Productive Vulnerability: Black Women Writers and Narratives of Humanity in Contemporary Cable Television

Abstract

As authors of their own series, Mara Brock Akil, creator of Being Mary Jane, and Issa Rae, creator of Insecure, have articulated their commitment to constructing black women as multidimensional subjects that embody contradictions. This article explores how Akil and Rae strategically deploy vulnerability in their televisual narratives to reframe black women as human; countering the Hollywood convention of representing black women in extremes, either superhuman or subhuman. The cumulative bodies of their work—that is, television series, press interviews, and promotional content—function as a pathway to humanity that does not require black women to capitulate to hegemonic scripts in order to be visible in the televisual sphere.

Keywords:

• black women
• cable television
• content creation
• representation
• respectability
• sexuality
• vulnerability

Notes

1 Angelica Jade Bastién, “Claiming the Future of Black TV,” The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/claiming-the-future-of-black-tv/514562/(accessed January 29, 2017); Robin R. Means Coleman and Andre M. Cavalcante, “Two Different Worlds: Television as a Producer’s Medium,” in Watching While Black, ed. Beretta E. Smith-Shomade (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 33–48.

2 Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, Shaded Lives: African-American Woman and Television (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).

3 Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999).

4 Lisa B. Thompson, Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009).

5 Ibid.

6 See Kimberly Springer, “Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women,” in Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2007), 249–76; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000).

7 Shonda Rhimes is heralded as a trailblazer for casting an African American woman in the lead role for a primetime network drama in 2012, which had not happened within the immediate 40 years prior to Scandal. Conversely, Mara Brock Akil has maintained an explicit commitment to marginalized subjects throughout her career. Her first series, Girlfriends, which the CW network cancelled abruptly in 2008 after eight seasons, featured a cast of four professional black women. See Candice Benbow, “The End of an Era: ‘Scandal’ Changed the Way the World Watched Television, and How the World Viewed Black Women,” Essence https://www.essence.com/culture/scandal-culture-impact-black-female-leads-television/(accessed April 20, 2018).

8 Valerie Chepp, “Black Feminist Theory and the Politics of Irreverence: The Case of Women’s Rap,” Feminist Theory 16, no. 2 (2015): 207. doi:10.1177/1464700115585705.

9 See Rebecca Wanzo, “Beyond a ‘Just’ Syntax: Black Actresses, Hollywood and Complex Personhood,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 16, no. 1 (2006): 135–152. doi:10.1080/07407700500515985.

10 Ibid., 138.

11 See Monica Flippin Wynn, “Where is Clair Huxtable When You Need Her?: The Desperate Search for Positive Media Images of African American Women in the Age of Reality TV,” in Real Sister: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Black Women in Reality TV, ed. Jervette R. Ward (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 102–120; “10 Reasons Not to Watch HBO’s ‘Insecure’ by Issa Rae,” Global Black History http://www.globalblackhistory.com/2016/10/10-reasons-not-watch-hbos-insecure-issa-rae.html(accessed October 24, 2016); Amy Juicebox, “I Have Every Reason Not to Like ‘Being Mary Jane,’” Blavity, https://blavity.com/every-reason-not-like-mary-jane (accessed August 2, 2017).

12 Michelle Wallace, Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory (New York: Verso, 1990).

13 After the research for this article was conducted, Mara Brock Akil released a new show for the Oprah Winfrey Network, Love Is, which she created with husband Salim Akil.

14 See Christopher A. Chávez and Sara Stroo, “ASPiRational: Black Cable Television and the Ideology of Uplift,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 32, no. 2 (2015): 65–80. doi:10.1080/15295036.2015.1023328. This study does not examine Ava DuVernay’s critical intervention of Southern black femininities in Queen Sugar, as the series airs on a network owned, in part, by Oprah Winfrey. I have also excluded the work of Shonda Rhimes as her various network series feature multiracial casts and are less focused on the particularities of black womanhood. Unlike Mara Brock Akil and Issa Rae, Rhimes has often espoused views of colorblindness when asked about her storytelling practices. See Ralina Joseph, “Strategically Ambiguous Shona Rhimes: Respectability Politics of a Black Woman Showrunner,” Souls 18, no. 2–4 (2016): 302–20. doi:10.1080/10999949.2016.1230825.

