Issa Rae’s Insecure, a year-old HBO sitcom, has garnered a rather substantial following during its relatively short run. The writer/actress got her start on Youtube with a series of shows, the latest and most prominent being The Misadventures of AWKWARD Black Girl, a miniseries depicting anecdotes of a black woman’s day-to-day encounters. The web series discusses matters of racialized microaggressions, navigation of social spaces, and unconventional or individualized coping mechanisms, contributing to the “awkward” component of it all. Ultimately, Awkward Black Girl acted as a segue to Issa’s televised industry intro.
Despite the writer/actress’s relative newness to her industry of choice, she has been regarded and welcomed as the likes of a pioneer and it’s no wonder. Issa writes and reflects a set of shared experiences, familiar to black women--and blacks in general--at a time where said community needs representatives and representation with comparatively few examples to that of mainstream or white America.
While figures of black women have been presented on shows like Scandal and Being Mary Jane, no show has quite managed to successfully deliver variety or the multifaceted nature of black women as individuals. For instance, Scandal’s Olivia Pope is a woman with a position in a high place which many believe is enough to satiate the craving of black women for positive representation in media but it’s not and cannot be.
Olivia Pope, a notably industrious woman, has myriad academic and career related accolades but spends every second of her political career falling deeper in love with and fretting about a married President who reciprocates but will not leave his wife for fear of tarnishing his public reputation. Pope often fantasizes about a life with her beloved Fitz which prompts the streaming of her fantasies, often fooling the audience into thinking that she’s gotten what she wants but she never does. What’s more, Olivia does not have a personal life. Any enjoyment she may express is merely pretense in order to elicit information from someone else for work or for publicity purposes--more work.
Similarly, Mary Jane of Being Mary Jane is so heavily immersed in advancement at work that... a personal life is not possible? While the show does occasionally allude to the difficulties entailed by becoming a successful woman and/or black woman in media, it can’t help creating acute failure in her love life. Mary Jane battles with nearing 40 and not having found the perfect man--this is one of her primary concerns, televised as a shortcoming, in addition to her drug addicted brother. Moreover, the show conveys the idea that a black woman must abandon her past, if not bountiful, for a successful future. There’s almost an omission of “blackness” to normalize the successful black woman. While it is important to acknowledge the fact that all blacks do not have the same experience, it appears as if these two women have no existence outside of their careers and their love-related angst comes to express the wrong set of ideas about black women. Being Mary Jane and Scandal emit the idea that black women cannot have it all, to borrow a phrase from Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver’s Girl’s Trip.
This is not to say that either of the two shows is problematic--why shouldn’t black women star in dramas about struggles for love and webs of dissatisfaction if white women get to do it without destroying the reputation of a whole subset of people? The problem lies in the fact that there is no place else for black, young women with divergent backgrounds to identify themselves. There’s no other show for them to view a black, female lead and say, “Damn! That’s me!” That’s where Insecure comes in.
Insecure divulges information about a qualic black, female experience that never gets its voice heard. It does not try to assimilate. It almost dedicates itself to offering access to a set of experiences likely to have been endured by any black woman and perhaps black men, whether rich or poor. It lends a voice to those black women who may have grown up without much money but sought after some degree or another and those who were privileged. It normalizes the black woman who speaks her AAVE like it has written rules with her friends and then switches to standard English so that her coworkers may understand, reinvigorating the notion of WEB DuBois’ double consciousness. She is not one thing or the other, she is one thing and the other. The show is an anomaly in that it works to rid itself of the monodynamic black woman, thus mopping up the trope spill in broadcast media with comedy as its instrument.
The show touches on the difference between racism and exclusion, emphasizing that blacks, as truly oppressed as they are, are not exempt from excluding other minority groups.
The subject of fetishization is also brought to viewers’ attention in an episode where two white women who we’ll call serial "copulators" lure Lawrence, who is also enticed by the fact that these women aren’t black.
Issa Rae presents her female characters as figures who are in control; things don’t “just happen.” Issa cheats on her boyfriend of five years and is saddened by his absence but it doesn’t cause paralysis. More importantly, it doesn’t become the center of the plot.
Innovative for many women, additionally, is Issa and Molly’s union. The two are products of different backgrounds but manage to use it in favor of their friendship. Significant but possibly overlooked is that both are dark-skinned women. Often, in television shows such as Martin there is a portrayal of two black women, one dark-skinned and one light-skinned where the light-skinned woman gets more attention than does her counterpart. Meme culture has also surfaced versions of the quote, “Every dark skin needs a light skin best friend,” to which one responds, “Sure but why?” In a more overt fashion and within the protagonist’s own friendship circle, Insecure addresses colorism within the black community, touching on multiple contentious topics and making them digestible with humor as her vehicle.
The show's complex character development generates a structure that makes it difficult for the audience to predict the actor’s next move at times. None of the characters are trapped in a box or left to be concrete figures, creating an organic ability for the show to align itself with the experiences of more than one type of black American woman. While no person(s) can be fully illustrated by way of a single medium, this feels like we might be a step closer.
The writer-actress announced that her show would be renewed for season 3 and it appears that her audience couldn’t be more excited.
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