You've probably heard or read these phrases somewhere: “Oscars So White,” “Me Too,” “Say Her Name,” “Black Girl Magic,” “Black Lives Matter.” They have all become part of the national lexicon. What you may not know, or have forgotten, is that they originated in an area of social media that included intelligent, informed reactions from celebrities, authors, journalists, and just about any black person with a voice. It was called Black Twitter.
Now that Twitter is called Hulu’s three-part documentary series “Black Twitter.” “The history of a town.” Like a time capsule of sorts, the series recalls what it meant to coin phrases and have discussions in 140 characters or less. For Penny, it's the first project in a deal with Hulu's Onyx Collective brand and a completely new direction for him.
“I really wanted something, a few things,” says Penny: “First, I wanted everything I did next to not be compared to 'Insecure.' I felt like I had just done something really special and reached the top of a mountain, and I didn't want what I did next to be like, 'Oh, well, that's not “Insecure.”' And I also wanted to break creatively. I've been doing scripted television, specifically in the half-hour slot, since [2004]. So she had already been doing it for 17 years. And I want to be afraid again. And that's how 'Insecure' made me feel. She made me feel creatively inspired again. And I wanted everything I did next to come from that place.”
Penny got her start as a writer-in-training on the UPN series “Girlfriends.” Other shows she worked on before “Insecure” include “The Hustle” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” She was also a co-producer of “Scrubs.” At 50 years old, she was ready to make a change.
The inspiration to switch to documentary came from his idol, veteran filmmaker Spike Lee. “You know, watching him diversify his own [work], not only for being a narrative filmmaker but for having made documentaries, things like 'When the Levees Broke' and '4 Little Girls.' For me it was like a very good demarcation line from one phase of my career to another. And I'm a big fan of black Twitter. I dedicate myself to it. I love it.”
Jason Parham appears in “Black Twitter: A People's History,” a three-part documentary series based on an article he wrote.
(disney)
The angle of Parham's three-part article was how much the Internet changes. By the time Parham and Penny teamed up to make the documentary series, things had changed again. “It referenced things like Vine and Friendster and spaces like that,” Penny says. “He told me, 'This seemed like the right time to document what we had done on the platform.' And obviously, we didn't know how prophetic it would be that while we were doing it, Elon [Musk] I would buy the platform and a lot of things would change as a result, but that's really what inspired me, to say, 'Yes, we should tell this story.'”
Black Twitter regulars featured in the docuseries include actress and comedian Amanda Seales, New York Times contributor and author Roxane Gay, Emmy-winning sports journalist Jemele Hill, comedian W. Kamau Bell (“ We Need to Talk About Cosby”), creative consultant April Reign (#OscarsSoWhite), television producer Baratunde Thurston (“The Daily Show With Trevor Noah”) and vlogger Kid Fury.
However, the series has been criticized by some on social media who say well-known celebrities and artists are not part of mainstream black Twitter.
“When you market a doctor, you market the names that people know, but that's not all we have,” Penny says. “That was one of the things that was very important to me. Black Twitter is obviously made up of famous people, but a lot of things that happened in the Black Twitter era were just people commenting on something, like CaShawn Thompson, who came up with the hashtag 'Black Girl Magic'.
“If you saw her you wouldn't know, 'Oh, that's the woman who started 'Black Girl Magic.' And she wasn't starting it to start a hashtag. She was simply responding to all the criticism black women were receiving online about her physical appearance. She [said], 'I don't know what you're talking about, but black girls are magical,' and that's where it came from. So for me, having people like that in the documentary is as important as anyone else.”
