She’s gotta have it Season 2: Nola Darling on the black british experience
The Oscar award winning director’s Netflix hit returned for a second season, with Nola Darling (Dewanda Wise) graduating from relationships with men (and a woman) to navigating her career highs and lows. Characterised as an upper middle class fine artist, residing in newly gentrified Brooklyn; Nola Darling, of Lee’s original 1986 production, certainly paralleled the Nola of 2017 however, in attempts to contextualize the source material to a 2010s audience falls to the waistline by painting a Nola (in the second season) that is completely inept from self awareness and ignorant, both within the cinematic universe, but adversely in wider socio-discourse.
The soliloquys present in the first season of the show provided dimension to Darling’s character, that, perhaps for the time appeared more revolutionary than it would today. The intensions behind actions and feelings really helped to cement her position as an omnipresent narrator, yet, also a young woman simply being, and figuring that out along the way. As these decrease in the second season, perhaps aided in a vastly cursory dismantling of social issue driven by the protagonist.
The season trails on with Nola’s acceptance onto the artists’ residency programme and her enlightenment towards her practice. Surrounded by some of the most phenomenal artists of our time, Tschabalala Self, Carrie May Weems and Amy Sherald. Whilst on the retreat, she embarks on a relationship with fellow artist, Olumide “Olu” Owoye (played by Michael Luwoye- Nigerian American actor), a British artist, who’s also inducted on to the programme. After a series of innocent flirting, the two finally set out a time for quiet meal for two (side note: dressed in Kente cloth- yet, being of Nigerian decent, not Ghanaian). Olu prepares a meal for the couple and the two then descend into a debate on nationality and the implications of blackness in acting. The scene cuts from dinner to… “I’m not mad at Chiweto Eji… I’m not mad at Jon Puerto Rican Bodega. Point is you London blokes need to fallback and fall away from taking our roles.”
Now, this isn’t the fist time the discussion on British artists versus American artists has surfaced. Like much, of Spike Lee’s readaptation, seems like an extraction from twitter debates. In 2017, Samuel L Jackson appeared on Hot 97’s Ebro in the Morning for his promotional run on the movie Kong. The interview centered racism and Trump then divulged into a somewhat rant on Black British actors in Hollywood. This later became the subject topic for the YouTube debate show, The Grapevine led by Ashley Akunna: Samuel Jackson: “Get Out” Should have an African American lead. Both shows set twitter ablaze over the xenophobic remarks made by seasoned actor Jackson; connoting that Brits were cheaper and lacked the trauma necessary to portray an African American character.
Nola Darling proceedes to school Olu’s character on the middle passage, England’s involvement in chattle slavery and how black Brit’s passivity is the cause of psychological Stockholm syndrome, which Olu agrees with, then states that, “I agree somewhat. But black British actors are better suited than black American actors for Staeside roles because they don’t carry the burden of fucked up Black American History” Lee’s regurgitation of the criticisms posed by Americans whom agreed with Jackson’s sentiments however, felt flat and lacked the range truly necessary to divulge in the diasporic differences of black people, British, in Particular.
This entire scene and its rehashing of the original debacle seemed more of a diatribe against Black British actors as opposed to the very real elites that control Hollywood. Like Samuel L Jackson, Spike Lee has existed within the actor’s circuit for over 20 years with very little recognintion compared to their white counterparts. Both nominated for Oscars, but not until, 2019 was Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman awarded. Until then, the arty, coming of age tropes seemed to fall on Hollywood’s deaf ears- cult African American classics however. But a film on white supremacy rather, is what went on to gain the illustrious award at the academy.
For many, it is common knowledge that the differences in behavior of Americans and the British is a very real distinction in the ways in which Black Brits and African American actors are portrayed. Brits, passive, demure, whereas Americans, Loud and brash. Race relations within the UK has always been positioned as a nonentity, much to the wretched nature of Black British existence both stateside and in the UK as opposed to the secondary status of Black American film and television. If we are to completely ignore the implications of colonialism, slavery and imperialism upon black British people, it is to therefore negate the existence of Caribbean positioning; it’s to completely ignore Africans, South Asians and more. To critique black British actors and their migration to the US is to completely overstate the percentage of British, black actors who in turn land those roles, and largely to ignore and over represent Black British female actors as a whole.
