Brandon Jay McLaren became semi-famous the same way as most
actors. He starred in a season of Power Rangers, and moved up from
there. More specifically, McLaren
portrayed Jack Landors, the red ranger in Power
Rangers S.P.D. It was the beginning
of a fruitful career for a guy who would later end up in things such as Harper’s Island, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, and Dead
Before Dawn. However, there’s one
thing that all three of these horror tinged projects have in common. Each of these make Brandon Jay McLaren into
the token black guy among a group of white friends.
The token black guy is a trope that has existed for decades
at this point. The whole idea is that to
get some sort of diversity into a cast of white people, one actor or actress of
a different race would be hired to fill out the cast. It was a way to check off a box of having one
non-white person on screen during the movie.
This actor usually doesn’t get too much to say when they are present,
other than loud exclamations that exaggerate what white people think black
people act like. The character ends up
being superfluous to the story.
At least, that’s how the token black character started. And as soon as the people behind the movie
were satisfied with their diversity, they would kill off the black
character. The white characters were the
ones being written with any form of substance, so they were going to be the
more interesting people to watch. This
led to the trope in which the black guy dies first. Usually, the character who was the least
formed was the first to be killed in the main storyline. This doesn’t include opening scenes in which
a movie attempts to scare the viewers right off the bat. The token character would be the first to die
because they were the least formed. They
were the shell of a minority.
At some point in the late eighties, the token black
character evolved. No longer were they
the character that simply said things like “Damn son!” or “Whack!” The characters evolved into actual
characters, though hardly ever the main character. Especially in horror and teen movies, the
black character was relegated to friend of the main character. This is something that is still true for the
most part. It was most prominent in the
1990s though, with movies like Dazed
& Confused, or Halloween H20,
where the one black person in the movie is the security guard for the school,
who is absent for the majority of the Michael Myers stalking people story.
Soon after the teen movie boom of the late nineties, where
the black friend character (usually one, sometimes two people) was present, a
movie came out spoofing those kinds of movies.
That movie was called Not Another
Teen Movie. I’ve said movie a lot in
this paragraph and I’m going to say it a few more times. Not
Another Teen Movie was a spoof of the popular teen movies. It took the majority of its storyline from She’s All That, a Freddie Prinze Jr. and
Rachel Leigh Cook romantic comedy. But
it did more than just spoof that movie. Not Another Teen Movie also pointed out
the trope of the token black guy. One
black guy goes to a party, sees another one, and respectfully asks him to leave
because he’s supposed to be the only black guy at the party full of white people. Then they both say “That’s whack.” It’s pointing out the trope in the perfect
way.
In more recent years, I have noticed Brandon Jay McLaren
popping up in the token black character role.
The first time was when I watched Harper’s
Island back in 2009. The television
show followed a wedding party on an island who were being picked off one by one
in a slasher film like scenario. It
aired on CBS for one season. The entire
cast was white except for McLaren. His
character was the college friend of the groom.
Basically, he was the only black character and he was delegated to the
buddy. He didn’t suffer the same fate as
most token black guys, however, as he made it far into the series, being one of
the final characters to die.
Then we come to Tucker
and Dale vs. Evil which takes the stereotypical horror tropes and flips
them to the perspective of the “bad guys” who are actually decent people
accidentally involved in the deaths of a group of friends. Of course the movie was going to hit on the
token black guy, and McLaren stepped in as the character. Again, he isn’t the first to die, which shows
that the trope has evolved at least that much in the years since the “black guy
dies first” stigma was huge. It’s still
strange that he’s the only non-white actor in the movie, after LOST was such a huge success with its
diverse cast.
Finally, we come to Dead
Before Dawn, another horror movie in which Brandon Jay McLaren is the only
black character of note. He plays the
best friend of the lead character. The
most that his character gets for his own storyline is that he’s a football
player and he plays a game. Other than
that, he’s just the best friend who is tagging along with the main character on
his journey through a zemonic Hell.
(Zemons being zombie demons, the evil force throughout the movie.) He’s enjoyable in the role, but there’s a
lack of depth to the character that seems obvious when watching the movie. Even the lesser friends in the movie get more
to their characters than him.
With diversity being one of the major topics in the modern
cinematic landscape, it’s strange to see so many movies in which there is still
only one character that isn’t white. Hopefully
the rise of shows like Blackish, Fresh Off the Boat, and Empire will lead to more diversity in
the casting of movies. The population of
movies does not need to be 95% white people for the movies to be
enjoyable. Skin colour doesn’t make a
main character any more or less captivating.
Give some non-white people a shot.
Give them more to do than say ethnically stereotypical things. The token black character trope needs to come
to an end. Brandon Jay McLaren deserves
better. Black people deserve better. Audiences deserve better.
I have some notes to finish out this week’s post:
- Dead Before Dawn was suggested by @erincandy, who has previously suggested Glitter, Ghost Storm, and Zombeavers.
- Christopher Lloyd was in this movie. He could also be seen in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, and Baby Geniuses. His voice could be heard in Foodfight!
- Have you seen Dead Before Dawn? What did you think? What do you think of Brandon Jay McLaren? The token black guy trope? Use the comments for any of this stuff.
- If you have a movie you want to suggest for me to watch for a future Sunday “Bad” Movies installment, you can suggest it in the comments or on my Twitter timeline.
- Next week, I will be covering the Sleepaway Camp movies. Not just the first three that most people know if they know the series. I’m also going to be watching Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor, and Return to Sleepaway Camp. That’s five movies that I’m watching for next week’s post. Get ready. I’ll see you then.
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