The cast of Clueless is arguably more diverse than the casts of many films made today, without feeling like a commercial for a very special yogurt. Welcome to my class blog! Even now I can find myself evaluating my closest friendships and trying to ask myself if Im the token minority. However, this doesnt mean this trope still doesnt affect me. Because that is what people go through so we as a black community should be able to see that even if it is as the white protagonists sidekick. Cluelessis a 1995 teen comedy from Amy Heckerling, starring Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Stacey Dashand the late Brittany Murphy. When Piccolo developed cancer and died, Sayers stood by him and encouraged him. Your black best friend is sassy. It also reminds me of a quote I once saw (although I dont exactly remember who said it) that having a minority role does not mean that the production should expect a large minority following in return; one role does not mean the same as cultural acceptance on the bigger screen. When people watch Miless character they wont think oh are all white people like this?. Stream Mixtape #94: Rebirth of Spring Now. By formulating this stereotype, we are stereotyping all African Americans and subconsciously labeling them at a smaller level of interest and importance. It plays on the Black Best Friend trope for laughs by showing how brainless it is. You know the one. Rachel True played a straighter example in the film. Winston serves no purpose on the Fox comedy other than to add diversity. Little Jacob is Jamaican, so whilst he is black he comes from a totally different culture to a black American. The Problem with the Stereotypical Black Best Friend, There are several major stereotypical roles, but one that appears to be very prominent in modern culture is the , : Clueless, Sex and the City, 10 Things I Hate About You, Shes All That, The Devil Wears Prada, and countless more. (Yeah, my car is definitely busted from so many potholes). I did not look half as good). Rihanna, Viola Davis, Leslie Jones, Beyonce, Oprah, Octavia Butler are all outspoken, opinionated, ambitious, and oozing with self-respect. Premiere! His sexuality, though it drives some of the plot, is not the sole defining quality of his character and the movie refreshingly frames it through Chers "bonehead" slow realization rather than any need for a dramatic coming-out monologue. Rose Catherine Pinkney, a television executive, told the, This doesnt mean that there cant be black best friends in movies. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Design a site like this with WordPress.com, Your Neighborhood Friendly Token BlackGirl, http://appiah.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Is-the-post-in-postmodernism-the-Post-in-Postclonial-Critical-Inquiry-17.2.-1991.pdf, Whos That on Screen and Why Does She Look Like Me? Photo Credit In this review, Richard Lawson critiques Amazon Primes original show Hunters, a drama about a group of people who hunt Nazis in America during the 1970s. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. An Undead Horse Trope that may be depressingly difficult to put down. But the way the media portrays these Black women is often in broad strokes and without complexitydiva, queen, or icon. I think the show tried a little harder than most shows to make the minority best friend more three-dimensional. When I did happen to connect to a Black, female character on screen, she was nearly always in a secondary role. probably sounds like a show you are watching, right? I liked how you analyzed Dionnes character because even though I have seen Clueless once before, I never looked at her character from this perspective. White people are not the superior race simply because there is no such thing as a superior race. Sure, Dionne (Stacey Dash) could technically be considered an example of the "black best friend" trope, but she gets her own plot lines and character quirks wholly outside of Cher. film and television there has been a certain trope of the white, main character minority leads that have minority friends. Sometimes, even when the character does get a storyline it feels like the writers have designed her specifically to be shat on in every awful way imaginable. We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Berk also has a black friend called Dennis, who has less of a role in the plot than their other best friend Felix. Newer series/movies such as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Tall Girl, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and Stranger Things also have the trope. who probably is light skin with curly hair (but thats another argument for Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. However, he gives advice that turns Guy into. See also Magical Negro, Token Minority, Satellite Character, and Gay Best Friend. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. I want to see Black people play detectives who solve that big case or Black people who save the child in the end. Rose Catherine Pinkney, a television executive, told the Times that there is a long tradition of black best friends in Hollywood. (LogOut/ Google Pay. Everybody deserves the chance to take the spotlight. They should be cast because they are talented. on how he realized at a cocktail party that most of his friends were white. The Black friend trope was adjusted to fit the needs of a post-civil rights society, though as demonstrated in the aforementioned recent examples, modern renditions bear a striking resemblance to the platitudes of previous eras. In season four, episode 12 of Schitt's Creek, Moira Rose (Catherine O'Hara) is seen pacing the room as she waits for Roland Schitt to show up at the hospital for his wife Jocelyn (Jenn Robertson) who is going into labor. These experiences made him a more down-to-earth, intellectual Green Lantern than his predecessors, but were all forgotten post-Emerald Twilight when they basically made him his cartoon counterpart. Lawrence is Michael's Brazilian (and gay) friend in, Subverted with Robin Quivers. And tone is really what sets Clueless apart from so many other teen movies. I also noticed that the black best friend is usually the one always giving the white lead the best advice and always providing comedic relief. With default one-dimensional portrayal, these token character feeds into what Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses in his essay, Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonialism?. The 'Big Dance' believes casting a black (or minority) secondary character satisfies the She said the studio "kept pressuring me to create more of a life for the boys in the film, to create more of an ensemble piece, which didn't make sense to me at all.". Rare to see