Lord knows I am usually long-winded. But I am so anxious to have you read the article I just read that brevity is essential.
On Friday morning, the NYT article about Shonda Rhimes was published. There was immediate outcry and, most tellingly, there were three or four tweets from Rhimes herself which maybe indicated that this was not the way she had anticipated spending her Friday morning.
Meanwhile, Linda Holmes, a writer and editor for NPR, was scheduled to interview Rhimes that night. She’d been preparing for the hour-long talk. And now this happens.
What should she do? Address it, obviously, except that takes time away from talking about character and writing and motivation…and all the things that you would ask a showrunner who wasn’t also the subject of a pandering, condescending article about how they’d harnessed a harmful stereotype and “made it good”.
In fact, Holmes pointed out, this would never happen to Whedon or Lindelof or Pizzolatto. Nobody’s accusing them of “busting stereotypes” because there aren’t any to begin with.
So do you ignore the controversy that’s in your face and pretend it doesn’t exist?
Or do you acknowledge that all the time spent on the controversy takes away from the work, which is the reason the conversation is happening in the first place?
Read what happened. It’s a very satisfying conclusion.
