Seeds
Seeds (2018)
Created, starring and written by: Deja Harrell
If being a twentysomething is awkward for (almost) everyone, is it more so for Black women?
That’s one question Deja Harrell asks in Seeds. In the show, four very different friends navigate the inevitable insecurity of being young Black women defying “respectability” out of joy or necessity: trying to jog to stay in shape but ending up smoking weed, stealing tampons because they’re overpriced, and drinking during the day.
“I wanted to show that Black women are nowhere near perfect….I wanted to be honest about that” Deja said. “I just wanted to see really young black girls who don't know anything. And show how funny that could be to not know anything, but still know a lot at the same time! What it's like to question the world around you.”
In many ways Seeds follows in a lineage of television sitcoms about Black women’s friendship and solidarity, starting with Living Single and moving on to Girlfriends and Insecure. But watching Seeds we are reminded that those series are products of a specific industrial context: broadcast and cable television, with its rules, norms, and expectations for how women and Black people should be represented. These women are more grown-up, closer to being the productive citizens that capitalism expects of all people, but a burden Black women carry in a unique way as they navigate racism and misogyny on top of the inequality we all endure. Because Living Single and Girlfriends were funded by advertisers marketing to productive viewers, they towed the line of respectability. Insecure goes farther, but, perhaps because of each character’s age and status, still avoids some of the messiness more common to real life.
The show isn’t all antics and games, however. Seeds clearly represents the serious side of intersectionality, how being a Black woman means not separating race and gender but feeling how both are intertwined.
In the fourth episode, “Hollys and Hoteps,” the friends are at a bar and confronted with how white women and Black men fail to understand this.
Beth (Dionne Addai) is hit on by a Black man who’s attitude changes she reveals she’s queer:
“How’s a king supposed to rule his kingdom if his queen’s not by his side to hold him down? I’m telling you feminists and homosexuals are the demise of the Black community.”
Meanwhile Danielle (Adia Alli) is confronted with a white woman, Kelly (Kate Cornelius), who thinks she understands Danielle’s experience simply because she’s dating a Black man.
“We go through a lot,” Danielle says.
“I know!’ Kelly retorts.
“You don’t know!” Danielle insists.
Deja intentionally wanted to show, through both humor and drama, the specificity of Black women’s experiences.
“There are points where I’m critiquing feminism and I’m critiquing the Black community….And the best way to do that is through satire…. I felt that comedy was the best way to do that because everybody understands comedy,” she said.
Seeds feels unabashedly unapologetic in its embrace of vulnerability and complexity. The result is the series is incredibly funny. Having screened the show in front of hundreds of people in Chicago, I saw how much joy and pleasure audiences took from watching the series. I could hear people laughing in deep recognition, as if saying: this is me but I’ve never seen it onscreen before!