Racism and racial representation on soaps

[Vee]

I would still make Duplaix's Rachel and Dan Gauthier's Kevin a tentpole couple at OLTL. But that's enough OLTL bullshit from me.

[Faulkner]

That would have been wonderful!

[Forever8]

I always got the feeling TSJ's Todd/Victor wanted to be paired with Renee Elise Goldsberry's Evangeline and when the pairing didn't come to fruition he kind of checked out acting wise for a time in my opinion. 

[Vee]

He checked out well before that, lol.

[titan1978]

Evangeline was such a good character, that I loved to watch, played by a fantastic actress.  She made me invest in terrible storylines.  The show was lucky to have her, not the other way around, and how sad to see OLTL had once again benefitted from a strong black performer and treated them like they did not matter.

I would have loved to see that.

[SFK]

I'm curious, what are the names of the black mother and biracial daughter on SB that Patrick mentions?

 

I loathed OLTL's Rachel's descent into addiction, and as the child of a black parent and a white parent myself, it was not lost on me that the character literally grew darker before our eyes with recasts as she fell further and further apart. Optics!

 

It's egregious when a show recasts black characters with no regard to complexion. Alimi Ballard to Jason Olive!? Monti Sharp to Terrell Tilford!? You've essentially rewritten the character's history. I'm not sure that daytime has touched upon colorism since Carla Gray.

[DramatistDreamer]

So interesting that Mulcahey mentions that writers would get notes advising them not to be too specific with characters.  That seems the direct opposite of what most pre-professional writing programs would advise students.  It certainly was the case in my graduate dramatic writing program.  This explains so much.

Edited July 4, 2020 by DramatistDreamer
Oops, I meant writers not actors.

[robbwolff]

 

The SB characters were the mother Caroline Wilson (Lenore Kasdorf), biracial daughter Alice Jackson (Marie-Alise Recasner), white daughter Jane Wilson (Jane Sibbets), Alice's father Gus (David Wolos-Fonteno), and cop Paul Whitney (Stoney Jackson). I believe Patrick was referring to Stoney Jackson as the miscast romantic lead. 

[Efulton]

I loved the characters of Caroline, Jane and Alice.  The show connected them to my favourite SB Family the Lockridges and they had so much potential. But like much of what was good about SB they didn’t last. 

[ChitHappens]

 

He outright stated he wanted that pairing, but the TnB wackos and KDP had other plans.  

[victoria foxton]

Alice was sweet and quirky. I loved her and Brian. On SB characters never lasted very long. They invested everything on Cruz and Eden.

[Faulkner]

Such a good point about the changes from Ellen to Mari Morrow to Sandra P. Grant. Each actress got darker in skin tone as she fell deeper into drugs. And lo and behold, when she was rehabilitated, they hired another light-skinned actress. This happened over the course of 10-20 years and several writing/producing regimes, but this trajectory was not lost on perceptive viewers.
 

And to speak further on the loss of specificity, Rachel lost all her political convictions after Bethea departed. A lot of that was due to Linda Gottlieb’s departure and OLTL’s shift away from social issues. Rachel seemed created very much out of that early ‘90s-era black and feminist consciousness.

Edited July 4, 2020 by Faulkner

[Efulton]

Yup!

[Marco Dane]

A former Soap Star from GH/BB/PC & AMC didn't know what the WP sign meant on my facebook page... He was confused of what Mary Hart was doing at Mount Rushmore when she put up the WP sign. I deleted the comments because I didn't want my vocal facebook friends to drag him to hell. He's blocked as well. Some former and working actors are VERY ODD AND WEIRD especially on Social Media...

[All My Shadows]

I really just wanted to quote the very last tweet from Patrick Mulcahey, but the specificity thing is what I was trying to get at a few weeks ago. I don't think the race issue in the way soaps are written will ever get fixed until soaps are willing to be more specific with characters across the board, and that requires opening up the writers' room to people who have more varied experiences - though it seems as though the people have been there but have been told to keep their specificities at the door. So, any attempt at writing characters with "specificities" usually flops because they're not allowed to actually go there.

 

Sad, because look at how super specific settings and characters are becoming in non-daytime shows. People want to see shows that spotlight segments of society that have not been put on the screen before. When you combine that with the very unique abilities afforded to daytime ("the luxury of time" and all that jazz), you could end up with some amazing, beautiful stuff. It's a shame that most of OLTL's first two years are lost because I feel like that could be a master class at how to bring all kinds of ethnic and religious differences to soaps. Instead, soaps cling to the same old sht. Another hospital, another police station, another restaurant, another business office, another upper middle class home, another apartment, etc. It's just sad.

I am black, and I can tell you that the majority of my black family and friends know nothing at all of the "WP" connotation of that sign, and they've all probably thrown it up at some point. Sometimes people really just don't know.