- In a Beverly Hills hotel, in front of an attentive audience, Whoopie Goldberg, Hispanic network executive Nely Galan and others were lamenting television's snub of minorities.
Few programs feature black, Hispanic or Asian characters; there is scant ethnic representation among the people who create series or decide which ones to air, and the situation isn't improving, they said.
The same day, at the same time, at a downtown studio 10 miles away, a bustling TV movie set showed how different things could be. From the make-up artist to the grips to the
director to the stars, this was a black-dominated production.
Not, of course, by accident: "Incognito," a thriller, is one of an ambitious series of 10 movies drawn from the Arabesque line of black romance
novels and produced by cable channel Black Entertainment Television.
The BET movies represent, quite simply, rare opportunities for black
artists, producers and technicians and an unprecedented chance for viewers to see black men and women presented as non-stereotypical characters.
"I see all of these people buzzing around, and for the first time, African-American talent is not only green-lighting a project, but also overseeing it from script to final edit. That is
absolutely phenomenal," said Robert L. Johnson, chairman of the network's parent company, BET Holdings, Inc.
"I think it bodes well for what can happen when we bring our creative talent along with
managerial talent and capital to this entertainment opportunity," Johnson said.
BET Holdings, which purchased Arabesque in 1998, is not acting selflessly, of course:
Johnson expects that his channel's investment in original movies will enhance BET's value for its cable carriers and attract more advertisers.
"We felt one way to do that was to produce movies that spoke to the black middle-class experience and dealt with themes that are not usually on television. So there's romance,
suspense, mysteries involving attractive black men and women," he said.
The fare may be essentially lightweight, drawn from the same kind of breathless stories
familiar to readers of white romance novels, but it represents a serious breakthrough on several fronts.
The heroes and heroines are journalists and computer software magnates, articulate and
affluent, not junkie moms and gang members.
In researching "Intimate Betrayal," writer-director Diane Wynter easily
found real-world examples of black female journalists and black-run computer firms, "But if you went by what you saw on television, they would be nonexistent," she said.
The characters and stories aren't filtered through the prism of black-white conflict, as is often the case when Hollywood pays attention to blacks.
Instead, the BET dramas allow blacks to stand as individuals without white definition.
"We're quite focused on the African-American characters themselves, and the challenges
they face that are quite personal," said Njeri Karago, the BET executive in charge of production for the Arabesque series.
"We don't want to be crying race on these particular ones. We want to look at the people, their backgrounds and their human qualities, their triumphs and challenges."
The romance alone is revolutionary.
Hollywood is "so afraid that if you do black sexuality or black romance that somehow it's a taboo subject, so they stay away from it," Johnson said. "Every once in a while it pops up in
"Soul Food" or "Waiting to Exhale" or "How Stella Got Her Groove Back", but no one does it consistently."
