#the way he talks about tommy and buck and representation and the show in general just makes me very emotional ngl <3

[theladyyavilee]

lou said tommy is queer as in deal with it

and I for one think he is SO REAL for that 😌

[wenellyb]

Eddie Diaz is a white Latino. Did people learn nothing from the Pedro Pascal discourse? And does the fandom *not* remember that episode where the funeral protestor refuses to be tended by Hen and Chim, so he asks Eddie to give him care— fully seeing he’s white— until Eddie says his last name is Diaz and his father’s Mexican, but he can channel his mother’s Swedish heritage for the man’s comfort? White people are not members of the global majority, but they do live and exist outside Western Europe and the U.S. (like Mexico).

It’s so weird how parts of the fandom are making any positive reaction to a m/m relationship in this show (that isn’t their yaoi ‘buddie’ fanfiction) into something about loving to see white men kiss. Y’all would still be getting that with canon buddie! Y’all couldn’t even support Michael and Glenn (calling them “homewreckers”). Y’all constantly ignore Hen and Karen with your complaints of “queerbaiting.” Y’all also called TK & Carlos’ (911 Lone Star) relationship “toxic” because it began with sex and because y’all fanon Carlos as some aggressive control freak. Like… c’mon!

I don’t think anyone who is supportive of Buck’s new relationship is arguing that Tommy is perfect. He’s was a fucking dick to both Hen and Chim when they joined the 118. His “delivery man” comment to Chim was wildly unacceptable. No one has forgotten this. Yet both Hen and Chim are *NOW* good friends with him…? Why? He changed. And the show shows the audience this. They show that he developed a great camaraderie with Hen and Chim. They show how he— unlike Sal and Gerrard— shifted his behavior and worldview to accept, embrace, and enjoy change.

Tommy could have been Sal. He could have been Gerrard. He had a good working relationship with both men and both men encouraged bad behavior in the 118. Yet he didn’t. He stayed on and befriended Hen and Chim (when most of the other guys still refused). Because he chose to learn and change and open himself to people’s differences (which likely also helped him come to terms with his own “differences”).

Tommy’s arc is meant to show how someone can make amends, repair relationships, and become a better person (y’know… learn, grow, and reform himself). The general audience for this show is straight and white. They *need* to see white people changing and learning to be better. They *need* to see queer people coming into themselves. These are important story lines.

Fans like Buck and Tommy together because they like Buck and Tommy together, because they like what this means for them and what might happen going forward. That’s literally it. We’re all just overjoyed by having more queer representation, including Bi representation. That’s it.

But there are a lot of “buddie” shippers in people’s inboxes hating on Buck and Tommy together for no reason other than it stands in the way of their ideal porn fantasies (“buddie”). And they’re being weirdly queerphobic about it, too.

Hi Anon!!!! So much to unpack here. I'll post this and let anyone comment their thoughts because this is an interesting conversation.

I'll start by saying that it never occurred to me that Ryan Guzman was not White, until Bucktommy became more popular and some Buddie shippers said that Bucktommy shippers were preferring the White MM pairing and I was like "Hmm.... both Buddie and Bucktommy are White MM pairings"???? Like it never even occured to me.

I'm not here to debate Ryan Guzman's ethnicity, he knows that better than us, but as you mentionned people seem to forget that there are White latinos.

I should add that Americans will maybe have a different perspective but in Europe, there is racism, and there is also xenophobia both are bad, but not the same.

If I'm talking about someone who is White and Latino being a victim of prejudice, I would never say that they're victim of racism, I would say that he's victim of xenophobia.

Believe it or not there are a lot of Europeans are xenophobic but not racist and vice versa.

With that being said, I agree with the rest of your ask..

I love 911 Lone Star and watched 911 casually but I never got the Buddie shippers, especially the ones who said they shipped Buddie as a form of activism, or because there was a lack of Queer representation (which is true) but Henren are there, TK and Carlos are right there and it's the same franchise.

