IR Action on Pan Am TV Series

Like that scene and if the characters go to Alabama it would be explosive. Kid that is indeed true you can count with your fingers of American actresses who had a love scene with a Black actor. The foreign actresses have more courage and guts.

 

The article below is spot on.....


On-screen, interracial relationships between white women and African American, Latino, or Asian men occur so infrequently that it can be argued that there is an implicit censorship of these unions that demonstrates how certain subjects are rendered outside the realm of what is speakable. Even films that do pair a white woman with a man of color tend to keep the relationship platonic or avoid showing any intimacy in their relationship. For example, interracial weddings are rarely seen or celebrated on-screen, even though weddings are a particularly popular tool used in Hollywood films to end a movie or serve as a backdrop of the narrative. Since weddings legitimize and solidify relationships, the avoidance of legitimizing interracial unions through marriage can be read as a symbolic ban, like the legal ban on interracial marriage overturned in 1967 by the Supreme Court. Prominent black actors such as Cuba Gooding, Jr., Will Smith, and Denzel Washington have commented on Hollywood’s tendency to avoid the issue of interracial intimacy and the hesitancy of white executives to place a black male lead opposite a white female lead for a romantic story line. When Denzel Washington was asked how people would react to a black man and white woman in bed on-screen, he replied “I don’t know. . . . I wouldn’t do it just for the reaction. If it’s a good story, I’d do it. . . . I haven’t turned down any scenes like that because I haven’t been offered any. So again that’s a question for some guys [waves his arm toward the Hollywood Hills] behind those big gates.” While black male actors are often blamed or rumored to avoid love scenes with a white woman, Denzel Washington, as well as Will Smith and Cuba Gooding, have all acknowledged that it is the filmmakers who make these choices.
In Hollywood today, a black man kissing a white woman is still largely a taboo as far as studio executives are concerned, as evidenced in the large number of movies that pair a black man opposite a white woman that do not include a romantic relationship. Films based on books that contained an interracial relationship, such as The Pelican Brief and Kiss the Girls, altered the story lines from the books they were based on to eliminate any sexual tension or relationship between the white and black lead actors.
In The Bone Collector, Washington played opposite Angelina Jolie, where they did exchange sexual innuendos, yet there was no danger of the two actually having sex since Washington’s character was a quadriplegic who couldn’t leave the house. The Oscar-nominated and popular box-office black actor Will Smith has also been paired against white women in movies such as Men in Black and I, Robot, yet the closest it came to a romantic or sexual encounter in either film was suggestive comments. This phenomenon occurs in a string of films such as Murder at 1600 (1997) with Wesley Snipes and Diane Lane and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) with Samuel Jackson and Geena Davis.
As some have argued, Middle-class American family norms include a guarantee against miscegenation and interracial sex is most problematic if it involves a white woman, given the gendered way that white women paired with men of color are often rendered outside the realm of possibility while white men paired with any woman is a possibility.
For example, in the popular 2005 romantic comedy Hitch, Will Smith plays a “love doctor” who helps other men get women to fall in love with them, focusing on his work with an awkward white guy in love with a beautiful blonde. While able to help other men by teaching them his moves, Will Smith clumsily pursues a character played by Cuban American actress Eva Mendes. As Hitch director Andy Tennant argues, “Unfortunately, if you paired Will with a white woman, that would overpower the romantic comedy. It would suddenly become an interracial love story, and that wasn’t the movie we were making.” Will Smith also commented on the racial politics of casting in an interview with a British paper, the Birmingham Post while promoting Hitch overseas:
“There’s sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, that people around the world don’t want to see it. . . . We spend $50-something million making this movie and the studio would think that was tough on their investment. So the idea of a black actor and a white actress comes up—that’ll work around the world, but it’s a problem in the U.S.”
Therefore, racial policing of on-screen relationships can be tricky business, especially when a black male actor is featured, and the fear of the white producers is that pairing him with a white woman will “overtake” the movie or more likely alienate some, yet pairing him with a black woman would change the film into a “black film.” Rather than acknowledge racism, white directors like Tennant problematize interracial unions and excuse the avoidance of these unions as good storytelling.
Relationships between men of color and white women are rarely depicted as long-term or successful and are often submerged in deviance. Furthermore, interracial sex is used to symbolize a major transformation or turn in the lives of young white women on-screen. This is reminiscent of the way white womanhood was viewed as a potential source of crisis after the Civil War. A number of contemporary movies such as Bad Company, Cruel Intentions, Freeway, Pulp Fiction, and Ricochet include an interracial sexual encounter or relationship, yet it is submersed in a deviant world of crime, prostitution, and inner-city motels.
Too often, interracial relationships symbolize chaos, unevenness, the unknown, fitting right into a postmodern or postpostmodern disarray of lives. Beyond what representations we see, it is more about what we don’t see. Interracial weddings are rarely seen or celebrated on-screen, even though they are particularly popular tools used in Hollywood films to end a movie or serve as a backdrop of the narrative. Since weddings legitimize and solidify relationships, the avoidance of legitimizing interracial unions through marriage can be read as a symbolic ban, like the legal ban on interracial marriage overturned in 1967 by the Supreme Court. There are virtually no films that include a happily partnered white woman and black man within the context of a stable, middle-class world. If a white woman is paired interracially, most often it occurs in a deviant setting, it causes problems, and/or is met with opposition, usually from communities of color who are used to symbolically represent the potential problems.
Protecting white women even in the movies remains a prerogative of the predominantly white male producers who control the film images we see. While the earliest films showed the dangers of interracial sex, with a white woman jumping off a cliff rather than be defiled by a black man, today’s white women who engage in sexual relations with a black man on-screen are also damaged, yet now it is symbolized through drugs, prostitution, and disengagement with school or family.
The representations of interracial unions between black men and white women do little to challenge racial boundaries, and often it is safer to pair a black man with a Latina woman, who is almost, yet not quite, white. Black men can be sexual predators, but they cannot be charismatic sexual partners, especially to white women, as we see in how few romantic movies a prominent star like Denzel Washington has been in. In Hitch, the problem of who to cast opposite Will Smith and the solution of pairing him opposite Eva Mendes shows what filmmakers think will alienate viewers and allows the familiar story to be told of a black man who is sexually savvy and slick teaching a white man how to get a girl without the threat of Will Smith wanting a white woman too (thereby also not posing a threat to the white man who he instead is helping). What emerges is that not only is interracial sexuality involving whites, particularly white women, problematized, it also points to how interracial couplings involving white women and black men, whether fictional or not, are still viewed with distaste in contemporary American society.

