The outrage over racist Girls

I think this topic is good for another post.

Girls is intended to be a more realistic Sex and the City, with younger characters and darker humor. Sex and the City was about four white women. Girls is about four white girls. So what’s the big deal?

Some suggested that the prominent gay character in Sex and the City, Stanford (played by Willie Garson), trumped the absence of blacks because the gay lobby is a lot more powerful than the black lobby. There’s probably some truth to this. How could anyone criticize Sex and the City for not being “diverse” enough when the show was making prominent strides towards the very important goal of making gay men really cool? Because of Sex and the City, every single woman wants to have a gay friend like Stanford.

And what about other shows about white people in New York City such as Friends, Seinfeld, or Gossip Girl?

As I wrote yesterday, if you randomly looked into apartments in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint areas of Brooklyn being shared by twenty-something women, in the vast majority of cases they’d be inhabited by all white people. All you have to do is walk around Williamsburg to see that it’s an extremely white place. The “hipster” movement just doesn’t have much attraction to non-white people. (The geography of Brooklyn, mainly the BQE and the Newtown Creek, keep this area walled off from outside NAMs. The Hispanics still living there are slowly being squeezed out by the forces of hipster gentrification, and the city had the foresight to never erect any housing projects in this area. Or perhaps the real reason for lack of housing projects is that it was originally considered an industrial area unfit for human habitation.)

If instead of four white girls there were two white girls, a black girl, and an Asian girl, would more people watch the show? The answer is no. Fewer people would watch because fewer people would see themselves in the show. No matter how many Asians and blacks you stick into a show about SWPLs, Asians and blacks aren’t going to be interested in watching, because it’s not a show about themselves.

So the real reason some hardcore liberal types are upset about Girls is because they think that HBO is sending the wrong message to proles and others who don’t think correct thoughts about race. Or maybe the real reason is because the show reminds them of their own racist lives which don’t have the correct mix of diversity, and this makes them feel guilty.

* * *

There was an Asian girl who made a brief appearance in the first episode. When the main character asks her boss at her internship if she can actually get paid for her job, one of her arguments was “but she gets paid,” she being the Asian girl sitting at a desk in the office. The boss replies “she knows Photoshop.” This rather humorously demonstrates how the white elite really feel about Asians. They are ruining things for everyone else by learning useful job skills. The show can get away with this because racism against Asians is tolerated.

* * *

I haven't said anything about the untapped market of Hispanic viewers. The problem is that there are SWPL Hispanics who will be perfectly happy watching Girls, and prole Hispanics who enjoy stuff like Paul Blart, Mall Cop. And then there's Univision. The Hispanic market is pretty well served.

Comments

[GMR]

There are hardly any Hispanic characters on any prime time show of the major networks.

[HS: There's the goofy sidekick character in Chuck, although I initially thought he was white. The blue eyes had me tricked.

And there's Carmen Diaz, who's not on a TV show, but she has been in a lot of movies.

What about Fantasy Island? Wasn't Mr. Roark Hispanic?

And the fat guy in Lost.

The main character in Ugly Betty.

There are many Hispanic characters in Dexter.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that TV is FULL of Hispanic characters, they just don't strike you as being that Hispanic.]

[destructure]

Fixed it for ya...

"Or maybe the real reason is because the show reminds them of their own ~HYPOCRISY~ that doesn’t have the correct mix of diversity, and makes them feel guilty."

***

The kind of nitwits who would actually watch "Girls" are the most hypocritical which is why they demand the show cover up their hypocrisy with more "diversity".

[Georgia Resident]

Most black people watch stuff made by black people, for black people. If instead they want to watch shows made by SWPLs for SWPLs, they should accept the fact that since the main target audience is, in fact, a subset of the white population, the show will pretty much be about white people. I just found the show unwatchable because it's basically about entitled females from upper-class families bitching that their parents expect them to get real jobs (since marriage is apparently out of the question, because that would inhibit their personal fulfillment).

