(Something Rukmini Pande said in the @fansplaining Race and Fandom podcast reminded me of this old meta I never got around to posting, so here it is, updated for 2016. Contains spoilers for In the Flesh series 2 (you can watch the whole series on Hulu). Thanks to @psmith73 for input and feedback!)
The Bad Guy of Color
In movies and on TV, we’re used to seeing people of color – especially men of color – as bad guys. You’ve got your drug lords, your terrorists, and your gang leaders (but not the “cool” white-friendly kind like mafia kingpins or bikers), all in a variety of shades of brown and black. As a rule, Bad Guys of Color have a few things in common: They’re scary (like, white folks’ worst nightmare scary), they’re The Other against white protagonists, and they’re not sympathetic characters.
Most of the time, there is no attempt to make us sympathize with the BGOC, because it might make it hard for us to watch them die, sometimes by the dozen. Usually, they don’t even give us a reason to hate them (exceptions, like Victor Sweet in John Singleton’s Four Brothers, who is shown as fully unsympathetic when he treats another Black man like a dog, are usually Black-written characters).
These are not the captivating villains. They’re not the Negan, The Governor, the Walter White, let alone the Loki, Joker, or Kylo Ren. They’re undeveloped, nondimensional, and more than a little racist.
When a person of color is written as a sympathetic villain, a developed character, they should be sympathized with, right? Especially if the character isn’t, as they say, defined by race?
This is literally such a good piece of writing and something I’ve thought about a lot and didn’t know how to address exactly, especially because the few times I’ve kinda spoken up for Maxine I’ve gotten “But she killed Amy/works for Victus!!” as a response – Which really demonstrates the point being made here. Maxine is a wonderfully written character and I adore her. While it’s questionable at best that the only recurring nonwhite character is an antagonist, she’s interesting and well written and given a very, very in-depth character and personality and motives, more so I’d say than other antagonists in the series.
As someone who’s been in the fandom for a long time, the sad truth is that most of the time, Maxine isn’t even talked about. People love to joke about Gary Kendall and Bill Macy being awful, or write long insightful metas about their behavior, but most of the time Maxine isn’t even brought up, it’s like she doesn’t exist. And when she is – like this piece says – she’s treated as the worst of the worst lowest of the low most terrible character in the world when she’s loads more interesting and sympathetic than a character like abusive lying bigoted scumbag Gary and violently homophobic abusive father Bill.
Anyway I don’t have any other commentary but I felt I would add that since like I said I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m really glad this is being discussed.
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