She was but if you notice TVD completely negates slavery in general. If you go back to the 1864 flashbacks it’s not mentioned once, when Alaric is going over the Civil War in class it’s also not mentioned, and when Bonnie was talking about her ancestors from Salem again it’s not mentioned that they were slaves or even free slaves. It also makes no sense that Emily would travel from a free state to a slave one. Plus Damon was a Confederate soldier who left because he “didn’t agree” which was vague af and probably an opportunity to save the implications of that but chose not to because as far as Plec and Williamson were concerned slavery never existed and was a fairy tale.
TVD chose to set it’s show in Civil War era Virginia and completely ignore the context of that which is why Emily ended up being called “handmaiden” even though we knew she was anything but. Just look at how Katherine treated Emily, that’s not how you treated a handmaiden.
In fact, the only time Slavery is acknowledged is in TO with Marcel, but that was just to serve the “white savior” complex and even ignored the context of that from there after. When Marcel talks about his past it stopped being about slavery and about daddy issues to make Klaus seem like a good guy for letting Marcel have basic human rights. Which is very telling to Plec’s mindset.
The treatment of this character is probably one of the most overlooked and I understand why. A) he was a heretic, something everyone always saw as knock off Originals. B) he was in season 7 and by that point most people done with Plec’s racist bullshit had stopped watching the show. And C) No one really remembers him probably because he had absolutely no lines, you’d think they would at least have him use sign language, but naw–I’ll get into that later.
I remember him, and I remember being very uncomfortable with what they did to his character and not realizing exactly why beyond the fact that the only black Heretic is also mute and it’s completely gratuitous. After analyzing my thoughts more I realized it’s so much more.
For me the only really memorable heretics were Nora and Mary Louise, and Valerie. The reason for this is because a) a lot of screen time was given to them, b) they’re the only ones that made it past one episode and c) a lot of development was given to these characters. Then I remember Beau, he was one of those three things, and trust me it wasn’t screentime or development. He’s in more than one episode, but why isn’t he given the same treatment as the other heretics? Surely he holds the same exact importance as the others, but he isn’t and I think we all know why.
So a lot bothered me about how this character was written. First he’s the only black heretic which isn’t what bothers, what bothers me is there’s no context for this character. There’s lots of context for what Nora and Mary Louise went through as lesbians in the 19th century, but absolutely none for Beau. Lily, a white woman from the Confederate south meets Beau, a black man who can suck the life out of her quite literally, imma needs some backstory on him. They already had the “white savior” thing going, but I would have loved to know what his struggles were back then–his were a lot worse than Mary Louise and Nora (and I’m not arguing about that so don’t @ me)
Then there’s the fact that he’s mute. The only black one in the bunch literally has no voice, he has no say in anything, but what’s worse is that being mute doesn’t automatically make someone non-communative, that’s just what they did to his character. He rarely voices his opinions in any sense someone else is always doing it for him. There’s also how he lost his voice. The only reason we get this information is because Lily laments about missing his singing voice. He doesn’t get to voice or express any of his pain at losing his voice, it’s Lily, the white woman he’s been essentially an indentured servant for who does–it’s her pain that’s focused on (sound familiar). I seriously could not make this shit up.
But the thing that gets me most is that he is the only one treated as a slave to Lily and it’s all under the mask of “loyalty” which is the most reoccurring theme when it comes to black witches on this show. Bonnie “loyal” to the Elena, Emily “loyal” Katherine, Greta “loyal” to Klaus, Ayanna “loyal” to Esther, and the list goes on and on. Beau seems to be the only one who has to be “loyal”. All the other heretics love and respect Lily, but everyone has rebelled in some capacity, all except Beau. He does everything she says, never questions it, and is honestly the only one ordered to do things. The only other one who gets ordered to do something is Oscar, the only other minority heretic, but at least got to rebel, and choose his own path.
Beau honestly reminded me of Harper from season 1 which I know most of you don’t remember, he was the first tomb vampire to be introduced. He black and the only other thing known about him is that he “died” in the war as a soldier. Again due to TVD’s complete negation of slavery we’re missing context, and he’s the only tomb vampire loyal to Pearl. The only difference is a) he has a voice, b) he has opinions, and c) he isn’t forced to act outside of his own self-interest which are all pretty significant differences BUT why is there such a low bar when it comes to black characters?
