On a recent episode of CBC’s The Current, I participated in a panel discussion about hateful online campaigns directed at women of colour in entertainment. We were specifically discussing actors Leslie Jones and Kelly Marie Tran, who were relentlessly attacked online around the releases of major Hollywood franchise films Ghostbusters and Star Wars, respectively.
Both examples are American, but earlier this month Canadian film programmer and critic Sarah-Tai Black became the latest to be targeted after she wrote a negative review of the anti-superhero movie Venom for The Globe And Mail. The situation prompted the Images Festival, where she recently began working as programming coordinator, to issue a statement.
“We at Images want to state unequivocally that we stand by Sarah-Tai Black, whom we believe to be a vital voice in film criticism and curation in this country,” it reads.
The very specific type of harassment directed at Jones, Tran and now Black has what you may call a Trump-era pedigree. Take an entertainment property that is cherished by man babies and harkens to an era when white male privilege was unquestioningly centered, and add what smells like a liberal agenda (you know like representation, which should be a human agenda). And then alt-right agitators, who usually sniff out their prey with some help from conservative pundits, harass the women of colour involved in the projects.
Jones was just one of the stars in the all-female Ghostbusters reboot that came out two years ago. But as the only WOC in the principal cast Jones was singled out by alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos and subsequently became the target of vitriolic online harassment that included her website being hacked.
Tran suffered similar and relentless abuse after starring in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the franchise installment that was largely well-received but infuriated some core fans who felt betrayed by its “let the past die” ethos and somehow conflated that problem with the franchise push for representation and a liberal agenda.
And then comes Black, who, like most critics, panned the Spidey villain spinoff. But unlike most(ly white) critics, her review also mapped out the film’s racial makeup to show how the do-gooder characters are Caucasians and the villains are POC.
Some commentators whined about Black bringing up race while discussing a comic book movie (god forbid!). Jonathan Kay, the former Walrus editor, tweeted that Black’s review was the Globe’s attempt “to show its Leaside readers how woke it is.”
Another reader responded with relentless and horrifying harassment, posting brutally racist and misogynistic comments on Black’s personal Instagram account. It’s not a surprise that the offending Instagram account follows Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos.
The hate Black endured as a result was infinitely more toxic than the messaging fellow Globe writer John Semley received for his Globe And Mail review dismantling Avengers: Infinity War (a movie fans actually loved). Semley, a white male writer, was attacked for his taste. Black was attacked for who she is.
She’s the only WOC film critic currently writing movie reviews for a major Canadian outlet. She’s also the only POC critic in Canada to write about Venom. Essentially, she’s the only minority perspective in Canada on this big mainstream product.
All this went down just weeks after TIFF, where an initiative to welcome more underrepresented writers into a largely homogeneous community inspired ongoing discussions about diversity in criticism.
The offending line in Black’s review is her description of Venom’s “pandering to whiteness.” In response, readers demand that Black ignore race (that thing she lives with everyday) when reviewing a comic book movie – as if there aren’t 100 other reviews from privileged perspectives that do just that.
What those offended by that line don’t seem to realize is that by demanding Black ignore race, they’re basically telling her to shut up and pander to whiteness.
movies@nowtoronto.com | @JustSayRad
