Interracial Relationships On Screen

Published July 27, 2017 at 10:00 AM CDT

This image released by Lionsgate shows Kumail Nanjiani, right, and Zoe Kazan in a scene from, "The Big Sick." The Kumail Nanjiani-led, Judd Apatow produced film made $6.8 million in three weeks of limited release. (Lionsgate via AP)

From “The Big Sick” to “Master of None” to “The Bachelorette” — Hollywood’s depiction of interracial relationships is changing.

Americans come in all colors and cultures. And we fall in love. Hollywood has struggled with that. Right now, there’s a new raft of shows that go there. For one, there’s a black Bachelorette for the first time, choosing from all kinds of guys. In the new movie The Big Sick, a mixed couple – white and brown, his family’s Pakistani – work through the complications. In Master of None, Aziz Ansari dates it all, sort of. This hour On Point: Hollywood’s depiction now of inter-racial romance. — Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Sopan Deb, culture reporter at the New York Times. ( @SopanDeb)

Leena Jayaswal, professor at the School of Communication at American University. Documentary filmmaker of ‘Mixed,’ a film about interracial relationships and biracial children.

Caty Borum Chattoo, director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at the School of Communication at American University. Documentary filmmaker of ‘Mixed,’ a film about interracial relationships and biracial children. ( @CatyBC)

Clover Hope, senior writer at Jezebel, covering pop culture. ( @clovito)

From Tom’s Reading List

New York Times: ‘The Big Sick,’ South Asian Identity and Me — “The romantic complications of South Asian children who grow up here have rarely been displayed as vividly as in this film, which tells the story of a Pakistani comic and Uber driver in a relationship with a grad student, who is white. Starring and co-written by Kumail Nanjiani, who was born in Karachi, it explores the South Asian identity in depth, and speaks to conflicts that many of us face growing up in America.”

Newsweek: How Aziz Ansari’s ‘Master of None’ Talks About Interracial Dating In A Way Other Shows Can’t — “‘Master of None,’ Aziz Ansari’s Netflix original series, which released its second season Friday, depicts the struggles involved in finding love, online and off, in a way most other mainstream shows are seemingly incapable of. The standup comic and author provides real-life scenarios of romance without Hollywood’s typical whitewashing: from exploring fetishization associated with dating people of a certain skin color and ethnicity to portraying what it’s like rejecting an English-speaking man through the muted perspective of a female cashier who only speaks American Sign Language.”

International Documentary Association: ‘MIXED’ Values: Biraciality in Non-Post-Racial America — “We hope ‘MIXED’ will offer a new lens into race and the lives of the first generation of mixed-race kids and families to be counted in the US Census, which has only been possible for 16 years. And the backdrop of today has turned out to be particularly meaningful: In an era in which biracial children are trying to understand both racism and white privilege, how do we explain the socio-political construction of race to a child who identifies as more than one? So, what have we—a brown woman and a white woman working together on a film about race—learned so far along the way, in places like New York and Texas and North Carolina and Maryland and Virginia, against the backdrop of Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter and the historic Obama presidency?”