BM/WW IR sightings on TV

I'm finally watching "Small Island". I gotta a good chuckle during these scenes when everyone just assumes that David Oyelowo is the Father of Ruth Wilson's baby. Also just gotta say, Horrible casting for the baby. The baby is darkskinned & doesn't look biracial AT ALL.

 

What show is this that has Ruth Wilson starring with Ashley Walters and Naomie Harris? I've got to see this!

And with regard to the show mentioned above with David Oyelowo, I guess it depends on how dark the father is. I've seen some biracial kids who appear to be wholly black.

 

That is honestly the only reason I am watching, to support that and see if they will commit and actually do it but the show is sooooooooooo bad to me tbh

 

So worth watching/supporting or no?

 

Spoiler

"There's rushed kissing more like a peck but..."Her friend the Margot Robbie lookalike stages a meet with the professor and hooks up with him and the brother walks in on them while she's on top of him riding him (not really shown), then she reports the professor to the school for the act anonymously.
The love interest finds out thinking it was the incident which occured between him and her and tries to to rectify the situation but finds out it wasn't about them, so she concludes he was a creep just as her friend pointed out and I think this is end of it.
But we also find out her friend (Margot Robbie lookalike) has been messing around with her crushes ever since they were young and she's starting to realize that she's isn't her 'bestfriend'.

 

I definitely give it a thumbs up. Aside from any wwbm action, I think it's a solid show overall. l like this genre, and this show is well done. Also I want to support a show with Black leads, especially if it includes interracial scenes without making it a scandal or virtue signal.

And on an unrelated note, if you like Aldis Hodge eye candy, you will for sure enjoy certain scenes where he's put on display. They definitely didn't forget to add some eye candy for the ladies lol.

 

I agree completely. That's why this site is such a big help. I don't have time to jump on every series based on a 2-second trailer tease.

 

How far have you made it? Can you recommend it?

 

Yeah he is definitely eye candy so I might have to watch it if its a good show. I definitely want to support shows with black leads especially after a recent argument I had which is part of how I got to this website lol So even if it isn't that great I will have to watch it.

 

Only one episode so far and haven't had time for more yet

 

I have very little interest in the show since I saw some of the casting, but more recently what has really taken me aback was a clip of Hodge in an interview talking about only agreeing to do the show if it done in a manner that does justice to "our stories". Our stories? Alex Cross is a character created by a white man who happened to write all the novels about the character which were consumed almost exclusively by white readers. How does that make it "our stories", dude? I am annoyed by shows and movies led by black male characters that are presented as being produced for black eyeballs or having to meet some standard for black audiences. It suggests that there is an initial limitation for who the show/movie is made for and that may have a direct result on the show or film's overall appeal to the masses.

 

It's pandering. Trying to get black audiences to watch by going full Black militant. Every time a black actor goes into a project with a black cast or they are a lead they all put on that black militant act to sell it. Jordan Peele did the same thing. And goes to show how little Aldis Hodge knew about this series. So, awkaaaard! lol.

 

i wouldn’t overstate this on either side. James Patterson in interviews has explained the importance of Alex Cross being an African American character - he turned down a lot of money early on to deny studios the ability to race bend the character to white. Cross is a tribute to the African Americans. Hodge, like all actors selling a project, is given “notes” on how to discuss it - this is contractual. It’s just marketing, no more sincere or serious than a McDonald’s commercial showcasing a burger.

 

Are you upset that James Patterson wrote the Cross books for white audiences or that Aldi's Hodge wants the show to resonate with Black audiences?

 

Maybe we've seen different interviews, but I don't see any militance in Hodge's promotion of the show. Not that I've watched a lot of it. My view, after watching the show, is simply that it shows Black people just being people. There are multiple viewpoints illustrated.

Just so I'm clear though

Spoiler: stuff you'll hate

there is some of that 2020 style "defund the police" talk. But Cross is on the other side of it, while trying to still be true to his community

It sounds like you won't watch the show. But if you do, I'm really interested in your take on things.

 

The latter. The fact that the show has an iconic black male lead character should be enough to bring in a black audience just like the Morgan Freeman Alex Cross films that still regularly air on black-targeted TV networks like Bounce TV.