 

That article was good but lacking proper context. I don't think that Latino male/WW pairings are anywhere near as taboo as they're making out. I see it in TV and movies much more than BM/WW.

The article also failed to note the double standard when it comes WM actors being paired with non-WW in on screen romances. Hollywood is allowed to depict WM hitting whatever color woman they want to without the story being "offensive" to most viewers. It's gotten to the point where you see certain black actresses paired more with white men than black men on screen these days and nobody says a peep about it.

 

That is what I said above. The filmakers decide who gets with who. :smt069

Freddy.......Gaius Charles has a very short career at this point. He has had two interracial romances in two different shows. One with an Australian actress and one with an American actress. The Australian one has been canonized on this board and the American one glossed over. Why is everyone glossing over his IR on the other show because people don't want to admit an American actress played a part with a BM?:smt039

 

Actually, Sandra Bullock was given the roll of Trinity at the same time that Will Smith was given the roll of Neo in the Matrix. In An interview Sandra Bullock exclaimed that at the time she didn't see herself romantically starring with the actor they had chosen so she declined. They later went with K. Reeves.

Here is the right link, sorry I was posting in my thread earlier.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29125424/ns/today-entertainment/t/america-asks-sandra-bullock-answers/

 

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-10-20/..._steve-mcqueen-sean-connery-role?_s=PM:LIVING

 

I see what you are saying here Jordan, I would say that, as pointed out in the article, the reasons the film-makers are deciding who gets with who, are rooted in a deep fear/loathing of IR between Black men and White women.

I would agree that it was very brave of the American actress in FNL, to take on such a role as it can be damaging in Hollywood, I have the same respect for Julia Stiles, so such examples do exist, just too far and few between for all the reasons mentioned in the article.