They never cared about Henren, they even erased them whenever they accused the show of Queerbaiting even thought it has several Queer characters.

I remember when they started complaining that Bucktommy had more fics that Henren after one kiss.... but never said anything about Buddie having over 20 000 fics after 6 years of nothing even thought Henren was canon.

A lot of their takes are rooted in hypocrisy, it's like they're taking all the arguments that have been thrown at them and throwing them back at Bucktommy shippers without even thinking about it.

It's very important to have discussion about fandom racism, because it's a huge issue especially in the biggest fandoms but I do feel like some of them are bringing the issue in bad faith. This discussion is so important but it needs to be had with the Bucktommy fandom AND the Buddie fandom. So far the Buddie shippers only want the Bucktommy shippers to have it.

Why don't they take a look at the mirror first and ask themselves why they never cared about a Black Lesbian couple when one of them was a Main Character. Why don't they ask themselves why a ship with 2 best friends has over 20000 fics and a canon ship that is TK and Carlos only have 7000.

And why do they find the weirdest excuses to hate on Carlos (as you said), who's clearly not White and never give him the same courtesy they give their fave White chatacters.

When Buddie shippers talk about fandom racism, all I can think is: the call is coming from inside the house.

[mystorymylifemywords]

The Coon, The Mammy, & The Brute: Stereotypes In Black Cinema

    Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines stereotype as a “standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment.”  Within the world of film, African-Americans have been depicted in a stereotypical light since the very first motion picture.  These stereotypes, although not as obvious today, still exist.  Names such as Mammy, Coon, and Brute, among others, are the stereotypical categories which African-Americans in film have been placed. Collectively, the human characteristics of African-Americans in film have been that of lower life forms that thrive on sex, muscle, and stupidity.  

    The questions being examined are why, after years of African-Americans attempting to gain equality, do these stereotypes still exist in modern film?  What are the roots of these stereotypes?  Finally, what can be done to change the perception of African-Americans in film?

    This essay will dive into the history of the people and films where these stereotypes originated.  Films such as Birth of a Nation, Training Day, Gone with the Wind, The Emperor Jones, Monster’s Ball, Imitation of Life, Jerry Maguire, and Bamboozled, among others, give a clear display of the aforementioned stereotypes and how they have evolved over the past 100 plus years. The actors who portrayed these characters are almost as important as the affected films.  Actors such as Lincoln Perry, Willie Best, Mantan Moreland, Cuba Gooding Jr., Denzel Washington, Hattie McDaniel, Halle Berry, Queen Latifah, and Paul Robson, to name a few, depicted these stereotypical roles, which led people to believe these stereotypes were and are art imitating life.

    Dr. David Pilgrim of Ferris State University describes the stereotype of a “coon” as a “lazy, easily frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, buffoon.”  The “coon” originated out of slavery.  Many slave owners believe the African-Americans working for them were lower life forms and could not do the requested work because they did not have the brain capacity to stay in constant thought or concentration.  From their actions, slaves were seen as lazy, dumb-witted, and scared.  All of these characteristics make up what we now know as the “coon”.  Many African-Americans would agree that the “coon” is the most demeaning of all African-American stereotypes in film.

    The truth during that time, slaves did not want to do the work because they did not feel as though they were being treated fairly. Laziness came from working 20 hours a day, 6 days a week.  Their fright came from not knowing when the Overseer would beat them for not doing the job the way the Overseer saw fit; they never felt as though their work would be seen as good enough.  Their slow or dumb-witted nature came from attempting to speak a language that was not their native tongue.   At the time, it was illegal to teach a slave how to read and write; their education on the language and culture was slowed to shackled crawl.

    Donald Bogle, a cinema historian, with a major focus on African-Americans in cinema, wrote about his disgust with the portrayal of the “coon” stereotype in his book, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, stating:

Before its death, the “coon” developed into the most blatantly degrading of all black stereotypes. The pure coons emerged as no-account niggers, those unreliable, crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, shooting crap, or butchering the English language.

