‘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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Race, Intersectionality, and the End of the World: The Problem with The Handmaid’s Tale

by Shannon Gibney and Lori Askeland

Hulu’s reboot of The Handmaid’s Tale opens with a car chase: the protagonist (Elisabeth Moss), who will later be called “Offred,” is racing with her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake) in their faded, old model Volvo through a frozen landscape, sirens of their invisible pursuers wailing.

The decision to introduce us to Offred as a member of an interracial family revealed an obvious break from the overwhelmingly white world of the novel and 1990 movie. Many reviewers construed that fact — and the powerful presence of Samira Wiley in the role of Offred’s badass lesbian friend, Moira — as undeniable evidence that the series would be more intersectional in its approach to feminist themes than the novel had been.  (“There’s intersectionality, too, with Moira, a lesbian, played by a black actress, Ms. Wiley,” was the breezy quip of the New York Times’ Katrina Onstad.) But sadly, bodies of color alone do not a liberatory racial narrative make. Indeed, a deeper look at the series shows the uncomplicated, and therefore, problematic effects of this “colorblind” casting.

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The Happy Hour Review: Colossal is Basically White Feminism

I watch, I drink, I spit hot fire. Yup, you guessed it, spoilers ahead.

Colossal checked off a lot of boxes for what I would theoretically enjoy in a movie. Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, it is often funny, surprisingly dark, and an inventive new take on kaiju movies. I like all those things. The lead, Gloria, is easy to root for as played by star Anne Hathaway. And Jason Sudeikis impresses as Gloria’s friend and eventual foil, Oscar. For about half of the movie, I found this all very enjoyable.

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My Love/Hate Relationship with HBO’s Girls

Girls is over. I have a lot of feelings about this show, if you’re aware of the criticism surrounding it, then yes I’m going to dabble into that. As well as some of the parts I actually liked. If you don’t want to read this whole essay, then it’s fine. To sum up how I feel: I showed up for Adam Driver and developed a love-hate relationship with the series overall. Brace yourselves, this is going to be long.

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