Core Post 4 - " I Like to Pretend Like I do not Hate Black-Ish "

I found this week’s reading particularly enjoyable as it not only speaks about many shows that I grew up watching, but the way Acham breaks down The Cosby Show, stripping it away from the notion of being a positive show, present an idea that I would say is not shared by many of the folks I grew up with that alongside myself watched it.  In my household, my family would often have shows with black casts on the television and I would make my own judgments about them.  When watching 1970s black sitcoms like Good Times and What’s Happening, I always felt like they were reminders of how poor and stuck we are.  Literally, it felt like the entire message of the show is being poor and black and this is the way it will be forever.  Then there were the 1990s shows that were cool and funny.  Martin and The Fresh Prince of Belair was less bleak and more willing to play around with pop culture and race.  As far as programs like The Cosby Show though, I never had any strong opinions. I didn't particularly like it or hate it.  For me, The Cosby show was another program like Full House or any other show about an affluent family.  Lately with the recent scandals, I have noticed my newsfeed take two strong attitudes towards Cosby.  While one side looked down on the successful comedian the others felt that the news’ critique were an attack on a black man that they felt connected to.  While I do not wish to really focus on the scandal, I want to highlight that the people that defended him did not notice the differences in class that Cosby highlighted.  While I cannot attest on the economic backgrounds of my Facebook friends, the ones that were against Cosby were those that I met in college.  Therefore I think the illusion that Cosby created, this mythical black family, not only perpetuated meritocratic ideals, but for low income blacks, it normalized his image, making it indistinguishable from a Brady Bunch family, but also rendered the problematic invisible .  The show simply existed, not really anyone’s favorite.  

Cosby’s decision to avoid racial discussions made his show different from the 70s and his bourgeois black cultural tastes, focusing on classical African American art and Jazz music, helped to not hide his blackness, but definitely opposed the kind of cultural images evident in a show like The Fresh Prince of Belair.  In a sense, I think the Fresh Prince of Belair connects more with my generation because it puts the character, Will Smith, within a mythical black family like the Huxtables, and presents to the viewers the problems that came from this highly idealized image.  Will Smith’s character constantly felt like he was living in the shadow of his more affluent Uncle’s family and also feared the erasure of the culture he identified with, that being his urban west Philadelphia vibe.  He was sure to make his identity visible while negotiating what it meant to live within an affluent black family, often satirizing them.  While I can highlight several episode that highlight Will’s dual identity of coming from a low income neighborhood and then obtaining a more privileged economic status, I will simply suggest that The Fresh Prince of Belair is more relatable for its commentary, whether intentional or not, on The Cosby Show.  

Today, as I watch shows like Fresh off the Boat and Black-Ish, I feel as if there is a capitalization on both 1980s and 90s black sitcom.  While the show tries to make race extremely visible, to the point where race is often the joke, there is still this post- Fordism idea permeating through each episode that if you work hard enough you too can enjoy the grand narrative of middle class America.  Although I find these shows both pretty funny, the laughter is always ambivalent when I consider who else is laughing at the jokes and if they are decoding the jokes similarly to how I am. It feels weird that only white production professors mentioned the success of these shows and not actually anyone of color, and these professors quickly look away from the problematic aspects and focus on the financial success.  In fact, no one I know of color ever thinks to mention Black-ish and there are moments when Eddie Huang, writer of Fresh off the Boat, regrets what his show has turned into, mentioning how it has shifted from the image he wanted to create. The same “try hard”  Reagan era attitude apparent in The Cosby Show is present in these shows but the idea of the other is also being pushed forth, introducing a space where it is okay for these stereotypes to be laughed at.  Esposito mentions that in our current climate it is difficult to talk about race without being labeled a racist or angry (523).  For Black-ish and Fresh off the Boat, they are not introducing a dialogue, but more so a space to laugh at the stereotypes you may have felt uncomfortable laughing at before. 1970s black sitcoms may have been super depressing, the Evan’s family in Good Times ironically had some of the Sh***tiest times I  ever seen on television. In the 1980s, the Cosby family created a myth that did not perhaps hide race fully, but ignored the factor of socioeconomic class.  Likewise, sitcoms today create affluent non-white families that one still cannot identify with but uses recognizable stereotypes that can be read by perhaps all classes of that race, but may be digested differently.  Therefore overall, perhaps the shows of the 1990s may have been the least problematic, in terms of niche programming successfully attracted black viewers with a more relatable/distinguishable narrative, and more willing to discuss race in a less awkward way.  In the end though, black families in sitcoms have been repackaged and sold to all types of viewers through each decade, and despite a seemingly political agenda for some, may be the largely the result of an economic motif nonetheless (Gray 68). 

