The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting by Kristen J. Warner

Author:Kristen J. Warner [Warner, Kristen J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies, Discrimination, Popular Culture
ISBN: 9781317700630
Google: HF3LCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-06-05T05:03:14+00:00

“ARE THERE INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS ON THE SHOW?” THE RACE-NEUTRALIZING POWER OF COUPLING

Burke and Bailey’s characters are not the only examples of Grey’s experiment with colorblindness within the text. Rhimes “unintentionally” places her characters in interracial relationships. When asked about it in interviews, she feigns surprise that her characters are racialized and in interracial relationships. Her explanation for those couplings is predictably downplayed: “It’s what I had planned for the characters.”49 Returning to the Burke/Yang romance best illustrates Rhimes’s disinterest in the cultural signifiers and expectations of her characters’ racial backgrounds.

From the beginning of their relationship, Burke and Yang never talked about race. In fact, the only differences and struggles they had involved their cleaning habits. Recalling this essay’s introduction, Rhimes’s provocative statement hopes that viewers would not get caught up in their racial differences but focus instead on their idiosyncrasies as part of why the relationship works. Chito Childs reinforces Grey’s strategy to neutralize the racial aspects of Burke/Yang’s interracial union:

On Grey’s Anatomy, the top surgeon Preston Burke, who is involved with an Asian American medical intern Cristina Yang, is presented as having “transcended … racial origin and, in so doing, have become normal.” The racialized message is still received yet in a color-blind package like contemporary racism and promotes an assimilationist perspective that encourages the view that race does not matter.50

Racial transcendence functions not only as a narrative structure for the characters but also as a lens for audiences to look past the obvious cultural reasons that may make interracial romances difficult. Moreover, transcendence offers yet another reason to plausibly deny why these televisual romances generally always fail. With regard to Burke/Yang, this so-called racially transcendent relationship came to a bracing halt in season four of Grey’s thanks to an off-set scandal leading to ABC dismissing Isaiah Washington’s51 in reaction to the publicity crisis he created for the network. Regardless, the lack of race discussion was cowardly. As one columnist wrote: “Face it, some writers are just afraid of going there. Taking on cultural differences isn’t easy, so they simply make believe they don’t exist.”52

In addition to the Burke/Yang romance that foregrounded neat and sloppy as the difference between the characters, the show revealed a second interracial romance with a backstory that was harder to racially transcend. As a way of neutralizing the racial stakes of this illicit affair, Chito Childs argues that placing the romance in the past generates a sort of racial displacement. “Beyond not showing interracial couples, another strategy of invisibility is to have an interracial union that happened in the past. By placing the relationship in the past, the show can claim to be racially progressive while not having to deal with actually presenting an interracial relationship.”53 In the show, Meredith Grey discovers that, decades before her arrival at Seattle Grace, Chief of Surgery Dr. Webber had a long-term affair with her mother, Dr. Ellis Grey. In the show, Webber faithfully visited Meredith’s mother in her nursing home until her death. Interestingly, the elder Grey

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