{"id":776,"date":"2011-10-18T11:28:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T15:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/funnyfeminist.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2013-05-29T00:11:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T00:11:49","slug":"oh-hell-to-the-no-mercedes-jones-and-black-stereotypes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/2011\/10\/18\/oh-hell-to-the-no-mercedes-jones-and-black-stereotypes\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Oh HELL to the No!&#8221;: Mercedes Jones and Black Stereotypes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I read a post on <a title=\"Ars Marginal\" href=\"http:\/\/arsmarginal.wordpress.com\/\">Ars Marginal<\/a> called <a title=\"Fandom and its Hatred of Black women characters\" href=\"http:\/\/arsmarginal.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/07\/fandom-hates-black-women\/\">Fandom and its hatred of Black women characters.<\/a> The post detailed ways in which black female characters are criticized and maligned by their fan bases. It&#8217;s an interesting read, not to mention an upsetting one. I know that I&#8217;ve seen a fair amount of hatred towards Bonnie of <em>The Vampire Diaries<\/em> for her crime of thinking vampires are bad and Damon especially so. (Yeah. What a judgmental bitch, right?)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this was the part of the post that stood out to me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;What\u2019s so wrong with these characters according to fandom? Hm, let\u2019s see:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They have an attitude problem.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re lazy.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re mean.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re stupid.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re ungrateful.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re selfish.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re sluts.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As I read that, I did a mental checklist and realized that all but two of these traits describes Mercedes Jones from <em>Glee <\/em>&#8211; not even in the way she&#8217;s perceived, but in the way she&#8217;s written on her actual show.<\/p>\n<p>This is particularly problematic on a show like <em>Glee<\/em> that makes a big point of celebrating diversity and portraying &#8220;minority&#8221; characters who break free from stereotypes. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Now, <em>Glee<\/em> has major, major problems when it comes to the messages they want to send. The writers can never decide whether they want to be <em>Freaks and Geeks<\/em> or <em>Arrested Development,<\/em> and they often wind up creating extremely mean-spirited after-school specials. They tackle issues like misogyny and body issues and disability in one episode and &#8220;solve&#8221; these ingrained social problems with a song and a dance. And don&#8217;t even get me started on <em>Glee&#8217;s<\/em> girl problem.<\/p>\n<p>BUT. One thing I have always appreciated about this show is the way it celebrates people from a variety of backgrounds. Almost every member of the glee club has at least one character trait that isn&#8217;t a stereotype for their racial\/ethnic\/religious group or sexuality.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Artie is a disabled boy who really wishes his legs worked so he could be a dancer. He also likes to rap (and is actually good at it, even though his gangsta aspirations are hilariously misguided).<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Kurt is gay and interested in fashion and showtunes. He also helps out in his father&#8217;s garage and apparently has been doing so all his life. Blaine is also gay, but he&#8217;s a football fan.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Santana is Puerto Rican and has some of that &#8220;sassy Latina&#8221; stereotype going on. But last season, we discovered that her aggressive pursuit of boys and sex had nothing to do with that &#8220;fiery Latin blood&#8221; stereotype at all, and that she&#8217;s actually a repressed lesbian who uses aggression and boys to cover up her true feelings &#8211; partly out of fear of being targeted for being gay, and partly (I suspect) because she struggles with showing any vulnerability whatsoever.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Mike and Tina are Asian, and you&#8217;re not going to forget that fact easily, since one or both of them mentions that they are, in fact, Asian, anytime they have a scene together. And because they are Asian, they are both academically driven, because all Asians are academically driven, no doy. But Tina also had a goth phase and still, apparently, pretends to be a vampire anytime she needs something from Figgins. And Mike is just as athletic and artistic as he is academic. It&#8217;s also worth mentioning that Mike&#8217;s physical attractiveness is frequently commented on while Tina&#8217;s is not (even though she&#8217;s clearly pretty). In a Western culture where Asian women are often objectified and fetishized, while Asian men are portrayed as asexual or unappealing, the portrayal of Mike and Tina is a refreshing change of pace.