And Here is Eddie Huang on Fresh Off the Boat - http://deadline.com/2015/04/eddie-huang-fresh-off-the-boat-tweets-1201406604/

Also random, but Eddie Huang has this NYC Bao style buns restaurant, it is so good!  Vibe is hip-hop meets Pork buns.   Lol next time you are in the city try some.  (This is not an advertisement for Baos buns)

Core #3: How Long Have You Been A Racist?

Jennifer Esposito in her article on race and Ugly Betty starts by defining races and postracial. It’s believed that the US is now a postracial society but we can all agree that is a lie. If you don’t agree, then you’re probably a racist.  Race continues to be a topic that many people tip toe around but as Esposito mentions, “by pretending it is not a part of the national discourse, we do people of color more disservice” (522). Even though people don’t always want to have conversations about race and are uncomfortable about the topic, television is a medium that continues to take on the issue among others. Gray notes in his article “in order for television to produce cultural effects and meet its economic imperatives…it has to operate on the basis of popular awareness and general common sense about the currents adrift in the society” (58). Race is a topic that has remained popular with society over decades.

In the new show Superstore, starring America Ferrera, there’s an episode focused on racism at the store. America Ferrera’s character, Amy, is asked by her boss to be the one giving out free samples for salsa. Amy asks why she specifically is the one being asked to give out the free samples. Her boss doesn’t directly say it’s because she’s Latina but says, “you just have a certain natural spiciness.” It doesn’t get more stereotypical than that when referring to Latinas. When she turns down the assignment her boss asks the other Latina employee to do the job instead. The icing on the cake is the person is tossed a “Mexico hat.” Finding the situation to be racist and stereotyping, Amy works to denounce the racism associated with Latinos and salsa through the episode. All her antics lead to an employee conversation and company video on racism. As usual the conversation goes south when Amy tries to explain to her boss and coworkers that she wasn’t being racist but instead trying to explain how their comments were racist. Instead of trying to understand her point of view Amy is made to look like a racist and the white characters that are being racist look good. Throughout the episode, Amy is seen as the oppressor when in reality she’s the victim. When people of color call out racist comments they’re always portrayed as angry while whites are put in the position of the victim. Esposito makes this same point with Marc trying to play the victim but forgetting his whiteness gives him an advantage. People of color are almost never seen as the victim in popular culture but always having to defend themselves while whites get to play the victim. For once it’d be nice to see a white person actually own up to their racism and not play the victim.

Here's the clip from Superstore when the conversation goes south

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaoe4QSm72w

Core Post 3

Broadly construed, Herman Gray’s article “The Transformation of the Television Industry and the Social Production of Blackness” questions the idea that the sudden proliferation of “black-oriented programming” in the mid/late 1980s was driven by the noble goals of culturally-savvy network executives; instead, he suggests that TV’s recognition and engagement with “blackness” evolved primarily from commercial media’s quest to generate profit by “identifying and packaging our dominant social and cultural moods” (68-69). As he constructs his argument, Gray is careful to declare that he’d like to focus on “political economic transformations and institutional conditions in the television industry” rather than use textual analysis alone (62). Hence, he highlights a shifting set of political, economic, and institutional conditions – such as the creation of multinational media conglomerates; the formation of the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986; the popularity of videocassette recorders and video games as home entertainment alternatives to network programming; a relaxed regulatory environment under Reagan/Bush; etc. – that altogether contributed to an environment in which programming aimed at black audiences emerged as “a low risk, potentially profitable object of television” (63, 66). Gray is wise to extend his research beyond the parameters of textual analysis, because it results in an illuminating article, but I think he’d admit that textual analysis can still bolster his argument. In particular, I’d suggest that textual analysis may strengthen our understanding of his claim that highly visible media personalities “helped to focus, organize, and translate blackness into commodifiable representations and desires that could be packaged and marketed across the landscape of American popular culture” (68).