    The most notable for his portrayal of the “coon” stereotype was Lincoln Perry, known to most as Stepin Fetchit.  Perry’s played the same “coon” in all of his films.  Despite becoming the first African-American to headline a movie and one of the first African-Americans to earn over $1 million, Perry was seen as someone who brought down his race.  His characters were always abused verbally and physically.  Perry’s most notable films were alongside Will Rogers.  In these films, Perry would play more of an animal than human; following Rogers around like a dog while shucking and jiving at the drop of a hat.  Bogle said of Perry:

His appearance, too, added to the caricature. He was tall and skinny and always had his head shaved completely bald. He invariably wore clothes that were too large for him and that looked as if they had been passed down from his white master. His grin was always very wide, his teeth very white, his eyes very widened, his feet very large, his walk very slow, his dialect very broken.

Daniel Leab, from his book, From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures, added:

Fetchit became identified in the popular imagination as a dialect-speaking, slump-shouldered, slack-jawed character who walked, talked, and apparently thought in slow motion. The Fetchit character overcame this lethargy only when he thought that a ghost or some nameless terror might be present; and then he moved very quickly indeed.

    From Perry’s legacy spawned other actors who wanted to follow in his footsteps like Willie “Sleep N’ Eat” Best and Mantan Moreland.  Both of these men were ridiculed in Spike Lee’s film, Bamboozled.  Best and Moreland-like characters were played by actors Tommy Davidson and Savion Glover. The film is a portrait of what is wrong with race within American, both in the early 1900’s to today.  Glover and Davidson played two homeless men who used their “educated feet” and “slick-smooth talk” to get into television. Their dancing, singing, and denigrating speech led to the murder of Glover’s character after he was kidnapped and forced to tap dance for his life as gunshots were fired at his feet.

    Today’s depiction of the “coon” is less blatant, but still offensive.  Cuba Gooding Jr.’s portrayal of football player, Rod Tidwell, in the movie Jerry Maguire has been the closest image of the stereotype since the 1960’s.  Gooding’s dancing, singing, creation of words, and consistent wide smile, showing those “pearly whites,” is reminiscent of Lincoln Perry and Mantan Moreland. His Oscar acceptance dance and celebration did not help his cause.  Since that day, Gooding has been typecast as a “coon” in American society.

    The term “mammy” was orated to the world in the 1927 film The Jazz Singing starring Al Jolson.  In the final scene of the movie, Jolson sings the song “My Mammy,” while in blackface, which entered the term into the world’s vernacular.  “Mammy” is described as a happy (always smiling), hard-working, overweight, caregiver for white slave masters’ children.  Marilyn Yarbrough, co-author of Cassandra and the "Sistahs": The Peculiar Treatment of African American Women in the Myth of Women as Liars, describes the stereotype as:

Mammy is first and foremost asexual, and accordingly, in this society she had to be fat. Most portrayals of Mammy depict her as an "obese African American woman, of dark complexion, with extremely large breasts and buttocks…." By doing this, male slave-owners could disavow their sexual interests in African American women. By characterizing Mammy as an asexual, maternal and deeply religious woman whose main task was caring for the master's children and running his household, the slave-owner found in her the perfect slave. She was a loyal, faithful, but still untrustworthy member of the family who always knew her place.

While Wikipedia describes “mammy” as “dark skin, with a heavyset frame and large bust, and overall matronly appearance, complete with an apron around her waist and a kerchief on her head. She is overweight and dressed in gaudy clothing, as well as genial, churchgoing, and spiritual to the point of delusion.”  These two representations, which are very similar, are the general representation of the stereotype.  However, historian Catherine Clinton says, in The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South, those depictions of “mammy” may not be an accurate:

Records do acknowledge the presence of female slaves who served as the "right hand" of plantation mistresses. Yet documents from the planter class during the first fifty years following the American Revolution reveal only a handful of such examples. Not until after Emancipation did black women run white households or occupy in any significant number the special positions ascribed to them in folklore and fiction. The Mammy was created by white Southerners to redeem the relationship between black women and white men within slave society in response to the antislavery attack from the North during the ante-bellum period. In the primary records from before the Civil War, hard evidence for its existence simply does not appear.

