When it comes to the Black American experience, I don’t know that television has ever gotten it right—but then again, I don’t know if they are supposed to. I’ve long been a critic of people who think that entertainment should act as a kind of de facto primer/ publicist for Da Race. The problem with black people is that we watch TV not knowing what we should reasonably expect. This, I know: that if you are able to turn on the set and just be entertained by anything you find, you are one up in the game. Television, at best, is a propaganda tool used to subjugate our critical mind and prop up apocryphal notions about The Others, this, relative to the intended audience of the programming we’re talking about. So when I read an article about the Black-themed TV coming to a crossroads, I find myself not quite as optimistic as the writer. I think black television is just recycling itself, and the days of The All New Amos and Andy Hour are not far off.
Jimi forgot to put a (tm) after Black American Experience. After all, that is a trademark which is increasingly owned and maintained by a select few the kingpin of whom is Dr Dre, Urkel, Will Smith or Michael Eric Dyson, depending on who you ask. It used to be Spike Lee, but something went wrong after 'Summer of Sam'.
My folks refused to watch The Jeffersons or Good Times or even Baretta. We were allowed to watch Sanford & Son and Chico & The Man. That was basically it. As far as I'm concerned, there probably haven't been any decent represenations of the 'Black American Experience' since 'Carmen Jones', with a few moderate exceptions in The Cosby Show, the one black dude on Barney Miller, Julia, Hill Street Blues, A Different World and Roc. Period. It seems to me that anybody who has been to an August Wilson play should have been ruined for what passes as good black TV permanently. Which begs a question which is how, if you consider it a priority, would you get people to the level of an August Wilson play?
My answer is simple. Those who care, care, and the rest are just agitating out of habit. Pops told me a story a few weeks ago about some gripe some black person had about some thing back in the days, and after the problem was adjusted the gripe lingered. Our grandparents' admonition was "You just want to stay mad". It was true. People just want to stay mad - there's nothing to be done about it. You just have to let them rage and give them space, pad the room and keep precious things out of the way.
We're more than 30 years past the age of Blaxploitation and a second generation of black literature is well out there. It's a good time to compare and contrast what passes for representation of the BAE today with that which was produced a generation or two ago (and even three speaking of Carmen Jones). Because the only reason to consider the difference is aesthetically. It's a historical fact that cultural productions never raised the status of a people by proxy.
So I suppose there might be something to the activism for positive images, but I'm convinced they've all been out there for generations. People who boycott 'Soul Plane' just want to stay mad.
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