Away Y'all Go

I'm not sure if anyone actually saw the movie Run, Fat Boy, Run*. It came out last year and was directed by David Schwimmer. Simon Pegg stars as a man who left his pregnant fiancee (played by Thandie Newton) at the altar. Some time later, she has taken up with a wealthy man (Hank Azaria) and her baby's father decides he wants her back.


Rashida Jones (daughter of Quincy), who notably played Jim's other love interest on The Office, had a role last year as the wife-to-be in I Love You, Man. She's played the girlfriend/wife opposite a White actor in a number of films and TV shows. (Yes, now you see where I am going.)


Zoe Saldana, who played Ashton Kutcher's girlfriend in Guess Who, may have landed her breakout role with the recent hit Star Trek remake. She has a romantic relationship with young Spock this time around.

There is a new film opening soon called Away, We Go starring Maya Rudolph and John Kransinski:

The two play a couple expecting their first baby and travelling the US looking for the best place to raise the little quad...just kidding...little one. It looks like an adorable flick.

It seems like Hollywood is getting mighty comfortable with the casting of Black actresses opposite White males. In most of these films, however, the race of the woman is not discussed. And like most Black actors in non-Black films, the women come unencumbered by Black friends or family members.

All of the women I named are of mixed parentage (all have one Black and one White parent, with the exception of Zoe Saldana. She describes herself as "Dominican, Lebanese, Irish, Indian and Jamaican"). With the exception of Saldana, they are also...how do I put this....light enough not to be so "noticeably Black" (unless you are race obsessed like me, who is like "OH SHIT, SHE'S A SISTER!"). Almost light enough to "pass".

Is this simply "color-blind casting" or are biracial Black girls now as hot in the White boy streets as they are in Negronia? Is the lack of mention of race in these films because the girls are so light and surrounded by White friends, so it hardly seems like they are Black at all? (EXCEPT THAT FOR THEY ARE!!!!)My guess is that these actresses were auditioned against White women and NOT casted in roles that were written for Black girls (minus Star Trek and Guess Who, both played by a mixed woman who is relatively brownner skinned). Would a darker-skinned Black girl have a crack at being Jim's boo on The Office or playing the wife in the season's big "Bromance".

All these girls are mixed and I've never seen them play roles where they were embodying Black female stereotypes or being exoticized. So I don't have any real criticism for them as actresses for taking these roles**. I DO find it curious that I have only seen Rashida Jones play opposite (and date) White men, but then again, I never saw her father with a Black woman either. I suppose that these girls may be more likely in real life to mate with non-Blacks giving their own backgrounds, so perhaps they make more sense in the role than would a more ethnically obvious Black woman? But if they are the only Black person in the film, I just can't help but to feel like they are kinda sorta...passing. Also, in most of these flicks, the woman is a supporting character. These aren't particularly meaty roles, but the same "pretty girlfriend/wife" types a lot of White actresses get. Not particularly a sign of progress for the race or the gender.

Speaking of, Phylicia Rashad is currently on Broadway as the matriarch in August: Osage County. Rashad plays a drug addicted, racist older woman of an Oaklahoma family grappling with incest, suicide, pedophilia and a host of other serious issues. Phylicia was cast "color-blind", but everyone else is White. It's peculiar to say the least. And while I am sure her stellar acting is enough to make you believe any role she portrays, I am not sure this is a a "win" for Black actresses, so much as it is tokenism and a ploy to lure in audiences. As Sir Fabulous Himself pointed out, why didn't they add a Black or mixed race person to play one of the children? Or cast folks of all races?

I'm not sure how I feel about Hollywood's new found (or perhaps revitalized***) comfort with paring Black women with White men, especially considering how infrequently we see quirky, cute, thoughtful films about Black women and Black men. I don't necessarily see interracial couples on screen as some great sign of progression. As someone very smartly commented on Jez, we needed worry about normalizing interracial couples until we have normalized Black ones. Why? Because that's the partnership that MOST Black people will find themselves in. In fact, with the exception of Japanese-American women, MOST Americans will marry a person of their own race.

Dropping one Black/mixed woman in a film doesn't really do much for me in terms of seeing progress in Hollywood. I don't feel that every film depicting a mixed couple has to involve a long, hackneyed discussion of the interracial dating "issue", but it just seems rather unrealistic that these ladies wouldn't have at least one Black parent, a sibling, a friend...someone else who looked like them who figured prominently in their lives. Or are these the film embodiment of the race-abandoning folks who choose to live in spaces with limited to no interaction with other Black people?

Black men are rarely portrayed in tender, loving relationships in films. Most of our movies are made by Tyler Perry these days, it seems. And you usually have to sift through the shucking and jiving to see anything positive or realistic in his tripe. I know for damn, diddly damn sure I am not rooting for this trend to extend to Black men. Not until we can get some serious dramas and romantic comedies and thrillers starring Black men and women opposite each other. And neither of them can be Beyonce.

It seems that the attitude is that a Black couple in the lead makes a film a "Black film" and thus, uninteresting to the rest of the world beyond Negronia. Which is weird, as there are more Black male superstar/certified box office gold actors than there are women. Are you telling me that had I Love You, Man starred Will Smith opposite Jason Seigel, people wouldn't have been interested? What about the story of a quirky Black couple traveling the country looking for a place to make a home? Too race-y?

The same way I am annoyed that MOST Black lead girls are light and MOST Black male leads are dark and MOST lead actresses of any film are thin and MOST female love interests are somewhat predictable and vanilla and MOST big budget Black films suck, I wouldn't complain if we saw more variety. You won't hear a peep from about seeing interracial couples in films when we start seeing more Black couples as well, and outside of the three-ring circus of Perryland and the non-actors garage that is Mrs. Knowles-Carter.

What are your thoughts?


*Interestingly, comedian Michael Ian Black of Vh1 fame was a writer on the film. I unfollowed him on Twitter yesterday for saying he made a barista uncomfortable by asking "Can a nigga get some Sweet and Low?" Wowzers.

**Someone could argue against that. I know I have a biracial parent who would have NO problem listing his complaints about these actresses choosing some of these roles. But I am not stepping into that arena.

***Halle Berry, Angela Basset, Whoopi Goldberg, Rae Dawn Chong and a number of other Black women have played opposite White men. Chong and Berry both had streaks where they didn't seem to have any Black leading men at all. My father despises both these women.