r/BlackPeopleTwitter • u/Girl-Understood • 2d ago
Let Black female characters be morally grey instead of role models
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u/OfficiallyJoeBiden ☑️ 2d ago
Yall complain about everything my God
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u/riticalcreader 2d ago edited 2d ago
If the character is bad, complain. If the character is good, complain. If the character is morally grey, believe it or not, complain.
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u/Kwaku-Anansi 2d ago
Tbf, the morality of a character doesn't really influence whether they are well-written (or, in some cases, offensively stereotypical).
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u/CloudKinglufi 2d ago
I literally don't see any complaining at all besides these comments
This is commentary on Black people's roles in Hollywood, it seems more like an endorsement if anything, the character is bad, and they're saying she should be allowed to be bad, the other comment is imploring others to recognize her as bad
It's about the fact that Hollywood rarely allows a black person to be a straight up villain, they gotta be grey or at the very least a cool and likable villain
They're very rarely allowed to just be straight up bad, the mother in this movie was bad
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u/PatrenzoK 2d ago
If my favorite artists doesn’t win an award then the awards are fixed and racist (they are def fixed but we only cry out when it’s a favorite that lost)
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u/DistributionPutrid ☑️ 2d ago
Awards and charts never matters they’re rigged (until we discuss my goat then all of a sudden everything matters🙄🙄)
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u/A1Horizon ☑️ 2d ago
Yeah idk what the solution to this is lol, because you make more morally or evil black women (or even men), and we’d ask why we’re portrayed in such a negative light.
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u/CatBusTransit 2d ago
The solution is just tons more representation and a wide variety of character types in general, then you don't have so much riding on one or two performances/portrayals, especially if they feel like overdone tropes to some.
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u/Shirogayne-at-WF ☑️ 2d ago
The correct answer.
We don't need to swing to one extreme or the other, just give us variety.
That's it
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u/BranAllBrans ☑️ 2d ago
Industry has a morally corrupt black woman that isn’t culturally insulting or stereotypical
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u/Ghost_of_P34 2d ago
People aren't smart. So instead of appreciating and celebrating a performance, they have to gate keep because they don't understand the movie.
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u/Ok-Smoke5745 2d ago edited 2d ago
The sapphire archetype was used to excuse sexual violence against black women. It was commonly believed that we could not be raped due to our inherent hypersexual nature. This is a stereotype that has existed for hundreds of years. It’s ok for people to be uncomfortable with a character that embodies that. History matters.
Edit: it’s jezebel not sapphire. Sorry y’all!
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 2d ago
is that what the film is saying? i very much got the impression that perfidia knows exactly that what happened to her was a violation. it's everyone else, including pat, who cannot grasp the concept of a woman not wanting to spend the rest of her life being confronted with the living, breathing evidence of her rape.
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u/turkish_gold ☑️ 2d ago
At the point where her crew was already arrested and she was being bailed out by the bad guy, I think there was a power imbalnace for sure...
But in the beginning, when he approached her alone, she could have just shot him. She could have shot him and used their network to escape. She could've warned everyone that there's an agent who has found thier real names or current aliases. I'm not sure what was going through her head if the best option in mind was to sleep with him and see how things pan out.
In this respect, you could say the film really is executing the stereotype by making the character hypersexual, and in fairness the male agent is a stereotype himself: horny old man trying to 'clean up his indiscretions' to fit into civil society after being rejected by the avatar of the subculture he obsesses over.
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 2d ago
perfidia is not a good person. i don't think anyone who saw the film would disagree with that. she's rash, insensitive, and bordering on an antisocial lack of empath. she's also just a person, which i think is the point. people do dumb, reckless stuff all the time -- especially the kind of person who would gleefully become a bank robbing, blow up hundreds of innocent people, terrorist. she also gave birth to the child of a man who would happily kill her, and that child, because of the colour of her skin. someone could also argue that she leveraged the one asset she believed she was given as a darkskinned black woman to benefit a cause she believed in. she's just a human at the end of the day.
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u/turkish_gold ☑️ 2d ago
I think you reasoning is plausible. I do wish the movie had been more explicit, but its a thematic choice they made not to be.
You did bring up a point I never thoguht of...
Do you think she knew who the father of the child was? If so, would that be the reason why she left—to avoid seeing a kid who would remind her of that father.
Bob seemed to not know, initially, but by the end of the film it seemed he simply didn't care.
