R.I.P. Marilyn Chambers

[lowend1]

http://www.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUSTRE53C5JE20090413

[uwe]

There still aren't a lot of love making scenes between black and white in Hollywood mainstream films though I do notice a trend to pair white actors with cappucino brown, curly haired females as their wives/significant others. Not so much the other way around though as if the clichée of the sexually aggressive and omnipotent black or even just brown man still loomed large (pun intended). 

Monster Ball with Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry was a grand exception to the whole no-interracial-sex-please! thing (and also one of the most compelling non-porn love making scenes since Sutherland and Christie in Don't Look Now), but that was hardly Hollywood mainstream though she did deservedly (not just for the sex scene) earn an Oscar for it.

Is it still that much a taboo with you guys or is showing it in a film perceived as perhaps too laboredly overt?

Uwe

[Rocker949]

I can only speak from observing what is around me.  But it's possible interracial couples are actually more common in real life than in the movies.  Certainly, it's extremely common, although I'm sure such things vary depending on what part of the U.S. is involved.  As for "Monster's Ball," I ended up seeing that in Holland quite some time after it had been in the U.S.  I didn't even have any idea what it was about.  That was certainly a great movie, though.  Even though Billy Bob Thornton's acting was very good, Halle Berry's was simply outstanding in that. 

[OldManC]

Is it still that much a taboo with you guys or is showing it in a film perceived as perhaps too laboredly overt?

99.9% of the viewing public in the U.S. (as elsewhere) have nothing whatsoever to do with decisions behind the production of films or television. Most of the people who do are among the most socially (and yes, politically) liberal people in the U.S. The possible uneasiness felt by someone in Des Moines or Billings wouldn't even enter into it (or not from their point of view, at least). If those characters and stories aren't being represented in film it has more to do with the movers and shakers in Hollywood than anyone else, and they never met a taboo they weren't itching to explode.

Unless they think the plebes they're selling to won't pony up the cash to see it.

That may have something to do with it.

BTW, it may be an outlier but "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" was released in 1967...

[PWV]

Re: the mainstream.  I was going to guess Eartha Kitt as Catwoman might have opened some doors to inter-racial love sparks, but then it occurred to me I don't know if she ever got as close to Adam West as Julie Newmar's Catwoman did.

Uwe makes a compelling point, although there certainly plenty of real-life interracial couples in the Pacific Northwest, and many of my students come from those parents. Maybe art does need to imitate life a little more these days. (And I loved Halle Berry in MB - sizzle! )

[kungfusheriff]

I do notice a trend to pair white actors with cappucino brown, curly haired females as their wives/significant others.

Your perception is correct, and I can say that with certainty because I'm the white half of a mixed marriage and probably more apt to notice. These pairings seem to be less uncommon, in movies and in life, than at any point during my lifetime but it's still surprising to see a couple who looks like us.

Then again, my boss, who is 77, is the son of a Jamaican woman and an Irishman. So who's to say?

The first recent, high-profile film to depict in a somewhat realistic light a relationship between a black woman and a white guy and not as a goof like that Queen Latifah/Steve Martin flick was a little flick called "Something New" (2006) that I stumble over on cable movie channels every now and then.

It's worth watching on its' own merits, if you don't mind romantic comedies, but there's one scene that absolutely killed me. The main characters, having recently met, are in the middle of an informal dinner on her dining room floor when the male lead stops in mid-bite and asks why everything in her house is beige.

If you have well-to-do black friends, that gag is a scream; if not, you'll probably miss it entirely.

Monster's Ball wasn't exactly a love story as I remember it, more like a melodramatic pairing of lost souls. Totally different animal. But that love scene...we all know what they say about the crazy ones...

[Highlander]

There is an episode of the original Star Trek series that has Nichele Nichols (Uhura) and William Shatner (Kirk) kissing, albeit under duress - the first inter-racial kiss shown on TV...

... but guess what... never shown on British TV at the time they were first being screened here in the early 70's...

I am not 100% on this but I do not think it has EVER been shown on TV here...

We have had an entirely gay "soap" here though... 

[eb2]

I don't see the whole black man/white woman as being that publicly taboo anymore.  I know that black women are not fans of this, and older or rural whites.  But in larger cities it is pretty common.  Certainly not very common, or else there would be no white or black people to begin with.  But I would venture to say that interracial relationships in the US are much more common with black men and white women, than white men with black women.  The racial stigmas are far more submerged now.

[uwe]

"Monster's Ball wasn't exactly a love story as I remember it, more like a melodramatic pairing of lost souls."

Perfectly put, Shawn.

Germany's most prominent interracial couple are these two and while I find Heidi's media omnipresence grating, I like them as a couple:









Oh yeah, and I always liked this song of his (later covered by George Michael), synth bass and all, I even sometimes play that run on my basses, that was before he became all ballady with "Kiss from a rose" in that more ways than one abysmal Batman III.







 

[gweimer]

There's also this pair.

[uwe]

And a lasting marriage too.

[gweimer]

This guy, too, but I don't think his has lasted.

[PWV]

OK, maybe not...