Blind to the Anatomy of Race 1

Running Head: BLIND TO THE ANATOMY OF RACE 1 Blind to the Anatomy of Race: Racial Influences in ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy Eric M. Williams Daniel Sumner Joubal Vernaza Rashawd Solomon Texas Tech University BLIND TO THE ANATOMY OF RACE 2 Crossing racial barriers in the film industry has been a difficult road for most television producers and screenplay writers. Thus, progress has been slowed along racial lines and many skilled non-White actors find it difficult to get hired or placed in non-stereotypical roles in the film industry. The producer for Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes, an African American female, set out to conquer the myth that an all-White cast is necessary for a successful prime-time television show. In producing the race neutral hit television show, Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes utilized blind casting, minority spotlighting, interracial relationships and post-civil rights ideology to create a fantasy story that requires its audience to look upon race in a new light. Formatted: Space After: 0 pt Formatted: Underline color: Auto The television show Grey’s Anatomy is making headlines for its uniquepost-civil rights method of selecting characters called ‘blind-casting.’ This methodology incorporates a blind approach to gathering a cast by only including gender in the character descriptions and not race (Long, 2011). In an interview with Nightline, Isaiah Washington, one of the main actors on the show, explained Shonda Rhimes difficulty in casting for the show. He stated how she was challenged with the task of conveying her intentions to Hollywood, saying “you [talent agencies] continue just bringing me all blond-haired, blue-eyed people. I want to see all actors. You can't tell me all the actors in L.A. are blond and blue-eyed” (Long, 2011, p. 1067). Rhimes eventually pushed the talent agencies into helping her bring to life a race-blind strategy for selecting characters. She also applied this methodology to the designing of the love relationships on the show. This method consequently lead to multiple interracial relationships that defied the norms of what had been established in Hollywood (Long, 2011). The show effectively creates a sense of racial indifference by placing non-White actors in roles and positions of authority usually reserved for White actors. For example, in the show’s BLIND TO THE ANATOMY OF RACE 3 pilot a person that the doctors refer to as ‘the Nazi’ is neither a Nazi, nor a man, but a heavy-set black woman, Dr. Bailey (Long, 2011). It is speculated that, “perhaps Bailey's ‘Nazi’ persona derives from professional jealousy. Maybe she's brilliant and they call her a Nazi because they're jealous” (Long, 2011, p. 1071). This role reversal is an important characterization to the show, because it confers on a minority the power and leverage normally given to wWhites (Long, 2011). In spite of the show’s portrayal of minorities in authority many critics say that the show simply re-allocates the idea of racial casting. While the casting of characters and relationships on the show appear to be blind to race, say critics, there are other incidents of wWhite privilege that exist. Things such as the actor’s history, which includes their place of origin, education, personal achievements, and gender that all play a big role in the development of the audience’s perception of each character (Long, 2011). Critics argue that this has the same principles as racial casting by subjecting certain groups, like African Americans and Asian/Pacific Islander Americans, to rigid pre-conceived stereotypical personifications. Regardless of the minor racial infractions that Grey’s Anatomy violates according to critics, the show provides an opportunity for African Americans and Asian/Pacific Islander Americans to receive overdue media talent recognition compared to other television shows (Long, 2011). White characters normally dominate the amount of screen time on television and films. This unfair domination affects both African American and Asian/Pacific Islander American (APIA), actors and actresses. Grey’s Anatomy’s character Cristina Yang, who is an APIA is given a significant amount of time on screen. She plays the role of a doctor and the interracial love interest of the African American male, Dr. Burke (Deo, Lee, Chin, Milman, & Wang, 2008). On most shows, the APIA characters are mostly invisible and not considered a vital part of the BLIND TO THE ANATOMY OF RACE 4 show’s narrative. Shonda Rhimes, the producer, chose to give Cristina a significant part in this prime-time drama thus strengthening the show’s race neutral objective (Deo, et al., 2008). APIA female characters are often misrepresented as being the seductive dragon lady, who seduces men and is always sexually available for her many lovers (Deo, et al., 2008). Rhimes bordered on that stereotype with Cristina Yang, because she was seen in the first episode ravishing a man, yet