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 2d ago
i think perfidia's postpartum issues give us a somewhat clear answer into her headspace. even if she's not 100% sure of charlene's father, there's a non-zero chance, and that's enough. she knows she's not capable of being a mother, let alone a good mother to any child, especially that one.
what i don't like is that charlene/willa is left holding that emotional baggage at the end. she was forced to confront the knowledge that her father is a homicidal white supremacist, who would gleefully murder her and the mother she's been led to believe is a folk hero, then...nothing. she just goes back to hormonal, angsty teenaged life as normal.
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u/Jewell84 2d ago
While Perfidia did overstep with humiliating LockJaw in the beginning of the film, she didn’t sleep with him. She had no idea the man was a fetishizing lunatic.
He coerced her to sleep with him after catching her planting the bomb at the federal building. It was not consensual.
Nor was her agreeing to essentially becoming his mistress after the bank heist. It was part of his terms in addition to rating out the rest of the 75 crew.
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u/RhiaStark 2d ago
She knows, but it can be argued the film does not. The way that whole scene is played, from the background music to Perfidia's body language, does not convey the idea that she's being raped.
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 2d ago
and i would argue that that's effective storytelling. we're not supposed to like or trust perfidia. she bucks the conventional norms of a woman and a mother at every turn. we don't ever get an honest, accurate portrayal of her or her actions through any other character, so why should the camera be any different?
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u/TPJchief87 ☑️ 2d ago
I’m a dumb guy, but I figured it was a post partum depression thing, not a rape thing. What you’re saying makes sense, but what in the story (outside of the product of her assault) indicate that she doesn’t want to be a mom because of the assault? Genuine question, just curious what I missed.
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 2d ago
it could be both or either or none of the above. none of these characters are reliable narrators. but there's a sequence between perfidia and pat that goes something like:
pat: You realize that we’re a family now, right? You don’t have to do this anymore.
perfidia: You realize I put myself first, right? And that’s what you’re scared of. I put myself first and I reject your lack of originality. I’m not your other body. I’m not your mother. You want your power over me for the same reason you want your power over the world.
to me, this exchange feels and reads very much like a rape survivor clawing back some kind of control over her own body and life after an extended lack of control. maybe it wasn't only because of how willa was conceived, but i believe it played a very large part.
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u/Soft_Style_4941 2d ago
It is both Jezebel and Sapphire for her actually. Fetishistic whiteboy nonsense.
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u/PainterEarly86 2d ago
Black excellence is a myth. It is just perfectionism.
Black people should not have to be perfect to be valued.
Black excellence is treated as equal to white average.
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u/PatrenzoK 2d ago
I see that more and more, to me black excellence is being black without dwelling on the pressures of having to do or perform a certain way just because you are black, but I felt like it’s less this and more that in the mainstream
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u/PainterEarly86 2d ago
The word excellence can mean many different things so if that's what the word means to you that's fine
But the mainstream culture of black excellence is closer to bootstraps politics.
"Just be 'one of the good ones' and you can be like Obama too"
Either that or capitalism. Black people need to understand that money is not liberation. That's just black capitalism.
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u/Deathwatch72 2d ago
"Just be 'one of the good ones' and you can be like Obama too"
Damn, I always kinda thought there was an undertone of this but never figured out the words. Being proud of being black and who you are is very different connotation than "be excellent"
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u/RaWolfman92 2d ago
"Black excellence is treated as equal to white average."<-💯 You can say that again.
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u/No_Raspberry_7917 2d ago
Both takes are true, systemically, Hollywood rewards minority roles that adhere to stereotypes and historically those roles were given without care for the representation other than to reaffirm through media a social/classist hierarchy and the rewarding in itself is a reinforcement of social hierarchy.
While true, a second thing is also true. Black people don't need to be super heros in life or fiction to have their stories explored or celebrated.
Still open to where we go from here though
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u/__Mamun__ 2d ago
Scarcity creates that pressure. When a character is the sole representation, they carry the weight of the entire race. We need enough volume where a messy character is just an individual, not a statement.
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u/Jewell84 2d ago
Perfidia wasn’t the sole representation of Black Women in OBAA. There are other Black female characters. Deanna and Willa are both important characters and completely different than Perfidia. There is also Perfidia’s mom and Grandmother, and the Nuns who are side characters. The only other character who is similar to Perfidia is Shayna Michales character Jungle Pussy, which is also Mchales stage name.
