The 19-year-old child of the president for the United States features a problem. Using one hand, her relationship with her new boyfriend couldn’t be better. But trouble is brewing.
For Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss)–the daughter that is first NBC’s White House drama, “The West Wing”–the dilemma is the fact that her beau, Charlie younger (Dule Hill), is black. White supremacists have already been delivering death threats towards the White home, plus an increasingly worried president (Martin Sheen) blocks the couple plans to go directly to the opening of a hot club that is new. When Zoey tells Charlie, who’s also her father’s individual aide, during a meal, he storms out of the restaurant.
The scene, which appears in tonight’s installment of “The West Wing,” is just one example of a onslaught of prime-time series being aggressively tackling romance that is interracial. Until a seasons that are few, such relationships were a rarity on network tv, considered too controversial and responsive to depict or explore. Now at least six dramas that are prime-time comedies have actually tale lines revolving around mixed-race couples.
“There’s this ‘toe-in-the-water’ approach now in television about showing blacks and whites in love on tv,” said Robert M. Entman, manager of the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University and co-author of this future book “The Ebony Image into the White Mind: Media and Race in the usa.”
“Both ‘ER’ and ‘Ally McBeal’ have experienced most of these romances into the previous few seasons, plus it didn’t end in outrage or have an effect on ratings,” Entman said. “So now there’s a tad bit more boldness in approaching interracial relationships.”
The tale lines revolving around interracial relationships are blossoming within a television season that’s been blasted by the NAACP as well as other minority teams for having less cultural diversity in the four major companies. And even though “The Jeffersons” of this mid-’70s featured a long-married interracial few, this season’s focus is regarding the stress of courtship additionally the societal conflict it could provoke.
Andrew Rojecki, who co-wrote “The Black Image in the White Mind” with Entman, suggests the stormy interracial love a few periods ago on “ER” between surgeons Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle) and Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston) was the primary force in tearing down the opposition toward showing black and white couplings.
“That relationship really challenged the social and social taboos on television,” Rojecki said. “It was done on a top show that interests both black colored and viewing that is white, which generally have various tastes in exactly what shows they watch. What exactly is occurring now with all these other shows is terrific. Whether it is a harbinger of what to come remains to be seen.”
Sensitive Area for Promoting Shows
Manufacturers suggest the trend is primarily driven with a wealth of largely uncharted tale lines. Indeed, while audiences look like more receptive, such plots remain an area that is sensitive the networks’ promotional machines.
The current industry of relationships cuts across age, social and expert obstacles. Intimate and tension that is romantic been building on CBS’ “Judging Amy” between Judge Amy Gray (Amy Brenneman) and her black court services officer Bruce Van Exel (Richard T. Jones), and a recently available episode showed her dreaming about a steamy erotic encounter with him in her office. On ABC’s “Once and Again,” Grace Manning (Julia Whelan), the high-strung, embarrassing teenage daughter of Lily Manning (Sela Ward), is falling deeply in love with her black classmate Jared (Robert Richard). CBS’ inner-city medical center drama, “City of Angels,” features a new Jewish resident, Dr. Geoffrey Weiss (Phil Buckman), performing a tense love with registered nurse Grace Patterson (Maya Rudolph) within the vociferous protest of her daddy. Students Shawn (driver Strong) and Angela (Trina McGee-Davis) are continuing their courtship on ABC’s “Boy Meets World.” And the future WB governmental drama, “D.C.,” about twentysomethings within the nation’s money, has interracial few, television news producer Sarah Logan (Kristanna Loken) and U.S. Supreme Court clerk Lewis Freeman mexican cupid dating (Daniel Sunjata), who’re living together.
