Me and one of my favorite girlfriends have this thing we do. We don't see each other all that often but we try to meet up at least once a month or so at Barnes and Noble. I won't say which one but it's our favorite one. It's in the middle of a lot of great stuff. We meet, stake out a table collect arm-fulls of magazines and books chat and laugh and catch up and discuss for hours while drinking tea or coffee or root beer and sometimes a slice of cheese cake. We're nerds so we like nothing more than to sit in a bookstore and chat about books and magazines while flipping through books and magazines and journals. Let's not forget journals. We have an unhealthy love for journals and paper goods. I am not exaggerating.
As a proud young black woman my friend is very much into finding ways to improve her health and positively evolve and expand her consciousness and after discussing the assault of predominantly white images of "beauty" in the first one hundreds pages of every fashion magazine on the table, she turned me on to some positive media that were geared more towards women who looked like us. One of those things was the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, a mini webisode on youtube produced, written and directed by a team of black actors. She let me watch a couple of episodes on her iPad and I nearly died laughing!!! I'm not sure how to describe it except to say that the things which the main character, a black woman named J. deals with daily in her workplace, the power dynamics, micro management, dealing with ignorant behavior and just plain absurd work situations were for me just so close to home, it was such a relief for me to watch and not feel like I'm totally fucking crazy. I'm sure this kind of thing takes place in the minds of a lot of working class woman of color. And White America, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I guess the closest thing I can compare it to is BBC's "The Office" which I am a diehard fan of. Love the American one too but Gervais will always win point with me for not selling out to comfort levels for ratings. His "Office" made me cringe.
I wish that if they actually got a network spot that this show would stay as it is but I just know they would have to take all the spirit out of it to get it up to some insidiously dishonest code so that it becomes a shell of itself. Maybe something like this could air on HBO but primetime will never want this. Well, it's only seven episodes on youtube and I really resent being left hanging on episode seven so I will do my best to support this project so that it has the chance to carry on and I can see what happens next! If you like it and you're awkward like J. I hope you will to.
: )
No comments:
Post a Comment