Living in the Margins
It’s should be clear to everyone who watches television that people of color have always been background characters (with the exception of shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Cosby Show back in the 1990s). To further prove this point, I will be focusing on two contemporary teen shows on the CW Network, The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle. Interestingly enough, both shows are based on books written by the same author and share screenwriters. The Vampire Diaries follows the story of Elena Gilbert, a girl whose life turns upside down when she discovers the existence of vampires and other supernatural creatures. With the help of (one of) her best friends, who also happens to be a witch, Bonnie Bennett (the only black person casted) she battles the dark forces that threaten her and the love triangle she finds herself in. The Secret Circle follows the same kind of format—a group of teens find about the existence of magic and their ties to it and begin to battle the supernatural beings that put their lives in peril. Unlike The Vampire Diaries, this show has a bigger ensemble of “main characters”, but truly only focuses on one or two, making Melissa Glaser (the only black character on an otherwise very white show) another background character.
For the sake of my argument, I won’t be focusing on specific episodes, seeing as though the theme is a recurring one throughout the show. There are arcs that run through various episodes on the show, which I will mention as I go along. I will speak of these two shows as one to make my argument, because both shows exhibit the issues that I will be discussing.
I think that for both of these shows it is important to pose the questions that Christensen and Karp posed their students in Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us. “What motivates the character? What do they want out of life? What’s their mission? How are they portrayed?” For these specific shows, it’s important to ask these questions because they could challenge the things that we are failing to see, the “secret education” so to speak. In TSC (The Secret Circle, for short), the first story we see unravel is Cassie’s, who is presumed to be the main character. By the end of the pilot, we start to see what her purpose in the show is, and how the other characters come into play. It’s not until the middle of the season one when we see Melissa finally get her story. Unlike the rest of the character’s (whose story arcs mainly focus on their backstory and how they play a bigger role in the overarching plot of the show), Melissa’s revolves around Nick (a white, straight male), another member of the coven which she is part of. Not only does her story revolve around Nick, but it also depends on him to furthering her development, and even then it moves at a snail’s pace, for lack of a better term. Throughout the series, we hear other characters describing Melissa as “a very powerful witch,” to the point where she is needed for bigger spells when someone else is missing to complete it. Like Melissa, Bonnie is the only witch Elena knows. That’s not where the commonalities between the two stop. Both of these girls, even though they are on two completely different shows, seem to have distant relatives whom the audience has never heard about. When there’s no need for an explanation, we always hear someone say, “Melissa (or Bonnie) is out of town visiting her cousin”. This usually happens when it’s a “filler” that focuses on explaining the storylines of one or more characters. Why is this important? It’s important because it belittles the existence of these characters. It gives them no visibility at all. Like the questions that Christensen posed, it makes us wonder what role people of color play in our society. “What kind of job do they have?” They have a job that benefits only the white person in some way or another. “What does this story tell us about the character?” That they are only important when they are needed, otherwise they can blend into the background with the rest of the unimportant characters whose backstories we care very little about. This is a type of “secret education” because it’s a recurring theme in mainstream media—the person of color always assisting the more dominant person (in terms of color, class and gender) in important matters that often have nothing to do with them. It’s not something that the audience often picks up on—hence the term “secret education”—but a recurring theme that runs through many shows targeted toward young audiences.
When examining The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle further, a clear pattern can be seen in the way two of the main characters, Bonnie Bennett and Melissa Glaser are treated. The depiction of these two characters makes claim to the second course assumption, “Youth is a Culturally Constructed Category”—but not just any youth—in this case, but Black Youth. After further research on these two characters, one of the most interesting findings was the idea of tropes. A trope is a recurring theme or message that runs throughout a particular medium that is not always blatant or obvious to the viewers. Two tropes that fit with both Bonnie and Melissa is the idea of “The Magical Negro” and “The Black Best Friend”, according to TVTropes.com. “The Magical Negro” consists of the holder of this trope to never think of himself or herself as needing the help of anyone, or using the wisdom that white folk respect oh-so-much to help themselves. On a similar note, “The Black Best Friend” is exactly what it sounds like: that characters sole existence is to be the white character’s sassy black friend whose story arcs will either be nonexistent or barely there. For both of these tropes, everything that happens to the character of color is at the expense of the white person or best friend. These specific examples I feel speak greatly to Youth Being a Culturally Constructed Category because it makes up a completely new kind of teenager. If we bring this idea of Tropes into the picture, we can see that by giving them (by “them” I mean these specific characters) titles, patterns in their development as characters begin to show up—Bonnie and Melissa just happen to be two of the examples that I am focusing on. These ideas (and to continue with my previous paragraph, “secret education”) are written for teenagers, by adults; white adults whose main focus is to continue perpetuating dominant ideals without thinking about the consequences that it brings. It’s almost as if they’re adding these characters for the sole purpose of “diversity”, to make sure that it appeals to a wider audience.