[Frank Stein]

In the future all shows will follow the progressive version of Elizabethian theater. Instead of males playing all the parts (include females), it will be NAMs playing all the parts (including civilized and intelligent characters). You see some of that now, but the progressives will not be happy until all Whites have been removed from the screen (except perhaps those playing rapists).

[destructure]

I streamed the pilot after reading your post yesterday. The parents might be SWPL but those girls weren't. They're just the downwardly mobile children of middle class parents. And trashy. My children are younger but if any of them were socializing with people like that I'd have a talk with them.

[Peter]

Four people who share an apartment are likely to be of the same race. That's just the way things are.

[Doug1]

You're absolutely right that the criticism of Girls not having blacks in it worth squat is not at all about realism, not really and not honestly, it's about message. It's about it not having enough diversity propaganda.

By far most SWPL don't have close black friends in my experience. They have black acquaintances at work and otherwise, and they may like to call them friends for cred purposes, but that's about it, in most cases.

[Scipio Africanus]

People always point to the large numbers of blacks in NYC when charging racism against these shows.

But when I moved here, one of the first things that struck me was how positively white most of the perople on the streets of lower Manhattan are. With the exception of Chinatown and some of the really hip, youth-oriented areas like Broadway in SoHo on a warm Sunday aftrenoon, or the area around W 4th St., Manhattan below Harlem is very, very white.

I don't mind the lack of black characters on the show because the odds are low that those girls would really have a black bestie.

[Firepower]

The now-standardized, ubiquitous screams of "racism!" over things as trivial as TV shows (about girls, even)

show how depraved the US is.

[ic]

Any disdainful attitude against successful people except Jews will not be labeled as `racist'. Such acceptable smacks include gentile white, Asian, especially rich people. Poor minorities are not allowed to be make fun of. Making fun of poor minorities is considered cruel as making fun of handicaped people. Then racist title is applied to such attitude.

Making fun of successful people including Presidents are strongle encouraged. If you are been ridiculed which media allowed, you are more likely belong to succesful class.

[Jack]

destructure - almost all of the young white "educated" women living in major urban areas in the Northeast are trashy. Sign of the times.

[Insider]

'By far most SWPL don't have close black friends in my experience.'

Most lack a black friend. However, if you ever come across an IWSB, you will notice that he or she has a lot of white friends (if not all). I think this is about numbers, more than anything else. There simply are not many IWSB's.

So, SWPL's who are fortunate enough to come across a bona fide IWSB are probably more likely to retain him or her as a close friend. In addition to the usual 'common interest and concern' dichotomy, SWPLs feel like their denialist viewpoint is reaffirmed through this friendship.

A good example of this are the shows 'New Girl' and 'Happy Endings.' To me, these shows perfectly capture the world as SWPLs want it to be. However, because IWSB are in such short supply, the shows simply cannot reflect reality.

This is before considering biracial individuals. A lot of the time biracial people hardly look black. Not only that, but if you notice, SWPLs are eager to actually remove any 'blackness' from biracial individuals, provided they are intelligent.

They will joke about the biracial individual's distance from black culture, make frequent comments about how the individual doesn't 'look' black, etc. In effect, they go out of their way to make the individual an honorary white person.

[Camlost]

Black people have already had dozens of comparable, failed shows on UPN and BET - like "Living Single". (which white people did not watch)

Everyday blacks just aren't interesting to other people at all, with the lone exceptions of when they're "gritty" (the Wire) or kicking action movie ass (Will Smith).

[HS: I think that Sanford & Son is quite hilarious.]

[Frank Stein]

There's a guy doing a great (although not very subtle) job trolling the Gawker comments to a story on this topic, and the earnest progressives are biting hard.

http://gawker.com/5905885/hipster-racism-runoff-and-the-search-for-the-black-costanza

My favorite so far:

omnipotentMLE @jiraf 36 minutes ago REPLY
No, but couldn't they find one daughter of a famous black celebrity and replaced one of the characters in Girls with her. The character would stay the same, no need for writing changes, but they would just have a black girl in the group...

yosoyjohnstamos @omnipotentMLE 5 minutes ago REPLY
Why don't they change Boyz N Da Hood, then?
Why can't one of the Boyz be white? Don't change the dialogue or anything, just make him white. Maybe the cripple.
See how ridiculous that idea is now?

