What happened to Victoria Rowell on Y&R?

[chicklitsandfantasies]

The Valley girl accent on women on any color annoys me because of the pitch. It gives me a headache and I end up muting that actress' scenes if it's really bad. There's no reason to not work on your speaking voice as an actor.You're playing a character, get engrossed in the role. I suppose I can ignore the accent if the actress is good but most of the time that's not the case.

[EastMA2]

Agreed on both accounts. Is there no one in VR's camp that can pull her aside and explain to her that she is not doing herself any favors and that she is not helping herself at all. No one should/would want to take on that baggage. And who is she to talk about anyone else? The way that she describes MTS could fit VR as well. She has proven that.

[Wales2004]

Based on that Nelson Branco tweet, I get the impression that he was primarily saying that VR is not a "ghetto girl" when he referred to her as the "whitest" person he knows and maybe that was an attempt to discredit her as a woman with any real "street cred." It's kind of similar to exposing one of those hardcore street rappers as a guy who grew up in suburbia.

The part about her accent was thrown in to stress his point and in retrospect I doubt that he was trying to make any sort of statement implying that black people cannot have English accents.

I generally love regional accents so I have no problem with hearing people from Boston say "Bah-stan," or people from Queens say "Nu Yawk." I grew up around valley girls, surfers, stoners, people from the LB-C, etc. I'm not fond of some of the vocabulary that makes its way to becoming commonplace.

Right now I don't like hearing "whatevs" and "feels." Slang can be entertaining but I hope that kids also learn proper grammar and vocabulary.

Unlike you, I don't see this in racial terms. Unless they're casting for certain types of characters then it makes sense that they want people who they think will seem more accessible to an audience. National news anchors don't speak with regional accents--most local ones don't either. Why? Because they want to be sure the audience understands them. The same applies for most shows in general.

Sports Networks don't seem to care much about that though so you end up with a hodgepodge of analysts who sound great or are grammatically/vocabulary challenged on top of whatever drawl/twang or squeaky voice some of them may have. it can get distracting for those who don't normally speak that way and the assumption is that the majority of the population does not.

I got used to cockney early on so it's only a problem when a person speaks too fast which makes his/her words slur. You ought to hear a person who speaks cockney telling a Welsh person that they need to speak English. There are probably days when I feel that way about everybody...except me of course.

[VirginiaHamilton]

I don't share your actor's brain, yet I feel exactly the same way. Folks (especially women) are expected to simply roll over and accept shoddy treatment and are pretty much called everything short of the devil if they have the gumption to call people out.

[marceline]

My problem with what Branco said is that he is trafficking in stereotypes. He's also apparently assuming a certain in-group status that he doesn't have. The "black enough" meme is tired, outdated thinking used by people who cannot handle the diversity of reality. I'm sick of it when it comes from someone who actually is black. It's even more disgusting coming from someone sitting on the outside who is basically berating a black woman's integrity for not living down to his image of how she is supposed to act. That's not for him to judge. Honestly it's not for anybody to judge. Neither Rowell nor anybody else should have to turn themselves into a stereotype just to make them more "palatable" to someone who sees the world in simple terms.

I'm pretty sure that if I started spouting off about whether Branco is a "good example" of gay (Ick. I hate even typing that.) he would lose his tiny, hysterical, stuck in the 80s mind and he should because that would be an offensive, misinformed, thoughtless thing for me to do.

Branco needs to drink a nice big cup of STFU.

[chicklitsandfantasies]

I think calling VR certifiable is definitely pushing it. Yes her tweet fest this past weekend was pushing it a little but unlike a certain other past Y&R actress she still seems in touch with reality. And most of VR's tweets were truthful and she praised alot of her cast mates which by the way people were asking her to talk about.People were tweeting her to describe so and so and she did.

Branco was the real vile one, going in on a woman who tweeted nothing bad about him and wasn't even paying him any mind. His remarks were racist and out of line And he has some nerve calling anyone insane.

[Wales2004]

marceline,

I totally agree with you on the stereotyping. It's such a rich subject.

