Interracial relationships in soaps

[marceline]

So obvious. So true. We get to watch that dishrag day in and day out while Shannon and Cornelius get so few scenes they can basically stop in a film a months worth on their way to their real jobs at Trader Joes and The Gap.

There was a story on NPR a couple years back about how Y&R had Brad Carlton atone for past misdeeds during Rosh Hashana

[Eric83]

Yeah that was it. I get them confused. Terribly sad to see how diverse and groundbreaking OLTL was when it premiered over 40 years ago, and compared to now when they are trying to use gays and blacks as scapegoats for their horrible ratings.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I believe her mother is Japanese and her father is an American...

[DeeeDee]

Latham should never work as a writer again the way she wasted Steinberg.

[Eric83]

Cornelius is the best younger actor on the show, the son of a supercouple, and extremely sexy, but he still gets ignored.

I am a bitter Frankie/Madison fan.

Shannon Kane blows Brittany Allen's milquetoast ass out of the water, but they are still forcing Marissa on us, when she is OBVIOUSLY not working.

[DeeeDee]

Not according to certain fans.

According to them he can't act.

But that's indicative of much larger issue.

She & Martinez should be front burner. It's 2010. There aren't any excuses.

[Vee]

Oh, I think they may put Matt with Des now. Now that Frons has found a hotter, more conventionally soapy hunk to pair with Dani, who was his priority, as opposed to Eddie Alderson. He can recreate Starr/Cole in Nate/Dani with another insta-jock prince for Todd's daughter - Matthew did not fit the Cole mold for him, so he got tossed into the background. It's no coincidence they have been grouping Matt with Destiny from before, during and after the musical, in promotion and onscreen, as Nate and Dani were shoved together. I expect them to toy with Matthew and Destiny again soon, if they haven't already, and I think they have and are.

The only problem with this is simple: Matthew is only being considered for a interracial relationship because he was declared "unfit" for frontburner story duty like Young White Hardbody Nate or Danielle. As a lowly real teenager, he can now be set on the mid-or-backburner and safely considered with a black love interest, since they will likely become Nate and Dani's Langston and Markko and not be major players. It's the same old Frons setup from 2007, and the same old treatment of minorities and interracial pairings - it's okay as long as they're not a major storyline, or the characters are bland. It's dismissive and callous, and it assumes the audience is as vapid and narrow-minded as the executives.

[DeeeDee]

It's not like anyone should've expected more.

Look how Tam's Markko was thoroughly emasculated & run out of town while OLTL goes out of its way to make Langston the sympathetic party or how Layla/Cris are stuck in the same joined at the hip-run the same scene day after day deal that Martinez & Kane are doing on AMC.

If it's any consolation I don't think Nate's gonna last past the summer (James maybe) but Nate is a non starter.

[DRW50]

It's also a very depressing view of the female characters -- I don't believe that Langston or Dani are that popular (and I think that they probably thought Dani was going to be VERY popular -- Langston is mostly just a filler character trashed to serve the plot), so let's bring in some hunky whitebread types for them to revolve around.

It's funny because from the start with Fish and with Kyle and to a lesser degree with Schuyler you heard people say well, they can't be popular because they aren't from core families. They failed because they aren't from core families. Oh if they were CJ they would have stayed around.

And yet you have three new hires who have NO ties to core families, so what do you do? You try to make them a NEW core family. You even bring in Jessica Leccia in what is probably an attempt to cash in on her GL popularity and to capitalize on her history of playing mother to a "teen" who looks the same age as she does.

Notice that Rachel, who IS from a core family, was fired and quickly forgotten.

[quartermainefan]

I don't even think about race in soaps anymore. After the episode with OLTL scapegoating Kish for their ratings I think there are new fronts in the war against discrimination that are more timely and the problem more acute. No soap ever dismissed actors for portraying a black character and then said the black characters were driving their ratings down. And the whole jewish thing is a perpetual problem, but one I can sort of understand considering jews make up something like 2% of the population in the USA (and I say this while being jewish myself). It is tough to ask for an accurate portrayal of middle american small towns and then insist there be a synogogue on every corner. But one of the soaps with the 100 or so characters on contract, one of the soaps could have written in a jewish character somewhere along the line.

I also have some outside the soap world issues with feeling much empathy anymore considering how high the black vote was against gay marriage. Tough to keep on showing support when the people you show support to turn right around and spit in your face.

[DRW50]

The prejudice isn't spoken out loud but sometimes that can be an even more dangerous prejudice. Was it a coincidence that Daphnee Duplaix was fired around the same time as Scott Evans and Brett Claywell?

[marceline]

That core/legacy stuff is such garbage. Those are just code words for "characters I want to watch." CJ hasn't been seen or even talked about in any meaningful fashion since childhood while Sarah's been back in three incarnations to fairly uneven audience response. Being part of the coriest of core families hasn't made them pivotal. But there's a certain segment of the audience that judges everyone by that core family yardstick and the few interlopers like Rachel who get through, get tossed based on some other random quality they don't meet. Bottom line, they write for who they want to write for and they don't want to write for minorities.

This thing with Ford's family sounds like the Rappaport invasion all over again.

[SFK]

"This thing with Ford's family sounds like the Rappaport invasion all over again."

I thought the same thing.

A brother is MORE than enough, the idea of building an entire family around this douche is balls of them, how insulting, no one even likes this prick and they boost the character based solely on superficial reasons: the Fords, the house that abs built. The people who love Ford don't even care about what makes him tick, what made him an ass, hell, just letting him be an ass on gp would have been the more inventive way to go. They better have an adopted Cambodian sister or something...

[Ann_SS]

Wait, they are building a family around that horrible character Ford? LOL! I'm not surprised. You can always tell when TPTB are enamored with an actor and have lost all perspective. For a couple years, Guza was obviously drooling over LLC''s boobs on GH. FV and RC have been doing the same over the body of the actor who plays Ford. He has gotten way too much airtime and attention. Now they are trying to find ways to keep him around.

Back to interracial relationships, sometimes a couple sparks irrespective of their ethnicity. I just want TPTB to take advantage of that chemistry when it happens. It should have been done with Madison and Frankie. I have said it forever and repeat it Natalia belongs in the Chandler mansion with JR. Natalia against Ann would be much more interesting soap than boring Marissa who AMC is determined to pimp till cancellation.

[TC]

1994? Could it have been the suits panicking over OJ Simpson?