The Scandal of Rhimes and Washington

      In their outlooks regarding representations of African American women, Shonda Rhimes and Kerry Washington display the attitude of inheritors of the privileges of the post-Civil Rights era (and not necessarily for the good). Let’s get some things straight from the outset:

1)      Do I believe that Rhimes’s and Washington’s onscreen and narrative representations of African American women are damaging and unhealthy: yes! I also acknowledge that the representations of black women in America are overdetermined.

2)      Do I believe that the children of the post-Civil Rights era are schizophrenic and confused, and need to figure out who they are: yes!

     I do not know Rhimes; I no doubt could benefit from working with her. From what I have learned about her, she is 

an American screenwriter, director and producer. She was born January 13, 1970.  Rhimes is best known as the creator, head writer, and executive producer of the medical drama television series Grey's Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice. In May 2007, Rhimes was named one of Time magazine's 100 people who help shape the world. Rhimes was an executive producer for the medical drama series Off the Map, and developed the ABC drama series Scandal, which debuted as a mid-season replacement on April 5, 2012. (Wiki)

     Now, while the description from above can be found on Wikipedia (and I mandate that my students never use any Wiki product as source material, wow), just about every biographical description that I found on Rhimes on the web described her the same way: American. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with Rhimes being described as an American, for that is her nationality. She is rarely described as African American in biographical descriptions of her found on the web, but as she once said

I’m a black woman every day, and I’m not confused about that. I’m not worried about that. I don’t need to have a discussion with you about how I feel as a black woman, because I don’t feel disempowered as a black woman. (James)

Rhimes acknowledges the overdetermined nature of her being in America: she is a black woman every day. And about that, she is not confused. I wish I understood her perspective(s) on blackness in America with a bit more clarity because her shows leave me confused at times. And, some of the other people who watch her show Scandal are confused, too. Or, at least, critical in a fashion reflective of confusion about something. And that something seems to be race. More specifically, a lack of developed blackness.

            When discussing the topic of race and its historic portrayal on the screen within mainstream Hollywood, Rhimes has suggested that, 

when people who aren’t of color create a show and they have one character of color on their show, that character spends all their time talking about the world as ‘I’m a black man blah, blah, blah’… That’s not how the world works. (James)

     Rhimes, seemingly, holds a world-view that suggests that the world is unconcerned with the “blah, blah, blah” of being a black man. And, if the world is not concerned with the inmost thoughts and feelings (the blah, blah, blah) of being a black man, then why should her shows reflect a concern with black men, their concepts of masculinity and any other blah, blah, blah? Moreover, if we take a look at the shows that Rhimes has been credited with writing or producing, then I think we can agree that while the shows’ demographics may have been diverse, they are not necessarily high Nielsen scorers in African American households. Consider the following: Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, Blossoms and Veils, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Crossroads, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Inside the Box, Seattle Grace: On Call, Seattle Grace: Message of Hope, Off the Map, Gilded Lilys and Scandal. With the exceptions of Hank Aaron and Dorothy Dandridge, none of Rhimes’s shows can be said to reflect any determined focus on blackness: and those that do, do so simply because of the works’ respective subject matter. Rhimes’s shows rarely reflect any concentration on blackness; any concentrated awareness of blackness in her shows seems to exists simply as part of the narrative fabric.

            So, that brings us to Scandal. According to Rhimes, “Scandal’s D.C. is a post-racial fantasia where color is a non-issue” (qtd. in Parham). Scandal’s D.C. is an utopian setting, where problems and problematic occurrences exist, just not with relation to race. It is a place where people – good people, bad people, indifferent people, jump-off people – can just be people. Perhaps that why Kerry Washington, who does not

want to ignore [her] Blackness [and] just want[s] to get to the point where [her] racial identity is simply a part of what makes [her] unique in the way being from the Bronx makes [her] unique, or being an Aquarius, or being born in 1977 and having hip-hop be a part of [her] heartbeat [makes her unique],

makes such a great choice for portraying Olivia Pope (Good). Rhimes has created the perfect world of fantasia where Washington can display her greatest desires of being. Yes, Scandal’s D.C is a fantasia, where color is a non-issue. It is a place where blackness is nothing about which any exceptional attention should be paid. Race is like one’s city of birth, or one’s zodiac sign, or one’s year of birth…or one’s musical genre of choice. Yes, race is a social construction. Just another something that makes each individual who they are. Rhimes has chosen not to highlight race on Scandal; Washington seeks to live in a world where one’s blackness is severely sublimated. To quote Rhimes, is that “how the world works?” Does race have very little significance in twenty-first century America? Oh, to be Sasha and Malia!

