Revenge of the Black Best Friend (Review): The Tales of the Exploiter and the Exploited
Photography: Roya DelSol / Set Design: Alexa DelSol / Styling: Zola Jeffers / Hair: Eugenia Forskin / Makeup: Nicole Guthrie
Dress Diséiye, Earrings HOME by Areeayl, Rings and Bracelet provided by Amanda Parris
In the last 15 minutes of Amanda Parris’ Revenge of the Black Best Friend series, we witness a new chapter in Canadian media criticism. It’s subtle but just as victorious as the protagonist’s (Dr. Toni Shakur) stare into the camera. Our conversations on representation, respectability and the superficiality of diversity and inclusion were expanded to reveal what’s created within all that rhetorical chaos: the exploitative thought leader. And by exploitative, I mean of people and trending political discourse. The six-episode digital comedy on CBC Gem follows the transformative lessons of Dr. Toni Shakur (Olunike Adeliyi), an actor, activist and self-help guru. Her talk show and books expose the insidious tactics used to sideline Black actors. She offers them justice and a guide on how to escape stereotypical casting.
In an interview with Amanda Parris, CBC journalist and playwright, we discussed how perfect the timing was for her show to be released just as she won the Changemaker Award. The Changemaker Award honours Canadian media creatives whose work has focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. In the process of creating Dr. Toni Shakur, Parris says she modelled the character after celebrity self-help gurus, like Iyanla Vanzant and Dr. Drew, and herself in an effort to interrogate, “what happens when a social justice issue becomes your brand? What happens when you start to make money off of the thing that started as a form of activism? Are you still trying to dismantle the structure?”
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Dress Diséiye, Earrings HOME by Areeayl, Rings and Bracelet provided by Amanda Parris
Shakur’s energy and Adeliyi’s capture of her ambition are electric. Her preached solutions promise revenge (as the title suggests) which comes with two meanings; one we’re familiar with, and the other is reparative. Parris explains that there’s “a traditional idea of revenge, which you see in episode 3, ‘The One Who Dies First.’ And that's a violent sort of revenge fantasy. But [revenge] could also just be the revenge of us finally taking center stage.” Shakur’s problem-solving taps into a fantasy many Black creatives (actors and beyond) have daydreamed. The ones where we see the perpetrators of our demise (aka gatekeepers) punished or exposed, and we’re rewarded with the role, funding or space that allows us to produce the work we’ve been aching to release with the right resources.
Photo: Duane Cole, Still from episode 102, Cast (L-R): Olunike Adeliyi
But her brand’s dependability is crumbling. We see how ineffective her teachings are when applied to real life and used to negotiate with colleagues and directors. It’s not unlike my own real-life experiences when I was an intern. Fueled by my journalism professors’ advice that I actively pursue taking on more responsibility, what I thought was professional persistence actually irritated my supervisor into sternly shutting me down and pretending she couldn’t see me on the street after my internship ended. Like the protagonist from “The One Who Dies First,'' I realized you can’t reason with gatekeepers when their concept of your disadvantages is so shallow. While the protagonist raged against the cast and crew’s condescension (and I didn’t), in reality, his actions would’ve caused a scandal that would’ve led to debates on whether his actions were an act of resistance or an intra-communal discussion on appearing respectable to white gatekeepers. And what would Shakur's stance be then?
From episodes 1 through 5, we see a stark difference in results between what she’s selling and what really happens. Yes, we’re presented with a collection of tropes that Black actors have been forced to repeat, but the issue isn’t just that they’re pigeonholed. In their attempts to speak up for themselves, they’re patronized with comments about their “limited range” and how their meager role is integral to the team. These rejections are common for all Black creatives whose imaginations and intuitions are stifled by Canadian media’s irritation with our requests for more than “representation.” Parris captures this relatable frustration through Degrassi: TNG alumna Andrea Lewis, whose role in RBBF was inspired by her 2013 blog post that detailed how she and her character, Hazel, were denied a chance to develop. Parris said, “I thought it was so brave of her to write that blog post because this was way before 2020 and the cultural reckoning and this really public conversation that we're having now around diversity, equity and inclusion. I thought it was just so incredible of her to do that, knowing what we know about how this [Canadian] industry doesn't like to be critiqued.” Lewis’ testimonial is a reminder that “representation” isn’t enough to get Black actors and creatives original opportunities.
Dress Diséiye, Earrings HOME by Areeayl, Rings and Bracelet provided by Amanda Parris
By the last episode, “Cancelled,” Parris sparks a new conversation. The consequences of Shakur becoming a glorified fragment of her community are a reenactment and a premonition. Shakur being called out by Black Twitter and people she was supposed to be helping is not unlike Black Lives Matter members, in America and Canada, being questioned and criticized for their spending, collaborations and mainstream direction. But this message is not just relevant to activists. As radical thinking proves to be a popular career choice, Parris shows us what it looks like for creatives to be at the forefront of trending political circumstances. Regurgitating acceptable political takes makes Shakur less of a threat to white higher-ups. In fact, they see her as someone to align with to appear progressive. Even if she is a controversial figure within her own community, Parris points out that her alliance with these gatekeepers means “that she is agreeing to create content with an entity that does not have any value or does not see the value in the folks that she might have previously thought she was working for and with.”
Like many activists-turned-high-profile-thought-leaders, Shakur becomes the “voice of her people,” sacrificing her humanity for the sake of being the revolutionary hero. With her character inspired by sensationalist self-help gurus, it’s only natural for her to have a TV show that makes you wonder how necessary it is to have her guest’s vulnerabilities exposed to the public. In “I Swear I Was In This,” she humiliates her guest, a Black actor whose role has been significantly reduced, for the opportunity to confront the white woman director who cut his role (The white woman director is very much the Asian man at the auction from Get Out, which Parris says was an intentional nod to the “people who are so locked into believing that they could never be the perpetrator of oppression”). Her confrontation, as Parris explains, “is just her writing herself into the narrative as the savior. Because she's Toni Shakur, her rewrite has to involve herself in some way, shape or form.” That’s part of her brand.
Revenge of the Black Best Friend is streaming now on CBC Gem.