The Full New York Times Commentary by Alessandra Stanley that offended Shonda Rhimes - Creator of TV hit series Scandal and Greys Anatomy - calling Rhimes an "Angry Black Woman"

Viola Davis (left) in “How to Get Away With Murder.” (Credit: Craig Sjodin/ABC)

Shonda Rhimes took offense to the below NY Times 9-18-14 article by Alesssandra Stanley. Rhimes continues to create many successful TV series with diverse casts.

Story below by New York Times
Commentary by Alessandra Stanley titled: "Wrought in Their Creator’s Image Viola Davis Plays Shonda Rhimes’s Latest Tough Heroine"

When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.”

On Thursday, Ms. Rhimes will introduce “How to Get Away With Murder,” yet another network series from her production company to showcase a powerful, intimidating Black Woman. This one is Annalise Keating, a fearsome criminal defense lawyer and law professor played by Viola Davis. And that clinches it: Ms. Rhimes, who wrought Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and Dr. Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” has done more to reset the image of African-American women on television than anyone since Oprah Winfrey.

Ms. Rhimes didn’t just construct a series around one African-American woman. She has also introduced a set of heroines who flout ingrained television conventions and preconceived notions about the depiction of diversity.

Her women are authority figures with sharp minds and potent libidos who are respected, even haughty members of the ruling elite, not maids or nurses or office workers. Be it Kerry Washington on “Scandal” or Chandra Wilson on “Grey’s Anatomy,” they can and do get angry. One of the more volcanic meltdowns in soap opera history was Olivia’s “Earn me” rant on “Scandal.”

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Shonda Rhimes (right), creator of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder.”
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Ms. Rhimes has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable. She has almost single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldn’t break.

Her heroines are not at all like the bossy, sassy, salt-of-the-earth working-class women who have been scolding and uh-uh-ing on screen ever since Esther Rolle played Florida, the maid on “Maude.”

They certainly are not as benign and reassuring as Clair Huxtable, the serene, elegant wife, mother and dedicated lawyer on “The Cosby Show.” In 2008, commentators as different as the comedian Bill Cosby and the Republican strategist Karl Rove agreed that it was the shining, if fictional, example of the Huxtables that prepared America for a Black President and First Lady. (This was after a Fox News anchor applied the description “terrorist fist jab” to the couple’s friendly fist bump.)

Even now, six years into the Obama Presidency, race remains a sensitive, incendiary issue not only in Ferguson, Mo., but also just about everywhere except ShondaLand, as her production company is called.

In that multicultural world, there are many African-Americans at the top of every profession. But even when her heroine is the only nonwhite person in the room, it is the last thing she or anyone around her notices or cares about.

And what is most admirable about Ms. Rhimes’s achievement is that in a business that is still run by note-giving, nit-picking, compromise-seeking network executives, her work is mercifully free of uplifting role models, parables and moral teachings.


Katie Lowes and Kerry Washington in “Scandal.” Credit Ron Tom/ABC

Ms. Davis is perhaps best known for her role in “The Help” as a stoic maid in the segregated South, a role for which she was nominated for a best actress Oscar. As it turned out, it was her “Help” co-star Octavia Spencer, playing the sassy back talker, who won an Oscar (for supporting actress).

Maybe it’s karma, or just coincidence with a sense of humor, but some of the more memorable actresses in that movie (its star Emma Stone, who played a young writer championing civil rights, is not one of them) are now all on network television, only this time, the help is on top.

Allison Janney, an imperious employer in the film, now plays an ex-addict and the matriarch of three generations of poor single mothers on a CBS comedy, “Mom.”

Ms. Spencer is one of the stars of a new Fox series, “Red Band Society,” albeit in a more predictable, pre-Rhimesian role: a bossy, sharp-tongued hospital nurse who is a softy at heart.

Ms. Davis’s character, on the other hand, is the lead, a tenured professor who also has her own law firm: She is as highhanded as John Houseman’s character in the 1970s movie “The Paper Chase,” and as craftily enigmatic as the lawyer Glenn Close played on “Damages.”

