The experience I encountered last winter as a participant on Quebec's version of The Voice came rushing back as we engaged with Fred Moten's text. I was reminded of how I instinctively tried to mediate my blackness and opt for invisibility as way to avoid causing discomfort or disturbance in a mostly white space. It did not take long for me to snap out of it, especially since my blackness was brought up constantly in different ways throughout the season. When I finally embodied my pride in my identify clearly and publicly, the response cold to say the least. This is a personal account and by no means definitive, but it can offer a glimpse of what it might be like to navigate television production studios as black talent.
1. The Hair Team ain’t there for you
Hair appointments will be set, but they’ll exclude you. Why? Because the sponsor doesn’t cater to people who have hair like yours. If you do enter the room, you’ll notice the walls splattered with photographs of white women with long blond hair. This is the ideal and you are far away on the spectrum, hence the lack of enthusiasm you are met with once seated in the stylist’s chair.
If your experience is anything like mine, they might actually let you do your own hair and watch you do it. You’ll be doing your thing in front of the large mirror from which four professional stylists will observe your movements, commenting on your skills and prowess. Sounds cool? Not really, since they’ll most likely be referring to you in the third person, acting like you’re some kind of youtube hair guru that can’t hear them from the screen. It will be awkward AF. Calling them out can be fun though, I enjoyed that part.
2. The Makeup Team ain’t ready
Apparently, you need to cake on the makeup to look decent on HD TV, so how nerve-wracking will it be to show up to get your face beat and have the MUA ask YOU how to do your makeup? It will be terrifying and stressful in a way, embarrassing in another, but mostly offensive and disappointing. Bring your own kit and if they mess you up, take matters into your own hands and fix it. There is no shame in making yourself look good even if that means possibly offending someone’s “work”. You don’t have to pay for their unpreparedness.
3. Prepare your poker face for the fuckery
Television folks are generally fun and social which means a lot of ignorance will be thrown at you "in jest".
“I bet your voice sounds like *makes offensively stereotypical supposed gang signs in the most crass manner* urban or whatever.“
“There’s a lot of diversity this year” The people saying this will be referring to the white dude who sings rock. The fact that they let the one gender-queer POC be misgendered throughout their whole stay on the show isn’t mentioned.
“The hybrid is the ideal”. You’ll hear this coming from the really cute potential bae the low-key racist who is pointing at a biracial person. It will make you question your intuition and exotic fetishist radar.
Ditch the poker face if you welcome the emotional labor that will be required to express your outrage tactfully or if you don't mind being blacklisted from the industry; you'll notice how the main players make up most of the players in this industry.
4. Actually, Quebec ain't ready. Period.
During your farewell speech on live television, you'll use the term "black girl magic". Then, you'll receive hate mail. People will call you racist. It will be frustrating yet unsurprising because you're well aware of the paradox of Quebec's pride in diversity and the paradoxical instances of its manifestations . You'll question your desire to take part in this kind of thing ever again.
Remember the messages of admiration and encouragement from those young brown faces in your DMs. Remember that we do it for the culture and you'll be just fine.
So many parallels I could draw with my experience as the only black broadcaster for this major TV company in France - but yeah Performance is the keyword here. Expected to perform an image (an accent, a laugh, a dance move, a song, an origin, a self, etc.).
ReplyDeleteBut the radical tendency (tradition) of blackness is to destroy (given) Images.
That sounds interesting, I'll remember to ask you about hat experience after class.
DeleteWhat was ironic as "talent" was being cast and expected to perform based on said casting while being excluded from the ressources available to others in order to deliver those expectations.
Another aspect of frustration for me was language. The hints of Ebonics I used in this text winks at what might be expected from me as an Black American. Growing up with mostly anglophones or non-black francophones means that I was unable to access part of what I've incorporated into my individual performance, artistically or otherwise, for lack of vocabulary or phrases akin to the style above. I literally said "black girl magic" in the middle of a French sentence - there was no alternative that I could think of at the time. It felt as if my blackness was still being interpreted without the proper translation.