For nearly six years now, Donald Glover has been on the path of portraying, challenging, and even redefining for some their perception of blackness viaAtlanta’sunmistakable brand ofcomedy, and it was about time that experiment carried on to other shores, especially now that the show’s third season has taken the cast all the way across the pond.
Quite frankly, Paper Boi’s European tour has carefully selected its locations in the old continent to do that, but perhaps this week’s “White Fashion” one-ups the rest in terms of showcasing how different black culture is in other parts of the world, where racism still exist but lives on taking wholly new and yet familiar forms. To do this,Atlantaresorts to its usual trickof sending each cast member out on their own adventures set off by a fashion campaign gone wrong.
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It all begins in the haute couture London workshop of renowned designer Bouchet, who’s coming up with the brand’s latest coveted a time a varsity jacket bearingtraditional manga artmade by a Tel-Aviv artist. It’s chic, it’s expensive, it’s white fashion. The only problem is the French visionary has decided to emblazon the jacket with the number 5 and the words “Central Park,” thus triggering a shameful run of ads in the United States with the cherry on top being the white woman surrounded by Black people on Erso Erso’s billboards.
In America, the Central Park Five is a landmark case on racial profiling and discrimination, however, in Europe, it wouldn’t be commonplace for the vast majority of people to be familiarized withAmericans’ own brand of racism, so blame it on the localization team to take the fall. Enter rapper Paper Boi to jump aboard Erso Erso’s diversity board to help the company handle this absolute mess with a series of campaigns designed to calm the outrage pouring in.
Al keeps his usual demeanor and is fascinated by finally being able to cash in on his fame and get some pricey clothes for free; Earn keeps playing his managerial role as the situation progresses; and, being the man of the world he is, Darius simply wants to get his hands on the infamous jacket and some good old fashioned Nigerian joloff rice. When they’re getting Paper Boi’s new clothes tailored, Earn lights a spark in Al’s mind: he should use this genuine opportunity to campaign for black communities to reinvest in themselves, though Al cuts him short to remind him what happens to Black activists: “they kill him”.
Darius’ adventure kicks off with the fashion house’s professional people pleaser, Sharon, who takes him to a local Nigerian restaurant that makes him feel right at home (Nollywood’sSharon Stone in Abujaincluded), the woman is fascinated by the food and considers getting these flavors out there. Later on, Darius revisits Mimi’s food joint only to find out it’s been shut down with a food truck owned by Sharon that screams all kinds of cultural appropriation without any of the flavor.
The real protagonist here is Al, who meets his fellow board members, including Khalil who’s here to navigate him through the waters of “apologizing for white people” as they enter a press conference where Paper Boi is perplexed at having to answerthe question “When will racism be over?”. Al is horrified, to say the least, by his new mates who seem like a diverse bunch of grifters taking Erso Erso’s money for their own personal gain, but he manages to get a pitch across the table and €60k for his “Reinvest in the Hood” campaign.
Unfortunately, things don’t go as expected as Paper Boi’s message gets “All Lives Mattered” with a Black and white ad featuring a pretty diverse array of models, butlacking the Black protagonismhe desired. Al storms an Erso Erso meeting completely fuming, yet when he’s leaving Khalil offers a harsh reality pill, these executives don’t want Black consumers to stray away from their brand and, in his opinion, that’s why people like him need to set up their own nonprofits to ensure the money gets where it needs to be, and so he departs tothe hyped-upBlack Panther 2premiere.
Khalil’s true humanitarian intentions are never confirmed. He’s still pretty shady, but he may have lit another spark in Paper Boi to give back to his community in some way in the future. Above all, thisAtlantaepisode explores some of the most glaringmanifestations of racism but from an English perspective. It’s a reminder (through Darius especially) that Blackness is not an American concept and even a joke character like Demarco forces Al to rethink his own perception of what Black really is, a concept that often depends on the piece of land one happens to sit on.
Glover always wanted to “show white people,you don’t know everything about Black culture”, and these exploratory trips of the Black experience throughout Europe serve to add more nuance to that subject. A Darius flashback episode has never been more necessary.
That’s about as far as it goes for the funny bits because elsewhere in London, Earn happens to run into Van and his indignation towards her silence these past few weeks is cut short by an English Karen accusing her of shoplifting. As the episode closes off, Earns confronts Van on the matter but she ignores him the same way the two continue to evade their relationship status, they kiss and spend the night together. The next morning Van is gone.
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