Blackfishing the Jesy Nelson case

"Jesy Nelson ‘blackfishing’ controversy: How to appreciate – not appropriate – black culture" 

Independent.

Was 1st TV interracial kiss 1968 Star Trek?

In a word ... no!

But it was William Shatner...

'He shared the first interracial kiss on US network television

Well, kind of. Six years after playing a bigot in Roger Corman’s The Intruder – an unflinching look at racial tensions in the south, which many theatres were afraid to run – Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, a Black woman who played the role of Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, shared a somewhat obscured kiss in the 1968 episode Plato’s Stepchildren. (He later claimed they didn’t actually touch lips; she says they did.) Though the clinch became well known as a US television first, various other earlier interracial kisses have since come to light – though by a weird twist of fate, the first of these also involved Shatner: with France Nuyen in a scene from a Broadway production called The World of Suzie Wong that was aired on the Ed Sullivan show in 1958.' (Guardian)

GUARDIAN SURVEY ON RACIAL BIAS

From football to dating to TV: 10 areas rife with racial bias in UK https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/03/from-football-to-dating-to-tv-10-areas-rife-with-racial-bias-in-uk?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

MAGAZINE COVERS Content analysis shows few BAME cover stars

Glossies so white: the data that reveals the problem with British magazine covers https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/10/glossy-magazine-covers-too-white-models-black-ethnic-minority?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

OfCom say TV failing to represent modern UK society

Ofcom chief tells UK broadcasters to reflect 'society as it is today' http://gu.com/p/4cfzp?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Playlist of past/practice clips

You can use these to set yourself practice exercises - feel free to hand in any subsequent essays for marking and feedback:

Practice clip: Hotel Babylon (not the exam clip)

Jan 2010 exam Hotel Babylon

The focus was representation of ethnicity:


h

If you're allergic to black people...

This post isn't so much about media representations as the ongoing consequences of negative representations of race. Many today will argue that we no longer live in a racist society; Britain has moved on. There may be some truth in that, but clearly the UK hasn't become an utterly idyllic society, as the following example sharply demonstrates - one taken from a West Yorkshire town...

'If you are allergic to black people, don't come in' – at first I balked …

Cafe owner Martha-Renee Kolleh's defiant response to insidious racism is preferable to constantly doubting your own experience

• 
• • Lola Okolosie
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 July 2013 10.02 BST
  • Jump to comments (361)

Martha-Renee Kolleh, who owns a cafe in the town of Ossett, Yorkshire, has put up a sign telling customers she is black because she is fed up with people walking out when they see the colour of her skin. Photograph: Gabriel Szabo/Guzelian

Increasingly in today's Britain, the word racism conjures up two very differing images for white and black people (I use black here in the political sense). When I explain to white friends that certain things that I have had said or done to me are racist, it is more often that not met with incredulity. How can that be racist?

House of Saddam

This makes for an interesting clip to tackle - its British produced (actually a BBC/HBO co-production) and with a largely British cast, but set in Iraq, so taking the questions of ethnicity to some degree beyond British expectations and stereotypes. Nonetheless, its those British stereotypes and conventions we're using as a framework for reference.
What are the binaries present here? What stereo/countertypes are at play? Is there a clear sense of some character/s as "the other"? Is there any sense of a journey; of character development - moving further towards or away from narrow stereotypical roles/expectations?
The embed below features Arabic subtitles not present on the BBC transmission.
The clip we're addressing runs from 2:58:13 to 3:03:11.

Note details such as the use of angles and shot variation to strongly signify (anchor) the moving, fluid power relations at play.

1974-2012: ONE US TV show led by black actress

Useful stat, and insight into the barriers that ethnicity still poses for black actresses: there were zero US TV dramas fronted by a black actress after 1974, until now (Oct 2012). Just a 38-year gap!!!
That would be a helpful stat to quote if ethnicity came up in your exam (wider context).
Article below URL.

American television's real Scandal

Why have audiences had to wait 38 years for a black female lead character?

• Sarah Hughes
• The Guardian, Monday 22 October 2012 21.30 BST

Kerry Washington, star of Scandal. Photograph: Craig Sjodin/ABC

When Scandal, the new drama about political corruption in the US capital starring Kerry Washington was first previewed in America, the show's creator Shonda Rhimes remarked, somewhat caustically: "I think we were at a place where a non-white actor can be the lead in a television series a long time ago – I just think that people have failed to cast the actors they should have been casting."

Surprisingly, Washington is the first black female lead on network television in 38 years. Not since 1974 when Tessa Graves starred as a policewoman in the blaxploitation show Get Christie Love! has a primetime US network show featured a black woman as the main character.
Since then the roles for black actresses have typically been limited to supportive friend or snappy sidekick. Most recently, former Doctor Who star Freema Agyeman landed a supporting role in the upcoming Sex and the City prequel, The Carrie Diaries, fellow Brit Gugu Mbatha-Raw played one half of a husband/wife spy team in the swiftly cancelled Undercovers and former reality star Nene Leakes had turns in Glee and sitcom The New Normal.
Even Miranda Bailey, arguably the strongest character on the show that made Shonda Rhimes's name – Grey's Anatomy – is frequently relegated to the sidelines in favour of another smooch between Meredith and McDreamy.

Race + rom-coms

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/jun/25/race-romcom-think-like-a-man

Useful Resources

See various articles at http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-role.htm