Interracial Relationships in Movies and Television-Gretchen Wesche

Hello everyone! As you can see by my title, I'm going to be discussing interracial relationships in movies and television. As we have seen in class, interracial relationships are being seen more and more in America, especially since 1967, and this trend has been reflected in the media. For my blog entry, I've made a list of a few contemporary movies (set in the present) to discuss (focusing mainly on those in which the interracial relationships are not emphasized and are simply another part of the movie or television show, something that may not have occured in older movies), and I will begin with my personal favorite:

The movie "Love Actually" is set in modern day London during the holiday season and features several interracial (or "inter-ethnicity") relationships:
*Keira Knightly's character and her husband, a black man played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
*Thomas Sangster, who plays Liam Neeson's (white) son and his classmate, an African American girl visiting London for school played by Olivia Olson.
*Laura Linney and Rodrigo Santoro's characters (Santoro is Portuguese and also played Xerxes in "300").
*Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz's characters: Jamie, an Englishman, and Aurelia, a Portuguese girl he meets in Marseilles.
All of these relationships are treated the same as any other relationships between people of the same race in the movie, with the possible exception of Jamie and Aurelia's story simply because it involves the two being from different countries and having to learn each other's languages. I believe that by including these relationships, the main theme that "love actually is all around" is further enhanced; that love does not see race or ethnicity and can even cross language barriers.

A Disney TV musical version of the traditionally European play "Cinderella" also features interracial relationships not only on the romantic level but also on the family level. The movie features the singer Brandy as the title character, Bernadette Peters as her step mother with one white and one black daughter, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen, Victor Garber as the King, and Paolo Montalban, who is Filipino, as the Prince. As you can see, this movie not only includes the interracial relationship between Cinderella and the Prince, but it also includes very multiracial families as well! This is an interesting casting choice which I see as ultimately portraying the Cinderella story as a universal fairy tale for everyone which is found in many cultures including those outside of Europe.

"The Family Stone" also includes an interracial couple, though with a "twist" in that the relationship is between two men. Though their relationship is just a minor part of the film, it is intersting to note that the fact that their relationship is between someone who is black and someone who is white is never really mentioned. Rather, the focus is on the fact that it is a homosexual relationship, which can be compared to the movement to legalize interracial relationships and marriages in the late 1960s in that there is currently a movement to legalize homosexual marriages.

Finally, in the television show "Smallville," a young Clark Kent (Tom Wellling) is perpetually infatuated with Lana Lang, played by Kristen Kreuk, who is part Chinese and part Dutch. There really is not too much to say about this relationship though in that Lana's biracial background is rarely if ever mentioned, which if anything suggests America's movement towards acceptance of interracial relationships.

The third season of "Desperate Housewives" may also be included in this category-but only partially. In the television show, Gabrielle, who is Latina, dates a white man who is running for mayor. At first, the simple fact that she is Latina and he is white seems to mean nothing. However, the audience and Gabrielle later find out that this is not the case and her new husband sees her instead as a way to hopefully win more of the Latino vote, now involving the relationship with racial politics.

Of course, there are still many movies and television shows that include interracial relationships, emphasizing them, often as the main conflict. These include (but are of course not limited to) "Save the Last Dance," "Guess Who" (the "reversed" remake of the older "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"), a future Disney animated movie featuring their first black princess (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) and a prince from a fictional kingdom who is presumably not black (though apparently, earlier in production, the prince was to be European and named Harry. Now he is listed as being named "Naveen" and having "an invented accent that has the romantic suavity of Italian with a sprinkling of mid-east exoticism," though this is all of course subject to change), and even the short comedy "Yellow Fever" by Wong Fu Productions in which Philip Wang ponders the notion that most Asian-Caucasian couples are between Asian girls and white guys but not the other way around (if you're interested, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOyRWuklsiQ).