Subject: TC/Eve/Julian: Not So Simple. Passions & Race (long)

I first did this in May. Not much has changed in my mind where this story is concerned.

This post has been mulling inside of my head, ever since I tried to reply to another poster about TC and Eve.

I guess it’s because I tend to look for something beneath the surface to explain characters, but, I like TC, and, don’t think that I’ve ever seen a representation of an African-American male like him on daytime.

There are so many issues that TC has that I appreciate JER writing about where he is concerned.

Well, here is it goes:

I’ve seen people who don’t understand WHY this will matter to TC, if he finds out about a relationship that Eve had with Julian BEFORE they were married. After all, Eve was a consenting adult, and, isn’t it unrealistic for TC to expect for his wife to be ‘pure’?
These two questions have to be dealt with separately.

The first issue is about whether TC should expect Eve to be ‘pure’. In that regards, whether he should have expected it or not, THAT is the lie that Eve told him and stuck with all these years. He believes that she was with NOBODY before him, and, he has built their life on that lie.

I compared TC to the football star in the movie ‘The Best Man’. In that movie, this guy had cheated around on his long-suffering fiancee so many times, he couldn’t even remember….BUT, he had a sense of pride that HE was the ONLY man that SHE had ever been with (or so he thought). Was he hypocritical, yes, but, that was his psyche. TC, as far as we know, has never cheated on Eve, but, there is something in him that demanded ‘perfection’ from the woman that he was with…hopefully, they will tell us WHY. I happen to think that it’s related to his mother, but, you never know.

Now, the matter of the relationship being with Julian..this is an entirely different can of worms, and IMO, it goes deep. It’s not as simple as ‘TC should get over it’, or rather it shouldn’t be. People call Passions a campy soap, which it is, but, if TC ‘got over it’ where Julian and Eve were concerned, he WOULD be the cartoon that some think that he is now, yet is not, IMO.

a) we have Eve sleeping with ANYONE else. I’ve tried to explain the male psyche that thinks that way..I don’t have to like it, I only have to acknowledge it.

b) The issue of TC being a failed athlete. This is a sensitive subject for some, in the African-American community, as it has been a hot topic of encouraging young Black men to put all their hopes on becoming an athlete in order to achieve success, knowing how far the odds of that are happening. And, when it does NOT happen, then, those young men have put themselves over a barrel, not preparing themselves for the reality of what will happen if they do not succeed.
 

While TC is not a basketball or football guy, the entire ‘mentality’ of sports is still there. I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but, I’ve enjoyed sports and been fascinated by them all my life. And, having read books and magazines on the subject, one thing is clear: those who undertake in life that they want to become world class athletes make the sport their whole reason for being. There isn’t a time in their life that they can remember being without the sport. They are willing to sacrifice anything in order to further that dream of being one of the best in their field. The long hours, the practice. They usually give up trying to really do school, have friends or relationships, which is why, more often than not, they develop an unusually close relationship with one parent – more often than not, the parent that takes them to practice and is most involved with the development of the athlete. In this case, from what we’ve been told, it was TC’s father.

Going back to sports and the African-American male, I’ve read time and time again, in articles and books about Black athletes, and why they enjoy their time in the athletic arena. In a country that routinely and systematically has discounted Black people in general, the athletic field is one place, where meritocracy exists. There is no ‘good old boys’ network. They appreciate sports, because ‘Numbers don’t lie’. It didn’t matter what Adolph Hitler was spouting, Jesse Owens came across the finish line first. It didn’t matter what you thought about the races, Jackie Robinson went out there and produced for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Boston was a hard place to be if you’re Black, but, Bill Russell went out there and redefined the game of basketball, period. The athletic field is a ‘level playing field’, so to speak, in a society in which there are problems with regards to race, and the athlete enjoys being able to be in control of his life..his destiny, by his own merits. The numbers don’t lie, and you can’t ‘put in context’ or try and downgrade an athlete’s achievement.

Now, if this is true, for sports that are generally popular with African-Americans, what must it be like for those who are in sports where Blacks are rarely seen, like TC and tennis?
From the beginning, this story has been racially tinged…from Whitney teaching tennis lessons at an All-White country club, to Julian and Ivy’s comnents about Luis and Theresa respectively, to the most obvious being Alistair’s Christmas ‘gift’ to TC. Alistair’s comments about TC and his father were so odiously racially charged, it stunk up the room.

He told TC that his father ‘knew his place’.

KNEW HIS PLACE?

I don’t know many Black folks that wouldn’t have wanted to take a baseball bat to Alistair at that moment in time…you don’t have to have a ‘hair-trigger temper’ for racist spewings like that to get to you.

The indignities that TC saw his father suffer at the hands of folks like Alistair had to have gotten to him, and, to conquer a ‘Whites Only’ sport, for the most part? On ‘their’ own terms? With ‘their’ rules in place? You take the validation and self-worth that regular athletes get in ‘accepted’ sports for Blacks, and magnify that for Blacks in ‘White’ Sports. There is a support system for Blacks in ‘usual’ sports, whether being able to commiserate with fellow athletes who do the same thing, to community support, to support in being at the events. The road of a Black Athlete in a ‘White’ Sport is lonely. Lonely and long. More often than not, the only face in the crowd at tournaments that ‘looks like you’, is the parent that goes with you and tries to encourage you on the journey. You build up your mettle during these times; I’ve read numerous accounts of the verbal racial assaults that not only Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe endured, ‘back then’, but, also, the long years of tournaments for Tiger Woods and the Williams Sisters. I watched some television movie about Tiger Woods, and there was a scene between Tiger and Hank Aaron, before he turned professional. Aaron had come to talk to him about the racial pressures that he had been under when time was coming that he closed in on Babe Ruth’s home run record. He told Tiger of the hell that the outside racial forces tried to impost on his life. And, he told Tiger that if that happened to him, in a sport where Blacks were accepted, that he had to know how difficult it would be for him in a sport like golf, and Tiger said that he did understand. There is a reason why the highest ratings The Masters’ Golf Tournament had in years was the year that Tiger Woods won. Some, not all, Whites couldn’t believe that someone of color had gotten the ‘Green Jacket’, while many Blacks watched, never believing that the day would come when someone with Black blood, would wear the jacket. He had climbed to the top, against the odds and little support.

TC was willing to travel that road and was doing so, when he joined the club of ‘frustrated athletes whose dreams were dashed’. I’ve read many accounts of how a star athlete, on the way to the top, is completely crushed when something happens, usually an injury, and everything that they thought they were going to do, is GONE.

The years of practice, the hours of sacrifice, the dedication, the dreams, the ability to compete…all gone. Something that had been THE center of your life is no more, and all that exists is a vacuum. More often than not, these former athletes become lost and hopeless, some going down a path of self-destruction, because they have lost their reason for being. Drugs, alcohol, you name it, can be used to numb the pain of the loss.

TC is different from this group for two reasons:

a) the norm is that a ‘Twist of Fate’ ruined their athletic careers.
b) TC is a functioning member of society.

Most of these failed athletes only have God to curse when the injury happens. It is a cruel twist of fate, and only the cosmos is responsible. TC is different because ‘God’ didn’t take away his dreams and hopes – it was man-made. Made by Julian Crane. When you can put a face to your lost dreams, it changes things.

I know that TC had a temper, but, he is a functioning member of society. So, why did TC not fall into that pattern of self-destruction? I think it goes back to his background, and why Eve lied to him in the beginning.

Some have stated that why doesn’t Eve leave TC? She supposedly makes more, by being a doctor. This is where a balancing act comes between them. Eve may have the ‘cash’, but, TC is the one who brought the ‘class’. It has been only recently, within the last 20 years, that the measure for ‘success/status’, has been based on financial terms within the African-American community. It has only been, since the 1980’s, with the coming into their own, of the Baby Boomer Generation, that African-Americans have been able to enjoy comparable financial rewards on par with their White counterparts. Up until then, the financial status of a family didn’t often equate with ‘status’. Education, background, family reputation, were the things that mattered. WHY do you think that Eve brought up those things about Chad? Even though TC is more down to earth, it was still the ‘world’ in which he was raised. Those old-fashioned values he comes by naturally.

TC has the family and background that Eve craved all her life. TC has roots in Harmony that reach back over 150 years. He has history, and, in that history, has developed a sense of self-pride that I bet attracted Eve to him in the first place. We know from TC that he believes himself as being an amateur historian; I would bet that he’s well read and educated, as would be his whole family….Caddy or no, that is no indication as to the education level of his father considering the times in which he grew up. TC was ‘old money’,so to speak, to Eve’s ‘social climbing’ aspirations. Eve had none of that growing up ( I bet), and when she met someone like TC, who had what she had dreamed of having, she made herself into what TC needed her to be. To attract his eye and to win his heart. So what if she sacrificed parts of herself, they must not be that important anyway. (NOT my thinking…but, I think Eve’s thinking, going into the issue of her fundamental lack of self-esteem). The ends justified the means- she got the stability she wanted, a man with roots, family, history. She got the package of the ‘perfect life’ that she always dreamed of, and if a few lies had to be told to obtain it, then so be it.

Now, there is the question of TC vs. Julian, and why Julian is the one who triggers so much animosity from TC. Once again, this is where the undercurrent, and not so pretty undercurrent of race that has run through this story, rears its ugly head. Race has to be one of the most difficult things to discuss openly and honestly, because of so many issues involved.

For TC, Julian is the PHYSICAL manifestation, of what could simply be called ‘the system’. A ‘System’ that is racist, rigged against you, doesn’t like you, and is against your best interests. It’s ‘the system’, that called Blacks 3/5ths of a human being, enslaved then, didn’t give the 40 acres and a mule, supported American Apartheid for almost a century, and, still, today, has other symbols some 30 years after the Civil Rights movement.

TC is a man who knows his family’s history. Their history of being enslaved in this country, and risking their very lives for the freedoms given to others by virtue of the color of their skin. The bravery in risking it all to try and achieve what is so fundamental at the core of life. Once his relatives made it to freedom and to Harmony, they began to make a life for themselves. They actually GET the 40 acres and a mule by hard work, only to have it stolen from them by the Cranes. The land was more than just a farm, it was a bid, a stance for independence- to be able to control your own destiny, and what could be more precious to a people who had literally been OWNED by others. Fast forward to TC watching his father, who, was limited in his choices, by the times in which he lived, be demeaned and disrespected on the most fundamental level by Alistair and others of their ilk, and, it had to make him mad..it would make any child angry to see their parent mistreated. But, TC found a way to fight back; to strike back at ‘them’…he did it through his tennis.

And, right when he was on the cusp, of winning, not only for himself, but, also, probably, for his father, his ‘gift’ was taken away. Not by an act of God, but, by the Cranes once again. Now, we’ve never been given a definite timeline, but, from the background that we’ve been given so far, it seems like TC’s father died in relatively no time after the ‘accident’ that ended his tennis career. Sure, his father very well may have dropped dead anyway on the day of some terrific tennis tournament that TC won…but, it didn’t happen that way. So, TC lost his dream and the person he probably shared the dream with most in the world, within a short amount of time. Add into that he was never able to get justice for being hurt, and that sense of closure has never come.

Which brings us to the present. CAN TC forgive Eve for having had a relationship with Julian? I don’t see it happening. The Cranes have pillaged his family for generations, taking and taking. Those images of Julian Crane, who belongs to a family that humiliated his father, stole his family's heritage, and cut short his tennis career, ALSO having been with his wife? Having been there first? It cuts to the CORE of TC’s manhood.

TC’s insistence that he WILL protect his family at all costs, no matter what happens, dare I say that it goes beyond just being a man his ‘castle’..that is has psychological underpinnings that go back to slavery, when the Black male was powerless to protect his family from anything- his children could be sold away from him at any instant. And, Julian/Eve go to yet another sticky and ugly remnant of American History- Black men and their inability to do anything while the White Master came down to the slave quarters and ‘had his way’ with his women. Can anything make a man feel more impotent, than to know that he cannot help the woman he loves, and that another man can force himself upon her without impunity? I KNOW that Eve went with Julian of her own free will, but, TC won’t care, IMO. The thought of Eve being with the man he despises most? That mental image of her and Julian? Of the thought of Julian laughing at him behind his back?

TC will feel Eve made a fool out of him. Humiliated him to the man he hates the most. TC has believed that he has ‘protected’ his family from foul influences..that his home was a ‘safe’ place for him. With this revelation, even this would have been fouled by the Cranes. There would be nothing of his own that he has that hasn’t been damaged by them, which is why I think it would be very difficult for TC to forgive Eve. For me, in this story, it’s far from ‘ she had a relationship before she was married’. Everyone brings ‘baggage’ to a relationship, and I hope that I’ve shown TC’s with regards to this issue.

As always, JMO.