Viola Davis Put Down by Ugly White Female New York Times Reviewer

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This is the ugly white woman who put down Viola

In a widely panned [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]review[/COLOR] of How to Get Away With Murder, the new ABC [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]series[/COLOR] which stars Viola Davis as a criminal defense lawyer and law professor, The New York Times‘ Alessandra Stanley tried to take down EP Shonda Rhimes. In the process, the TV critic also offended Davis by comparing her to lighter-skinned [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]African American[/COLOR] stars.

“The actress doesn’t look at [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]all like[/COLOR] the typical star of a [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]network [/COLOR]drama,” Stanley wrote [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]in her[/COLOR] review, which spawned several think pieces. “Ignoring the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to, Rhimes chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful than [[COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]Kerry Washington[/COLOR]], or for that matter Halle Berry, who played an astronaut on the summer mini-series Extant.”

http://www.farrahgray.com/viola-davis-seemingly-replies-called-less-beautiful-halle-berry-kerry-washington/

[Tropicana]

She has got to be flippin kidding....


alessandrastanley.jpg

Here is what she said:

Wrought in Rhimes’s Image

Viola Davis Plays Shonda Rhimes’s Latest Tough Heroine

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.”On Thursday, Ms. Rhimes will introduce “How to Get Away With Murder,” yet another network series from her production company to showcase a powerful, intimidating black woman. This one is Annalise Keating, a fearsome criminal defense lawyer and law professor played by Viola Davis. And that clinches it: Ms. Rhimes, who wrought Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and Dr. Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” has done more to reset the image of African-American women on television than anyone since Oprah Winfrey.
Ms. Rhimes didn’t just construct a series around one African-American woman. She has also introduced a set of heroines who flout ingrained television conventions and preconceived notions about the depiction of diversity.
Her women are authority figures with sharp minds and potent libidos who are respected, even haughty members of the ruling elite, not maids or nurses or office workers. Be it Kerry Washington on “Scandal” or Chandra Wilson on “Grey’s Anatomy,” they can and do get angry. One of the more volcanic meltdowns in soap opera history was Olivia’s “Earn me” rant on “Scandal.”
Photo

Shonda Rhimes, of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder.”CreditRichard Shotwell/Invision, via Richard Shotwell, via Invision, via Associated PressMs. Rhimes has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable. She has almost single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldn’t break.
Her heroines are not at all like the bossy, sassy, salt-of-the-earth working-class women who have been scolding and uh-uh-ing on screen ever since Esther Rolle played Florida, the maid on “Maude.”

Is this woman for real?

They certainly are not as benign and reassuring as Clair Huxtable, the serene, elegant wife, mother and dedicated lawyer on “The Cosby Show.” In 2008, commentators as different as the comedian Bill Cosby and the Republican strategist Karl Rove agreed that it was the shining, if fictional, example of the Huxtables that prepared America for a black president and first lady. (This was after a Fox News anchor applied the description “terrorist fist jab” to the couple’s friendly fist bump.)Even now, six years into the Obama presidency, race remains a sensitive, incendiary issue not only in Ferguson, Mo., but also just about everywhere except ShondaLand, as her production company is called.
In that multicultural world, there are many African-Americans at the top of every profession. But even when her heroine is the only nonwhite person in the room, it is the last thing she or anyone around her notices or cares about.
And what is most admirable about Ms. Rhimes’s achievement is that in a business that is still run by note-giving, nit-picking, compromise-seeking network executives, her work is mercifully free of uplifting role models, parables and moral teachings.

As Annalise, Ms. Davis, 49, is sexual and even sexy, in a slightly menacing way, but the actress doesn’t look at all like the typical star of a network drama. Ignoring the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to, Ms. Rhimes chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful than Ms. Washington, or for that matter Halle Berry, who played an astronaut on the summer mini-series “Extant.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/television/viola-davis-plays-shonda-rhimess-latest-tough-heroine.html

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Alessandra Stanley’s pathetic non-apology for her Shonda Rhimes “angry black woman” review

Stanley is a failed critic, shouting over a rising tide of detractors. Time for her to g

Alessandra Stanley has heard her critics. And she thinks they’re too loud.The day after her controversial piece on “How to Get Away With Murder” and its producer, Shonda Rhimes, appeared in print, and three days after it caused turmoil across social media, the TV critic for the New York Times told the New York Times’ public editor, apparently via email, that “I didn’t think Times readers would take the opening sentence literally because I so often write arch, provocative ledes that are then undercut or mitigated by the paragraphs that follow.”
That lede had been: “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called ‘How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.’” And what followed had been a bizarre look at the landscape for black women on TV, a morass of strangely charged language about the “menacing” sexuality of the “darker-skinned” actress Viola Davis, and deep engagement with an “angry black woman” stereotype that, frankly, anyone who has ever watched “Scandal” would know is deeply irrelevant. (Olivia Pope, the character on “Scandal” that Stanley described as going on a “rant,” speaks the same way as every other character on that show, white or black.)
The public editor for the Times, Margaret Sullivan, published a lengthy letter from a black reader urging the paper to fire Stanley; the critic’s lengthy history of corrections would seem to provide justification enough even before the most recent contretemps. That the piece hinges on a misunderstanding since corrected by the paper — that Rhimes had created Davis’ character as an avatar for herself, when indeed the whole series was created by a white man and Rhimes merely produces the show — is outside the scope of both Sullivan’s inquiry and Stanley’s reply, bizarrely. Both focus on the piece’s lede, rather than the strange and offensive ideas (that Rhimes’ characters that are black women are like Rhimes herself in being “angry”) that followed.

