Kalinda Sharma: You can’t ask me and I can’t tell you, but don’t conclude from what I’m saying it’s what you think.
And a little bit of Sammy Davis Jr. for good measure. George R.R. Martin on the Dothraki DNA.
It was not so long ago that we were hijab deep in television’s golden age. Complicated stories unfolded over multi-year arcs. The dialogue had some poetry. A new palette of complex characters seemed ready to paint the post-millennial American canvas. Even an old fashioned western like Deadwood found humanity in frontier racism, homobophia and timeless cultural stereotypes. (Lest we forget the exchanges between “Swedgin” and the Celesitial Wu, who bonded in their fear of the unknown San Francisco cocksucker.)
If this year’s Emmy talk is any indication, all the promise of that past decade has gone to Wu’s proverbial pig pen. Aside from the heartbreakingly overlooked Treme—not only a more evocative show than David Simon’s more acclaimed precursor The Wire—it’s the musical high note that Glee can’t hit on its best day. And whether you lack the requisite soul to inhabit Simon’s hopeful urbanism or harbour some peculiar passive aggression about the achievement, we can take a moment to praise Khandi Alexander’s alternately gritty and gracious portrayal of LaDonna Batiste-Williams. The singularly best acting (male or female) on television today.
It’s easy to overlook LaDonna, who is, after all, only a very strong black female. It doesn’t matter that she’s subject to the trials of Job in post-Katrina New Orleans. Trials that include running a small business, getting raped and searching hopelessly for a murdered brother. The very premise for such a character is so…well, 2006. LaDonna has no secret past. She’s not bisexual nor half-Mongol. She doesn’t drink blood, sell weed or live with a serial killer. Her skin does not have an Amerindian tint. In a time when you have to be a multicultural Swiss Army knife to draw critical attention, LaDonna is a 4” wood saw.
How did we come to take actresses like Alexander, Regina King and Aisha Hinds for granted? What happened to the acclimitization period between right now and the time when Claire Huxtable and CCH Pounder were still exotic? There was no in between time. No time of weighty ethnic roles.
Television has cleverly figured out a way around such weight, and in the process around real multicultural casts too. Why depict one or two or three marginalized cultures in your show when you can jam all those cultures into a single character?
Enter The Good Wife. Enter Archie Panjabi’s Kalinda Sharma. On paper, Sharma represents a sort of paint by numbers approach to network television’s notion of “edgy” character development. (If you favour the George RR Martin characters from cuttings colouring book.) Indian descent? Check. Bisexual? Check. Ethically dubious? Yes! Possibly from…Toronto? Mais oui. It’s a testament to Panjabi’s skill and the writing of Michelle and Robert King that we don’t just find such a character believable. We quickly take her for granted too.
Lana: Why do you like men?
Kalinda: Why do I like men?
Lana: Yes, sex with men. Why do you like it?
Kalinda: I don’t distinguish.
Lana: You don’t have a preference?
Kalinda: Uh…
Lana: You were saying?
Kalinda: I was saying Italian, Mexican, Thai…why does one choose one food over the other?
In fact, why choose between Mexican and Thai, when you can choose multiple marginalized sexual identities wrapped in major minorities boxed in enigmatic multiethnic foreplay tied back, for good measure, to more than one dark homeland. True Blood crams the equivalent of a Zadie Smith novel into a five minute V trip when the very addictive Lafayette Reynolds (played by Nelsan Ellis, who was also ripped off with this year’s Emminees) and boyfriend Jesus Valasquez momentarily morph their psyches into one.
Nothing sobers one up like voodoo, fertility and slavery. Which brings us to the most multimulticultural San Francisco cocksucker in the history of the medium. Game of Thrones Dothraki leader Khal Drogo:
The Dothraki can be interpreted a few different ways, but are described in the book as having copper skin and almond-shaped eyes. They are described by the language creators as “a cross between the Mongols and some of the Native American tribes.”
Dothraki warrior Khal Drogo is played by Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa, whose father was Native Hawaiian and mother of German, Irish and Native American descent.
Give the Khal a name that sounds sort of like the Soviet Russian boxer in Rocky IV and you’re off to the races. Critics have levied light charges of racism on HBO’s Game of Thrones:
You should see the look on the (platinum blonde) girl’s face when she realizes she’ll have to marry such a brute! He’s swarthy and he wears drag-queen levels of makeup! His similarly painted people are themselves a range of swarthiness that stretches from… light brown all the way to dark brown! When the men aren’t doing freaky sex dances with bare-breasted women, they’re killing each other for fun. And on top of all that, their food looks totally gross. Frankly, the producers could have saved good money on these scenes if they just tattooed the words “Scary Brown Person” on everyone’s forehead.
But here’s the catch. Several hundred years before the Civil Right movement, Khal Drogo and the platinum blonde Princess Khalisi come to embrace their interracial relationship with the same deep sincerity as Lafayette and Jesus Velasquez. Aside from The Taylors, are there two more realistic couples on television? They teach us about love, respect, empathy and loyalty in stark juxtaposition to the needlessly destructive realms around them.
Of course, LaDonna taught us that this year too.
Tags: Dothraki, Emmys, Game of Thrones, Kalinda Sharma, khal drogo, Khandi Alexander, Lafayette Reynolds, Treme
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