Race in Disney and Grey's

In her article on the portrayal of race in The Princess and the Frog, Sarah Turner argues that Disney employs a message of colorblindness in its characterization of Tiana and Naveen. Although she is shown as black, Tiana must also be “simply another princess” in order to avoid characterizing Tiana in stereotypical African American ways (84). Turner claims that in order for Disney’s message of race to be effective, the audience must both notice her blackness while simultaneously overlooking it “in favor of her character and her desire to access the American dream” (84). I think this approach is a wise and effective one; Disney was smart to make Tiana’s race a relative non-factor in the debut of the first African American princess. After all, the point is that her attitude and personality should outweigh any physical characteristics, so I don’t see a problem.

             This article also led me to think about other movies or shows that depict race in ways that make it unimportant, and one of the most salient examples that came to mind was ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. In the show, the main characters range greatly in race and ethnicity, featuring several “typical white” characters alongside African American, Asian, and Hispanic doctors. The diversity in the show had honestly never occurred to me until I watched a recorded interview on the subject, and I think that’s what creator Shondra Rhimes intended. The underlying message that race is irrelevant to one’s abilities or potential is one that I think should be much more prevalent than it currently is in modern film and other media. In the interview I watched (which is in a link below, but isn’t solely focused on race and diversity), Sandra Oh, the actress who plays Christina Yang, mentions that she auditioned for the role of “Christina” and that the “Yang” last name was added on after she was cast. This struck me as an incredibly impressive thing for a writer to do; how can someone write a role in such a way that race is a non-factor and be completely open to allowing an actress of any race to play the role?

            Shonda Rhimes, who is African American, has spoken many times about her casting choices, and sums up her approach to casting racially diverse actors and actresses in an interview with the New York Times.  Her interview is pretty long, but relevant and insightful, especially when one considers the perspective it is coming from. Here is a brief except from the article:

           

Rhimes refuses to make an issue of her casting. “I think it’s sad, and weird, and strange that it’s still a thing,” she told me over the phone a few months ago. “It’s 2013. Somebody else needs to get their act together. And, oh, by the way, it works. Ratings-wise, it works.” In addition to its general success, “Scandal” is also rated No. 1 on network TV among African-American viewers.

While race on Rhimes’s shows is omnipresent, it is not often discussed explicitly. This has led to a second-order critique of her shows: that they are colorblind, diverse in a superficial way, with the characters’ races rarely informing their choices or conversations. Rhimes, obviously, disagrees. “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,’ ” she says. “That’s not how the world works. 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.”

Shonda Rhimes is definitely heading in the right direction as far as diversifying American media, and it’s nice to see that Disney is starting to do the same.

Link to Shonda’s interview with Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/shonda-rhimes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Link to Sandra Oh’s interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8avIEuD9I