            Now, Washington is a good actress; she has mastered her craft and has been, I would imagine, handsomely compensated for her labor. However, I think we all would have to admit that most of Washington’s character portrayals, on the small screen and the big screen, have reflected the “tragic mulatta.” Yes, I said it: Kerry Washington has allowed herself to become type-casted as a twenty-first century tragic mulatta! Consider her characters Nikki Tru and Broomhilda von Shaft, from I Think I Love My Wife and D’jango Unchained, and of course Olivia Pope from Scandal.

The Tragic Mulatta

     William Wells Brown, an African American novelist, is most credited with inaugurating the entrance of the tragic mulatta onto the African American literary scene with the publication of Clotel; or, The President's Daughter in 1853. Our good friends at Wiki suggest that

the novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the “degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America.” It is a tragic mulatto story about a woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson; their relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. (Wiki)

While most would argue that Brown develops the tragic mulatta character type in the guise of Clotel (at least in African American literature), I would argue that it is Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, who first presents the tragic mulatta to American audiences in the guise of Eliza. At any rate, the tragic mulatta is usually a mixed-race Jezebel; a woman of color of such beauty and desirability that she often finds herself in situations, not of her own doing, which nonetheless lead to her downfall and destruction as a human being. Her male superiors are usually defenseless against her feminine charms. Moreover, according to David Pilgrim in “The Tragic Mulatto Myth,”

the tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, from the 1840s. The tragic mulatto is an archetypical mixed-race person (a "mulatto"), who is assumed to be sad, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit in the white world or the black world. As such, the “tragic mulatto” is depicted as the victim of the society they live in, a society divided by race. They cannot be classified as one who is completely black or white.

The female "tragic octoroon" was a stock character of abolitionist literature: a light-skinned woman raised as if a white woman in her father's household, until his bankruptcy or death has her reduced to a menial position and sold. She may even be unaware of her status before being so reduced. This character allowed abolitionists to draw attention to the sexual exploitation in slavery. (Pilgrim)

I would argue that many of the major roles – at least three – that Washington has portrayed as an actress in Hollywood reflect a mix of the Jezebel figure and the tragic mulatto, resulting in a twenty-first century version of the tragic mulatta. And while Pilgrim may argue that the tragic mulatto is neither completely white nor black, we must remember that the “one-drop” rule of American genealogical history mandates that anyone with at least a drop of African American blood is overdetermined as black. So, the tragic mulatto may feel divided between the black and white worlds, but the tragic mulatto is classified as black. The tragic mulatto is usually the only person confused about what race the tragic mulatto is considered.  

Nikki Tru

 

      In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock stars as Richard Cooper, a successful, happily married practitioner of middle-class patriarchal masculinity. His audience is led to understand that Richard portrays much of the criteria of middle-class patriarchal masculinity and his reflection and portrayal of that criteria work to explain his apparent success. He is intelligent, loyal, rational, attractive, virtuous, and above all seems to possess the self-control needed to navigate corporate America as an African American male. Richard’s tenuous grasp of self-control is thrown into question with the entrance of Nikki Tru, played by Washington, onto the screen. As the IMBD cast description explains, 

an encounter with an attractive old friend, Nikki (Kerry Washington), suddenly casts doubt over [Richard’s] typically resilient self-control. At first she claims to just want to be his friend, but she begins to show up consistently at his Manhattan financial office just to talk or have lunch, which causes his boss, secretaries and peers to view him with varying degrees of contempt. When Nikki begins to deliberately seduce Richard, he does not know what to do. Against his better judgment, he flies with her out of town for one day on an errand, where he is beaten by her boyfriend, and returns too late to make a sales presentation at an important business meeting, causing the loss of a lucrative contract. Later, when she and her fiancé are about to move to Los Angeles, Nikki asks Richard to come to her apartment later to say a “proper goodbye.” When he gets to Nikki's apartment, he finds her in her underwear in her bathroom. In the moments before it seems Richard will consummate his attraction to Nikki, he realizes how grave the loss of his wife and children would be, so he walks out on Nikki. Richard returns home, surprising his wife, and for the first time in the film, they begin to rebuild a genuine rapport, with a possible promise of good things to come. (imdb.com)

     Washington’s character follows the typical patterns of the Jezebel and tragic mulatto figure in American narrative. She uses her feminine wiles to seduce Richard against his better judgment; she is the cause of Richard’s loss of self-control when it comes to all things sexual. Like the tragic mulatto, she is left alone and distraught (destroyed?), when Richard decides that he loves his wife and returns to his happy home. Men must be on the lookout for women like Nikki Tru, for she poses a grave threat to middle-class patriarchal masculinity. She is so fine, so beautiful, a man might just lose his self-control and destroy his marriage and career and …his humanity(?) in the attempt to posses her.