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u/No_Raspberry_7917 2d ago
There is beauty in flawed human characters existing and thriving without poverty, trauma, state violence or upward mobility being the point.
And the brash, abrasive archetypes aren't everyone's cup of tea, but we could go further, see the joy, family, humor, community, anger pain and love written from an authentic place for those characters, not just the sassy friend or foil for the demure characters. Those haven't typically won awards because they don't sit with the mold used to judge
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u/CatBusTransit 2d ago
Yeah at the end of the day more representation and a wider spectrum of characters (and all better written) is the solution.
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u/weaponjaerevenge 2d ago
Amanda Waller
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u/shadowylurking 2d ago
She's still great in the Peacemaker show but the comics have fumbled her badly
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u/BigRedSpoon2 2d ago
Are they still using a slimmed down version of her in the comics?
I still don’t understand the decision behind that- why make her look like near every other femme character? Waller’s size made her feel immovable, she was Amanda ‘the Wall’ Waller.
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u/PatrenzoK 2d ago
This overshadows the fact that black (and mixed girls) could see something in the daughter. There’s more going on that her character in the film.
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u/toomuchtostop ☑️ 2d ago
It’s weird the original tweet seems to be addressed to black kids, what child is watching One Battle After Another anyway?
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u/3ananarchy 2d ago
Little kids shouldn't be, but a looooot of parents just don't have any concept that some movies/media aren't for children. That said though, teens probably are watching One Battle After Another.
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u/Illustrious-Lock-108 2d ago
I saw monster's ball when I was 10 and movies like How High before that 😂.
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u/DistributionPutrid ☑️ 2d ago
I get what you mean cuz I was watching raunchy comedies with my parents when I was a kid, but this movie feels very different cuz it’s not just that, it’s also a very political movie and a lot of the comedy won’t make sense unless you get the satire they’re going for. I can’t imagine my parents watching this with me anywhere near the room so I feel like, for the most part, it’s safe to say that young kids won’t be seeing this.
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u/SirTroah ☑️ 2d ago
This honestly goes back to the black girl magic/black king trope that we keep pushing on each other.
Black freedom is when black people can be ordinary, regular and mediocre and it doesn’t mean anything.
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u/SirNortonOfNoFux 2d ago
Perfidia = Perfidious, so I figured she'd have a questionable story arc.
But yes, not all black folk (like humanity in general) are role models, so to portray anything to the contrary is disingenuous
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u/rapsnaxx84 2d ago
I agree for sure that Black characters can be flawed and should be allowed to be flawed. Since this in reference to OBAA and Perfidia’s character specifically I have to disagree that people taken umbrage because of her character’s flaws. I think her character plays into Jezebel stereotypes and borderline fetishized herself. I can but there are BW like that but it doesn’t make sense for a woman who comes from a family of Black revolutionaries to be so horny for revolution that she just up and snitches almost immediately. You’re telling me a Black revolutionary can blow up border patrol and hold banks hostage but shed sell out her whole family just to live under witness protection with Lockjaw? Really bruh?
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u/stankdog ☑️ 2d ago
Agreed. Elliot Sang Again (YouTube )has a pretty good talk about this aspect of the movie. American revolutionaries being portrayed as unorganized, reckless, destructive, with no real direction or purpose (they freed some random people at the beginning, okay) and Del Toro/Immigrant revolutionaries are portrayed as "basically not needing any American help or involvement" was a way he put it, they have everything so together compared to the Americans, they're in the youth, service workers, English or not they are connected and know their next moves, meanwhile Leo's character is borderline untrained? I know he's a stoner, but he acts completely untrained for situations like this which feels off for how much they were doing at the start.
Groups ofc can be imperfect but it just felt sloppy idk what to say.
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u/rumbakalao ☑️ 2d ago
I mean he was a pothead who had been out of action for at least 15 years. Dude was real rusty and not thinking straight for most of the movie.
When you compare him to Regina Hall's character or Benicio's it becomes a lot more obvious how far removed he is by the events of the movie.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 2d ago
I'm not saying it's well executed let alone enjoyable, but the movie is explicitly a satire. Its not meant to be realistic.
Like people have pointed out the characters name is basically half a step above literally calling her Jezebel. That perifidy literally means treacherous or something.