Even with that small amount of agency, he, like Beau, ends up dead and forgotten. With as much as Lily stressed that they were a “family” or becomes inherently clear that Beau isn’t apart of it. He isn’t afforded the same amount of care as the other. No character of color is.
i love the living shit out of her and i wish this whole cancer plot (which is underwritten anyway) could go away
BUT what we saw on screen was: white lives matter more than black lives
not because liz is familiar to us, but because black lives are expandable on this show
we can afford to kill these non-characters as long as our white audience doesn’t identify with them
that is the message they are indirectly going with
*and this has been an ongoing thing for several seasons. remember when caroline killed that male POC in 2×02? and it was taken as an unfortunate but forgivable accident because we love caroline and she is just a baby vamp who doesn’t know any better??*
I know this is really old post but I was thinking about their the other day when someone brought up the Liz cancer thing. The first kill Caroline ever mad was a black man, weirdly they even gave him a name, Carter, usually their a more dehumanized. She kills him there are absolutely no repercusscions for his death, it all becomes about her and her grief. And the same occurs here. She uses him as a science experiment, without his permission no less, and ends up putting him through excruciating pain and then eventually death. And the repercussions for this, again focusing on Caroline’s grief and his death is otherwise ignored. The same thing happened with Rose in her death episode. With Elena and that hunter Connor and this is just one of the patterns of when the show has dehumanized black people.
Disclaimer:sorry if I sound bitchy, know that it isn’t my intention 🙂
I
get what you mean, and while I don’t entirely disagree, I have to say
that I never really expected for an entire episode to address
Bonnie’s Dad’s funeral. What I do expect though is for the poor girl’s grief
and trauma to at least be MENTIONED by her good-for-nothing
“friends”.
The
real issue here is the blatant racism of this show revealed time and
time again through Bonnie’s poor treatment. You said that Bonnie’s
Dad was never mentioned before. Why is that? Because the writers (and
network) are allergic to Bonnie. The least story line and back story
she gets, the better. The girl is a walking talking plot device. She
gets NOTHING. No hot guys worshiping the ground she walks on, no
aspirations, NOTHING. I mean we got introduced to Elena’s birth
parents, biological parents, tutors, Caroline’s parents, Tyler’s
parents, even Matt’s Mom! Yet it took 4 seasons for Bonnie Bennett’s
mother to even be introduced and just as soon she left, just like
that, as if she’d never existed. Bonnie’s Dad was introduced in
season 5 only to be killed off almost immediately.
Yes,
Liz Forbes was present from the beginning of the show so I get that
an episode might be devoted to her funeral, but that is clearly not
the reason they’re going down that road. As you said “this
show is very disloyal to its core relationships unless they are
romantic in nature”
so make no mistake, the SOLE reason of this plot line is really to
induce romantic Steroline; nothing more, nothing less.
Plus,
Caroline also lost her father who – just like Bonnie’s Dad – was
never mentioned before, yet she got another episode addressing her
grief and sense of loss over his demise. Bonnie once again is left
with literally nothing: no one to console her, not one scene
addressing her ordeal, nothing. So far, for the most part, the deaths of white
characters have been met with heartbreak and tears, while the black (and other POC) characters (except perhaps for Grams) just die and everyone moves on
without batting an eyelash. What this does is subconsciously tell
viewers that white lives matter and black lives don’t. Oh wait, that
sounds familiar…
Even Grams was met with just moving on. Grams dies and Bonnie is missing for 5 episodes and when she comes back everyone just expects her to get over it.
Sure Grams comes back from time to time but mostly as a plot device to aid the rest of the MFG, like every one of her family members to be introduced is.
For more than two years, Clarise Coleman faithfully attended every track practice and every cross-country meet for her son, Chase.
A few weeks ago, Chase, who is a nearly nonverbal autistic child, was running in a meet in Rochester, New York, with his team from Corcoran High School – was assaulted by a stranger in the middle of a race.
Coleman was waiting for him at a part of the course where runners would come down a hill but he didn’t appear and she went looking for him. She was shouting his name and then she started to meet people who pointed in the direction of her son. One of them said:
“I see a grown man, who is quite tall and fairly heavy … exit the vehicle and give this young man a shove that puts him back 10 feet and flat on his butt. Like, just shoved him across the road. The kid didn’t seem to be doing anything but standing there, obviously had nothing in his hands and weighed all of 130 pounds. This guy was easily twice that.”
This tall white guy was a 57-year-old man named Martin MacDonald who told the police that the reason he attacked the Black kid was he thought Chase was going to mug his wife and take her purse.
“My son is a minor. [MacDonald is] a grown man,” Coleman said she told police. “He put his hands on my son. Of course I want to press charges.”
However the police was deaf and on Oct. 21, Rochester City Court Judge Caroline Morrison sent a letter to the Colemans that shocked them:
She had denied their warrant application, and MacDonald would not be charged for second-degree harassment.