    With all of that said, the “mammy” character in film is represented by the stereotypical description given by Yarbrough and Wikipedia.  In the classic film, Gone with the Wind, the “mammy” was played by Academy Award winning actress, Hattie McDaniel.  McDaniel’s character was not known for her beauty or intelligence, but rather for rearing children, cooking, cleaning, and being accessible to her master; a classic representation of the stereotype and the likely reason why McDaniel won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she knew her role and played her role to the supreme pleasure of the overseeing voters.  In an unrelated sign of the times side note, McDaniel was not permitted to attend the award ceremony due to the color of her skin.

    Soon after the release of Gone with the Wind came Imitation of Life.  Louise Beavers “mammy” character epitomized the stereotype.  Beavers’ character loves and cares for her white family’s children so much, she forgets to tend to her own daughter’s needs.  Along with doing whatever her family tells her to do, Beavers signs away the rights to her famous pancake mix, making the white family rich while she lives the life of a pauper in the basement of the family’s home.

    One would think, after 60+ years, the “mammy” character would have disappeared from all of cinema.  It was the believed the Black Power and Women’s Rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s would killed how African-Americans and women are portrayed.  However, 1995 saw the release of Billy Madison starring Adam Sandler and “mammy’s” return to feature film.

    Theresa Merritt played “mammy” or “Juanita” the overweight, jolly, unattractive maid to Sandler’s character’s family.  From her big laugh to her over-the-top singing to her willingness to do whatever needed to please the family, beyond the duties of a maid, the “mammy” was back in play, but audiences did not notice it.  Washington Post film critic, Rita Kempley stated Merritt’s role was “shamelessly patterned on Miss Scarlett's Mammy” from Gone with the Wind.  Why would this character be placed in a mid-90’s movie? The racial insensitivity was striking, yet went mostly unspoken.

    A movie that did spark some controversy was 2003’s Bringing Down the House starring Queen Latifah and Steve Martin.  In this film, Latifah plays an ex-convict who blackmails Martin and hides out in his home. While she is there, Latifiah acts like a 21st Century “mammy.”  She cooks, cleans, and raises the children while using her hip hop style and slang.  Latifah’s “new age mammy” wears bright, tight clothing, and hair-weave, however, when she first meets Martin, she is dressed like the stereotypical “mammy” caricature. Yes, her character is a far cry from Hattie McDaniel, but as the times change, so do styles, but apparently not African-American stereotypes in film.

    Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the term “brute” as a “characteristic of an animal in quality, action, or instinct.”  In early film, “brute” was used to define African-American male actors who showed animal-like force, rage, and sexual hunger.  Dr. Pilgrim describes a “brute” as “an innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal -- deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially White women.”  

    In the time of slavery, males were not given a name or alias that indicated strength because it would elicit unwelcomed fear amongst slave owners.  Instead, after the slaves were emancipated, the white man openly called African-Americans “brutes” and claimed, because of the rage they held inside during slavery; anger and lustful hunger would be unleashed upon white women and white people across the country.  

    Writer Thomas Nelson Page is the man created for colloquially coining the term “brute.” In his book, Red Rock, a black politician is charged with raping a white woman, showing his thirst for the purer race, and his lust of sex and empowerment over a weaker sex.  The character was later lynched for committing the crime.

