#blackwomenrights

[crabby-gothgirl]

Netflix, stop bringing down black women.

Netflix, just fucking stop already.

The 2 most popular shows on Netflix, as of this moment, have renewed seasons that both use black women protagonists to depict them in unhealthy relationships with serial rapist white men-filling out the caricaturized film roles of black women being seen as “the white master’s wench”. 

This triggers me deeply, as they are trying to promote and ingraine into young black female viewers who may watch these shows, with a systemic sense of colonialism and degradation. As if black women can’t have appropriate healthy relationships if they choose to date interracially, and are only meant to serve as “therapists” or “caretakers” by catering to clinically insane white men who go out and hurt other women.

The shows guilty of being problematic asf doing this, are Thirteen Reasons Why and End of the Fucking World. The last show fervently disappoints me, as I used to be a fan of it.

-----

Let’s start off with the infamous Thirteen Reasons Why. A show that’s already culprit for romanticizing mental illness for teenagers (suicide ideation and escaping your problems through use of suicide).

 From Season One, it’s served off of pure controversy and...

*ahem* the fact that the suicide rate in teens went up as soon as it aired *ahem*

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718529255/teen-suicide-spiked-after-debut-of-netflixs-13-reasons-why-report-says

But hey, as it’s executives will try and say in its defense:

 “Correlation isn’t causation.” 

(yeah, sure it isn’t)

In their recent season, they have a British black girl named Ani who has a romantic affair with the show’s notorious antagonist, Bryce.

Keep this in mind:

Bryce is an upper class privileged American white male with a toxic upbringing of entitlement due to his white privilege and socioeconomic status. Not to mention he’s a quarterback for their school football team and is popular among the school body. Being raised with this parents that don’t care enough to regulate his actions, he rapes several girls at the high school, including the show’s former character Hannah Baker.

A white privileged male athlete that gets away with raping girls with little to no repercussions for his actions?

 Isn’t this dynamic sounding familiar to anyone?

*cough* Brock Turner *cough*

 As the experience is so traumatic for Hannah, she suffers from PTSD and, by the end of season one, decides to take her own life and is shown doing so.

~~~~~

Now, after doing something as abhorrently inhumane as that, violating someone and then having that person become so depressed, that they decide to take their own life, one would have hoped the executives could have been like:

Executives: “Wow, this Bryce guy sure is a disgusting fellow. Let’s keep him as an antagonist to show how negatively his actions can impact others and use this as a moral message to amplify the seriousness behind the issue of date rape for young girls.”

Instead, their logic is:

Executives: “Wow, Bryce raped all of these girls in his HS, one having to commit suicide for it. For Season 3, let’s make this guy seem like a precious cinnamon roll for our preteen audience and make it seem like he did no wrong!”

Me:

Now here we bring, Ani.

A new face to the cast. An African-British girl. Something that admittedly that had me curious for a hot second.

My mind: Black female representation in a character? It’s not often we see a show where a full colored black woman is the main character. (Ignoring the context of the god awful show said character is a part of).

But then, the curiosity kills the cat as soon as we see what Ani’s character is meant to serve.

Ani’s mother is an immigrant from Kenya. They live in the UK but then decide to move to the US to find work. That work ends up having her mother work as a nurse for Bryce’s wealthy white family. Being immigrants, they live in their plantation house. 

While working under this white family, Ani develops a sexual “relationship” with Bryce where they become friends with benefits.

Is it just me...or is anyone else getting slave-master x mammy vibes from this shitty ass relationship dynamic? 

Thirteen Reasons Why writers be like:

“This is a picture of a healthy interracial relationship.”

...

Disgusting motherfuckers.

Thirteen Reasons Why has always been complete shit, but they seem to be growing into more of a shit show, as Netflix keeps sucking their dick and renewing their contract to make more and more unnecesesary seasons of their show.

Problematic triggering themes are their only motivation. They’ll do things like show a girl committing suicide in the most gruesome way possible on-screen, then have the nerve to claim mental health “wokeness”.

I have always despised these people, and this just adds to the fuel of hatred I already had for them.

~~

Now onto the next show, End of the Fucking World.

Out of the shows mentioned on this list, I have to say that I’m personally affected the most by this one.

The first season admittedly had me going. I was actually looking forward to watching the second season. Until...it turned into a huge slap to the face for black women :/

SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO WATCHES THE SHOW:

Remember the creepy professor dude that tries to rape Alyssa in the first season?

Remember this crusty motherfucker?

The character Clive Koch, who is a serial rapist murderer who kills his own students. Is probably the most appalling character to do some of the most unspeakable things in the EOTFW universe.... 

(A straight up Ted Bundy in a nutshell).

Guess who found it was a good idea to start off the second season with introducing a backstory for a new character, a black female, who is somehow made to be his....romantic interest??

Yes.

They actually did this.

Netflix you need to get your shit together. 

Writers of these shows, get your shit together.

These shows are straight up damaging, you are hurting your young black female audiences by marketing these shows and depicting us in such damaging portrayals as mammies and coons to toxic mentally ill white men- in the 21ST FUCKING CENTURY, ARE YOU KIDDING ME Y’ALL?!

And don’t hide behind the excuse of “it’s not about the color” when it is DAMN WELL ABOUT THE FUCKING COLOR. You could have easily chose a white woman or any other POC woman for such a role to nurse a criminally insane white man with sexual favors but BOTH times you made it a damn black woman- your self-insert mammy to feed off your sick twisted desires!!!

Black women deserve to have HEALTHY relationsips portrayed for them, we are the most marginalized group in terms of dating, we don’t need to endanger our women by portraying them, telling them that they can only be loved by mentally ill SICK white men! We deserve HEALTHY romantic love! Shows and movies about us having HEALTHY relationships, with men of any race! Stop using us as mere race bait to push for marketing your shitty teenage drama shows that already have enough problematic themes as is! 

It’s time to STOP!