So now that we’ve all had time to get worked up about and then accept the full gayness that is Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens, can we take a moment to look at how the characters of colour are treated? Because not gonna lie, that did rankle me a bit.
Of all the characters of colour, and I should add that most of them were black characters as well, which honestly makes it worse, I don’t think any were fully treated with respect.
- Ligur died a pretty awful and painful death via holy water, which was played for laughs. The fact that a white man killed him only adds to how awful this is.
- The “disposable demon/demon #1/demon #2/demon #3” (quoting from the script book and IMDB here) was killed in several ways (mauled to death by a hellhound, killed by Hastur….. twice), all played for laughs, all by the hands of a white man – it’s starting to sound a bit like characters of colour are, uh, disposable, huh?? Having him be a character of colour and the running gag be that he’s always played by the same actor does not, actually, make it funny. We do not exist just to be comic relief.
- Pepper literally had her mouth taken away because a white boy didn’t like what she had to say – and yes, Wensleydale and Brian also had to deal with that, but it is very telling that it was because of Pepper, and that she was the only character of colour of the four of them. Tokenizing has never really been progressive, but the way they went about treating her was really pushing it. Also love how she was aggressive and outspoken, because the angry/aggressive black girl/woman trope is not harmful at all (:
- On that note, Uriel slamming Aziraphale against the wall in episode 4 felt unnecessary and, again, reinforces the aggressive black woman trope. I’m glad they cut the fact that Aziraphale literally spits blood when it happens (see script book, page 298: “Uriel reaches down, hauls Aziraphale up and slams him against the wall. Blood on his lips”), but it still isn’t… good. We know Sandalphon is kinda the henchman/muscle of the four main angels next to Aziraphale, so why not just have him do the heavy lifting? Having Uriel do it is just… in bad taste imo.
- I know three out of four horsepeople were killed, and they’re antagonists, but that does not take away my unease at the way the black and asian characters looked monstrous and were then killed off by two white characters. (And, yes, it did bother me that they were killed Like That in the show, as in the book it was more symbolic and drove the point of foils much further home.)
To build on that, why is the only textual non-binary character killed off? Don’t come at me with “all angels and demons are sexless” bullshit, I can write my entire thesis on how that was a cop-out and homophobic. The fact of the matter is, none of them were confirmed in the show itself to be agender/nb, whereas pollution is explicitly referred to with they/them pronouns and called “sir” despite being pretty feminine presenting. - Anathema deserved better and I can write an entire post on that, but suffice it to say that she felt underdeveloped and her “romance” with Newt fell flat and felt forced. Which. I mean, if you consider the prophecy, it quite literally was in a certain way, and we don’t have enough time to unpack all of that. When Pepper said, “Another deluded victim of the patriarchy,” I felt that unironically – although the patriarchy in this case would just be the writer of the script.
- Adam and Eve being black is great, but when you then have a white character (Aziraphale) be their savior in need… Therefore indirectly having a white person be the savior of humanity… I think you all know where I’m going with this. Having them be black in this case is just performative, you get the credit of having pee-oh-seas but the narrative is still focused on the white character(s). The implication is still that while ~humanity~ may have come from black people, white angels and demons also exist and therefore the entire concept is just a disappointing deflating balloon of “look at me! I gave you ethnics and coloured people representation! I did not think of the implications and consequences but you’re in this story so give me my money!” instead of actually progressive. There is nothing in this narrative that is actually #woke.
- Having a very graphic, very disturbing scene in which an ethnically ambiguous (wikipedia lists Jesus’ actor, Adam Bond, as multi-ethnic) man gets crucified is, perhaps, not a very good way to score diversity points. Maybe.
- Sister Mary Loquacious/Mary Hodges was the only nun in the convent to be a person of colour as far as I can tell (tokenizing again!) and I’m glad she got a bigger role than the rest of the (white) nuns, but having her be incompetent and in general kinda… looking like a bumbling fool… feels bad man. And then later during the Tadfield Manor scene she was quite literally made to shut up by a white man, like… That’s Not Very Subtle, Mate. You have to think about the implications of racial inequality when pulling shit like this.
- Not specifically about one character of colour, but in general it’s so jarring to see two white characters (Aziraphale and Crowley) front and center while in the background there’re only PoC (most notably during the Noah’s Ark scene). It sends the message that we cannot be the heroes in our own story, but always secondary to the White Heroes, and this is not the first time I’ve talked about this issue (although then it was specifically in the context of Hollywood). When taken into account that the characters of colour that do exist and have lines and aren’t minor characters are treated pretty damn badly, this is thrown into even bigger relief.
And like, listen, at first glance you have a bunch of PoC and therefore characters of colour, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. And you know what? White liberals eat this shit up, and that’s a problem in itself, but when you, as the showrunner and script writer then go on to pat yourself on the back for a job well done even though you did less than the bare minimum of writing good rep? That’s when it starts to get ugly.
It’s 2019. Claiming this is good representation when most of the characters of colour die (read: are brutally murdered) or otherwise pigeonholed into bad tropes, or, generally, both, should not be happening. You can, should, and must do better.
Promising us rep and then revealing that this is the precious rep you talked about leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m pretty sure most others would agree, if they haven’t talked about it already. There is literally no excuse for the way this was written and cast and then handled – there is no way this was all coincidental.
