Dr. Jason Johnson

Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell

Main navigation

Netflix

Dr. Jason Johnson on Politics, #Privacy, #Netflix, #Facebook, and #Spotify

by

Dr. Jason Johnson discusses the lack of oversight from the House and the Senate in terms of how Silicon Valley handles information from its users, especially with users that integrate Facebook, Netflix and Spotify accounts. Other panel members include Chuck Rosenburg (Fmr. US Attorney), Peter Baker (The New York Times), Ron Klain (VP Biden), Nick Confessore (The New York Times), Michelle Goldberg (The New York Times), and host, Nicolle Wallace.

Can We Talk About This Thing Bothering Me About Dear White People?

by

When Netflix announced that it would release a TV series based on the 2014 film Dear White People, a lot of white people freaked out, accusing the show and Netflix of being racist. All the freaking out didn’t really affect the popularity of the show, which managed to snag a 100 percent “certified fresh” ranking among critics on popular TV- and film-review site Rotten Tomatoes.

But next to that 100 percent rating is also an audience ranking, of what regular people who watched the series thought, and it’s a middling 57 percent. Now, is a lot of that just a bunch of white tears still crying over a show they think is targeting them? Sure. But—and I’m about to go with an unpopular opinion here—what if Dear White People isn’t the “stay woke” comedy of this era that we’ve all been waiting for? What if Dear White People is actually asleep—as in a dreamy, deep, comalike sleep—as a show for white people disguised as a “faux woke” comedy for black people?

Sure, Dear White People, the Netflix show, is funnier and deeper than the film, and it has some outstanding episodes (especially 4-6), but the faux wokeness is strong.

The 10-episode series has no problem poking fun and satirizing the failings, hypocrisies and conflicts among black activist college students at a PWI, or predominantly white institution, but it is afraid to take that same sledgehammer to “white allies” who are constantly hovering in that space, too. The result is a show that is barely worth an afternoon binge, when it could have been a classic Netflix and chill.

What is “faux woke” comedy? It’s comedy that is steeped in the politics of black life and pain but isn’t really for black people. Faux-woke comedy goes through great pains to use the black experience to appeal to white allies and not offend their sense of important “wokeness.” There’s money in faux wokeness now, so long as you can sell it to white audiences. (Think of the early work of W. Kamau Bell.)

These types serve up “black” consciousness with a creamy foam on top but make sure, if the topics get too thorny (sex, relationships, institutional violence), that they’re there with a hanky for all the allied white tears. By the finale, Dear White People devolves into a hat-tipping, cane-swirling, “Racism, AMIRITE????” instead of giving black viewers (the source of the comedy) real laughter and catharsis.

Any show’s “message” is shown through contrasting character voices; whoever gets the last word is what the show is really trying to say. Aaron McGruder’s critique of commercialized black culture came by way of Huey calling out Grandpa and Riley on their “nigga moments” in The Boondocks. Michaela Coel calls out racial fetishizing on Chewing Gum by contrasting Conner and Tracey with Ash and his bougie-but-assimilated ex-wife in “Replacements” (season 2, episode 2). Even though Earn is the main character in Atlanta, Donald Glover uses Paper Boi’s realness and Van’s work ethic to expose him for the smug, self-righteous underachiever he really is. In Dear White People, white folks almost always get the last word, either from their mouths or from black folks caping for them.

The students at Winchester aren’t just characters; they’re ciphers for certain black ideologies. Reggie is black male militancy, Coco is self-loathing but self-aware assimilation, Troy is respectability politics. The strengths and weaknesses of their beliefs are pointed out throughout the show, but what about Sam and, to an equal extent, Gabe, the key relationship that runs throughout the show?

Unlike Reggie’s, Coco’s or Troy’s behaviors, which are all poked fun at and are contrasted, Sam and Gabe run free, unchecked and unchallenged. Sam’s contention that black activism is burdensome is never challenged by Joelle or Reggie or anybody else on the show. If anything, it’s validated by Gabe constantly reminding her that she can opt out of her blackness by being with him. Gabe is never called out by the main characters for anything he does, no matter how egregious. His feelings are deemed just as important as the actual real-life experiences of black folks on the show. By. Other. Black. People.

Gabe sexualizes Sam from the jump (posting her post-coitus pic on Instagram), privately resents being a minority in black spaces, calls the cops because he feels threatened by an interracial scuffle at a frat party, and publicly requests that Sam attend to their relationship at a meeting to comfort Reggie, who was almost killed by the cops whom Gabe called. Sam blithely basks in her color privilege, which gains her favor with men of color on campus, lies about a relationship that makes her a hypocrite, puts her needs above Reggie’s trauma and, in the climactic scene of the finale, can’t even explain the purpose of protesting.

Are there any contrasting voices to their actions? Does someone provide a counter voice for how black folks really feel? Did Joelle step in to play the conscious Missy Vaughn to Sam’s flaky Lynn Searcy? Nope. Was there a Tim Wise to Gabe’s #Woke Ryan Gosling? Nope. Gabe and Sam get the last word. Worse, in the end, all of the black characters, from Lionel to Joelle to Sam, rush to remind Gabe, and white people like him, that calling the cops was OK and there’s still room for him at the barbecue. It basically takes the previous eight episodes of the show and throws them down a flight of stairs for Gabe’s white feelings.

Worse, in the era of Trump, when nooses are hung on campuses, and blackface parties and email attacks on black students are becoming the norm, Sam has no answer for Kurt’s challenge of “What is accomplished by marching?” The white man gets the last word, on love, politics and race, because that’s how the writers feel, too.

