{"id":9671,"date":"2019-03-04T04:04:18","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T11:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=9671"},"modified":"2019-03-04T04:04:18","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T11:04:18","slug":"lena-waithe-and-the-new-black-renaissance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2019\/03\/04\/lena-waithe-and-the-new-black-renaissance\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Waithe and The New Black Renaissance"},"content":{"rendered":"

from TIME Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Hollywood\u2019s New Black Renaissance Is Thriving. But the Industry Still Has Work to Do<\/h1>\n

By LENA WAITHE <\/a><\/p>\n

\"Lena<\/a>PHOTO: ROGER ERICKSON \/ Courtesy of Chicago Magazine<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

What makes me optimistic today are the people trying to rip up what it means to be black and successful in Hollywood and rebuild it afresh. People like Terence Nance, the writer and director behind HBO\u2019s Random Acts of Flyness<\/i>. People like Dime Davis, who is directing four episodes of BET\u2019s Boomerang<\/i>, the TV version of a beloved movie that I\u2019m producing. And people like Drew Michael, the stand-up comedian whose recent HBO special was almost like a therapy session; there was no audience hiding Drew and he was so vulnerable. That\u2019s what art should be: aware of where the lines are, but coloring outside them.<\/p>\n

Audiences are loving this new renaissance. They\u2019re entertained, but they\u2019re also educated. But my hope is that it no longer needs to be a renaissance, a moment or a movement. I want it to be the norm. It sometimes seems like people believe: \u201cThey have Black Panther<\/i>, so they\u2019re cool. Moonlight<\/i> won best picture, so they\u2019re good. They\u2019ve got shows like Atlanta<\/i> and Insecure,<\/i> so they\u2019re done.\u201d But that\u2019s not enough. White folks have everything, and we still have a lot of catching up to do. It\u2019s too soon to be patting ourselves on the back like the problem is solved.<\/p>\n

After all, the decision makers still don\u2019t look like us. We\u2019ve had a black person run the country, but never a big movie studio. Even though I\u2019m making cool work, I still have to ask white people, \u201cIs it OK? Do you like this enough? Do you understand this?\u201d Until the big studio execs look like the rest of the world, that\u2019s not going to change.<\/p>\n

That said, people of color are a commodity right now. Every senior white executive is like: \u201cWhere\u2019s my black TV show?\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019s my black Blockbuster?\u201d And that\u2019s awesome. But what we need is someone to be looking at it with a certain kind of intention. Don\u2019t say, \u201cWhere\u2019s my Insecure<\/i>?\u201d Ask, \u201cWho\u2019s the next Issa Rae?\u201d Don\u2019t say, \u201cWhere\u2019s my Black Panther<\/i>?\u201d Ask, \u201cWho\u2019s the next Ryan Coogler?\u201d<\/p>\n

We need to find artists who are rebels\u2014and usually the artists who are rebels aren\u2019t the kind to raise their hands or promote themselves. We can\u2019t count on the industry to find them. There are very few execs out there looking for the next stars and doing the roll-up-your-sleeves work of reading a bunch of scripts and talking to a lot of people to find who\u2019s next. Until you\u2019re hot, no one is seeking you out.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at TIME<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from TIME Magazine Hollywood\u2019s New Black Renaissance Is Thriving. But the Industry Still Has Work to Do By LENA WAITHE PHOTO: ROGER ERICKSON \/ Courtesy of Chicago Magazine What makes me optimistic today are the people trying to rip up what it means to be black and successful in Hollywood and rebuild it afresh. People […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}