    The worst thing a black man could do in the early 1900’s was rape a white woman, or be accused of raping a white woman.  Most accusations led to the man being lynched or beaten for violating the purity of the white female.  In film, this became prevalent in D. W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation.  The film is most commonly known for its cinematography and usage of cutaways and wide-angle moving shots, but it is also known for its famous, or infamous, “Rape Scene.”  The “Rape Scene” contains no sex or even physical touching between the “black” man and the white woman.  

    The scene begins with the “black” man looking at the white woman from behind a tree as she puts clothes on the line to dry.  The white woman doesn’t notice him, at first.  When she sees him, she screams, and runs away into the mountainous, rocky desert landscape while the “black” man lasciviously gives chase. The white woman runs until she comes to a cliff.  The “black” man shows excitement because he has her where he wants her.  As he comes closer, the white woman inches closer and closer to the edge of the cliff.  When he gets too close, about 15 feet, the woman turns and jumps off the cliff to her death.  The “black” man flees while the white settlers attend to the fallen woman.  

    I use the word “black” in parenthesis because the character in the movie was “black,” but the actor playing the role of the “black” man was white.  Most of the actors who played “black” characters were white men wearing blackface make-up.  No African-American was allowed to touch or come near any white woman during the filming of the movie.  Long Island University Professor Melvin Sylvester said, “This one film also lead to outspoken outrage by many African-Americans, including the NAACP organization. To no avail, the NAACP tried to have the film banned or parts of the film censored or deleted. Most of the black roles were done by Whites in blackface, with only selected scenes for African-Americans in this film.”

    Birth of a Nation shows the ideology of the time.  In the “Rape Scene,” the pure fear and terror of the “brute” coming near the white woman was enough for her to take her own life.  She did not know if the man wanted to talk, she would rather die than be seen conversing with the “brute.”

    The most famous “brute” was Paul Robeson.  Robeson was a tall, strong fellow with a very deep voice.  Although he had degrees from both Rutgers and Columbia Law School, one would never know that from watching his movies.  In almost every movie, Robeson was either singing in his deep baritone voice, beating someone up, or looking for sex.  His role in The Emperor Jones (1924) is his most famous and where his “brute” character has received the most ridiculed.  

    In The Emperor Jones, Robeson plays “Brutus Jones,” a man who is on the run after he kills a man, flees to a West Indian island, and crowns himself emperor.  The character’s name, “Brutus Jones” is an early indication of what type of stereotype is being portrayed in this film.  Like all “brutes,” the character kills, attacks, and lusts over women. In the end, the “brute” is killed after a white trader convinces the emperor’s subjects to rebel.  To show that the subjects did not believe Robeson’s character was human, they believed they could only kill him with a silver bullet. The movie also contained other African-American stereotypes, such as, the “coon,” the “tom,” and the “pickaninny.”

    Although the film was a success and was revived several times, it was another step backward for African-Americans.  What is more puzzling, why did Paul Robeson take so many roles as the “brute”? Robeson was known for his stance against racism.  He even quit his job as a lawyer because the white secretary would not take dictation from an African-American.  To this day, despite his success as an athlete and lawyer, people do not know why Robeson did not stand-up against the majority, as he did with Senator McCarthy, and refuse to act in films where African-Americans were made to look less than human.

    The “brute” character has changed since the early 1900’s when Birth of a Nation and The Emperor Jones were released.  The “brute” is now seen as a pure criminal, whose rage and sexual appetite are fixed on African-American women, along with other minorities.  In the 2001 movie, Training Day, Denzel Washington won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of a dirty, rogue street cop.  This was the re-birth of the “brute” in the 21st Century.  

    Washington’s character was intense, angry, animalistic, sexually hungry, and stupid. His character was the opposite of Ethan Hawke’s, clean good cop character.  The movie made it seem like black was evil and white was good, much like the feeling taken away after watching Birth of a Nation.  A racial divide had been made, and one of the world’s best actors, Washington, was caught in the crosshairs.  Moreover, the director of the movie, Antoine Fuqua, an African-American, helped further propagate the stereotype portrayed by Washington.