Dear White People had a wonderful comedic and dramatic opportunity to talk about the thorny issues of being a black activist while being partnered with a white person, and instead hid from it. Dear White People had all the materials for a funny, complicated look at the limits of white “allies” and whiffed. Or even a character study of “Rashida Jones vs. Tracee Ellis Ross” performative blackness by biracial activists like Sam. Nope. Dear White People had the chance to validate and legitimize black pain on college campuses and instead made activism look rudderless.

Faux-woke comedy requires that in the end, jokes about black pain are always sanitized so as not to offend white sensibilities. No matter how powerful the black community’s voices, in the end the writers want you to know that they’ll kneel in the Oval Office and pledge allegiance to white feelings no matter what. Even though Dear White People made me laugh, fight off a thug tear or two, and think, after 10 episodes it also painfully, obviously missed the mark. Dear White People isn’t great comedy or groundbreaking. It’s a faux-comedy love letter to white people written in the letters of black pain.

This article originally appeared online at The Root.

The Root: With Iron Fist, Marvel and Netflix Make a White Man Lord of the Urban Jungle

by

You know Tarzan was a bunch of garbage, right?

The idea that some white guy got left in the middle of the jungle, was raised by apes, and somehow became the biggest, baddest, smartest guy in all of Africa is equal parts ridiculous and racist. But “white man who masters the culture, skills and talents of ‘exotic foreigners’ and then saves the day” is the movie trope that just won’t die. (Case in point: the filmAvatar and just about every one of the Step Up dance movies in the 2000s.)

Unfortunately, the great tradition of Hollywood whitewashing got a boost this week when Netflix announced that its new Marvel martial arts series, Iron Fist, will star white actor Finn Jones. Proving that now Hollywood thinks black and Asian people can’t be heroes for their own communities even if the facts and data prove otherwise.

Marvel comics—from its billion-dollar Avengers franchise to its TV universe featuring Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the critically acclaimed Netflix series Daredevil and Jessica Jones—has been lauded for its diversity, but Iron Fist was Marvel’s chance to correct one of its wrongs. And trust me, Iron Fist has always been a problem.

A nasty, whitewashed, appropriation fantasy on steroids, Iron Fist debuted in 1974 as Marvel’s answer to the popularity of blaxploitation films and kung fu flicks. Iron Fist, aka Danny Rand, was a white man, with the money of Bruce Wayne and the martial arts skills of Bruce Lee, who had a black girlfriend who was a dead ringer for Pam Grier. Throw in a few vines and some monkeys, and Iron Fist was Tarzan all over again, this time with the lead character lording over the urban jungle of New York City.

Comic book fans of all colors joined with 18MR (18 Million Rising), an Asian-American organization, with a petition to demand Marvel cast an Asian American as Danny Rand/Iron Fist. After all, if Marvel could cast Samuel Jackson to play a once-white Nick Fury and cast Idris Elba to play a Norse god inThor, why not fix a longtime Asian-appropriating white-savior character by finally creating something progressive?

But instead, when Netflix/Marvel announced Iron Fist, we got this description:

Danny Rand (Iron Fist) is a very complicated character. He’s a billionaire New York Buddhist monk martial arts superhero who’s still trying to figure out what exactly that all means.

He fights against the criminal element corrupting New York City with his incredible kung fu mastery and ability to summon the awesome power of the fiery Iron Fist.

In other words, the same old story. However, there’s something more insidious here than just another example of a white guy playing a role better suited for a person of color.

The problem with heroes like Iron Fist, or movies like Avatar or The Lone Ranger, is that they erase people of color. White men are placed at the center of the story in which they must rescue people of color while using the cultural history of the people they are saving. Somehow, the magic powers, potions, fighting skills and power suits that we create don’t work until a white guy uses them.

There are literally dozens of Asian-American actors who could have played the role; there are actual young Asian billionaires on which Iron Fist could be based; and with Asians making up over 12 percent of the 13 million people living in New York City, it seems likely that one of them could decide to fight crime in the Marvel universe. Heck, given that Iron Fist was originally a black-Asian hodgepodge, why not cast an African American for the show? African Americans are more likely to participate in martial arts than any other racial or ethnic group in America. There is a real, live black guy out there who’s been running through the streets in a costume fighting crime with marital arts for years.

Part of why superhero movies and TV shows are so popular is because they give viewers the feeling that we can go to extraordinary means to take problems into our own hands. But when the heroes are always white, it makes it look as if people of color can never solve their own problems.

With all the issues around crime in the black community, for some reason, the only person in popular culture traumatized enough by crime to ever do anything about it is a rich white kid with a fetish for black leather and bats. All the black military veterans out there, and only Tony Stark comes up with a power suit?

The comic and TV show The Walking Dead takes place outside of Atlanta, and it’s mostly white people who figure out how to survive. I’m willing to bet that Spelman and Morehouse alone could’ve taken out at least some of the zombie apocalypse. But apparently in Hollywood, no amount of trauma, disaster or special skills is enough for black, Asian or Latino people to rise up and rescue themselves.

In the coming months, we’ll see Anthony Mackie play the Falcon and Chadwick Boseman play Black Panther in the new Avengers movie. Then this fall, the Netflix series Luke Cage, starring Michael Colter, will debut. These are steps in the right direction, but they are still characters that for the most part are introduced as part of some larger storyline that was centered on a white hero.

Perhaps with enough protests, as well as wiser choices about where our dollars go, people of color on film will be driven to fight crime and battle the forces of evil as much as the white guys. In the meantime, I guess we can all marvel at another kung-fu-appropriating billionaire who has mastered skills that millions of blacks and Asians have never managed to figure out on film.

This article originally appeared online at The Root.