What Kind of Love - Donald Glover

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I watched a lot of Black TV on UPN 13 before it was B.E.T. when I was a kid, even though some of it wasn’t age-appropriate for me. Girlfriends was one of my faves, One on One, Moesha, Sister Sister, The Parkers, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, etc. and later on a pirated DVD copy of Chappelle’s Show, Def Poetry Jam, and The Boondocks. We didn’t have cable growing up so all I had to watch was stuff that was free and accessible to me. I never watched anything from The Disney Channel which was the norm for kids my age because that meant you had money and access. So I grew up watching different TV shows than the kids around me.

With that being said, I also grew up watching a lot of international shows from a Taiwanese and Korean framework. I was exposed to diverse content at a young age and never felt like I wasn’t being represented since I watched a lot of Chinese and Korean programming and saw people who looked like me (despite being a chubby kid).

Bao Jing Tian otherwise known as “Justice Bao” was one of my favorite shows as a kid that showcased a dark-skinned judge who was known to be the fairest judge of all in the land. The old Chinese mythology was that he suffered from a great injustice as a baby born with Black skin because no one wanted him. Which makes him have a keen eye for justice.

Another fave of mine is “The Man with Iron Fists” which was RZA’s first feature film that he directed and starred in. This was one of the first few times where I felt two different cultures colliding and interwoven into a beautiful masterpiece that even one of the greats Tarantino helped produce. It showcased Black and Asian cinema to me which I felt was the mise-en-scène of my life. Watching Black and Asian stories has always given me hope that TV and film could be greater than what our world proposes diversity to be.

Some of my all-time favorite Chinese films are “Red Cliff” and “House of Flying Daggers” — my favorite Korean film right now is “Parasite” and I have yet to watch “Minari” starring Steven Yeun from AMC’s “The Walking Dead” — I love Asian horror in general and sci-fi, horror, and thrillers are my go to for TV/film.

I recently finished watching Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You” on HBO and the final episode of Season 3 of Westworld after all these years. “Woke” on Hulu was pretty great as well.

Some of my favorite films made by Black women filmmakers are Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman” — “Daughters of the Dust” by Julie Dash, “Belle” by UK film director Amma Asante, “Eve’s Bayou” by Kasi Lemmons, and “Spirits of Rebellion” by my former professor Zeinabu Davis.

Currently Black TV shows are, I feel, going through a Black Renaissance for the past couple of years. I love Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” on FX and Issa Rae’s “Insecure” on HBO. Ava Duvernay’s “Queen Sugar,” I haven’t finished watching yet and I still need to catch up on “The Chi” by Lena Waithe. Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and “Us” has been some of the greatest horror films of all time and will be known as classics in the future. Jordan Peele really changed the game for horror films to be elevated other than a ridiculous amount of gore.

Some of my favorite classics are “The Outer Limits” and “The Twilight Zone” — “Black Mirror” has definitely brought that elevated sci-fi narrative back. My favorite reality TV shows were “Fear Factor” and Tila Tequila’s “A Shot At Love” back then which I only watched solely for the fact that she was the first “Asian representation” I’ve seen in a long time.

I love Constance Wu from “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Fresh Off the Boat” — Bobby Lee from Mad TV and the Netflix series “Love” which was directed by Judd Apatow — comedienne Margaret Cho for talking about her sexual assault in one of her shows.

I loved watching “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” where I saw Robin Thede for the first time as a correspondent who later on created “A Black Lady Sketch Show” which is one of the best comedy skit shows I’ve seen in a really long time.

All in all, I think it’s a really good time for TV and film right now. I believe more and more creatives are slowly stepping out from the shadows to showcase their stories and I feel so blessed to witness all of this going on.

With love,

Sway

Saturday, May 22nd at 4:19am

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