Tuesday, January 15, 2008

My Friend, the Haitian

filed under: heroes

So I’ve been totally engrossed in the first season of Heroes on DVD, but what’s grated my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard is actor Jimmy Jean-Louis’s memory-erasing character called The Haitian. I’m not taking offense because I’m Haitian (I’m not), I’m taking offense because WTF? If he was the only African-American working for The Company, would his coworkers just call him “the black guy”?! He’s mute, okay, so ostensibly he can’t tell anyone what his name is. But c’mon. That kind of knee-jerk racism brings out the race man in me.

I’m not calling for a boycott or anything. But for those who don’t watch Heroes, the cast is populated by superpowered characters, and the bad guys work for The Company. They spend the series capturing people with powers, poking and probing them till they die, and discarding them. The Haitian appears pretty early on, what episode exactly I don’t remember. What I do remember is that after he erases the memory of mind-reading cop Matt Parkman, said cop starts to get flashbacks of what happened to him and immediately identifies dude as “the Haitian.” But the Haitian is mute. So there’s no Haitian accent to pick up on. How does he know the guy’s Haitian?

Sorry, it’s just lazy. They coulda done better. Weeks ago my homegirl Alexandra Phanor, writer extraordinaire, came visiting Paris with her French bf Antonin to meet the parents. She’s Haitian. We met at the Louvre and had drinks at Le Fumoir, a spot my man Miguel Baguer put me onto when I first moved here. When Hollywood does my life story, I hope they mention Alex’s name and she’s not just the Haitian.

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Comments

kymberli at 2:52 PM on 01/16/08:

Marlo from The Wire has just joined the cast….maybe he will be The Haitian Son!

MML at 2:59 PM on 01/16/08:

i hear that ‘the wire’ is good, kym. i watch zero TV. ‘desperate housewives’ and ‘sex and the city’ once upon a time (to paraphrase timbaland).

Rob Fields at 8:31 PM on 01/16/08:

Funny, but I’m watching season one also. Good news—and this won’t ruin anything for you—is that he gets lines as the story develops. Not sure if we ever get his name though. The other question, of course, is how do they know he’s Haitian if he doesn’t talk?

Seriously, though, other than that, the first season is turning out to be reeeally good. In fact, I expect that Netflix will be delivering disc 6 today!

MML at 12:35 AM on 01/17/08:

yeah, i’ve seen homeboy speak by this point. but for one episode, they jump ahead 5 years, and he’s still ‘the haitian’ in 2012!

mobrowne at 12:57 AM on 01/17/08:

and see, that’s why i hate you. now i have to rent the series from netflix, lose days and a lot of good sleep to figga out what the hell is going on…

MML at 9:29 PM on 01/17/08:

mahogany! i insist you jump on the bandwagon right now and fuck with ‘heroes’ soon as possible; unless you have a more important book to read. that’s the only free pass…

Shawn Taylor at 11:47 PM on 01/17/08:

When has any brother or sister (of any race) ever been treated with respect in SF/Fantasy? And don’t say Hiro from Heroes. That’s some yellow coonin’ if I ever saw it.

MML at 11:19 AM on 01/18/08:

latifah in ‘sphere’? will smith in ‘i am legend’? (he dies, but heroically.) yes, hiro is coonin.

theHotnesss Grrrl at 10:46 PM on 01/18/08:

There’s also Wesley Snipes in Blade; Laurence Fishburne & Jada Pinkett in The Matrix and Ziyi Zhang & Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger. With the exception of Lost, Heroes has hired more actors of color than any other network primetime cable tv show and that’s been for the past like 10 years or something. So we have our gripes with The Haitian character (i agree w/ you on the wackness), but it’s not all bad. What is bad, actually, is the current season of Heroes. I hear they are struggling with too many plotlines and characters and are fighting to keep the show afloat. What that means in Hollywood is they gonna have to kill off some brothers and sisters in the new season. Check out the list of demised characters on Lost if you don’t believe me! So enjoy The Haitian while you can as this is probably homies last season.

MML at 10:56 PM on 01/18/08:

points well taken, nikki. i’ve never seen ‘lost’, but i did hear that season 2 of ‘heroes’ is weak. it’s possible to watch every episode streamed on their website, but it doesn’t work when you’re outside the US.

Shawn Taylor at 5:47 AM on 01/22/08:

Out of everyone theHotnesss Grrrl listed, only Ziyi Zhang counts as a good portayal. Blade (and I love the first two movies) was the other otherized to the nth degree. He was this cool, sexy, and confident dude, but didn’t get any type of real dramtic arc aside from kicking ass? A travesty. The Matrix was foul. It might as well have been called the Legend of Morpheus Vance. Another mystical negro helping the white boy attain enlightenment. And Jada was just an after thought. The story should’ve revolved arouund Morpheus and Niobi.

theHotnesss Grrrl at 10:40 PM on 01/23/08:

Damn Shawn it’s like that!:) Blade esp the 1st two parts pretty much kept true to the comic it was based on and in those comics Blade didn’t really have a major dramatic arc. He’s a sci-fi superhero that kicked as* and Wes did that superbly and for that I gotta give him his props. About The Matrix I would agree with you if I just focused on the conclusion and the third installment. I do not think that about Morpheus when I analyze Part I where the plot revolved around him and his beliefs and his struggles and his ego. It’s too bad that Will Smith turned down the part of Neo. I wonder how that would impact your feelings toward said “mystical negro.”

Shawn Taylor at 6:39 PM on 01/26/08:

It wasn’t like that! I’m just saying…I love genre entertainment but the people of color representation is sorely lacking—especially considering that it is us that are the first in line to see any sci fi-type flick. Wait till ya’ll see my sci-fi tinged puppet show.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

My Friend, the Haitian

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