The Portrayal of African Americans in Situation Comedies
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THE PORTRAYAL OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN SITUATION COMEDIES By CAROLINE WATTS A Capstone submitted to the Graduate School-Camden Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Program in Liberal Studies Written under the direction of Dr. Wayne Glasker And approved by ____________________________ Dr. Wayne Glasker Camden, New Jersey May 2015 CAPSTONE ABSTRACT The Portrayal of African Americans in Situation Comedies by CAROLINE WATTS Capstone Director: Dr. Wayne Glasker While one might ordinarily hypothesize that the portrayal of African Americans on television has positively progressed over the years, this study sets out to determine the extent to which the depiction of African Americans has changed. Stereotypical key terms are evaluated and calculated throughout several African-American television programs that were aired before and after The Cosby Show run from 1984 to 1992. This study attempts to examine this phenomenon by determining which attributes were, and are currently, portrayed, along with the frequency of those portrayals. Results of this study showed a slight increase in negative portrayals since the airing of The Cosby Show, and therefore, lead to speculation as to whether there may be a more accurate way to determine additional and more precise findings. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author expresses sincere appreciation for the constant motivation and guidance from her mother, Dr. Patricia A. Watts and mentor, Dr. Maccamas Ikpah. iii 1 Introduction Since its advent, television has served as a persuasive medium throughout the United States and well beyond our borders. For many decades, there have been serious concerns raised by African Americans about how they are portrayed by the media (Isaacs, 2010; Horton, 1999; Balkaran, 1999). Isaacs’s (2010) longitudinal study, over a period of 20 years, found that television migrated from depicting African Americans as dramatically unfavorable in the 1990s, to exaggeratedly favorable in 2010. Balkaran (1999) maintains that there are profits to be gained from portraying race as it has been and is currently defined, and this portrayal outweighs the need to change what has proven to be a valuable business approach. However, in contrast, Horton (1999) indicates that although there has been social progress in general, the portrayal of African Americans in movies, television, and the news has not significantly changed in a positive way. The negative portrayal of African Americans in the media is not new, nor is it limited only to television; the stereotypical portrayal dates back several decades. For instance, Carl Pierson’s 1935 Western with Gene Autry portrayed African Americans negatively in The Singing Vagabond. In this movie, Gene Autry, his sidekick Smiley Burnett, Ann Rutherford, and Barbara Peppe used unnamed African American dancers whose sole role throughout the movie was to perform a silly dance while grinning, which made them look like buffoons. The dancers were not included in the list of credits, although Champion, Gene Autry’s horse, was listed as a cast member. 2 This treatment is what a very prolific black lyricist of 20th century, Andy Razaf’s, 1940 poem below questions. The poem supports the general feeling that the U.S. media do not portray African Americans in a good light: Are Hollywood producers mindful of their harmful acts Or are they just plain ignorant and do not know the facts Don’t they know colored people are just like other folks? Razaf’s lines express African Americans’ frustration over their portrayal in the media back to the silent movie period. Horton’s position (1999) is very much supported by Leab (1973), who also suggests that the portrayal of African Americans in the U.S. Media has not changed over time. Leab (1973) indicates that the portrayal of African Americans generally makes them appear to look and to feel like “objects of ridicule and condescension” (p.1). According to Leab (1973), movies such as Sambo, Rastus in Zululand, and Nothing But a Man portray African Americans as lazy, uneducated, unethical, brutish, and poor. Much of the literature suggests that attitudes and portrayals have not significantly changed over the years (Stroman, Merritt, & Matabane, 1989). Although the number of African Americans who appear in television shows has increased, the quality of the portrayal has not improved (Masto & Tropp, 2004). Furthermore, Stroman, Merritt, and Matabane (1989) propose that the actual socio- economic condition of African Americans before the Kerner Commission, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders established by President Lyndon. B. Johnson, was better than their portrayal in the media. The Kerner Commission authors stated: 3 We find African American characters are looking better, talking better, and not acting like buffoons, but they are restricted to what they might tell us about the issues