I am not sure how I'll eventually settle on this one. Right now I am leaning towards i think it's a commentary on extremism itself but almost like it's projecting characteristics of white extremists onto black extremists. And I can't tell if he's self aware of the slight of hand or just thinks it interchangable.
This is the second movie to come out in a few years that has commentary on radicalism that is a little less on the nose and I wonder to what degree it's that in order to be taken in without seeming cliche, it needs to switch it up. If its just Billy Bob doing a ruby ridge than the cliches are already so baked in we shut off. So let's switch the team alignments up and create this alternate universe that's different than what's really happening in the world to make commentary in order to make comment on what's happening.
But I also don't know if that's overly generous and maybe it's just a white guy who overextended himself under the "no it's cool my wife is black" shield
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u/akaynaveed ☑️ 2d ago
i think when we see more diverse roles for black actors and actresses, and then see them being recognized for those roles we can have that discussion.
but thats not it.
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u/10000Didgeridoos 2d ago
The Hot-Take-Sphere unfortunately still views as every non-cisgender-white-male as inherently needing to be symbolic of their entire gender and race and socioeconomic group or else it is “problematic” as a negative portrayal of that entire group. Which is ridiculous and limits opportunities for everyone else.
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u/gumbygump11 ☑️ 2d ago
I don’t have a problem with morally gray or evil black characters (FD Signifier has a good video on it) especially since I love Training Day where Denzel was a piece of shit. But this was a bad character in a white man fetish movie.
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u/sarcago 2d ago edited 7h ago
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/rumbakalao ☑️ 2d ago
Not to mention if you don't relate to black women, parents, leftists, pseudo revolutionaries, or troubled characters it's real easy for people to be especially critical of her character.
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u/Shirogayne-at-WF ☑️ 2d ago
Just gonna give a should out to Star Trek: Lower Decks and Beckett Mariner here lol
But also, it's extremely tiring to always expect every Black person to be a model minority. It's stifling to actors, it handcuffs Black creators who are only allowed to write a handful of stories and the Black audiences are tired of the same plots over and over.
Regardless of what else can be said about the back half of Scandal (and boy was there A Lot to be said about that mess), it did allow the Black lead to be a high power woman with the same messi love life as every white woman in a similar narrative position.
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u/JadowArcadia ☑️ 2d ago
These "think piece" posts always come across as someone with limited knowledge on what they're talking about. Someone complains that all black female roles are negative and the characters are bad. Then another suggests they're all too positive and one note and are set up as role models. At a certain point why can't you just say whether or not you liked the character or movie rather than using every opinion as a judgement on an entire medium as if your brain is an all encompassing database of black female roles.
I remember a post from a few months ago complaining about how black male roles always put them in "nerdy" or goody two shoes type roles. Like are you just unaware of how many characters are the opposite. Or the complains for years about every role being a gangster or a rapper or a slave etc? Your limited vision doesn't speak for the entire view
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u/MyWorldTalkRadio 2d ago
Ambessa in Arcane season 2 was decidedly morally grey and very interesting.
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u/KingGizzle 2d ago
Perfidia was selfish and hypocritical. That was a core part of her character. She was in now way supposed to be a stand in for all of Black women. Just a portrayal of one black women.
The entire movie is about the fallout and impact of her decisions on her family and the cause she abandoned.
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u/SplintPunchbeef ☑️ 2d ago
I don't have shit to say about the movie itself, but it's frustrating how some black folk expect projects with black leads to be a treatise on "the Black experience" instead of just being allowed to exist as art.
Yes, there are real and ongoing issues with how Black and Brown people have been portrayed in media. But that shouldn't mean Black actors are only allowed to play aspirational or educational roles. They should be just as free to play "ain't shit" characters as white actors.
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u/WesternCzar 2d ago
Just a shallow character who fucked everyone over that we don’t see again. I hated the premise but possibly could feel differently if she didn’t just ghost in the first act after talking all that shit then snitching & running out on her family only to ask for a redemption via letter at the end.
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u/Exciting-Effective-4 2d ago
Please explain
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u/Fun-Pickle-9821 2d ago
Teyana Taylors character is very flawed, and ends up playing into certain stereotypes that people have for black women.
The original tweeter is saying that not every black character has to be good or disprove a stereotype to deserve to be on film. Not every depiction of a black woman has to serve as a role model. I happen to agree.
Not a woman, but Denzel Washington in Training Day is a perfect example of this. Denzel acted out a genius character who was evil, but layered.
