POC Media Week 1: July 14 – July 22

On Tumblr I wrote about my commitment to extend my POCreading challenge to all my entertainment. Since a significant amount of that entertainment includes reading, I think it is fitting to record my progress here. 

This week will count as my baseline because I put no effort in finding entertainment with diversity. Looking at the results, I can tell this is not going to be an easy challenge. Although I have an equal number of entertainment with diversity as not (six to six), the time I spend on each is drastically different. My "diverse" entertainment was mostly blogs and YouTube videos. The total for the week is approximately 3.5 hours. On the other hand, the movies I watched and books I read were predominately white and took up more than 40 hours of my time. Yikes.

Below is the breakdown for the week. What great TV shows and movies should I be watching? Leave suggestions in the comments section!

404 (soon to be Paper Droids), a blog for geeky girls:
Pass. One of the editors is a woman of color and their content is inclusive. (approx. 10 mins)

GirlXoxo, a book blog:
Pass. Blogger is a woman of color and her content is inclusive. (approx. 10 mins)

Cherish My Daughter, blog and Youtube channel dedicated to natural hair care:
Pass. (approx. 10 mins)

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón:
Fail. The characters may not be Anglo-Saxon but they certainly are white. (approx. 4 hrs)

Various pieces by/ about Issa Rae:
Pass. This woman inspires me so much that dreamt I had coffee with her. We sat and talked and she gave me advice about being a black woman entrepreneur and chasing my goals. She’s incredibly talented and hilarious. I’m a big fan. (approx. 1 hr)

Various erotica ebooks:
Fail. There was one character who was Maori but of course he was described as savage, primal, and animalistic. (approx. 18 hrs)

X-Men movies:
Fail. Storm is in it and she’s a major character but considering it was an ensemble cast, people of color were sorely underrepresented. (approx. 3 hrs)

Taren916, natural hair/ lifestyle vlog:
Pass. She’s a positive and genuine biracial woman. (approx. 1 hr)

Harry Potter movies:
Fail. Kingsley is in there and so are the Patil twins. There also was a fair amount of diversity in the extras. But extras do not equal protagonists and it would seem the heroes of the wizarding world are white. (approx. 4 hrs)

The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises:
Fail. Sorry Nolan but Token!MorganFreeman is not enough for me. (approx. 5 hrs)

The Art and Making of The Dark Knight Trilogy book:
Fail. In fact reading about all the movies together made me realize just how big of a fail it was. Among the characters important enough to be mentioned in the chapter about casting, Lucius Fox was the only black person. There are a few other people of color in the trilogy but they are not protagonists and tend to die early (note the number of people of color Joker and company kill compared to the number of people of color there are in the movie). And, as the icing on the white male cake, there were only three notable women characters in the trilogy—Rachel Dawes, Miranda Tate, and Selina Kyle. FAIL. (approx. 8 hrs)

Pretty Little Liars
Pass. Emily is a queer woman of color and as one of the four main protagonists she can’t be dismissed as a token. This casting is impressive since the character is white in the books. (approx. 1 hr)