Rhimes saves the day in subsequent episodes by showing Cristina’s life and character. We get to see a profound glimpse of who this Cristina character actually is and that she is not just a stereotypical Asian dragon lady that is normally shown in the media. We see her private life and her friendships and she quickly becomes a real person having real value. Shonda Rhimes surprised many viewers by portraying an Asian woman with a very respectable image. The image was empowering to both Asian women and other misrepresented minorities in the eyes of the general public (Deo, et al., 2008). Episode two2 of Grey’s Anatomy begins addressing race neutral ideology with a steamy Formatted: Space After: 0 pt interracial lovemaking session. Surprisingly, Burke and Cristina are caught in the act of lovemaking by Burke’s parents. His parents turn out to be none other than “iconic African American actors Diahann Carroll and Richard Roundtree” (Warner, 2015, p. 632). These individuals were some of the first African American leads on prime time during the 1960s. Richard Roundtree, is known for playing the classic role of John Shaft in “Shaft” (1971). Carroll and Roundtree, were definitely a welcomed cameo to the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Their presence and its history supports the shows underlining theme which emphasizes the importance of casting character parts not considering race” (Warner, 2015). “The way that creator, executive producer, and head writer Shonda Rhimes imagines her characters illustrates the conscious effort she exerts to normalize and rehabilitate viewer attitudes regarding race” (Warner, 2015, p. 632). BLIND TO THE ANATOMY OF RACE 5 Shonda Rhimes must be complimented for producing a ground breaking television show that causes people to reevaluate their racial expectations. Even so, the fact cannot be ignored that Shonda is “selling a safe version of race to audiences” (Warner, 2015, p. 636). Grey’s Anatomy’s primary location, Seattle Grace Hospital, is a safe political arena for addressing racial issues because hospitals are themselves inherently indifferent to race when treating patients. It is like she is carefully playing flag football instead of hard hitting tackle football with the race question of ‘how can we as people become a post racial society’ (Warner, 2015)? A post racial society presents a new challenge in and of itself. This stems from the reality that “a society without race ‘being free’ from racial group identification is the crux of postrace ideology” (Warner, 2015, p. 637). The drawback of that ideology rears its head in disapproval because “separating an individual from his or her group status also disconnects the person from a historical trajectory of disenfranchisement” (Warner, 2015, p. 637). The race factor introduced in the show indirectly debunks the myth that racial equality exists in the film industry (Washington, 2012). This is evident when one realizes the reason Grey’s Anatomy, is the perfect show for pointing out the racial division in our society. One of its major themes is the showcasing of Black and Asian interracial relationships. This is the first of two shows to depict emergent Black/Asian interracial relationships, and it was the only show to do so for some years. The relationships on this show “offered up Asian American women and Black men as mediating figures by which race and desire could be analyzed and understood as separate and apart from interracial White–Asian and White–Black relationships” (Washington, 2012, p. 254). Although grey’s Anatomy makes great strides, many believe that it does not arrive at the post- racial ideal. The goal of the interracial love drama unfolding at Seattle Grace Hospital, the shows BLIND TO THE ANATOMY OF RACE 6 primary location, is to cause the viewing audience to ask the question ‘has mainstream media achieved a post-racial American culture?’ Emphatically, the answer is no! The interracial love relationship is nothing more than a facade and an illusion of the non-existence of racial turmoil in America (Washington, 2012). The myth and hopes of a post-racial television show free from even the scent of White hierarchical marriage dominance is finally debunked in Season 3 of the show. (Marriage dominance proposes that only White males can marry). It happens when the show’s interracial relationship between the African American male and the Asian female is completely terminated. As any good stereotypical portrayal of the African American male would have it, the African American male skips out on the wedding planned between him and the Asian woman (Washington, 2012). He does this dramatically by leaving her “at the altar,” thus the post-racial “moment…passed and the” racial White “hierarchies remain unchallenged” (Washington, 2012, p. 264). “This relationship had the potential to be the first Black and Asian interracial pairing on television to move beyond sex, but unfortunately it failed” in spite of the shows overall success (Washington, 2012, p.

Load more