[Kiwiguy]

HEH @ Frank Stein :)

[Camlost]

[HS: I think that Sanford & Son is quite hilarious.]

Yeah, you're right. I even liked What's Happening and the Jeffersons.

But those were different days.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

It shouldn't be surprising the cast of Girls is all white. Afterall, the casts of Mad Men, the Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Rome, Girls, Entourage and the like are white. Apparently the producers of paid TV know that non-white casts won't would bomb with audiences who can select what TV channels they want to watch (even non-white audiences). The reason these producers don't want to film non-white actors (except for black actors like Samuel L Jackson who mostly appear on screen with other white actors like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction) is because audiences tend to ignore ads and TV shows that have too many non-white faces on.

In marketing circles its well known that viewers will either pay less attention to, or change the channel sooner if there are too many non-white actors in the ad. However, if the actors in an ad are all white or mostly white, viewers will watch longer. This is even true in non-white countries. In Tokyo's shopping districts, half of all models featured in fashion posters are European.

This rule that nobody wants to watch too many nonwhites holds true even for TV news. The cable TV ratings leader, Foxnews, has blond anchorettes and pundettes as far as the eye can see. Meanwhile, the perennial ratings loser, CNN, has many nonwhite anchors and reporters and their viewership levels have paid the price for it.

It's actually rather amusing to compare subscription cable with regular cable. First of all, paid subscription shows are well written. Subscription shows also excellent best writing and acting in an age where script writers for movies and basic cable can barely type to coherent sentences together. Also, movies and basic cable have seen audiences flee to the internet and subscription cable as movies and basic cable have stuffed more ugly non-white actors and reality shows into their programming.

For some reason, the subscription cable business model has produced both inherently better made programming and programs that appeal to white people.

[hyjer]

The only exception I can think of is the scifi series Red Dwarf, which had I think 2 NAM actors.

[AC]

"In marketing circles its well known that viewers will either pay less attention to, or change the channel sooner if there are too many non-white actors in the ad. However, if the actors in an ad are all white or mostly white, viewers will watch longer."

Well then why are there so many blacks in commercials and advertising? Blacks, especially black men, are frequently cast as heroes or positive figures, and rarely as villains.

And why are white men so frequently absent from commercials and advertising, or cast as buffoonish, loser types next to savvy, genius, hero black male types?

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Well then why are there so many blacks in commercials and advertising? Blacks, especially black men, are frequently cast as heroes or positive figures, and rarely as villains."

For the same reason Hugh Hefner has to add token non-white playmates: cover from being called racist. The ad executives - who lean heavily SWPL - were also trying to be hip. But, ads with non-white actors don't pay. Notice how non-white faces have appeared in more basic cable TV programming cable viewership has *fallen*. Meanwhile, pay TV shows like Boardwalk Empire have overwhelmingly white casts.

Maybe the reason paid TV producers are more amenable to having all white casts is because they are under more pressure to produce a quality product that people will pay extra $ to watch.

Basic cable show producers, on the other hand, can afford to be lazy because their studios will get some revenue just because customers can't (yet) pick and choose which specific channels they want because their basic cable carriers sell only in bundles.

[jigger statz]

"Well then why are there so many blacks in commercials and advertising?"

Yeah, for several years now Allstate has been using a big black guy (who once tried to kill Clint Eastwood's daughter) for all their pitches. They don't seem to be suffering.

[AnotherDad]

I just think the Stalinism has increased.

Now i've never seen "sex in the city" or "girls", actually not much TV period since i had kids in the early 90s. Of course, as a late fifties boomer, i'm an old fart now, not anyone's target demo, which i understand is young women 18-35. (They watch TV and buy crap in ads.)

But i see the difference here that we're in Obama and BRA and "Trayvon!" and the Stalinist anti-white ideology just has more clout.

