Soaps and BLM....

[Marco Dane]

What Soap Opera do you think has the guts to do a Black Lives Matter Storyline?

[YRfan23]

Didn’t they try to interpret the JJ shooting Theo stuff on Days as one? 
 

I know Sally Sussman wanted to do one with Devon on Y&R but they had her drop it. 

[Darn]

One Life to Live.

[BetterForgotten]

What's the use? It would be told through a white writer's POV anyway. 

[ChitHappens]

I'm good if they just stick with the usual rotgut.  No need to touch this.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

All the shows that had any semblance of courage to do it are all canceled. All My Children and As The World Turns immediately come to mind.

In the mid-1980s on ATWT, a Black detective named Roy Franklin had a younger brother who had been shot and killed by the police but it was more treated as both part of Roy's backstory and the reason for the tensions between Roy and his father Leonard, a bus driver who just could not reconcile why his eldest son would want to work with the same organization responsible for his brother's death. 

The acting was wonderful even in the little of that story that I did see (Mel Winkler, who just passed away last week

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, Novella Nelson and Count Stovall were wonderful in those scenes). Unfortunately, the storyline didn't go much deeper and I wonder whether pressure from P&G and CBS (not the most progressive of brands) had something to do with that thread of the story short-circuiting rather abruptly.

Edited June 16, 2020 by DramatistDreamer

[ChitHappens]

 

The worst bait and switch in the history of Daytime.  Theo's shooting was easily a Blue Lives Matter story, highlighted by the removal of Theo from the canvas so we could focus on JJ's pain.

 

UNFORGIVABLE!  I believe it was the last time I made an attempt to watch Days.  I don't even tune in on my days off.

[BetterForgotten]

It wasn't always reflected on their shows, but P&G as a company has always been more progressive than a lot others. Before it was even "popular" P&G invested a lot into African American businesses, and spent millions on adverting that was designed to raise awareness at how unfairly blacks were targeted in this country.

 

This ad was done a few years ago:

 

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This one done last year:

 

 

This one done very recently to respond to present situations:

 

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by BetterForgotten

[DramatistDreamer]

I can appreciate those ads but P&G has been around since 1837. They really only started tackling diversity problems within their corporation last year.

P&G sponsored the "My Black is Beautiful" initiative yet, they still sold bleaching cream all over the world, particularly in Africa and Asia.  

I really want to believe that P&G is doing this latest initiative for the right reasons and not just for money but I admit to being skeptical of their motives.

 

https://jezebel.com/p-g-backs-black-is-beautiful-doc-sells-skin-lighteni-476509650

[BetterForgotten]

Colourism, unfortunately, is another issue and these same corporations profit from it handsomely.

 

I know it's particularity widespread and problematic in India.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

It exists within the Black community, within every country where groups of Black people live.  Racism is very much alive in corporate America.

 

I'm trying to figure out how many Black writers were in the writer's rooms for P&G soaps?  I'm having a very hard time thinking of any, can anyone think of any?  Marketing is one thing but how many management and executives are there within a corporation?  How many writers did they employ on the staffs of their shows? That's really where 'the rubber meets the road', so to speak. The rest is just optics.

[Marco Dane]

OLTL.... Would be the only soap to have the guts to do it...

[BetterForgotten]

I'm not sure ABC of the past 25 years would ever clear a story like that, or at least one that was well thought out and had longterm impact. 

[Chris B]

I hate that Sally Sussman didn’t get to do her story with Devon. She got a lot of heat for not having enough action early on and that story could’ve been a great umbrella story to kick off her tenure. I remember when Devon had the random car accident it didn’t go anywhere and she got heat for that, but we now know why it happened. 

[LondonScribe]

At this stage, if American soap operas were a Scorpion and had the chance to do any story that fully served it’s black characters, actors as well as it’s audience (much less a BLM type story), I feel it would rather sting itself and sink

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Edited June 16, 2020 by LondonScribe