. They’re really f*cking bad.

The sex she had with her (white) boyfriend was a) implied and b) though it was in a drug-addled state, it was at least loving.

This black guy just does sex to her with no feeling. No inkling of emotion. Totally using her. The scene is shot from a horrible perspective angle that lets the viewer feel really up close and personal with a guy we’re supposed to dislike and who we’re pretty sure bad things are going to happen to…and we’re led to be okay with that.

Also add to this that all the people at the girl’s AA group were white. No minorities were there trying to better themselves. But she needs drugs. So off she goes to a poor black neighborhood where she gets laid for crack.

And we’re not led to dislike her for her addiction. She’s explained to the camera that she’s angry. We see her messed up nuclear family. So we feel sorry for her. We sympathize with the fact that she needs to medicate to find comfort. But the blacks on the street in at in her in fact in this scene, there’s no sympathy for them. They’re just street thugs who make faces as Douglas drives his Mercedes through Compton. The white girl is going to get out and get rescued. But Douglas, who’s character is in charge of arresting the nation’s drug problem, isn’t worried about anyone else.

And then, to make it clear just how far gone the girl is, when she passes out and is for all intents and purposes a corpse on the bed, the black guy climbs on top and goes at it again.

Also, at the 2:03 mark, we meet another man to whom the girl has ostensibly whored herself out to. He's white. We don't see him mount her. There's no creepy vaguely necrophiliac sex. The guy is apologetic for his actions and he's gone.

No one else in the movie is as base of a character as the black drug dealer. And as the movie purports, drugs are all over. Even in rich, uptight suburbia. So why go and enlist a bunch of black actors to portray the worst of the drug problem?

There’s any number of other things that could have communicated her downfall. She’s scored drugs from her rich white friends through the first hour and a half of the movie. Why she needs to go to a scary black neighborhood now is odd. Especially since the last time we saw her with her boyfriend, they were a sweet couple. Very very high, but sweet nonetheless. And he got her high just fine. Why not go back to him. call him and ask him to come get her? there’s nothing on film that would suggest that she couldn’t call her established boyfriend and she’s been in treatment, so she’s not making decisions out of her freebased haze.

So why a scary black neighborhood? Why not, I guess? No harm right? In reinforcing horrible stereotypes in a movie that seems to say that it’s tearing them down.

Does Don Cheadle make up for that? Does the black lawyer in the courtroom? Benico del Toro’s character trying to do good? The Latino judge? Maybe. And Soderberg does deserve credit for making these choices that can unnecessarily be called “progressive.” These are bold casting choices in an era where we still can’t have a black man and woman be leads in a romantic movie without it being labeled an “urban comedy.”

But the scene with a guy having sex to a nearly dead girl is more visceral. It makes your gut turn. There’s a physical sense tied to that emotion. And it’s the scene where something horrible happens to someone the movie has taught us to care about. So that’s going to be what sticks out to you. What you remember. The funny and charming banter that Cheadle and Guzman have in the car will fade. You won’t remember all the turns of phrase.

But you’ll remember how uncomfortable you felt when you saw nameless, voiceless black man remount a sweet, innocent girl that he’s just finished corrupting.

I got to 1:51:31 before I had to get back to work. will finish up any more chat about this flick when I get to finish the film.

Despite college enrollment data, apparently, Asians are dumb

Not to turn this blog into anything that has to do with faith, but it amazes me that by the vocal scientific community, people who put any stock in faith (rather, Christianity) are often insulted and have their intellegence called into question.

Which totally makes sense when you consider that Mr. Crick of the DNA-debunking duo Watson and Crick made a guest lecture appearance at UC Berekely. While he was speaking, he said that there was hard scientific evidence that overweight people are happier than skinny people. To prove his point, he showed the class a picture of a smiling Santa Claus and a vacant-eyed runway model.

Yeah.

So I shouldn't be surprised when articles like the one that this editorial reviews make it to the printing presses.