Wait another generation when 25 year old white are a minority...

[AC]

"Maybe the reason paid TV producers are more amenable to having all white casts is because they are under more pressure to produce a quality product that people will pay extra $ to watch."

Blacks are still overrepresented. They're especially overrepresented as heroes and positive characters, and extremely underrepresented as villains. And whites, especially white males, are overrepresented as villains and underrepresented as heroes. This is the case for movies as well, which have to get people to pay to watch.

[Peter]

"This rule that nobody wants to watch too many nonwhites holds true even for TV news. The cable TV ratings leader, Foxnews, has blond anchorettes and pundettes as far as the eye can see."

People watch Fox News because of its political views. As pretty much the only major Republican-leaning news channel it is effectively guaranteed a significant number of viewers.

[Peter]

"Also, movies and basic cable have seen audiences flee to the internet and subscription cable as movies and basic cable have stuffed more ugly non-white actors and reality shows into their programming."

A few months ago I watched a couple episodes of this reality show called "Hardcore Pawn" and couldn't believe the racial dynamics. It consisted of absurdly stereotypical Jewish pawnbrokers in Detroit taking advantage of desperate, mostly black customers.

[Insider]

The more universal a show's themes are, the more people will watch the show. It doesn't matter if the characters are black, Asian, or white.

Sanford and Son is funny because the dynamic of a fairly reasonable son trying to deal with a curmudgeon old man of a father is universally funny.

The Cosby Show is funny because a father trying to deal with the shenanigans of his family is universally funny.

A lot of minority shows are unfunny because they focus on narrow topics---"black people are funny because they do X and white people do Y." How is anyone white supposed to enjoy that kind of show? Whites tend to watch white shows because most black shows and movies approach humor in this way.

To be quite honest, this is why I stay away from almost all black comedians. If you want to enjoy universal acceptance, make something with universal appeal. It's simple merit, not racism.

[Kurtosis]

This post and most of the comments were just so ridiculously on-point it's not even funny.

That is all.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Blacks are still overrepresented. They're especially overrepresented as heroes and positive characters, and extremely underrepresented as villains."

That doesn't refute any of my points.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"People watch Fox News because of its political views. As pretty much the only major Republican-leaning news channel it is effectively guaranteed a significant number of viewers."

Even if you remove Fox from the picture, you'll see a correlation between how many news channel anchors are white and how high their ratings are.

Compare CNN to MSNBC. MSNBC's liberal anchors are almost all white, while CNN has a very "diverse" non-white anchor lineup. CNN has much lower ratings than MSNBC. What else better explains this gap than the race of the anchors? Is CNN lagging behind MSNBC because they're much less liberal than MSNBC? Is the production value of CNN programming that much lower than MSNBC?

There's no reason why CNN should have lower ratings than MSNBC except the race of the pundits.

Face it, not even racial minorities want to see too many minorities on TV. There's a reason why at least 50% of fashion store models in Tokyo are European.

[Insider]

'There's no reason why CNN should have lower ratings than MSNBC except the race of the pundits.'

Or worse programming. Or appealing less to the main people interested in watching cable news---people to the far left or right. Or having less interesting personalities. There seem to be other factors at work.

[AC]

"That doesn't refute any of my points."

You seemed to suggest that blacks were absent or underrepresented on TV and in movies.

I believe that they are overrepresented.

[Zvi Tabor]

I worked in finance in Tokyo for a few years.

There's pretty much nothing but Japanese people on TV.

The Euro and US fashion houses with big stores in Tokyo use a lot of the same models and advertising in Japan as they use in the US and Europe. Some American celebs do commercials as a novelty type thing. Hollywood kids movies and blockbusters like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean do well but most serious and normal movies like dramas, comedies, romances, etc. are dominated by Japanese films. When I was there Korean dramas were quite popular.

They generally don't watch much non-Japanese people or stuff. They don't watch much Westerners apart from novelty things like celebs like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a silly commercial, or a Western expat trying to speak and act Japanese on a show, or some Hollywood blockbusters.