    The second problem with the movie came months later, when Washington won the Academy Award for his starring role.  Much like when Hattie McDaniel won for Best Supporting Actress in her role as “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind, it appeared to the African-American community that Washington was being credited for playing the role he was supposed to play in the eyes of the White-American community, the “brute.”  In his prior movies, Malcolm X (1992) and The Hurricane (1999), Washington played smart, articulate men with dreams of power and peace.  Arguably, Washington’s role as “Malcolm X” was his best, but the 62-year old actor does not believe race played a role in his Oscar losses or his win, “I don't put too much into that. The year I was up for Malcolm X, Al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman (1992). He had been nominated eight times. If he had lost, what would he have blamed it on? I've been nominated four times and I won once, so who would Pacino blame had he lost?"  These comments came after Rev. Jesse Jackson accused the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of institutional racism. After looking at Washington’s body of work and his competition in 1992 and 1999, I would have to agree with Rev. Jackson.  A black actor must follow the path and portray the characters whom the white audience can relate.  Historically, strong, intelligent black men aren’t given a chance in this country due to the fear of the majority that the minority will work together, rise up, and overcome the oppression that has faced them since the birth of the nation. On the silver screen, the majority wants the minority to imitate the life they perceive to be correct way for races and cultures to cohabitate.

    After all of this, the question must be asked, what can be done to change the perception of African-Americans in film?  How can they change the stereotypes?  In order for a change to occur, people must be educated on the real lives African-Americans lead.  Not all African-Americans sing and dance.  Not all African-American males are strong and undersexed.  Not all African-American females are subservient and submissive.  African-Americans are just like any other person that walks this planet, we aren’t all alike.  Some are educated at places like Harvard, Oxford and Princeton.  Some are scientists and doctors.  Some are teachers and principals.  And yes, some like to sing, dance, and cook, but each person is different in their own right and no one should pigeon hole an entire race by categorizing them as a specific type of person.  This study goes outside the scope of film; art imitates life; the viewing public sees what life has presented them on the silver screen. These movies, for the most part, are not presented as fantasy; they are presented as a representation of what is happening in the real world.

    African-American actors and actresses are also to blame for the continuing to play the stereotypical roles offered in today’s motion pictures.  These actors have the choice to take a stand and not take roles that will demean and disgrace an entire race.  The actors and actresses are just as responsible as the screen writer, producer, executive producer, and director.  The actor and actress are the mouth piece of the motion pictures’ hierarchy.  If an actor or actress refuses to take a role because it makes fun of or can be seen as making light of a specific race in terms of stereotypical characteristics, it will only cause the production houses to become more creative and work harder to remove the stereotypes.  

    A prime example of actresses taking charge and turning down demeaning roles; the 2001 film Monster’s Ball starring Halle Berry, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for her role, was originally turned down by Angela Bassett and many other African-American actresses because they felt the film did not portray the African-American female in the best light.  Bassett told Newsweek, “I wasn't going to be a prostitute on film. I couldn't do that because it's such a stereotype about black women and sexuality.”  In a July 7, 2002 article, USA Today Op-Ed writer, DeWayne Wickham said, “The movie is a leering, fanciful look at interracial sex from a white perspective. Its highlight is the union between a grunting, groaning, lust-filled beautiful black woman and an unsuspecting white guy on whom she throws herself.”  Wickham goes on to say, “In the eyes of too many Hollywood filmmakers, white people make sensuous love while black folks have crude sex.”  Art imitates life; Hollywood holds the paintbrush and owns the easel.

    Movies leave indelible impression on everyone, especially young minds; hip hop artist Jay-Z stated on his album American Gangster, “Scarface the movie did more than Scarface the rapper to me; that is more to blame for everything that has happened to me.” Those words ring true when you see African-Americans taking roles where their characters degrade and disparage the people they are supposed to represent.

This piece was originally published in 2008 and re-purposed in 2017