To that end, I’d like to briefly discuss two commercials that were released in 1993. The first is a McDonald’s ad that features Michael Jordan and Larry Bird playing a game of HORSE for Jordan’s Big Mac:

Their shots become ever more elaborate and unrealistic, but the two players make everything. Because neither player misses, there’s not a true resolution to the competition; effectively, Bird (nicknamed “The Great White Hope” by some commentators) and Jordan (one of the most famous black athletes of all time) are signified as equals with no discernible difference between them. This probably isn’t the place to have a debate about which player was historically better (at jump-shots, or even trick-shots), but in 1993 Bird had just retired and Jordan was attempting to win his third consecutive MVP – indisputably, Jordan was the more transcendent player at that particular moment. Despite great stats, Jordan would actually lose the 1993 MVP award to Charles Barkley, who also starred in a famous commercial that year:

In terms of tone, Barkley’s Nike commercial starkly contrasts with the Jordan/Bird McDonald’s ad. It’s kinetic, pugnacious, and – with respect to Barkley’s disavowal of his “role model” persona – seemingly subversive. Barkley resists becoming a symbolic figure, a representative case. Looking at these commercials, the argument could be made [and I find this argument potentially flawed, but useful as a hypothetical] that, whereas Jordan buys into an idealized portrait of a “postracial” competition where race isn’t an organizing principle, Barkley confronts viewers in a way that disrupts their attempts to naturalize his identity according to dominant cultural norms.

To complicate this argument, Gray might posit that the commercials aren’t so divergent after all. In his article he suggests that, given political, organizational, and economic conditions at networks in the late 80s, networks responded with narrowcasting and niche marketing that were meant to exploit black images and representations as a means of generating profit (66). Insofar as the McDonald’s and Nike commercials circulate different signs of “blackness,” they would both remain – in Gray’s eyes – indicative of TV’s tendency to shape-shift and thus organize/articulate different audiences, desires, identifications, and meanings. As a cultural institution, TV is unnaturally good at harmonizing dissonance. 

Native American Cable TV Channel

It looks like the US may be following in the footsteps of Canada and might possibly be dedicating an entire channel to Native Americans. This seems a bit late, but better late than never. The article touches on how those from different minority backgrounds are having more network TV shows, but Native Americans seem to always be passed by because they're seen as almost extinct. Irregardless of that comment and thought, there should definitely be more representation of Native Americans and I think a channel dedicated to them is a good start. Hopefully, it won't be filled with a bunch of white-washed content and the few Native Americans in the industry will have full control of the content.

Here's the link to the article

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/native-americans-television/463392/

Core Post 5: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

The words “niche programming” have been thrown around a fair amount in trade papers over the last few years, as the industry has tried to figure out just how the rise of cable and online television has affected what has come to be known as the Second Golden Age of Television. While undoubtedly many things have changed, Herman Gray’s chapter “The Transformation of the Television Industry and the Social Production of Blackness” indicates that the supposed increase in quality and diversity on television today has antecedents in black representation on TV in the 1980s. Gray’s production analysis of television networks in the 1980s complicates the current repeated narrative that niche programming leads to more diversity in representation on TV.

The factors that Gray states created black representation in the 1980s have analogs in our contemporary television landscape. Gray points to market forces (including the birth of cable and Fox) that drove networks to narrowcast in order to specifically target certain demographics for advertising (66). Shows like The Cosby Show, In Living Color, and A Different World were designed in part to appeal to the urban black viewer (61). (Though, as Christine Acham points out, networks didn’t want to alienate potential white viewers either, so blackness was not truly represented.) Today, the already complicated media landscape has further splintered thanks to online television. To quote Variety: “...the lesson of premium cable has been that quality can flourish once unfettered of the need to please everybody.” This has meant, paradoxically, that everybody can increasingly be found on TV. While the vast media landscape is still predominantly white, network shows like Jane the Virgin, Blackish, and Fresh Off The Boat tap new markets through diverse representation, while still trying to avoid alienating any potential white viewers.

It’s important to note, however, that this proliferation of people of color has not translated to cable and streaming programming. “Prestige” (read: mostly streaming/cable) shows, though more likely to show nudity, sexuality (including queerness), and adult content, overwhelmingly produce content about upper middle class white people. The Huffington Post found that between 2002 and 2014, 79 of 90 showrunners at HBO, FX, AMC, and Showtime were white men. Of the other 11 creators, 10 were white women. Only 1 was a person of color. This is reflected in the networks’ programming: Girls, Mad Men, and even Game of Thrones primarily tell white stories. This has two intertwined effects: First, “quality” is equated with subscriber television, so network television is rendered its inferior. Second, because subscriber television is mostly made by and for white people, “quality” is equated with whiteness, while people of color are relegated to “trash” network television.

The actual quality of these network shows is irrelevant. As Gray points out, these network shows commodify and exploit race (68). In doing so, networks sustain a false dichotomy of representation. HBO has attempted to respond to criticisms leveled against it by creating a diversity initiative. However, the vast majority of the market currently caters to the unspoken assumption that quality=cable/online=white and trash=network=POC.