Olivia Pope

 

In ABC’s Scandal, Washington plays Olivia Pope, a highly educated, intelligent, deliberate, sexualized and powerful political fixer centered in the nation’s capital. She is also the president’s mistress. Now, the connection with the tragic mulatto is rather evident. When one takes into consideration the history of sexual relationships between women of color – black women – and white men in America, the obvious social critique regarding Olivia and Fitz’s relationship cannot be ignored. And, although the show rarely speaks of race, even Washington’s character cannot escape the obvious implications of the relationship when she mutters that she is beginning to feel “a little Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson” about the relationship with Fitz. William Wells Brown would smile. In the effort to reinvent the tragic mulatta figure, it seems as if Rhimes and the creative team over at ABC decided to craft the character trope with an assumed inverted power relationship with the character’s male superior; however, the history and culture of the United States almost precludes the audience from interpreting Pope as anything other than an overdetermined jump-off broad. Which is sad, because Washington’s character is the first representation of an African American female lead on network television in some time. Well, maybe not African American for Oprah Winfrey reminds us that 

[Olivia Pope] is a fully realized woman…[Kerry Washington] is not just in this role because she is African-American. [Kerry Washington represents] a new moment for our culture. (Winfrey)

What moment is that, Sophia? And where is Harpo, anyway?

     While Washington’s role should be celebrated for the powerful reflection of black womanhood that it illustrates, the trace and specter of America’s racial past haunt Pope’s characterization, especially with regards to her relationship with Fitz. I mean, here is a woman that can do anything that she wants – including win the election for Fitz – but she cannot find herself an unmarried man? Perhaps, we are to understand that what this powerful, smart, ambitious, feared African American political operative wants is a married white man.

Broomhilda von Shaft

No role underscores the idea that Washington has been type-casted as a tragic mulatta more than the role she played in Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 smash hit D’jango Unchained. In the movie, Washington stars as Broomhilda von Shaft (Shaft, really? Shut yo mouf), the enslaved wife of D’jango, himself a slave and played by Jamie Foxx. The plot of the movie revolves around D’jango attempting to rescue his wife from the evil white slaver Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Two of the motivating reasons for D’jango’s attempt to save his wife: 1) to rescue her from the sexual proclivities of Candie and his enslaved male wrestler population and 2) to protect her from labor in the field, for Broomhilda has always been a house hand and she would not survive the demands of a field hand…and she is too beautiful to be wasted in the field.

            On the one hand, Broomhilda is overdetermined as a sexual object and chattel property by Calvin Candie; he wishes to keep her enslaved and do with her as he pleases, for she is his property. And a proper Southern gentleman – a man reared on middle-class patriarchal masculinity – should have the power and strength to do with his property as he pleases. On the other hand, Broomhilda is overdetermined by D’jango as the helpless, pitied feminist presence that must been hoisted upon a mantle and protected within the cult of domesticity. So, in actuality, what we have is an ideological struggle between the enslaved black man and the free white man over the role, purpose and function of a black woman(…I’m sorry, a woman for whom her blackness is but one component of her being). Does Broomhilda have a say? Not in the movie. The audience is privy to no words – neither in English nor German – which reflect Broomhilda’s perspective on the matter. We get that she does not wish to be the concubine of Candie, but are we to understand that she wishes to be caged away by D’jango. I do not think Olivia Pope would go for that. Broomhilda is definitely a victim of society. And, the audience is afforded an understanding of the desires of both white men and black men regarding Broomhilda (consider the opinions of D’jango and Candie and Dr. Schultz and Stephen), but we rarely hear from Broomhilda herself. By the end of the movie, she simply rides away with D’jango. I guess it is up to the former slave, with his tenuous grip on concepts of middle-class patriarchal masculinity, to provide the protective space in which Broomhilda, the mulatta slave too delicate to work in the fields, can be established within America’s cult of domesticity.

