Girls Gone Wild

I've watched two episodes now of HBO's new hipster femme comedy "Girls" about a bunch of twenty-something women in NYC trying to fake it until they make it.  Head writer/creator/actress Lena Dunham has a damn funny show on her hands, almost painfully so.  It's "Sex And The City" on the set of "Freaks And Geeks"...which makes perfect sense since it's an HBO comedy produced by Judd Apatow.

But a lot has been said about the show's lack of diversity.  There's not a person of color to be seen so far in the quartet of main characters or their friends, and this is New York City.  It's a problem, but as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, there's a much larger issue here behind "Girls" and Hollywood in particular:

This selfishness tends to ultimately serve the writer and the audience. I think back to Friends, which for years, was dogged by criticism of its all-white cast. When its creators finally relented they casted two great talents--Aisha Tyler and later Gabriel Union--but didn't even bother to write separate story-lines. They simply recycled the same plot, and plugged in a new black girl.

I thought about that episode after one of the writers on Girls responded to the criticism by tweeting sarcastically, "What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME."  That comment understandably set of a new round of outrage. But it should also set off some reflection. I don't know Dunham or anyone who writes for Girls. Perhaps that was a rogue comment that says nothing about her team. Nevertheless, I think it's only right to ask whether you really want black characters rendered by the same hands that rendered that tweet. Invisibility is problematic. Caricature is worse.

Hollywood's problem with persons of color in general is that in a world where people are often reduced to two-dimensional bits, PoCs are reduced to their race, plain and simple.  It's either an all-white cast, or an all-black one produced by Tyler Perry.

If you've ever seen my family, which looked like ABC's Modern Family long before that show was cool, life doesn't work like that.  Here's what I want to see, Hollywood:  Dad's white, Mom's black, the kids are both, and they all do completely normal things.  They play soccer.  They go to the beach.  The two grandpas watch a football game together.  The two grandmas show off baby pictures at church...and it's the same church, by the way.  I think the fact that they did average family crap would blow everyone's mind.

Maybe that's just me.  Also explains why I'm not a head writer for an HBO series.