"Plato's Stepchildren" and Southern TV Stations

Missed this before...

Network TV, anyway.

 

Which part of my post are you referring to--L.A. Law or Dawson's Creek?

 

Both. L.A. Law was on NBC and Dawson's Creek was on the WB. There were already cable networks like Showtime and HBO that might have featured a same-sex kiss. I don't recall if they ever did it on Showtime's Brothers, but I've not seen that show since it originally aired.

 

I have some questions:
1. Was there a big fuss from the South after the kiss. Were there thousands of letters and did sponsors drop out by the hundreds?
2. When was it change from Spock to Shatner and would it have been counted as the "first interracial kiss" if it had been Nimoy (playing an alien) instead of Shatner?
3. If the Masters/Lazarus romance had happened then would there have even been a kiss. I can only ever recall Kirk kissing people and on occasion Spock when he was crazy. Even married people didn't kiss (in the human way) on Star Trek. Kirk was generally the only person who kissed in TOS (a tough job but someone had to do it). So if a black-white relationship happened but no kissing or bedroom scenes would that have been scandalous?

 

1. There's no evidence of any public fuss on record about "Plato's"
2. Uhura never kissed Spock in any draft of what became "Plato's Stepchildren."
3. "Alternative Factor" First Draft script, p48 Masters and Lazarus smooch

 

Of course it would, because it's the actors that matter, not the characters. Nobody cared about the interspecies marriage between Sarek and Amanda, or about Kirk getting seduced by an alien bug-bird creature in the illusory guise of Antoinette Bower, because both actors were white. Racists weren't going to get upset about non-existent differences between imaginary races, because that would have no impact on real life. Their concern was that if the media normalized images of black people and white people getting romantic with each other, it would promote real-life "miscegenation" and dilute the purity of the white race.

I'm sure it would have, for the same reason. Note that when Eartha Kitt replaced Julie Newmar as Catwoman in season 3 of Batman, the sexual tension between Batman and Catwoman was immediately dropped. Any expression of romantic interest between races, even mere flirtation, was a no-no.

Which I gather is the reason the Spock/Uhura flirtation we saw in "The Man Trap" and "Charlie X" was absent from later episodes -- because of network objections to the idea of interracial romance. Although I leave it to the Fact Trekkers to chime in on whether there's any actual evidence of that.

 

In the 1965 Robert Butler-directed early episode of Hogan's Heroes "Hold That Tiger" an agent played by Arlene Martel is in the barracks and when Hogan asks where a woman is supposed to sleep amongst a bunch of men Newkirk volunteers "she can share my cubical" and then all the men start offering the same...including Kinchloe (Ivan Dixon) pointing to himself (12:50 at this link). In an interview Butler said he argued with Dixon on if this was appropriate for the show's audience, and they called the producer who told Dixon to go ahead and ogle her. It's not a big deal given it's two black guys amongst 9 whites, but it demonstrates that US network TV was steadily creeping up on interracial affairs.

How much that was curbed by the "webs" (networks) is difficult to say without seeing the broadcast standards memos for each show. ABC aired the Wagner-Nicholas kiss around the time Laugh-In was shooting an episode in which they made a joke about not being allowed to show a black and white kiss on NBC...which may or may not have been true.

 

As it turned out, not at all. People worried about such a reaction, ahead of time, but in the end, no such backlash occurred.

This has been repeatedly confirmed by all concerned, including Nichelle Nichols.

 

Meanwhile, in I, Spy, Cosby's love interests are scrupulously kept Black (of course, with 20/20 hindsight, I much prefer the episodes where he has no love interests...)

 

On ER, Doc Benton's "white" love interest left because he - essentially - couldn't handle a conflict of ethnic backgrounds...or something. I always found that unfortunate.

 

La Salle didn't like the romance in the context of the series, because he believed the writers were saying of his character Benton, "... the only time that this man becomes human and tender and vulnerable and open is when he falls in love with a white woman" [https://www.cbr.com/er-eriq-lasalle-benton-corday-breakup].

 

We've pointed that out before, but to be clear we've never gone so far as to say at what level that decision was made. As per the Hogan's Heroes example sometimes those decisions were made a the show level not the network level. Was it ABC who nixed the flirtation? Dozier, knowing his show was ratings borderline and not wanting to rock the boat? Eartha Kitt as a strong black woman not wanting to play lovesick to a white man? I've not seen/read this discussed by anyone involved in the show, so I can't speak to it.

Yep. Hence my "creeping up on".

 

ANY man south of 7 on the Kinsey scale (or woman north of 1, or enby who... well you get the picture) who can resist Eartha Kitt is...something special.

 

A neat trick since the scale is only 0 to 6!

 

Exactly. Even gay men and straight women have to pause and think...

 

Hahaha. I never had to pause and think. I found her captivating but not sexually attrrrrrrractive.