HBO’s latest web-series acquisition eschews Brooklyn for a queer, multiracial, multiethnic arts landscape in Chicago. Welcome to Fatimah Asghar and Sam Bailey’s world.
“Brown men aren’t scared of brown women, they are scared of being boring and predictable if they end up with one,” Shriya Samarth, a media junkie and friend, told me over the phone. “Whereas brown women can genuinely fear the expectations of being a daughter-in-law, brown wife, etc.”
Watching “I Love Dick” is like attending an exhibition for which the artist has supplied her own curator’s notes. It’s an experience as much as a story: arresting, disorienting and provocative. It’s also very conscious of explaining to you how and why it arrests, disorients and provokes.
Here’s how the scene plays out. As the sharply dressed god paces back and forth in front of the believers who summoned him, he lays out a terrifying vision of what the future holds for them and their descendants: slavery, torture, death, and hundreds of years of being screwed over by structural racism.
The system that the Hulu series operates within shows there were laws to protect property, but not women and certainly not sex workers.
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As if you needed more reasons to watch a show starring Oscar-winner Julie Andrews, her new Netflix children's show, Julie's Greenroom, features a character who identifies as gender neutral.
Henwick spoke how the series is looking to investigate the Asian stereotypes that spawned the character, rather than rely on them. When asked about concerns over the character’s Orientalist origins, Henwick recounted her own recent journey from actively avoiding Asian character roles to embracing them — so long as there’s something meaningful to say.
Taboo is about the return of the repressed, but also the suppressed, with the protagonist serving as a vessel for social commentary about the species-wide violence and corruption wrought by imperialism, racism, and capitalism.
The BBC show seems to have difficulty fitting female characters into its universe. But it isn’t Arthur Conan Doyle’s fault.
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