      I was going to be really critical of Washington for playing so many tragic mulatta roles. And then I was going to criticize the NAACP for celebrating her roles, along with ESSENCE and ELLE and Ebony and Jet. But in a world where The Academy sees fit to celebrate the roles depicted in The Help, who am I to pose critical inquiry regarding the representation of African American women in narrative and onscreen? And then I read a VIBE interview featuring Washington and I realized that she knows little about African American history. And so, her ignorance with regards to the impact of the characters that she is paid to portray should not surprise me. In an interview for VIBE, just before the Christmas premiere of D’jango Unchained, Washington was asked the following:

Before D'jango was even completed, the screenplay and the trailer received criticism from black people who objected to the treatment of slavery, suggesting it is not serious. It is a spaghetti western not a heavy drama like, say, Roots or The Color Purple. Were you prepared for this type of scrutiny?

She responded by saying,

This [D’jango Unchained] is not a doc. This is a Quentin Tarantino film. But I remember there was this one moment in the script where Jamie's character was put in an awful crazy medieval metal mask. I said, ‘‘That's some sick thing Quentin thought up.” And when I went to the production office to meet about my wardrobe, I saw into the research office. Twenty photos of real masks like that. It made me sad. I realized as much as my degrees and everything I've read on slave narratives [should have informed me], I didn't even know that they wore masks like that, that people did that to us. It took a Tarantino movie for me to know that that's not some crazy thing out of his imagination. That's how it went down.

You see, even with all of her degrees, Washington was ignorant of how it (the horrible treatment of African American slaves) went down. Thank you, Tarantino for enlightening her. (Does anyone find it humorous that she received her education from Tarantino – that great illustrator of all things black – regarding the history of slavery?) If Washington was ignorant of the devices used to curtail the movement of slaves, then I would not find it surprising that she is ignorant of the tragic mulatta in America’s narrative history. Maybe someone should show her some pictures of the plight of the tragic mulatta the next time she is on a movie set. Then she will know how it went down.

            Both Rhimes and Washington are children of the post-Civil Rights era, born in 1970 and 1977, respectively. I believe that the children of the post-Civil Rights era are schizophrenic; they have driven themselves crazy by trying to have their cake and eat it too. On this topic, I too agree with Kenneth Warren (and I hate to agree with him on anything). In the effort to continue the legacies of Truth, King and Jordan and live out their ambitions as Americans, children of the post-Civil Rights era have lost sight of their history and at times their humanity. God bless ‘em! They are, collectively, an underdeveloped bunch with the weight and promise of an entire race on their shoulders. And, perhaps I am bias because I too am one of these souls. But I live a conflicted existence and one must find blame or cause for the disillusionment now being so thoroughly enjoyed. I live somewhere between the demands of the Black Panther Party, the unfulfilled promises of Operation Push and the exploitation of one's race and skills as exhibited by Justice Clarence Thomas. Am I an “American,” African American, or a black man ignorant of his lineage trapped in America? Am I to add to the recipe of what makes this country what it is, for good or bad, or am I to figure out a way to rip it asunder and put it together again? Should one utilize one's skills and talents for personal and material gain or for the promotion of some “just cause” to the benefit of some larger group of brethren? Or, maybe, just maybe, I should say fuck it, take some Oxy or thorazine and live in the post-racial fantasia that is the America of Rhimes and Washington.


                                                               Works Cited

 Arceneaux, Michael. “Jamie Foxx & Kerry Washington Open Up About Race.”

                      http://tvone.tv/topics/celebrity_gossip/celeb_news/jamies-foxx-kerry-washington-open-up-
                      about-race.html

“Clotel.”                         
                      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotel 


Good, Karen. “Kerry Washington on “Race” and “Colored Girls.” Essence.
                      http://www.essence.com/2010/10/25/kindred-spirit-kerry-washington-on-2-new/

  

James, Kendra. “Quoted: Shonda Rhimes on TV Diversity.”

“Shonda Rhimes.”

                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shonda_Rhimes

Parham, Jason. “Why Does “Scandal” Keep Avoiding the Race Question?”

                        http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/05/shonda-rhimes-and-scandal

Winfrey, Oprah. Oprah’s Next Chapter. Episode nine. Oprah Winfrey Network, 2012.

Pilgrim, David. “The Tragic Mulatto Myth.” Jim Crow: Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris

            State University, 2000.