 

No. I was just simply highlighting the selling of it.

Agree. That Marketing always seems to go away when it's Pro Black Man or IR between BM & WW.
If the selling of it the show by Aldis Hodge has been highlighting the importance Black Male Empowerment then cool. But if he is expanding it to all Black People by his term "our stories" then it's similar to what they did with Luke Cage in wanting it to be a Black Male Character centered and represented by the strength of Black Women.

 

For years I was thankful for Patterson providing a black male lead for a franchise series when such a thing was a rarity in the publishing industry (it still kind of is tbh). As a person who lived in the Washington DC area myself, I did not think Patterson had a great grasp on black Washington (unlike someone like George Pelecanos, A white novelist who understood black communities of both DC and Baltimore and carried that understanding to his duties as one of the writers of "The Wire"). But I never held it against Patterson for having a more superficial grasp of the community, I was simply appreciative of his willingness to offer the world a complex black guy as a focus of his brand of storytelling. That's something black female authors, who were/are far more numerous than black male authors, would never do. Most of all I was delighted that Patterson's Cross novels were huge best sellers and being consumed by readers who otherwise would not read books centering on black characters unless the stories fell under the category referred to these days as " trauma porn." I don't think Patterson was writing for white audiences; he just happened to write books that drew white readers in part because his white face could be seen on the cover folds.

As for Hodge, my objection is his going on some show with some black host and trying to play it off as if the Alex Cross series was some franchise that was beloved and consumed largely by black people. According to Hodge when he was approached by the producers for the show he informed them he wasn't interested unless there were certain assurances in how they were going to handle the Cross series, he referred to it as doing right by "our stories". This implied a sense of ownership, as if the Alex Cross franchise was some sacred text for the black community. You hear this from black folks a lot when Hollywood is about to do an adaptation of black written literature or movies about real black people. The Cross series doesn't fall under any of those categories. It wasn't Easy Rawlings by Walter Mosely for God's sakes. Nevertheless the black audience Hodge had been speaking in front of did their normal thing of uttering their approval of his words like they were in church responding to a preacher. [Sidenote: This is similar to the nonsense you see about Miles Morales on black twitter. Miles was not created by a black writer but black people who never knew of the character until the animated movies all over Twitter making demands about the skin color of the actor who will eventually get cast as Miles and about how he should have only black girlfriends.]

This is something Hodge tends to do when a microphone is put in front of his face. He is not some extreme militant, but when he gets an opportunity he will bring up the race factor when, in my opinion, it is unnecessary. This is why I was somewhat weary over his casting in the first place. I could envision him as one of those black male actors suggesting behind the scenes of his character only having black love interests even though Cross in the novels had romantic attachments with women of various racial backgrounds. Hodge is a good actor though and is more age appropriate than Morgan Freeman who brought the character to life on the big screen.

I hope that clears things up on my part.

 

And not only that...the black male showrunner seemed to only want Luke to have relationships with black women. I am guessing this was in.part because he grew up reading Luke Cage comics in the 70s and 80s and the women Luke hooked up with during that time were black women exclusively. But times have changed and by the time the Luke Cage TV show had started airing, Luke had been in a relationship with Jessica Jones for well.over a decade in the comic books. Even more than that, this tv version of Luke had been introduced first on the Jessica Jones show and their sexual rapport had been well established. The black show runner of Luke's show tried to ignore all of that, as if it never happened.

Here is some interesting trivia. Years before Luke and Jessica had their Netflix shows, the late John Singleton was trying to take a stab at a Luke Cage movie and he was going to use Jessica as the love interest. It would have been the first time Jessica Jones appeared onscreen. But the Hollywood trade mags also reported Singleton was looking to cast a black actress in the role. Because you know no black man can have no white love interest, right? My god. I am so happy that movie was never made. Who knows. If it had been Jessica Jones may still be played by black actresses to this day ala Iris Allen of Flash. Members of our black community feel it's racist to reverse the race bend casting of black actresses even if the character had been created as a white woman. Lord, make it stop.

 

And that's where I'm getting at with my skepticism.(Which I know I could be wrong on with Aldis' context).
But let's be honest he wouldn't had used that term "out stories" in any context if the Black Male Protagonist had a white love interest.