 

Yes but without proof the naysayers here blame it on the actresses. Some of these actresses have no more pull than a waitress at McDonalds. Until the public is asking for it I doubt it will come about. And we know that will take a miracle. People need to support what is out there so the money is there.

And good to see you posting. Your voice of reason is missed around here.

 

Whatever.

 

As usual you make valid points. When it comes to the actresses, I would say that proof would be tough to come by, as most would not come right out and say that they don't want to do a romantic IR movie, I do find Sandra Bullock's Matrix comment to be very disappointing, if in fact it was about Will Smith.

 

That would be disappointing. I cannot find any direct quotes of her exact words. She also doesn't use a name in what you can find that "she said". We assume she refers to Will.....but we can't be positive since she doesn't use a name. I find it unbelievable she would diss a big player like Will, even if by innuendo.

 

Personally, I think it goes both ways. It's the Actresses and the Movie Producers. I am more inclined to believe that it is more the movie producers than the actresses. But, to be honest, unless we are directly in the entertainment industry and experience it for ourselves I suppose we may never know.

 

http://celebrityquips.com/2009/03/14/sandra-bullock-quotes-2/

Not sure how reliable the link is, and she does not mention Will by name, but if there was nobody else cast in the role before Keanu it is pretty easy to deduce.

 

Originally the point was made to reflect A list actresses who do have a say. I don't know how we got to the chick from FNL who btw hasn't been able to get any decent roles since. The last thing she did was Wonder Woman which never got aired. Kind of interesting.

 

I posted the other link showing that Will was originally cast and he turned it down after thinking about it for a while.

 

Enough is enough. The porn issue is a legit one from all I've read. I'm not doubting that. But to write that white American actresses are ducking black male love interests on the big screen is absurd.

First of all the opportunities of any women to be the love interest of a black man in movies are very limited because black guys don't get the chance to be the stud or romantic pursuer in film in the first place. Even with black women it isn't that common. Secondly one can't prove that white American actresses duck black guys in that fashion because they never get put in such a position in the first place. In other words those actresses don't have to duck because Hollywood motion pictures don't have any interest in even considering pairing a black man and a white woman in mainstream motion pictures. Anne Hathaway doesn't have to drop out of a big role in fear of being onscreen with a black man because it would never come to a point in which a black guy would be seriously considered in the first place. Until Hollywood is open to such pairings we can't make claims about what those actresses will or will not do.


Anyway Pan Am is a TV series and TV series have been far more willing to go that route than film. I think it is a bit much to say that if the actress being paired with Gaius in this show was American she would have called her agent to get her out of the situation and that is basically what some of you are claiming. Get a grip, my friends. Kid, you use Amanda Seyfried as an example but when she was on "All My Children" she was for awhile paired with Michael B. Jordan. That relationship only came to an end when she was dropped from the show, something she had no control over.

 

I don't think Elba complained about that. Elba took issue with black men not being seen or portrayed as "sexy" by the industry and the media. And by the way when it comes to UK television black characters are far more likely to be paired alongside white love interests. To an extent that is the case in the few British movies that have black protagonists.

 

She very well could be referring to him. It just seems like shooting yourself in the foot, both being on the same level and perhaps being offered roles playing together later down the road. Who wants to work with someone who dissed them earlier??!! Is it possible someone else was offered it after Will and before Keanu........we won't know.........so we assume it to be Will. I would be disappointed knowing that later she adopted a black son.

 

I ain't ignoring shit. You're being obtuse as usual. Dude had two on screen IR romances with a foreign actress and a no name American actress. Like I said before, name me one big name American actress who's in her prime (other than Olivia Wilde) who's done an on-screen IR. You keep pointing to the article that points out that it's the people who make the films who decide when there's going to be on screen IR romance. Nobody ever claimed that white American actresses decide when there's going to be IR in a script. We said that they don't take the jobs when they're available. You think that the powers-that-be in Hollywood also just keep passing up over famous American actresses for foreigners and no name domestic talent on a whim on rare occasions that they are casting IR roles? Get real. When the parts are available, high-profile American actresses don't want to take them.

 

I posted a second link showing that Will was the first to get that role. Also, it is what it is, I have been called the N word by people with black partners and or bi-racial children as much as I have by the common everyday White Power types. Keep in mind that some Actors and Actresses adopt Children like some people adopt pets.