Thump
Well-Known Member
I think everyone has seen it in movies or TV Shows. There is a tense dangerous situation and a group of people are trying to survive. As a audience member you start to notice the characters seem to fit certain generic archetypes. And that's when you notice the Expendable Black Guy. He is the guy that you can start a countdown until he becomes the first/only person to die.
A recent example that has pissed me off is a show on TNT called Falling Skies. It's a show about a bunch of survivors and resistance fighters of an alien invasion of Earth. Well, when the show first aired last year there was a scene were the survivors had a run in with some nefarious humans and in the scuffle the only "good guy" to die was a brother. Then later in the same season a Black father "sacrificed" himself to save his son. Then in the beginning of this season the same son gets killed by crossfire from fellow humans. And in the most recent episode the only newly introduced charterer (Jamil) gets killed by alien bugs.
The thing is, it's not like there are even that many casualties on the show. All the people I mentioned make up about 70% of all the deaths on the show. At this point there is only one brother left, so I guess his days are probably numbered.
I like how this kind of thing was brought to attention in a the scene from The Walking Dead (which is ironically very similar in premise to Falling Skies) . T-Dog (cant a brother get a regular name) was talking to the old man and he was worried that his days were numbered because he was the only Black person in their group full of White people (and one Asian).
A recent example that has pissed me off is a show on TNT called Falling Skies. It's a show about a bunch of survivors and resistance fighters of an alien invasion of Earth. Well, when the show first aired last year there was a scene were the survivors had a run in with some nefarious humans and in the scuffle the only "good guy" to die was a brother. Then later in the same season a Black father "sacrificed" himself to save his son. Then in the beginning of this season the same son gets killed by crossfire from fellow humans. And in the most recent episode the only newly introduced charterer (Jamil) gets killed by alien bugs.
The thing is, it's not like there are even that many casualties on the show. All the people I mentioned make up about 70% of all the deaths on the show. At this point there is only one brother left, so I guess his days are probably numbered.
I like how this kind of thing was brought to attention in a the scene from The Walking Dead (which is ironically very similar in premise to Falling Skies) . T-Dog (cant a brother get a regular name) was talking to the old man and he was worried that his days were numbered because he was the only Black person in their group full of White people (and one Asian).