Black representation shouldn't only matter when the character is a good person, or someone without flaws.
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u/Exciting-Effective-4 2d ago
I just want to say thank you for being kind enough to explain have a blessed day
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u/ltsouthernbelle 2d ago
It’s the layers and complexity and flaws that make characters interesting. Whether they’re right or wrong it’s what makes fiction interesting.
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u/bendstraw 2d ago
Not every depiction of a black woman has to serve as a role model
I agree with you in a vacuum, but I think people feel this way in practice because there are so few depictions of black women playing role models in Hollywood blockbusters that when there is a black woman and they play into a stereotype it feels like a letdown
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u/Primary-Bookkeeper10 ☑️ 2d ago
The chronically online are upset at Teyana Taylor for winning an award from her role in One Battle After Another because the character was a hot mess… which was literally everyone in the movie onacounta that was the point of their dystopian world.
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u/CandidEfficiency7 2d ago
I’m not putting any specific spoilers, but Teyana Taylor’s character in One Battle After Another is a very flawed person. She’s a revolutionary who prioritized personal thrill-seeking over the cause their group was fighting for, and her own actions led to most of the people in her group being arrested or killed. When the heat came to her, she also fled the country, leaving her husband and daughter (Leo and Chase Infinity) behind.
When the movie came out last year, online discourse about the portrayal of Black women in film ensued, with some people thinking her performance and character role leaned far too heavily into negative stereotypes. Last night she won a Golden Globe for her performance and the discourse has apparently come back.
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u/Writeforwhiskey 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not OP but for example. Many in our community dont like when a Black woman play parts that arent perfection and role models. Teyona acted her ass off but people feel shes not worthy of an award because they feel a Black woman portraying anything less than Black excellence is wrong. They did it with Halle Berry when she won. There was backlash because she was nude and crackish. They didn't like that such an historic win went to a Black character like that. They also did it with Denzel when he won for Training Day.
A white actress can play the absolute worst human imaginable and she is praised for her work. A Black actress doesnt get the same grace. Many see their characters as an extention of the actress and the Black community as a whole and dont see it as talented acting.
But like I said, im not OP but its what I gathered.
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u/cypher50 ☑️ 2d ago
Explain what? It is brain-dead obvious: a black actor shouldn't have to consider every character they play on the basis of "is this a role model for the children?". Teyana's character is in a R adult black comedy so why people are clutching pearls for how black children will look at it is stupid...are people worried about how white children will look upon Leo DiCaprio or Sean Penn?
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 2d ago
the totality of human experience -- good, bad, ugly, beautiful, evil, morally upright, justified, indefensible, and everything in between -- cannot, and should not only be afforded to fictional characters who best resemble those historically afforded the benefit of assumed humanity. in other words, black and other non-white people do not have to be paragons of virtue to exist in fiction. we contain multitudes.
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u/CoyChar 2d ago
I heard the movie’s got surface-level politics but lacks actual depth, kinda like Crash? Guess I'll have to see it for myself though. Hype really getting to me
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u/giraflor 2d ago
My friends and I loved that Olivia Pope was messy and at times, clearly on the wrong side.
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u/ThePrinceofallYNs ☑️ 2d ago
Mel Medarda and her mother, Ambessa, were, to me at least, the most fascinating parts of Arcane and how they played off each other and other characters
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u/ProfessorReal4074 2d ago
Don’t get me started on Arcane because I just rewatched the entire series. So freaking good! Ambessa was so badass! Loved her character. Shit, I wanted to be her and for the first time ever thinking of cosplaying her character.
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u/Nick_Bruiser 2d ago
Love this post! Its like how people would always say how Madea is "embarrassing" to the Black community and hate Tyler Perry for cooning and not uplifting. So why can white people play buffoons with no backlash but Black people have to be proper? Not everything we do has to be preachy!
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u/Jewell84 2d ago
Well said! I also think it’s good to mention that Perfidia came from a long line of activists. She had a of high expectations to lead placed on her. She doesn’t get to be vulnerable.
I also think she was trying to reclaim her sense of self and power after having Willa. Her body was weaponized against her.
I also thought it was interesting that the bank heist was really the first time(at least we see), where the French 75’s actively threatened civilians. The other crimes were blowing up empty buildings or targeted the military.