And yet Stanley’s reply is suffused with the hauteur of a person utterly convinced she’s in the right, and befuddled as to why anyone might disagree with her. She claims to have intended to praise Rhimes, and when Rhimes was vocal about feeling offended by Stanley’s piece, the writer argued her own writing was “too incendiary” and suggested that her haters just didn’t understand her work: “I think that a full reading allows for a different takeaway than the loudest critics took.”
There are many words for Stanley’s posture, continuing to shout out her assumptions even when presented with new information. The critical sensibility is not one of them.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/22/alessandra_stanleys_pathetic_non_apology_for_her_shonda_rhimes_angry_black_woman_review/

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An Article on Shonda Rhimes Rightly Causes a Furor

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

The article on the television producer Shonda Rhimes hadn’t yet appeared in Sunday’s paper, but the virtual world was ablaze in protest over it on Friday after it was published online.

Written by the longtime TV critic Alessandra Stanley, its first paragraph – with a reference to Ms. Rhimes as an “Angry Black Woman” – struck many readers as completely off-base. Many called it offensive. Some went further, saying it was racist.
Another reference to the actress Viola Davis as “less classically beautiful” than lighter-skinned African American actresses immediately inspired a mocking hashtag. (Ms. Stanley’s article was pegged to a show, starring Ms. Davis, that will debut this week on ABC, “How to Get Away with Murder.”)
One email from Patricia Washington, a longtime Times subscriber, addressed Dean Baquet, the executive editor, with a copy sent to me. She wrote:

I am deeply offended by the story written by Alessandra Stanley about Shonda Rhimes being an angry black woman. At first, I tried to give Ms. Stanley the benefit of the doubt and thought that she was attempting to be irreverent. Then I realized that she was being racist, ignorant, and arrogant. It is interesting that I have never seen any of Ms. Stanley’s stories refer to any white producers of TV or film programs in racist, stereotypical terms. As awful as the story is, she got her facts wrong because Shonda Rhimes is not the executive producer of the new show, “How To Get Away With Murder.”

I am a black woman and a lawyer. I have worked very hard to achieve in my profession and earn respect. I live in a very nice suburban community in Maryland. And yet, none of that makes one bit of difference because a New York Times writer can make whatever offhanded, racist opinions about a successful TV producer who is a black woman she cares to make, and because she has the protection of The New York Times behind her, can publish it. Because Ms. Stanley is a New York Times writer, her story has reached a national audience. Why is Ms. Stanley allowed to characterize Ms. Rhimes as she did and get away it? Why is she allowed to characterize Viola Davis as she did in her story and get away with it?
Ms. Stanley’s story was a backhand to me and it hurts. For the first time, I am considering cancelling my New York Times subscription because this story is much more than disagreeing with the writer’s opinion. This story denigrated every black woman in America, beginning with Shonda Rhimes, that dares to strive to make a respectable life for herself. No matter what we do, as far as Ms. Stanley is concerned, we will always be angry and have potent libidos as we have been perceived from slavery, to Jim Crow, and sadly in September 2014, the 21st century.
Please remove Ms. Stanley from the New York Times. None of us who read your paper should ever be subjected to this.
(Note to readers: Shonda Rhimes is, in fact, an executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder.The Times has corrected a headline and caption that referred to her as the creator of the show.)

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/an-article-on-shonda-rhimes-rightly-causes-a-furor/

More to come

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Update, 12:58 p.m., Monday: Early Monday afternoon, I spoke to the culture editor, Danielle Mattoon. She told me that arts and culture editors are well aware of the response to the piece, and she offered words of regret, as well as an explanation and a resolution for the future.“There was never any intent to offend anyone and I deeply regret that it did,” Ms. Mattoon said.
Ms. Mattoon called the article “a serious piece of criticism,” adding, “I do think there were interesting and important ideas raised that are being swamped” by the protests. She told me that multiple editors — at least three — read the article in advance but that none of them raised any objections or questioned the elements of the article that have been criticized.
“This is a signal to me that we have to constantly remind ourselves as editors of our blind spots, what we don’t know, and of how readers may react.”

Update, 2:31 p.m., Monday: Ms. Stanley sent me a detailed response early Monday afternoon, and provided links to other articles of hers that, she said, are stylistically similar to this one. She wrote:

In the review, I referenced a painful and insidious stereotype solely in order to praise Ms. Rhimes and her shows for traveling so far from it. If making that connection between the two offended people, I feel bad about that. But I think that a full reading allows for a different takeaway than the loudest critics took.

The same applies to your question about “less than classically beautiful.” Viola Davis said it about herself in the NYT magazine, more bluntly. I commended Ms. Rhimes for casting an actress who doesn’t conform to television’s narrow standards of beauty; I have said the same thing about Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect.”

My final take of the day: I still plan to talk to Mr. Baquet about the article, its editing, and about diversity in the newsroom, particularly among culture critics. The Times has significant diversity among its high-ranking editors and prominent writers, but it’s troubling that with 20 critics, not one is black and only two are persons of color.Correction: September 22, 2014
Due to a production error, the byline on this post was briefly incorrect.
Correction: September 22, 2014


An earlier version of this post said that there is only one person of color on The Times's staff of critics. There are two.

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/an-article-on-shonda-rhimes-rightly-causes-a-furor/

[Blackstar*]

I didn't need to see the critic's photo to know that she has problems with black women because nothing in that review made any kind of sense. Still, I'm not surprised... :/

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I hope dem fire ar ugly self.