Bill Cosby Made One Good Decision (Core Post)

As a middle-class white kid growing up in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s, The Cosby Show was a tremendously important show that was not only totally "appointment TV" but also helped me develop my growing sense of fairness, love of family, and racial visibility. Acham is totally correct in her article that the show was not about the blackness of a black family and only occasionally dealt with racial issues. At the same time, having a black family on TV every week (and quickly syndicated several times a day) was significant for me. Living in Washington, where the population at the time was about 65% African American, I didn't really understand that showing a black family was unusual. I took for granted that some families were white and some were black (both inside and outside my school). The Huxtables were probably more like my family, with two working parents—albeit with more kids than in my house—than many other families on television (Silver Spoons, Who's the Boss?, Kate & Allie). I knew they did not physically look like me, but it felt similar to my experience (probably aided by my dad, like Cliff, also having his office in our home).

Acham points out that the cultural specificity of the Huxtables was a half-step removed from the thematic content of the episodes, for instance, the art on the walls including "[paintings] by African American artist Varnette Honeywood...hung in the [the] home. There were also framed pictures of African American historical figures such as Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass" (107). She doesn't mention how the costumes on the shows were frequently more related to black fashion than white trends. Cliff became a fashion plate for amazing sweaters, which were not necessarily black, but also not conservative the way a white Ob/Gyn would otherwise dress on a network show. (Just googling "Cliff Huxtable" now, the first autofill suggestion is "Cliff Huxtable sweaters".) The eponymous item in the iconic episode "A Shirt Story," where Denise makes Theo a copy of a designer shirt to save him money, would have been unlikely to appear in the closets of many white teens. There was never a question for me that I was watching a show about an African American family, however I think not confronting many issues related to race made their difference from me something that became a asset rather than a deficit.

Following this show (and A Different World, which was better than The Cosby Show in its later seasons, though took a similar reticence about dealing with many overt issues of race, even at an HBCU), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was probably the next family comedy I watched that focused on a black family. The added complication here was that it showed that some families (black, white, or otherwise) have more complicated structures. I didn't know anyone who lived with people other than their parents and it was important for me to understand that family structures did not have to be "traditional" (in a Moynihan Report sense). Following this, I loved The Bernie Mac show (produced by Larry Wilmore), which added another complication to the Cliff Huxtable/Philip Banks father-knows-best model. The show's premise is that Mac, playing a fictionalized version of himself, is raising his sister's three kids because she is struggling with drug addiction. (If you haven't watched the show you should because it's hilarious.) The show knows it's on the same family road as Cosby, but it takes a different angle by dealing with issues of race directly. I don't know if it would have been as successful if the audience, black or otherwise, had not "grown up" with the model set by Cosby.

Today we have Black-ish (also produced by Wilmore) and I wonder if this is the postmodern response to all of these shows. It's about blackness, but also about being a family. It shows the complicated nature of parents and kids regardless of where they live or the color of their skin. It knows who came before it and sometimes pokes fun at its influences and itself. Meanwhile, even when it doesn't directly deal with issues of race I think a non-black kid growing up today and watching that show will appreciate that it's about a black family, full stop. The visibility of difference means a lot to all viewers.

CFP in a Hybridized Academic-Fan Space

Hey everyone, I just wanted to drop an interesting CFP in light of our discussions on academia and fandom. This conference, though academic in nature, is situated physically, temporally, and thematically within a fannish space: the largest anime convention in the U.S., AnimeEXPO, located here in L.A. In some ways it's an ordinary academic conference, sending out calls for papers in well-established academic channels (like UPenn's) and competitively selecting papers for presentation. It attracts some well-known scholars who investigate Japanese media, but is intended for an unusally wide audience (the majority of those attending the lectures are not academics, and quite a lot of bodies show up relative to traditionally academic conferences). It's a unique way for scholars to directly address consumers of the media they study, and for the consumers to talk back.

This sort of space brings up many questions about the nature of the academic as distinct from the popular, given that all the academics in attendance are there not only for professional purposes (it's still another line on the CV), but for openly fannish pleasures as well (you can attend the 4-day convention for free with an industry pass). Those who study Japanese media and its fans may therefore choose to attend fan panels alongside other fans, attend screenings/events, or even cosplay (typically when not presenting, though one of Henry Jenkins's students hosted a more informal pseudo-academic-fan-panel-thing outside of the regular symposium in crossplay two years ago, further muddling this boundary).

What is the role of the critic who admits to being a fan, and deliberately opens their criticism to the critique of fans (who then, in addition to already having their own kind of textual authority, become critics of academia  and academic authority themselves)? The job of the critic is always a tenuous thing, resting on particular positioning relative to textual objects and established forms/sources of intellectual authority alike, and spaces that posit a multiplicity of textual positions as potentially authoritative certainly complicate traditional models.