in the lives of African Americans. (p. 53) In 1994, Dates suggested that the coverage of African Americans in the media had celebrated misogyny and violence, and communicated paranoid images of black men as shucking and jiving con artists who joke about pathological behaviors and criminality while playing the role of black “bucks” to whites (1994, Dates). One would expect that the portrayal of African Americans in the media would have changed in more recent years, as evidenced by the election of the first African-American President, Barack Obama, and the extraordinary progress that can be seen throughout the black community. This is also clearly evident by the fame and success of Oprah, who has been recognized by Forbes magazine in 2014 as the richest African-American person in the world; two African American Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice; and the current National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, among others. But what has actually changed in the media, and the way they have chosen to define African Americans today? Situation comedies provide a particularly interesting view of this definition. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which situation comedies have portrayed African Americans since the advent of television, and to attempt to determine the extent to which there has been a positive change in these portrayals on TV over the past 50 years. Because of the profound impact of The Cosby Show on society, this particular TV show is used as the supposed “turning-point” in the study. 4 Relevance The Cosby Show served as a benchmark in American television because of its vast popularity with viewers, and the light-hearted positive portrayals of African-American characters. The show was ranked as the most popular family comedy in the 1980s (Britannica, 2015). As the highlight of Thursday-night television for eight whole seasons, from 1984 to 1992, the program was recognized for reviving the sitcom genre and increasing the network’s ratings (Britannica, 2015). The show was well-known and valued for its attempt to battle stereotypes about African- American families. The Huxtables’ high-income professions, strong nuclear family, and mixed-racial peer group was the basis for TV Guide deeming them “the most atypical black family in television history” (Britannica, 2015). The Cosby Show was one of only two American television shows to lead the Nielsen ratings for five successive seasons. It received the People’s Choice Award for favorite comedy program for seven years of its eight year run, as well as three Golden Globes; six of the 29 Emmy Awards for which it was nominated; and more than 40 other awards (Britannica, 2015). “The finale of The Cosby Show was the seventh most-watched of all time, with 44.4 million viewers” (Fisher, 2014). Accolades of this measure are substantial in African American TV. Therefore, it is normal to assume that the evidence of its popularity would change television production forever. Fisher (2014) describes how The Cosby Show played a significant role in frequently promoting African Americans and African culture by working other artists into story lines. For instance, Jacob Lawrence, Miles Davis, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Miriam Makeba were featured on the program. The show opened 5 doors to other successful sitcoms featuring African-American casts, including 227, Amen and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Furthermore, A Different World was a spin-off from The Cosby Show, which was created after the character Denise, played by Lisa Bonet, left home to attend Hillman College, a fictional historically black college (Fisher, 2014). 6 Research Questions The study will seek to answer the following research questions: 1. What are the dominant attributes of African Americans portrayed in situation comedies pre- and post- The Cosby Show? 2. Is the overall frequency of portrayals of African American stereotypical attributes pre- and post- The Cosby Show different? 7 Methodology The instrument discussed in this study focused on episodes of the shows listed below, as studies have found these shows to reveal a high degree of reliability. I investigated four situation comedies in order to determine the extent to which the portrayal of African Americans in situation comedies has changed with the shifting socio-economic and political changes in the U.S. over time. I examined two episodes of Good Times and The Jefferson’s before The Cosby Show, and two episodes of Family Matters and My Wife and Kids after The Cosby Show. A synopsis of the situation comedies that form the study sample drawn over a period of time is presented below. Good Times stars the unemployed wife and mother of three, Florida Evans. The husband’s character is James Evans, a proud black man who usually works two jobs, one in construction and one dishwashing. The couple had three children: James, Jr., a seventeen-year old, Thelma, a sixteen-year old, and youngest Michael, an eleven-year old.