When I saw the first promotional video for “Being Mary Jane” I will admit that I was thrilled to see my girl, Gabrielle Union, back in the game. As the commercials ran frequently throughout the summer on BET, I had already imagined the first episode in my head: Successful black journalist, raised by a loving family, the Miss Independent of 2014, the no-nonsense women we all aspire to be! My standards and anticipation were set on high levels, but after the premiere and the episodes that followed, my high came down and I realized how BET had fooled me once again.
Do not get me wrong the series has its positive perks: a bright woman of color who is successful in the journalism field –something we do not see very often—who is the peacemaker of in a family full of dysfunction. However, Miss Mary Jane Paul is a character on the opposite perspective we as an audience are not used to see and hear from, “The Sideline”. Even though it is an interesting twist BET pulled on us, Mary Jane stays with her status quo, convincing her peers and audience that being number two is better than first place in a relationship.
Critics have been raving about BET’s new hit series, giving it a 67% on Meta Critic and a 7.6 on IMBD.Com. Fellow Rattlers are also in love with Gabrielle Union’s authentic character; Morgan Danford, a freshman Journalism student, who watches the show religiously, said “She is very raw and real. In a way, she is relatable and easy to understand and I like that”.
Mara Brock Akil, creator of “Being Mary Jane,” attests to how Mary Jane’s character speaks to all of us in an interview with The Daily Beast earlier this year, “I think Mary Jane is all of us,” says Akil. “I think it’s time for us to redefine who we are and not keep chasing what we have been told”.
But what is it that makes Mary Jane Paul so relatable? The fact that she has to work twice as hard? She is a part of a broken family? In our millennial culture, having sidelines as well as being one is more common than we think in the year of 2014.
Today’s dramas such as “Being Mary Jane,” and ABC’s “Scandal” are just a birds-eye view of how the media decides to portray black women. Although Mary Jane and Olivia Pope are powerhouses who are at the top of their game, they are still put on the backburner in the game of love.
“I don’t like what these shows are saying about our women,” says Stephanie Benoit, a freshman Social Work student, “We say Olivia Pope and Mary Jane are the ‘Baddest’, but what makes them bad? That they have to take other men and are never in the spotlight like how they should be”?
It almost seems as though these shows are supporting the habit of “The Sideline”, and that should not be the case. It is disheartening to see that the media portrays these characters in the sense that they do because, there is so much more to a black women. These character descriptions do not do black women any justice, and it adds even more negativity to the weight that black women have to carry.
Both shows, nonetheless, have audiences at the edge of their seats every Tuesday and Thursday at ten. And although it is seen as entertainment, does it tell a certain truth about African American woman in our society? That in order to be “bad,” we have to be on the sidelines, never getting a chance to show our power outside of a nine to five corporate job? Or is there a part of Mary Jane Paul and Olivia Pope living in all of us? Has our cultures standards be redefined?
What do you think Rattlers?