Now the autistic Black boy refused to go to practices and skipped running in his last meet of the season. He turned his running uniform in to his coach, who gently encouraged him to change his mind. Chase refused.
“We just keep telling him, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. Chase is good. There are mean people and there are nice people and this person was just a mean person,’ ” Coleman said. “We just keep apologizing to him that happened. Especially me. I kept apologizing to him that I couldn’t keep him safe.”
The attack deeply traumatized him and he lost one of the few things that gave him a sense of pride and belonging.
Please, make a shout out to this outrageous accident! The white man still didn’t receive any punishment for ruining life of the Black boy. THIS IS HELL!
#StayWoke #BlackChildrenMatter #WhitePrivilege
Every reblog that includes Martin MacDonald in it is another web page to help make sure that when you google Martin MacDonald’s name, it’s in connection with child abuse and racism.
When are we just gonna kill racist white people???????
That would literally solve nothing because while the law won’t do anything about racist white people, the law will definitely do something when those racist white people get killed. And even worse, it would only further racists agenda because while we still struggle to have people listen to us, racist don’t have the same issue. Killing them would do nothing but make them feel vindicated and in a society that’ll listen to them would just help further spread their racism with “see, we were right” because unlike white people when POC do one bad thing it speaks for all people of that race in society.
It’s why we want Trump impeached and not assassinated, not only because murder is wrong period, but also because the fall out from that would come down on the POC’s, and racists in this country would have more reasons to be publicly racist (not that they don’t already).
Disclaimer: This is VERY long. I’m putting most of it under the cut because of length. I thought about cutting it short but this is a topic that’s very important to me so I decided to not cut words.
So after Friday’s episode many viewers, especially black viewers were left with a very real feeling of discomfort following Elijah’s speech to Marcel. Because of that discomfort many of us have expressed how the narrative, and Elijah, has skewed into racism, an accusation that makes some viewers feel uncomfortable.
Here’s the truth though, in a way it should make some people uncomfortable. If you didn’t feel uneasy about the idea of racism in a narrative that you like then I would have to question some things about you. With that said, I’ve seen a lot more efforts to shut down discourse about the accusation or explain away the behavior many people find problematic than I’ve seen to actually understand it and why we might feel that way. That’s a problem, it’s a big problem when this discussion is something that’s actually very necessary for this show, and many TV shows. When writers take on the task of crafting a narrative that includes minority characters, there is a certain level of awareness and delicacy that many are going to expect then to have when it comes to these characters. When they offend their audience and mishandle the characters they have been entrusted with then they deserve to be taken to task for that. It doesn’t matter if the offense was intentional or unintentional. This is especially the case when you have a writing staff who pats themselves on the back for trying to be aware of social and racial issues that are currently at play in our society.
I personally don’t think that writers are obligated to treat every black character or every character from a marginalized group like a delicate flower that can’t be harmed in any way shape or form. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is when you take characters from marginalized groups and carelessly handle them in a way that ends up pushing a racist narrative.To give an example, killing a black character doesn’t automatically make a narrative racist but pushing an idea where a black character is consistently targeted by white characters, denied humanity and is treated as disposable flesh then that is indeed a racist narrative. That kind of dynamic has historically been an issue in this world and it is still an issue. We can discuss whether the racism that seeps into our fiction a little too often is intentional, and I don’t personally believe it always is, but we have to acknowledge that it’s actually there first.
That’s why we need to talk about The Originals and Marcel.
What they did to Marcel in Friday’s episode, what they had Elijah say to him, and the narrative that built up to that moment was racist.
WELL if you hold the Quarter and its witches in so much contempt why the fuck are you in New Orleans trying to establish some empire or whatever the fuck your family has been doing for the past few seasons hmm????
GOD i swore i wouldn’t rant about this show and it’s bald faced anti blackness because WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT but goddamn “french quarter fortune teller” was the last mfking straw.
RIP again Beau, whom through shitty and racist writing was made mute by having his throat slit, had little screentime, was treated like a servant, was given racial stereotypes, killed and put through his own personal hell, came back ravenous in a white man’s body and had his heart ripped out even when he begged to live, and Bonnie, the only other POC on the show, tried to help him.
peter davison: “it would be like a female james bond” (when asked about the possibility of the Doctor being female)
what do these two folks have in common?
here’s what.
it hadn’t even occurred to davison that james bond could be anything but male. it also hadn’t occurred to him that an alien isn’t restricted by gender. to his mind, the Doctor has to be the standard default, which is male.
likewise, julie plec never considered having bonnie bennett as a female protagonist, because that possibility never even existed for her. a female protagonist must also be the standard default (in this case, white).
POC of TVD 