General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT article calls Shonda Rimes an angry black woman.
The New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley just published an essay that begins, When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman, a flame-throwing start if there ever was one. The piece arguesadmiringlythat Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, and an executive producer of the forthcoming How to Get Away with Murder, and a singularly powerful figureblack or white, male or femalein the TV universe, has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldnt break.
With compliments like these, who needs insults? Rhimes is no more the angry black woman than her characters, who are angry the way that a bird is bipedal: Its not false, but its not to the point.
To understand Rhimes work as a reclamation and redefinition of the phrase angry black woman is to take an extremely narrow, arguably undermining view of what she has accomplished. It would be far more accurate to say that, in her work, Rhimes has embraced and subverted the stereotype of the career-first woman and the mistress rather than that of the angry black woman, but even these reclamation projects are selling Rhimes achievements short. Rhimes has not just re-framed the stereotype of the angry black woman, she has blown open what black female characters are allowed to do on television, including, most importantly, fronting a TV show. (Before Scandal, a network show had not been headlined by a black actress since the 1970s.) Rhimes black characters are allowed the entire range of human emotionanger being just one. This, of course, goes for Rhimes non-black characters as well. It is not just Greys Anatomy's Dr. Bailey or Scandals Olivia Pope who have been cast in Rhimes image. According to Rhimes herself, thats just as true of Cristina Yang and Meredith Grey and Scandals own Mellie, all of whom get angry from time to time but are not likely to be indentified as angry non-black women anytime soon.
Angry, like bossy or shrill, is a particularly loaded word to use about women, and even more so about black women. It comes with the implication of unreliability and unreasonableness, the connotation that the unhinged woman in question is easily dismissed, qualities that Rhimes charactersand Rhimes herselfbarely ever display. Olivia Pope is conflicted, tortured, in a self-destructive relationshipbut she is never anything but ultra-competent. If she has occasionally lost her temper, she has more often bit her tongue, kept her secrets, gulped down her wine. Dr. Bailey dispenses a kind of faux-anger, behaving like a grump and a curmudgeon to cover up her huge heart. And as for Viola Davis Annalise Keating, in the one episode of the How To Get Away with Murder available to critics, she is severe, sexy, and Sphinx-like: Who knows, yet, if she even does angry? Describing these women and Rhimes as angry black women is a contortion, shoving them into a stereotype that doesnt fit.
<snip>
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/09/19/shonda_rhimes_an_angry_black_woman_wrong_new_york_times_she_is_so_much_more.html
And here's the tone deaf, racist- yes, racist- NYT piece by Alessandra Stanley (chief television critic for the Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/television/viola-davis-plays-shonda-rhimess-latest-tough-heroine.html
Baitball Blogger
(46,684 posts)Though I can follow your sentiments on this one and agree that getting assigned any tag is suspect of racial overtones, I just want to point out that when the right-wingers were called Angry White Men during the Bush years, it created the image of a powerful movement that was nearly impossible to deflect given our resources at that time. (It was hard to overturn the monolith of right-wing media back then when all we had to counter it was Jon Stewart's satire.)
Personally, anger can be a strong motivator. If your cause is good, anger is nothing to be ashamed of.
cali
(114,904 posts)yes, anger can be a good thing, if harnessed and directed for their purpose of advancing a good cause, but this was a characterization that wasn't only off base, it brought race into it when it really is totally irrelevant. As has been pointed out Rimes creates female characters- white, black, asian, hispanic who are powerful and express anger.
Baitball Blogger
(46,684 posts)PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)leftyladyfrommo
(18,866 posts)over some outrageous situation is dismissed as just another angry woman. Meaning that if we get angry we are crazy and should simply be ignored.
I think men must be terrified of angry women.