Listen to Represent:
On this episode of Represent, Aisha Harris is joined by Ahmed Ali Akbar, host of the BuzzFeed podcast See Something Say Something, for a discussion about Muslim representation and interracial relationships in Kumail Nanjiani’s new romantic comedy, The Big Sick. But first, Vulture’s Alex Jung helps us unpack the Hawaii Five-0 controversy that followed reports that Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park left the show over unequal pay.
Check out:
- “The Time to Fix ‘Hawaii Five-0’ Was at the Start” in the New York Times
- Daniel Dae Kim speaking out about leaving Hawaii Five-0 over unequal pay
- Here’s what Hawaii Five-0’s showrunner had to say about the pay inequity dispute
- “Kumail Nanjiani’s Culture-Clash Comedy” in the New Yorker
- BuzzFeed asks: “Why Are Brown Men So Infatuated With White Women Onscreen?”
- Nadya Agrawal’s response in Quartz: “Brown Actors Like Aziz Ansari Have Reduced Brown Women to a Punchline”
- Aisha and Ahmed both recommend Mississippi Masala as a rare example of a people-of-color interracial relationship being represented
The Plusses and Deltas for this week:
( + ) Aisha loves that Ava DuVernay is making a Netflix miniseries about the Central Park Five. Alex is happy to hear that Lucy Liu will direct the Season 2 premiere of Marvel’s Luke Cage.
( ∆ ) Aisha is rolling her eyes at the upcoming film Blind, in which Alec Baldwin plays a novelist blinded in a car crash. After hearing that Showtime is rebooting The L Word, Alex would like to see an industry shift away from sequels, franchises, and reboots and toward telling new stories.
Will you be at Comic Con in San Diego next week? Then come say hi to Aisha at one of her panels: Rotten Tomatoes’ “Your Opinion Sucks!” and Fandango’s “Female Voices of Film Twitter.”
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Producer: Veralyn Williams
Social media: Marissa Martinelli
