Reading Journal [09-24-10]

While there were many noteworthy stories in the news this week, the one that especially caught my eye was an article on a subject that means a lot to me, personally. The MSNBC article "'Undercovers' puts minority leads in the TV Spotlight" delves into the progressive casting of Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, two black performers, as the leads in the new primetime TV drama "Undercovers" by "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams, amidst a sea of predominantly white TV stars. Representation of minority actors in the media is a huge deal to me and it's a topic that I honestly believe is not usually covered in major publications and is thusly not regarded as a gigantic problem by the general populace. I'm really glad this article covers this and informs the reader exactly why the casting of two lead black performs on a major network is such a big event.

Overall, I think the article is well-written and includes information that may be potentially eye-opening to a reader who knows little about underrepresentation in Hollywood. Of course, the article is about promoting 'Undercovers' and giving it good press, but I definitely think it was also written from the angle of showing just how difficult it is for an actor of color to land a big break. I especially thought the quotes from Kodjoe had a lot of meat to them and pretty much told it like it is. Often times, I find the issue is sugarcoated because I actually do know many people who don't believe this issue exists or that I'm "playing the race card," but I think Kodjoe's words really reveal the close-minded nature of the entertainment industry and counter the argument that we live in a post-racial society:

"Everybody says you did a great job. Then you get the call they ‘went another way,’ which means they went with a white actor. (The color of your skin) is something you have no control over. After a while, it wears you out.”

I think it was also very wise of the writer to include Mbatha-Raw's quote which highlighted the differences between the entertainment industry in the UK and the US. It added another dimension to the story and helped the reader see just how behind the times the American TV industry is in comparison:

"Coming from the U.K., I have a different cultural legacy and was pretty naive to the whole thing. I just thought of it as another audition. This was the first television role I'd ever gone out for in the States. It didn't cross my mind that I was doing anything out of the ordinary."

After this week's journalism article exercise, I'm starting to get a firmer grasp of the power quotes can have on a piece and I think this article is an excellent example. Each quote the author includes is there for a reason.

Now this is just me, but if I were to add onto this article though, I would probably include a statistic data chart that compiled all the ethnicities of every lead actor/actress in a major network TV show and separated each ethnicity into columns. If the writer included a chart like this, I'm sure the highest column would be Caucasian by a landslide and I think that would definitely drive home the point on why the 'Undercovers' casting is so important and how rare an occasion this really is. It would also add a sense of legitimacy to the claim that minorities are, in fact, underrepresented in Hollywood. In this article, I might have also mentioned a few more shows in the Fall line-up of major networks which feature a minority performer in a lead role—for example, half-Vietnamese actress Maggie Q as the lead in the CW drama "Nikita"—to show that this is perhaps the beginning of an upwards trend of more leading minorities on TV. Still, as it stands, I do believe this is a very well-written and informative article and I really took a lot from reading it.