‘Killing Eve’ and the Centering of Whiteness

There is no doubt that representation in media has grown significantly in the past couple years if not the past year alone. We had Black Panther in early 2018 where almost everyone was a person of color (I’m comfortable saying 90% including extras) and Crazy Rich Asians coming out in August 2018. Though we have yet to see how many people of color are in Crazy Rich Asians, I can assume it will be significant judging by the trailer.

While I am excited about this shift in movies, I am a TV girl. Thankfully we are also seeing growth in television with shows like Black Lightning and One Day at a Time. We’re slowly creating a collection of shows that will allow us to choose more carefully what we consume instead of being stuck with the same shows representing for everybody (not sure how many times I’ve watched Merlin).

So when I saw the previews for Killing Eve, I thought heck yeah. An Asian lead, majority female cast, a black female character, everything was there to make this a show with good representation. And then we met Eve’s husband who is white. And her former boss BIll (who’s married to an Asian woman) is white. And the love interest for Elena is a white man. And Villanelle’s handler is white. That’s when I realized that every significant man in the show was white and the only men of color we’ve met so far were basically perverts and both of them were Chinese. One of the men was into BDSM (which does not make one a pervert but is often shown in that light) and the other wouldn’t take Eve’s No for what it was and instead demanded she go on a date with him if she wanted to learn any information.

Warning: Spoilers up to Episode 4

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