Yeah, I was shocked, since so much of this show is explicitly about awareness of this kind of thing. Even if it was deliberate to show that Black people can be on both sides of colonizer violence and even if that’s actually acknowledged on screen instead of them focusing on the plot, the end result is still this person violently killed and then no longer on the show. I make a big deal about representation coming from actually being visible and in front of us because otherwise, it’s inevitable that no matter how much sympathy we had in this ep, by next week and then onward, we’ll have moved on. It is simply how this works. It won’t even be like George, who lives on by people still remembering and mentioning him, who will mourn Yahima?
And my other concern was like, the focus on the genitals. Honestly, I haven’t even been fully comfortable with the nudity level for Tic, I’m sure they have their reasons and the actors are comfortable with it and maybe it’s like, to take control or make it more matter of fact and less salacious, but it just feels like if certain people are oversexualized by so much of society still, is it really worth showing these kinds of shots? I know it’s HBO and they show women all the time but that’s kind of my point, I don’t love that either.
Maybe they will reverse it, even if the actor only has this one IMDB entry for the show, that could be to avoid spoilers. But…I don’t have lots of faith in that. And we will move on.