The premiere episode is a cleverly constructed hoot: A group of Keating’s top first-year students compete fiendishly to win internships in her law office, then find themselves using her classroom lessons to fiendishly cover up a death. It’s a sexy murder mystery not unlike Donna Tartt’s first novel, “The Secret History,” not a nighttime soap. Ms. Rhimes is the show’s marquee muse, but the writer is a “Grey’s Anatomy” alumnus, Peter Nowalk. The pilot episode of “How to Get Away With Murder” is promisingly slick and suspenseful, without all the histrionic, staccato speechifying that Ms. Rhimes favors on “Scandal.”

Read the remainder of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/television/viola-davis-plays-shonda-rhimess-latest-tough-heroine.html?_r=0










There Are Just So Many Things Wrong With the New York Times’ Shonda Rhimes "Wrought in Their Creator’s Image" Article - Margaret Lyons writes in New York Magazine below:

New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley has a long history of being wrong about a great many things. But her newest article, an ostensible paean to Shonda Rhimes, is inaccurate, tone-deaf, muddled, and racist. Stanley's "Wrought in Their Creator’s Image: Viola Davis Plays Shonda Rhimes’s Latest Tough Heroine" is a mess. Let's take a look.

"When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman."

Why in the world would it be called that? Are there specific instances of Shonda Rhimes seeming particularly angry? Many of us follow her on Twitter, where she does not seem angry — except maybe about this atrocious article. What is the maximum amount of anger black women are allowed to demonstrate before they get stuck with that label? More angry than everyone else? What is it that qualifies Shonda Rhimes as an angry black woman and not just … a black woman? Do we use any kind of coded, dismissive language when talking about, oh, Aaron Sorkin or John Wells or J.J. Abrams? Ha, ha, ha, ha, of course we don't. Also, she's not "getting away with it" because no matter what she does, she's still going to be slapped with the racist label "angry black woman" by the New York Times.

"On Thursday, Ms. Rhimes will introduce How to Get Away With Murder, yet another network series from her production company to showcase a powerful, intimidating black woman. This one is Annalise Keating, a fearsome criminal defense lawyer and law professor played by Viola Davis. And that clinches it: Ms. Rhimes, who wrought Olivia Pope on Scandal and Dr. Miranda Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy, has done more to reset the image of African-American women on television than anyone since Oprah Winfrey."

You can tell how much that image has been reset because you're still calling her an "angry black woman." It's almost too progressive. Shonda Rhimes is many wonderful things, but she is not actually the creator of How to Get Away With Murder. That's Peter Nowalk. And he's white. Though my guess is he'd have to be a raging maniac before anyone would label him "angry."

"Be it Kerry Washington on Scandal or Chandra Wilson on Grey’s Anatomy, they can and do get angry. One of the more volcanic meltdowns in soap opera history was Olivia’s "Earn me" rant on Scandal."

I am a huge Grey's Anatomy fan. Chandra Wilson is not the star of Grey's Anatomy, certainly not the way Kerry Washington is the star of Scandal, nor is her character angry. Tough? Sure. Serious, driven, passionate, difficult to please — all these things. Angry, though? On Scandal, Cyrus is by far an angrier character than Olivia. Mellie is a rage machine. But somehow, for some reason, this article is just about how angry black women are. What's the difference between a rant and a monologue? Sometimes just the race of the person delivering it.

"Ms. Rhimes has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable. She has almost single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldn't break."

Congratulations to Shonda Rhimes for ending racism. But how are any of these characters cast "in her own image"? Futher, she didn't "embrace the caricature" of the Angry Black Woman — she rejected it completely and wrote other things. What kind of character would Shonda Rhimes have to write before there was no twisted logic to suggest that secretly they're still Angry Black Women? As it turns out, any black female character — and many black female real-life human beings — can be labeled an Angry Black Woman. That way, their ideas can be ignored, marginalized, and dismissed.

Read the entire Margaret Lyons article: http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/shonda-rhimes-new-york-times-alessandra-stanley.html