Minority series finds wings online
A black superwoman appears on your laptop in shimmering blue tights, green socks and a midnight blue cape. Her hair in Afro puffs, she is sitting on a promenade bench. She looks worried and a bit worn out. Her makeup is smeared, probably from crying.
She tells us she has just caught her boyfriend with a “second-rate superhero.” The nerve of him.
The woman, who identifies herself as Fantastica, climbs a railing on a ledge several stories aboveground.
She holds tight to the rail behind her, breathes deeply, then announces dramatically: “Death over dishonor.” And lets go.
You shout at your computer: Girl, don’t go out like that over a man.
The camera shifts. You see her falling, slo-mo.
The screen goes black, and already you are hooked on this Webisode series, “Chick.” You haven’t yet decided whether you like the character, but you identify with her—that torment of being on a ledge, fuming. You want to know what happens next.
An agitated voice-over explains: “Have you ever thought you were meant to be someone great like a superhero?”
Los Angeles actress Kai Soremekun created the black superwoman series, but decided not to shop the screenplay to any cable channels or networks. Instead she persuaded friends to shoot and produce the low-budget series gratis.
When it was done, Soremekun posted the “Chick” trailer on Facebook, and the miniseries was picked up by Rowdy Orbit, a Web-based network for “culturally relevant” short films created by minorities.
In one superwoman leap, Soremekun skipped even trying to shop the series to a broadcast or cable television studio.
The Web gave her the freedom to fly creatively, she says. How many black female superheroes are on television now? How many black women are writing their own scripts, controlling their own stories, weaving in
metaphors about black women in real life who need to be superheroes just to survive?
“In terms of black projects in the studio system, they have been much more cookie-cutter,” says Soremekun, a seasoned Hollywood actress who plays the superwoman herself. “On the Web, you can explore other ideas.”
Web television has been around since the ’90s, but in the past year edgy new shows by, for and about minorities are proliferating on the Internet. Many of the new series take the form of Webisodes — episodes that usually last about five minutes, aimed at the short-attention spans of the all-mighty Millennium Generation.
“You can look at this as revolutionary,” says Jonathan Moore, founder and CEO of Rowdy Orbit, which was launched in February. “It is giving people a voice and a platform to express themselves without judgment or red tape holding you down. Now they can go from idea to production to distribution.”
For years, minority writers, producers and actors have complained about the lack of diversity on television. Last year, the NAACP Hollywood bureau criticized a “virtual whiteout” in broadcast television. “At a time when the country is excited about the election of the first African-American president in U. S. history, it is unthinkable that minorities would be so grossly underrepresented on broadcast television,” NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement.
Robert Thompson, a white professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, says the lack of diversity in programming is counterintuitive, given the breakthrough success of programs such as “Roots” and “The Cosby Show.” “The general politics of people who run television may have at some point been close to admitting diversity and people of color, but the fact remains when the NAACP did its report, the results were shocking,” says Thompson.
“We are not a country that has suddenly solved race problems,” he says. “Even people who think of themselves as forward- thinking and supporting diversity — ‘Oh, my best friend is black’ — won’t watch certain shows. Not because they are consciously racist or don’t want to see black people on television, but they tend to move away from those shows.”
But other factors also lie behind the jump to the Web. One is generational. Just like mainstream broadcast and cable executives, minority players also view the Web as a tool to draw the viewers under 30 sought by advertisers. Research shows that many younger viewers want quicker story lines and characters that don’t take too much time to understand, and they want them on demand, with the freedom to pause and replay.
Advances in technology have also lowered the bar for those without deep pockets. “Everybody and his grandma can be a filmmaker now,” says Paula Matabane, professor of television and film at Howard University.
Web sites dedicated to hosting independent Webisodes by and about people of color are emerging. Aside from RowdyOrbit. com, entertainer and entrepreneur Percy Miller, aka Master P, announced plans to launch Better Black Television next year. Miller says the network will provide family-friendly shows, including shows on fitness, financial planning, sitcoms, dramas and “responsible hip-hop music and videos.”
“With BBTV, we’re spearheading the initiative to meet consumer demand for family-friendly hip-hop content,” Miller said in a statement.
BET.com has also entered the fray with the launch earlier this month of “Buppies,” its first original scripted Web drama. The show revolves around Quinci, the socialite daughter of a Hollywood celebrity, and follows Quinci’s relationship dramas as she and her friends “navigate L. A.’s young black power elite.” The series stars actress Tatyana Ali, who played Ashley Banks, the cousin of Will Smith’s character in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
The shows in this story can be viewed at www.rowdyorbit.com and www.bet.com
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