I'm unfamiliar with Nelson Branco so everyone is likely to have a much better handle on his intent than I do and I know that he took a very "catty" immature approach.

I really don't think he's trying to say that this is how black women are supposed to be. His attacks are a different kind of personal.

I think that particular jab is meant for her supporters.

It seems a more preemptive way of saying she's no "down sista" so don't even come to me with how she's just keeping it real.

That's what I get from it.

[alphanguy74]

And I think your'e completey correct here.

[DeeeDee]

+1.

[marceline]

And he did all that by buying into and perpetuating a damaging and ignorant stereotype that showed what he considers to be "legitimate" blackness.

Branco needs to stick to waxing rhapsodic about the size of actors dicks. (Oh dear, I used the word "rhapsodic." I wonder if that disqualifies me as black by Branco's standard.)

[juniorz1]

You know I do!

And Epperson SHOULD come back. I get the impression that she's not opposed.

[Wales2004]

And I'm more convinced that the people to whom he probably directed that comment are the true gatekeepers of that stereotype.

The problem with that stereotype is that people want to have it both ways. At the same time they gripe about society seeing them as stereotypes and a monolith, they turn around and gripe that people don't want to accept that stereotype in the "mainstream."

One "pop culture" blogger complained that the lady in the Pine-sol ad, man in the Sears ad, and the lady in the Tide ad that says "ecru," among others are stereotypes. Yet according to her black women could never relate to "Eat, Pray, Love" because they don't have the money to travel. And she found the pilot episode of "Undercovers" with Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw unwatchable because even though they were playing agents on international missions, they weren't "black enough" and needed to speak some "Ebonics." Gugu Mbatha-Raw was a specific problem for being "too light" and not having any "attitude."

The expectation that white people should easily shake off stereotypes perpetuated by black people telling them that they don't know what it's like to be black seems unreasonable to me.

No, I'm not excusing Nelson Branco. I'm not a fan of Twitter. It just seems to assist people in exposing their ignorance.

[marceline]

Which is why I said that it's sickening coming from black people AND white people. All the stuff cited above is ridiculous and ignorant but Branco doesn't get a pass just because black folks say ignorant things too. This isn't an either/or situation. It needs to be called out no matter who says it. What Branco said was ugly and wrong and he doesn't get to say it just because some black person somewhere said something equally ugly and wrong. Is it okay for someone to tell me I'm not black enough just because their idea of black is Flava Flav? I don't expect Branco to "easily shake off" a stereotype but I'm damn well not going to excuse him for using it.

In fact, if he and Rowell truly were friends then what he said was even worse because that tells me he spent all that time with her holding that "black enough" crap in his head instead of accepting her for who she was. I'm just curious if when Nelson was interviewing other black actors he was sitting there thinking they weren't black enough either. Who else isn't black enough for Nelson? Nathan Purdee? Tim Stickney? (After all Stickney does Shakespeare! *gasp*) What about Debbi Morgan or Tamara Tunie or Tika Sumpter? Do any of them make the cut? Because after all, they are all so "well-spoken."

If Nelson wanted to nail Rowell for her tweets there were a million ways he could've done that without going after her race. I don't consider it unreasonable to judge him for his words and actions.

[tina m]

Thank you for posting that. Some of us are busy in our daily lives, (like myself, working & going to school) we miss out on news topics and speculation/rumors. This is a board where fans can be informed and discuss incidents like this that happen behind the scenes. We're all adults here!

[Wales2004]

I'm not saying that he or anyone should get a pass. I'm saying that if black people tell a white person that only black people can say what constitutes "blackness" then why should white people waste their time disputing it and insisting it's not true? That's a no win situation.

Nelson Branco stepped in it on his own and there is no excuse for him period. But there are other people who get caught in the web for accepting that something is "black" because some black person insisted it is and this is what black people do and then they get labeled 'racist" because some other black person says they are stereotyping black people. As silly as it may be, there are white people who simply avoid black people altogether or who will quikly agree with them, just to avoid being labeled a racist. I've seen black people take advantage of this fear.

People should be seen as individuals. Unfortunately, there are too many people working against seeing people as individuals.