15 Wallace, Invisibility Blues, 1.

16 Chávez and Stroo, “ASPiRational,” 67.

17 Noliwe Rooks, Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture that Made Them (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).

18 Paisely Harris’s review of the multiple formulations of respectability that emerged in the late 19th and 20th centuries among women of different class standings demonstrate that racial uplift ideology was nuanced. See Paisley Harris, “Gatekeeping and Remaking: The Politics of Respectability in African American Women’s History and Black Feminism,” Journal of Women’s History, 15, no. 1 (2003): 212–20.

19 Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

20 Candice M. Jenkins, Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intimacy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 14.

21 Ibid., 20.

22 Wallace, Invisibility Blues, 4.

23 In the early 1900s the NAACP formed an ad hoc committee intended to monitor how Hollywood studios treated black subjects. The NAACP Image Awards were later established in 1967.

24 Abbey Phillip, “Why Black America Hates VH1’s ‘Sorority Sisters,’” The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2014/12/22/why-black-america-hates-vh1s-sorority-sisters/?utm_term=.8f2a3a0e4dcf(accessed December 22, 2014).

25 Ibid.

26 Smith-Shomade, Shaded Lives, 19–20.

27 Jennifer Fuller, “Branding Blackness on US Cable Television,” Media Culture & Society 32, no. 2 (2010): 292. doi:10.1177/0163443709355611.

28 Ibid.

29 Hillary Crosley Coker, “Why I’m Already Breaking Up With Being Mary Jane,” Jezebel https://jezebel.com/why-im-already-breaking-up-with-being-mary-jane-1497463330(accessed January 9, 2014).

30 Juicebox, “I Have Every Reason Not to Like Being Mary Jane.”

31 Mara Brock Akil, interview by Dan Harris, Chicago Ideas Week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwVr6Wp6xVM(accessed January 7, 2015).

32 The myth of the undesirability of black women, immigrant rights, human trafficking, and the disposability of black bodies are among the topics that Mary Jane confronts on her show, Talk Back With Mary Jane Paul.

33 Being Mary Jane, 201, “People in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Fish,” directed by Salim Akil, aired February 5, 2015, on BET.

34 During her rant Mary Jane references Bill Cosby’s infamous musings on the deficiencies of the black poor. See Bill Cosby, “Pound Cake Speech” (Washington, DC, 2004), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gh3_e3mDQ8 (accessed March 16, 2018).

35 Being Mary Jane, 201.

36 Enuma Okoro, “Being Mary Jane Is No Scandal—and That’s a Good Thing,” The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/-i-being-mary-jane-i-is-no-em-scandal-em-and-thats-a-good-thing/283118/(accessed January 16, 2014).

37 Tai Beauchamp, Color Commentary Aftershow With Mara Brock Akil, Video, 3: https://www.bet.com/video/being-mary-jane/season-2/color-commentary/episode-201-aftershow-with-mara-brock-akil.html(accessed February 3, 2015).

38 Nghana Lewis, “Prioritized: The Hip Hop (Re)Construction of Black Womanhood in Girlfriends and The Game, in Watching While Black, ed. Beretta E. Smith-Shomade (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 157–171.

39 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004).

40 Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Colonial of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337. doi:10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.

41 Ibid., 264, 321.

42 Being Mary Jane, “Pulling the Trigger,” directed by Salim Akil (BET, March 10, 2015), Television.

43 Ibid.

44 Tai Beauchamp, Color Commentary Aftershow With Mara Brock Akil, Video, 3:15 https://www.bet.com/video/being-mary-jane/season-2/color-commentary/episode-206-aftershow-with-mara-brock-akil.html(accessed March 10, 2015).

45 Jenkins, Private Lives, Proper Relations, 191.

46 As described by Andre Cavalcante, paratexts are important devices that content creators use to amplify, subvert, or expand the intended or dominant reading of a media text. See Andre Cavalcante, “Centering Transgender Identity via the Textual Periphery: TransAmerica and the ‘Double Work’ of Paratexts,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 30, no. 2 (2013): 85-101. doi:10.1080/15295036.2012.694077.

47 Mara Brock Akil, “Keynote Speech” (presentation, Digital Blackness Conference at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 22–23, 2016).

48 Most notably, Rae was once slated to produce a loosely autobiographical series with Shondaland, the production company owned by Shonda Rhimes, for ABC. According to Rae, the project failed because she lacked the confidence needed to address network petitions without compromising her creative vision. See Issa Rae, interview by Roland S. Martin, News One Now, https://youtu.be/TlncMgR1GgA(accessed February 9, 2017).