that but there are some examples. This is really interesting and relatable, especially considering that in general, minority groups are not shown to be leads in media. Home \ Uncategorized \ black best friend trope clueless . Shes the character who seems to perpetually exist outside of the plot, a sort of one woman Chorus whose main purpose is to cast her eyes to the heavens in the most exaggerated of eye rolls, click her tongue, and make smarmy comments about whats going on while never actually being allowed to take part in whats going on. (Until it's time to save the day of course. It also shows just how deeply this system goes to keep Black people at the bottom of the rung. The idea for Clueless went through several iterations, beginning as a TV series, then getting turned into a feature film at the advice of Heckerling's agent, Ken Stovitz, then getting rejected "so many times it was a joke," according to Stovitz. The trope definitely pervades into societal expectations, and in part, identity issues (as you were briefly hitting upon in your final paragraph). high school years. Films like the timeless teen comedy 16 Candles or last year's. In the "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series Percy's best friend is Grover, who is played by Brandon T. Jackson. She's been the news anchor and a co-host of, 8-Ball, Lance Vance, and Little Jacob in the. Nia Tipton is a writer living in Chicago. I always used to applaud the black best friend because at least these movies tried. We cant rely on ads alone to do that. So, you're hip. Their position is consistently applied in this piece with the help of research from all kinds of sources. Their sole purpose in media is to support, advise, and/or motivate the white character, while also trying to diversify empitly, I would argue, but we'll get to that thatpiece of media. This Captain American/Steve Rogers and Falcon/Sam Wilson. Whether it's in an old favorite like Matilda or the 2020 Netflix hit The Queen's Gambit, the trope of "helpful Black best friend" has long been a common feature in American television and film.This week, The Cut lead producer B.A. Because there isnt anything inherently wrong with the Sassy Black Woman and to point out the character type isnt to say that it has no place in media. Welcome! Instead of casting the black actor Other examples include Tucker from Danny Phantom or AJ from Fairly Oddparents. She's never too busy to lend an ear, or come along on your wacky schemes. Is it because she has no love life, no apartment, and no family? Lawrence is Michael's Brazilian (and gay) friend. Some minor irony: they actually had to hire an actor to portray a black staff member, since the Colbert Report didn't have one. amount of films and tv shows that include the black best friend trope and come Despite the fact that Tiana is the heroine of, Eema the Styracosaurus is probably this to. (another argument for another time). The man in question, Jordan Carlos. Newer series/movies such as The Chill All that being said, the token black friend (or BBF) is a stereotype that has mostly been weeded out due to minorities seeking roles of higher acclaim. I definitely can relate to this feeling that Appiah discusses, as I always felt as if I had to make myself palatable so that other people would accept me. Originally posted . Hollywood, how about we change up the game? Do they have a home, a family, or even a pet goldfish named Sir Swims-A-Lot? Good. The The token black friend in a sense now becomes a reflection of the entire black community. She is flawless to the point of being unreal. I would so often slip into roles that society deemed acceptable for meId try to be sassy, I would try to relate to my white classmates more, I would try to be less black. Now that I think back, trying to dilute myself so that other people deemed me worthy seems like such a waste of time. Dionne, also known as Dee, was fierce in her Blackness and unapologetic. Ghost in the Shell, Aloha, and Deathnote). Oops. Thank you so much!! Do I have my own story? Seeing how little Hollywood cared about casting Black people as more than someone around to give advice and cheer on the white protagonist is the earliest memory I had of seeing how Black people are degraded and belittled in the American media. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. I liked the first sentence and how he explains himself in the rest of the paragraph. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Black People Are Tired Of Being The Stereotypical 'Black Best Friend' In TV And Movies. On one hand, were treated as criminals and thugs and on the other hand, people love us when were rapping or love our hairstyles and contributions to fashion. And when you say "Some of My Best Friends Are X", you want people to know that there is credibility behind that statement. But,what was so great about her was she didnt have to sacrifice parts of herself in order to be a good friend. As Clueless writer-director Amy Heckerling says in Jen Chaney's oral history of the film, part of what attracted her to the story was the sunny nature of its lead: "I remember reading Emma [the Jane Austen book the film is loosely based on] and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Black leads who arent slaves, thugs or any other negatively seen role My name is Bianca Bullock and I'm a senior at High Point University, majoring in journalism. Black people deserve to be depicted as heros just as well as they're able to play that nice best friend whose only role is to make their white counterpart look good. Then there's Christian (Justin Walker), the transfer student who immediately becomes an object of lust for Cher but is later revealed to be gay. The token black friend in a sense now becomes a reflection of the entire black community. Since so many movies, particularly movies set in a fictionalized dystopian Los Angeles, enforce the idea that diversity leads to conflict, its still refreshing to see a movie like Clueless suggesting that racial diversity in social settings like high school leads to the normalization of that diversity. Inverted for Cho Chang who is Asian and has a white best friend Marietta that fits the, Defied by Regine, the black secondary character from, Rafael, Greg's study partner in an Israeli yeshiva in the middle third of, Shaunee is the only black main character of, Invoked for laughs in the Season 3 episode of, Parodied with J.D. And that's what I think makes her so ridiculous and lovely all the time.". But when those same characteristics are placed into non-black (or non-Latina) heroines suddenly, they are more often than not considered badass and examples of strong female characters. 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black best friend trope clueless