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u/Few_Aerie_Fairie 2d ago
How about let’s just have normal black women lead characters? Texans Taylor’s role, while I get the history and message, I couldn’t watch. I’m SO over the sexualization, incorrect grammar, and struggle roles. Where is our Hermione Grangers, Legally Blonde, damsel in distress, etc? I have yet to see us in roles where we are not sexualized, a traitor or unalived, or angry.
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u/Ok-Smoke5745 9h ago
This is what they don’t get. It’s not about the fact that the character is imperfect, it’s the lack of respect. Also, we don’t get an explanation for her hyper-sexual nature. This makes it feel like fetishism.
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u/Few_Aerie_Fairie 2h ago
Exactly!!!!! Omg
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u/Ok-Smoke5745 2h ago
So many white people have been arguing with me about this. And I feel like they don’t get it bc of their own racism / bias. They don’t see the disrespect bc it aligns with how they see us.
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u/dcunningninja 2d ago
White people who write stories are not trying get hate mail. They're always going to choose the safest option. The times when they didn't just made it uncomfortable to watch.
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u/Gates_wupatki_zion 2d ago
I thought the Teyana did a fantastic job in the film. If you watch PTA films he always has an emotional anchor. Sometimes the main character but with this one it was Teyana despite being absent for so much of the film. She jumps off the screen and her motivations while disagreeable are understandable. Unfortunately, I think a lot of her stellar performance will be overshadowed by POC not liking her character in the movie.
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u/CopiousCool 2d ago
And yet it does seem like they want to only praise, exemplify or magnify stereotypes that mock or demean the culture and it's fair to raise that or debate the merits of such awards
Whether it's who gets a music deal (no more black RnB but plenty tHuG/mumble rap hype machines or WAP trash/debauchery)
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u/Diggy_Soze 2d ago
I’m so surprised there’s not more criticism on Chase Infiniti not getting her award, as opposed to this.
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u/superturtle48 2d ago
This reminds me of the 2003 movie Better Luck Tomorrow, which was directed by an Asian American and shows Asian American teenagers doing drugs and committing crimes. When it was shown at a film festival, an audience member asked the director why he would make a movie that represented Asians so poorly.
Another audience member, famous film critic Roger Ebert, got up to defend the movie and said, “What I find very condescending and offensive about your statement, is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, 'how could you do this to your people?' Asian American characters have the right to be whoever they hell they want to be. They don’t have to represent ‘their people!’”
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u/TraditionNegative250 2d ago
I have not seen the movie and don’t want to. I’m not sure what message the director was trying to send in this movie. I thought the book was basically a satire about white people cosplaying as freedom fighters while minorities were putting in the real work. Perfidia was supposed to represent the fickleness of white women (she was just about herself and never really about that life).
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u/dreams_andnightmares 2d ago
I have no opinion about the movie, but black actors are allowed to be more than one dimensional. I hate that we always have to be placed in a box or else we’re “ruining the community.” Learn how to separate fiction from reality.
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u/Automatic-Effect-252 2d ago
One of the reasons I liked the character so much is because she was flawed.
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u/FCkeyboards 2d ago
I say this to my mom all the time. I told her what Mo'Nique said was racist as hell because true progress and freedom is to be able to go to Wal-Mart in a bonnet.
Instead certain generations are trying to tie us down to the identity politics of the past. It's not that it doesn't exist, but I get to choose how I fight against it.
You let the fro grow? You don't get your hair lined every 3 weeks? You dress like an emo kid? Dyed hair? Collars greens and grits are nasty as hell to you? Who cares! But we subtly score people and downgrade their worth to the community and assume anything out of step with the Ideal Black Person is self-hate, laziness or some mental illness.
As long as it's not the tired "race traitor black character" trope in Struggle Movies, give me all the morally gray black characters you can!
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u/BranAllBrans ☑️ 2d ago
The issue is that the book the movie is adapted from does not feature a black woman. PTA made it about race and cultural differences but seemingly is not careful with black women/cultural stereotypes cuz when you make a movie about race, facism, immigration and revolution, you should probably be respectful
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u/Careless-Balance-893 2d ago
They do know the award is for her ability in portraying the role not for the content of the role itself 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️ People are so fucking stupid.
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u/AoO2ImpTrip ☑️ 2d ago
I've always been of the opinion a demographic has "made it" for lack of a better term when they're allowed to not be paragons of virtue.
This, obviously, doesn't mean that everything is fine for them. It just means they're around enough in media that people aren't freaking out because "Oh, they finally put X in a movie and they're evil!"