Rebecca Raby’s A Tangle of Discourses is also a good text that comes into play for Melissa and Bonnie merely because what these two characters are experiencing is a discourse in and of itself, even if it’s one that is rarely talked about amongst scholars. This particular discourse is presented to teenagers who have no idea on what they are watching, therefore they can take no agency and or resistance against what they are being subjected to. There is only one side of the manipulative relationship being presented, so there is no room for any notice of a power relation or struggle between white characters and characters of color. This also falls under the Christensen piece because of the secret education that the viewers fail to see.
For the sake of my argument, I won’t be focusing on specific episodes, seeing as though the theme is a recurring one throughout the show. There are arcs that run through various episodes on the show, which I will mention as I go along. I will speak of these two shows as one to make my argument, because both shows exhibit the issues that I will be discussing.
I think that for both of these shows it is important to pose the questions that Christensen and Karp posed their students in Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us. “What motivates the character? What do they want out of life? What’s their mission? How are they portrayed?” For these specific shows, it’s important to ask these questions because they could challenge the things that we are failing to see, the “secret education” so to speak. In TSC (The Secret Circle, for short), the first story we see unravel is Cassie’s, who is presumed to be the main character. By the end of the pilot, we start to see what her purpose in the show is, and how the other characters come into play. It’s not until the middle of the season one when we see Melissa finally get her story. Unlike the rest of the character’s (whose story arcs mainly focus on their backstory and how they play a bigger role in the overarching plot of the show), Melissa’s revolves around Nick (a white, straight male), another member of the coven which she is part of. Not only does her story revolve around Nick, but it also depends on him to furthering her development, and even then it moves at a snail’s pace, for lack of a better term. Throughout the series, we hear other characters describing Melissa as “a very powerful witch,” to the point where she is needed for bigger spells when someone else is missing to complete it. Like Melissa, Bonnie is the only witch Elena knows. That’s not where the commonalities between the two stop. Both of these girls, even though they are on two completely different shows, seem to have distant relatives whom the audience has never heard about. When there’s no need for an explanation, we always hear someone say, “Melissa (or Bonnie) is out of town visiting her cousin”. This usually happens when it’s a “filler” that focuses on explaining the storylines of one or more characters. Why is this important? It’s important because it belittles the existence of these characters. It gives them no visibility at all. Like the questions that Christensen posed, it makes us wonder what role people of color play in our society. “What kind of job do they have?” They have a job that benefits only the white person in some way or another. “What does this story tell us about the character?” That they are only important when they are needed, otherwise they can blend into the background with the rest of the unimportant characters whose backstories we care very little about. This is a type of “secret education” because it’s a recurring theme in mainstream media—the person of color always assisting the more dominant person (in terms of color, class and gender) in important matters that often have nothing to do with them. It’s not something that the audience often picks up on—hence the term “secret education”—but a recurring theme that runs through many shows targeted toward young audiences.
When examining The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle further, a clear pattern can be seen in the way two of the main characters, Bonnie Bennett and Melissa Glaser are treated. The depiction of these two characters makes claim to the second course assumption, “Youth is a Culturally Constructed Category”—but not just any youth—in this case, but Black Youth. After further research on these two characters, one of the most interesting findings was the idea of tropes. A trope is a recurring theme or message that runs throughout a particular medium that is not always blatant or obvious to the viewers. Two tropes that fit with both Bonnie and Melissa is the idea of “The Magical Negro” and “The Black Best Friend”, according to TVTropes.com. “The Magical Negro” consists of the holder of this trope to never think of himself or herself as needing the help of anyone, or using the wisdom that white folk respect oh-so-much to help themselves. On a similar note, “The Black Best Friend” is exactly what it sounds like: that characters sole existence is to be the white character’s sassy black friend whose story arcs will either be nonexistent or barely there. For both of these tropes, everything that happens to the character of color is at the expense of the white person or best friend. These specific examples I feel speak greatly to Youth Being a Culturally Constructed Category because it makes up a completely new kind of teenager. If we bring this idea of Tropes into the picture, we can see that by giving them (by “them” I mean these specific characters) titles, patterns in their development as characters begin to show up—Bonnie and Melissa just happen to be two of the examples that I am focusing on. These ideas (and to continue with my previous paragraph, “secret education”) are written for teenagers, by adults; white adults whose main focus is to continue perpetuating dominant ideals without thinking about the consequences that it brings. It’s almost as if they’re adding these characters for the sole purpose of “diversity”, to make sure that it appeals to a wider audience.
Rebecca Raby’s A Tangle of Discourses is also a good text that comes into play for Melissa and Bonnie merely because what these two characters are experiencing is a discourse in and of itself, even if it’s one that is rarely talked about amongst scholars. This particular discourse is presented to teenagers who have no idea on what they are watching, therefore they can take no agency and or resistance against what they are being subjected to. There is only one side of the manipulative relationship being presented, so there is no room for any notice of a power relation or struggle between white characters and characters of color. This also falls under the Christensen piece because of the secret education that the viewers fail to see.