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Rae has described the music featured on Insecure as an essential component in communicating the intended meaning of each episode. During season two, she was particularly drawn to the work of R&B artist Sza, because of her focus on “women who make bad decisions” in the album CTRL. See Issa Rae, interview by Rob Markman, A Genius Conversation with Issa Rae on the Music of ‘Insecure,’ https://youtu.be/odrGmSpCxzI (accessed September 21, 2017).

52 Kristen Warner, “[Home] Girls: Insecure and HBO’s Risky Racial Politics,” Los Angeles Review of Books https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/home-girls-insecure-and-hbos-risky-racial-politics/(accessed October 21, 2016).

53 Issa Rae, interview by Gayle King, CBS This Morning, https://youtu.be/jvfHL_Xcl_Q(accessed October 5, 2016).

54 Issa Rae, interview by DJ Envy, Angela Yee, and Charlamagne tha God, The Breakfast Club, Power 105.1 FM https://youtu.be/z26fq6EILw(accessed October 28, 2016).

55 According to Nielsen data, 61.54% of Insecure viewers are non–African Americans. See “For Us By Us?: The Mainstream Appeal of Black Content,” Nielsen, http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2017/for-us-by-us-the-mainstream-appeal-of-black-content.html(accessed February 28, 2017).

56 Prior to releasing the trailer for the premiere season of Insecure, Rae explained her rationale for the name and premise of the show in a brief video posted to her public Twitter account. See Issa Rae, Twitter Post, https://twitter.com/IssaRae/status/773586256039075840(accessed September 7, 2016).

57 Ibid.

58 Insecure, 101, “Insecure as Fuck,” written by Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore, aired October 9, 2016, on HBO.

59 Thompson, Beyond the Black Lady.

60 Insecure, 101.

61 Issa Rae, “Issa Rae Recaps Season 1 Finale,” Entertainment Weekly, November 28, 2016, http://ew.com/article/2016/11/28/insecure-blog-issa-rae-recaps-season-1-finale/ (accessed March 16, 2018).

62 Ibid.

63 Insecure, “Hella Perspective,” written by Christopher Oscar Pena and Issa Rae, aired September 10, 2017, on HBO.

64 Issa Rae, “Issa Rae Recaps Season 1 Finale.”

65 Kimberly Springer, “Third Wave Black Feminism?” Signs 27, no. 4 (2002): 1059–1082. doi:10.1086/339636.

66 Ibid., 1071.

67 Salamishah Tillet, “A ‘Queen Sugar’ Rush Heralds a ‘Silver Age’ for African-American TV, The New York Times, June 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/arts/television/a-queen-sugar-rush-heralds-a-silver-age-for-african-american-tv.html (accessed March 16, 2018).

68 Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Traci C. West, “Policing the Sexual Reproduction of Poor Black Women,” in God Forbid: Religion and Sex in American Public Life, ed. Kathleen M. Sands (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 135–54.

69 Paula Groves Price, “‘New Normal’ in American Television? Race, Gender, Blackness, and the New Racism,” in African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings, ed. David J. Leonard and Lisa A. Guerrero (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013): 438.

70 Chevonne Harris, “In Defense of Being Mary Jane and Flawed Fictional Black Women,” The Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/chevonne-harris/in-defense-of-being-mary-_b_4567429.html(accessed March 12, 2014).

71 Morgan also advances a “politics of pleasure [that] is capable of intersecting, challenging, and redefining dominant narratives about race, beauty, health, and sex in ways that are generative and necessary.” See Joan Morgan, “Why We Get Off: Moving Towards a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure,” The Black Scholar 45, no. 4 (2015): 36–46. doi:10.1080/00064246.2015.1080915.

72 Helene Shugart, Catherine Egley Waggoner, and D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, “Mediating Third Wave Feminism: Appropriation as Postmodern Media Practice,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18, no. 2 (2001): 194–210. doi:10.1080/07393180128079.

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Notes on contributors

Timeka N. Tounsel

Timeka N. Tounsel is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her research considers how black women make sense of themselves in and through mass media. Timeka is currently completing her first book, Tangled Visions: Black Women and Media in the Age of Obama.