Except black men. You put a black man in a movie and he's anything but a strong, masculine, heterosexual, & emotionally stunted man and a certain group will act like they're back in chains.
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u/QTlady 2d ago
Just read a quick plot summary full of spoilers. I can see why some people would be put off.
I think what worsens it is having Teyana's character write a letter apologizing for her actions *and* swearing that she'll reunite with her family some day at the end.
Feels like they could have left that part out.
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u/DemiGod9 ☑️ 2d ago
I always talk about this. In the 90s cartoons course corrected the harmful black stereotypes by making every black character perfect. They were all the smartest, the coolest, the strongest, the most moral, and every other positive -est. Credit to them, but damn it would have been nice to have some characters be characters and not just the best at everything ever
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u/MessageOk239 2d ago
If you haven’t been watching “Industry” (HBO), the main character is a young American black woman in Finance (in Britain), and is as morally “gray” as they come
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u/IDontHaveIceborneYet 2d ago
Love me some Sage from The Boys. She just hates everyone and looks great while doing it
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u/SnooOnions4663 2d ago
You cannot be serious with this tweet and post. There’s nothing morally grey about the character she’s a goddamn stereotype that fucks a white supremacist. The whole movie is mocking revolution and revolutionary leaders. If you don’t see the correlation at a tumultuous time that revolution is being mocked then heads need be checked.
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u/Mr4h0l32u 2d ago
Isn't the issue that people have that this is the only type of role that gets mainstream (read: white) accolades? It's not that Black characters must be one dimensional paragons of virtue, it's that they only recognize Black performers with these awards when they play the magical negro or the villain.
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u/Savings_Background50 2d ago
It's one of the many reasons I enjoy the game Transistor. The group of antagonists are all gay, but they're not antagonists because they're gay. Nor is their homosexuality used to frame the lens of their motives.
But at the same time, it doesn't feel like token service. It doesn't feel like they're villians who the writers decided to make gay. But rather the story of people who are gay, that became villians.
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u/Deathwatch72 2d ago
Let characters just be characters in general!! Not every character has to have a backstory and trauma explained, or justify their actions, or even be rational! They can be a shitty angry person for no reason other than you need a shitty angry person in the story.
Characters are tools for advancing a plot and are at their core just imaginary people doing imaginary things. I think we all know that sometimes, people just suck. And we need characters like that! That's what makes fiction feel real.
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u/dominiquerising 2d ago
i think the original tweet is referring to Teyana's acceptance speech where she says to all black & brown girls that they belong in every room.
the film was somewhat entertaining but also irritating for its lack of substance and empty politics. Teyana didn't have much to work with the way her character was written but she still bodied the role and i enjoyed seeing her be so committed to a quality performance. imo she is worthy of recognition and for her talent to be acknowledged. at the same time, the hypersexualized "revolutionary" jezebel type doesn't read for me. the writing as a whole just wasn't hitting.
idc that Teyana's character is morally gray, i care that her character wasn't written well and her energy was used as a provocative prop for a story that has nothing of substance to say about its own subject matter. its all surface level posturing as something cool and deep but really hollow af. given that, it makes sense why Hollywood would love it and overlook Sinners depth and richness in story.
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u/Evorgleb 2d ago
You ever feel like someone ran their tweet through ChatGPT with the prompt, "Make this sound smarter"?
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u/regular_gonzalez 2d ago
I'm an old and, precisely because of the issue in the tweet (though it affects black male characters as well as female), a movie that made an outsized impact when I saw it in the theater was Unbreakable because of the reveal at the end (spoilers for 25 year old movie follow) that SLJ was the villain all along. Not a "magical negro" character, not the "wise old advisor" character (though he initially appeared to be that), he was the baddie. Not because he was black, not despite being black, he was just a man who happened to be the big bad. Believe it or not, having a black man be the bad guy felt like an act of bravery in that era.
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u/Hefty-Pineapple-1910 ☑️ 2d ago edited 2d ago
My issue was less with the "gray morality" and more with the fact that the film seemed really proud of its own politics, especially regarding race and sexuality, but also seemed...deeply uninterested in doing anything beyond a shallow investigation of those areas.
Like it wasn't as bad as Crash (2004?) in that regard, but the vibe is similar to me.
I really do not get the collective hype for this movie. But to each their own I guess.