<\/p>\n<p>(Look at me &#8211; I just found a culturally sensitive reason to enjoy staring at a shirtless Harry Shum, Jr. I&#8217;m brilliant.)<\/p>\n<p>Then you have Puck, who is Jewish, and I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever seen a Jewish male character on TV or in movies who&#8217;s anything like Noah Puckerman. He&#8217;s terrible at math, irresistible to women, a &#8220;sex shark,&#8221; and fiercely proud of his religion even though he seems to be the worst Jew <em>ever,<\/em> eating pork during a simchat Torah screening of <em>Schindler&#8217;s List.<\/em> He&#8217;s hilarious in a very non-stereotypical way.<\/p>\n<p>And then you have Mercedes, who is black, fat, and sassy. But she&#8217;s also&#8230;fat, black, and sassy.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n<p>Did you know that Mercedes is black? That&#8217;s why she wants to sing more songs with her &#8220;chocolate thunder&#8221; and make &#8220;cocoa babies&#8221; with her new boyfriend (because her boyfriend is also black, and black people like to spend their time talking about how black they are). Her favorite musical is <em>Dreamgirls<\/em>, of course &#8211; why would her favorite show be anything else? And she&#8217;s sassy. She&#8217;s so sassy and black that she actually wrote a song called &#8220;Hell to the No.&#8221; (I&#8217;m not knocking the song. It was a good song. But the other part of me was thinking, &#8220;Seriously? The black girl writes a song centered around a stereotypical black catchphrase? <em>Seriously?&#8221;)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em>Oh, and did you know that Mercedes is also fat? That&#8217;s why her one subplot in all of season two centered around her wanting to get tater tors back to the school cafeteria. Fat girls, especially BLACK fat girls, love their food!<\/p>\n<p>This episode, by the way, is the the same one where the writers thought it would be LOL-arious to include a <em>Precious<\/em> spoof with a fat black girl named Cameo. I suppose I should just be happy that Mercedes wasn&#8217;t starting a campaign for fried chicken and watermelon.<\/p>\n<p>Then we get to &#8220;Asian F,&#8221; an episode that is meant to be a spotlight for Mercedes, and it focuses on how she&#8217;s &#8220;constantly&#8221; late to practice (wtf?) and either can&#8217;t dance or doesn&#8217;t want to learn the dance steps. Great. Now we have &#8220;entitled&#8221; and &#8220;lazy&#8221; to add to the stereotype list. Never mind that, unlike other members of New Directions, Mercedes has never quit the club right before a major competition because she wasn&#8217;t getting enough solos, nor has she lip-synced during practice, nor has she ever, ever been shown to even be late to a single rehearsal, much less miss one entirely. But all of a sudden, the writers were portraying Mercedes as though she had <em>always<\/em> been this lazy. And she&#8217;s always been a worse dancer than Rachel, I guess. (I saw &#8220;Baby One More Time&#8221; <em>and<\/em> I saw &#8220;River Deep, Mountain High.&#8221; Don&#8217;t tell me Rachel is a better dancer than Mercedes.)<\/p>\n<p>Of all the characters on <em>Glee,<\/em> Mercedes is the most stereotypical, and the last episode to give her more character development actually made the problem worse. We don&#8217;t have any other black characters on the show to create some kind of balance, either. And giving Mercedes a few stereotypical traits <em>might<\/em> not be so bad if we had any clear motivation for her character other than &#8220;wants to be in the spotlight,&#8221; if we knew about her long-term dreams and goals and passions. But we don&#8217;t, and it&#8217;s a crying shame.<\/p>\n<p>I go back to watch the scene between Kurt, Blaine, and Mercedes in &#8220;The Substitute.&#8221; Kurt actually high-fives Blaine for &#8220;breaking the stereotype.&#8221; Meanwhile, in that very same scene, all Mercedes wants is tots. If that scene doesn&#8217;t prove the utter cluelessness of the writers when it comes to race, I don&#8217;t know what does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I read a post on Ars Marginal called Fandom and its hatred of Black women characters. The post detailed ways in which black female characters are criticized and maligned by their fan bases. It&#8217;s an interesting &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/2011\/10\/18\/oh-hell-to-the-no-mercedes-jones-and-black-stereotypes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[34,53],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogposts","tag-glee","tag-white-girl-talkin-about-racism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3zNYR-cw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2885,"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/2885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theresabasile.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}