{"id":36687,"date":"2014-06-11T20:27:12","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T20:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36687"},"modified":"2017-02-19T22:53:14","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T22:53:14","slug":"thanks-belle-its-nice-to-see-a-face-like-mine-on-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36687","title":{"rendered":"Thanks, Belle, it’s nice to see a face like mine on screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks, Belle, it’s nice to see a face like mine on screen<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a> (The Observer<\/a>)
\n2014-06-07<\/p>\n

Ashley Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n

In giving top billing to Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the film <\/em>Belle makes a real contribution to raising awareness of the mixed-race experience<\/em><\/p>\n

My heart leaps whenever I see the poster for Amma Asante’s<\/a> new film, Belle<\/em><\/a>, high up on billboards around town. The poised, sincere face of its lead actress, Gugu Mbatha-Raw<\/a> (a Brit of black South African and white English extraction), towers above an otherwise white cast including Tom Wilkinson<\/a>, Miranda Richardson<\/a>, and ex-Harry Potter<\/em><\/a> villain Tom Felton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why? As a mixed-race Brit myself \u2013 white and black Caribbean, as I’ve been checking in the relevant boxes for some years now \u2013 it’s always been significant to me to see someone who looks like they could be a close relative in the foreground rather than the background. The film’s protagonist, Dido Elizabeth Belle<\/a>, as you might now know, is based on an actual 18th-century mixed-race woman of white British and black African heritage who was raised as an aristocrat…<\/p>\n

…The sociologist Emma Dabiri<\/a> convincingly argues that “black-mixed people can be racialised as black, whereas non-black-mixed people are able to inhabit a more ambiguous exotic space”. This, says Dabiri, puts paid to the myth that all mixed-race groups can be packaged together \u2013 as the media often attempt to do \u2013 as one separate, monolithic community: a tidy narrative of progress…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks, Belle, it’s nice to see a face like mine on screen The Guardian (The Observer) 2014-06-07 Ashley Clark In giving top billing to Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the film Belle makes a real contribution to raising awareness of the mixed-race experience My heart leaps whenever I see the poster for Amma Asante’s new film, Belle, high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,10],"tags":[17491,15271,13842,15676,2103,2835],"class_list":["post-36687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-ashley-clark","tag-dido-elizabeth-belle","tag-emma-dabiri","tag-gugu-mbatha-raw","tag-the-guardian","tag-the-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36687"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51701,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36687\/revisions\/51701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}