How To Disappear Completely

"Have you ever seen a mixed-race couple on TV or film in which race did NOT play an issue in the relationship?"

A classmate in my Celebrity class asked that question last week. And honestly, none of us could think of any examples. Unless of course, you want to go with James Bond's flings with the "locals" of various regions he's been. But that's hardly a real relationship. And so it makes me wonder how far we've really come since Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

And speaking of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and racial relations, I went to the library today and found Patch of Blue on the shelves. Sidney Poitier is perhaps one of my favorite actors (although, when I say "favorite," this does not mean that I have seen every single one of his films or read biographies of his life or watched documentaries, etc. or etc. I just happen to like what I've seen him do). His ground-breaking films are always idealistic: what the world should be like, perhaps what we wish it could be. Polished, educated, honorable, middle class: Sidney Poitier blurred the colour line (even as he starred in films that explored it--is it any wonder that several of them are shot in black-and-white?) and demonstrated that African Americans* were just human. Or did he?

Some might argue that the only thing human about Sidney Poitier's characters was their skin. "Humanity" does not equal white middle class culture, yet these films seem to suggest that such is the case. Instead of supporting the achievements of the "race," Poitier's characters seem to have left it behind. Instead of listening to Ellington, Coltrane, or Davis on his phonograph, the character Gordon Ralfe in Patch of Blue keeps records of Strauss and knows how to sing in French (signs of white culture and education). You could accuse Poitier of selling out.

But I like the disconnect. It keeps the lines between what counts as "black" and "white" fuzzy. I don't know. These are just thoughts kicking around in my head before I attend the African Drum Summit concert for my world music concert. I guess I've also been thinking more about it because I'm hoping to present a paper on Porgy and Bess (if my abstract is accepted) which explores the same issues regarding what "counts" as "black" and what "counts" as "white." Porgy and Bess gets dragged over the coals for being "too white" or "too Jewish" (Gershwin was Jewish) but definitely not "real" black. And though Anne Brown (the original Bess) was a classically trained singer, people wanted her to sing spirituals. She wanted to sing Schubert. How "authentic" is that? To say, you're only doing black music if you've got the gravel in your voice?

*Interestingly enough, while whites can (and have in the past) played blacks, blacks are almost always cast racially: Not that Zoolander is the fount of all social knowledge, but the following clips from the extended features (which includes a "fake" interview between Derek Zoolander and Ben Stiller as the actor) does say something:

Zoolander: My second choice for the role [of Zoolander] was Will Smith.
Stiller: Um, Derek. Will Smith is black.
Zoolander: What? You got a problem with that??