Avery wanted that look from day one. For us, the notion of the white man ‘holding us down’ is not a thing, but for Avery it was. I can’t even imagine what the poor man went through with those guys. With Rick Berman. It’s like they stripped him of his power. But then as soon as he got to be his physical image and stopped looking like a black Ken doll – I’m sorry, it’s true! – and got to look like his vision of Sisko, it was like night and day. He was suddenly a powerful cat and it was, like, ‘Whoa, I wouldn’t fuck with him!’
Terry Farrell, discussing the change in Sisko’s look at the beginning of season 4 in Star Trek DS9
I’m at the part of The Fifty Year Mission in which the DS9 cast and crew are talking about how finally by season 4 Avery Brooks was allowed by the studio powers to look the way he wanted to look (aka the great hair migration). I had always stupidly bought the official explanation that Paramount didn’t want two different captains to be bald-headed. And I figured it was just executive stupidity. But reading this book with so many comments similar to the ones Farrell gave, I can see that the studio execs were fearful of the image of a powerful black man. That is still executive stupidity but of a significantly different and very problematic nature.
Thinking about it further, you can say that Benny Russell’s battle to bring Benjamin Sisko to life in the episode Far Beyond the Stars is similar to the battle that Avery Brooks had to wage to present Sisko in the way he believed was the correct one.
(via old-type-40)
This is from the book I posted all those screen shots of last month. So informative.
(via drunkspacelizards)
