Hollywood Hegemony
Representations of Race & Class on ABC’s Black-ish
If you read any recent trade magazines, pop culture blogs, or listen to media critics on T.V., much talk has turned to the recent trend toward diversity in network television programming. For the purposes of this essay, I will be giving an analysis of the ABC Family sitcom Blackish in terms of its representation of race and class. There is an overwhelming sentiment in the culture industry that this movement is a response and a reflection of the culture at large. Industry showrunners and producers alike make claims that this provides a template for a more equitable expression of our democratic values. While conversely, the media critics from the academy argue that the representations do not offer radical enough representations or even honest representations of the struggles still affecting the marginal classes in our society. If we are to assume that Aristotle was correct, that persuasion exists in the audience, and that network TV is a mirror for our society based on our values, then perhaps the showrunners are correct. Perhaps the uptick in diversity reflects the progress of recent social movements like Black Lives Matter or even the election of Barrack Obama. However, that would be to leave out an investigation into the construction of the show, the political economy of the media and culture industries, and the role of the Capitalist class in reproducing persuasive artifacts of entertainment, which reinforce a culture through its hegemonic project.
In the first portion of this essay, I will take a surface analysis of the symbolic representations of race in Blackish. More specifically, I will develop this analysis by discussing the semiotics, narrative themes, and cultural stereotypes operating within specific codes and conventions of the family comedy genre. In addition to finding meanings within the show, I will also attempt to draw connections to how these the symbols lead to cultural practices much in the way that Kenneth Burke called Rhetoric “Equipment for Living.” Symbols are tools used by humans for the purposes of cooperation, collaboration, and competition. Although the tools have a shared and accepted meaning within our culture, they can be used to build a variety of alternative narratives, which unfortunately rarely make it through the various focus groups, board meetings, and Nielsen ratings analytics in order to have the type of purchase capable of influencing attitudes toward a more equitable society. Critiques of the system rarely seem a viable form of entertainment because the system itself sees such representations as alien to our American values, when in fact; they may be more democratic than anything of the standard Hollywood offerings.
In the second level of analysis in this essay, I will turn to the political economy of the culture industry. In order to fully understand how media artifacts are constructed, we must also investigate who owns the means of production and for what purposes does the programming function. The only reason that shows exist are to make a profit for the shareholders. The educational system, which provides the workers for the culture industry follows suit and reproduces the canonical dramatic structures and comedic troupes, which are recycled generationally and systemically. Structures also have their origins in the very academic institutions that nurture the maturation of the creative knowledge workers within the industry. This process becomes a hegemonic pedagogy favoring structures and templates of proven storylines that deliver predictable results. In short, the audience remains tied to consumptive behaviors through themes that reinforce values associated with the capitalist motives of the industry. Film schools create workers, not artists, and independent voices are sanded down to produce predictable content with spectacle and basic dramatic material. Programs like Black-ish resort to harnessing stereotypes, product placement, value engineer production in order to minimize costs and maximize profit. With that said, the productions need to be creatively considered in order to attract an audience. Without an audience, the networks have nothing to sell the advertisers.
To start with this critique we can begin by discussing the Characters and the general synopsis or logline of the show. Anthony Anderson as an upwardly mobile middle-class black man who is struggling to maintain a sense of his cultural identity while living the lifestyle of an upper middle-class American in a suburban community near Los Angeles, California. Anthony Anderson plays the father, Tracee Ellis Ross his wife, and Laurence Fishburne plays his father. Both Anderson and Fishburne are also credited as executive producers of the show, which brandishes a nice public and persuasive image of the executives behind the production in order to gain consent from African American audiences.
The Johnson Family is comprised of a mother and father, a live-in father in law, two adolescent children, and a set of six-year-old adorable twins. Andre the father, struggles to accept a new position as Vice President of the urban division at his advertising agency. He wants to radically challenge the inner workings of his firm or at least earn his promotion based on his merits, but ultimately consents to his boss and accepts the role as the urban director as a black figure to court black business. He often is portrayed as weak and needs support from his wife to handle issues with his children, he exhibits the consistent behavior of avoiding housework, and his consumer addictions of sneakers and flat bill cap collections provide codes of black maleness and consumerism. Andre is more concerned with his own lack of identity than his role as a father.
The strong female role of the wife holds down the serious job, while the grandfather Moses type offers sage advice of the wise old black man as he fecklessly lounges about and heads to the racetrack. As for the children, the older teenage daughter is a diva in the making, less involved with her culture than her number of Instagram followers, she is often hyper-sexualized which is often the case with young women of any color in family entertainment. The teenage son is having an identity crisis of his own, not being good at basketball, like young black boys are supposed to be, Andre junior has changed his name to Andy in an effort too seem more integrated at his exclusive school of wealthy kids. He even goes as far to request having a Bah Mitzvah and changing his name to a good Hebrew moniker like Shoal. In response, Andre Sr. attempts to perform an African coming of age ritual in order to keep his son connected to his culture. In a commentary, the on-looking grandfather makes the comment, “We aren’t African were Black,” which is a joke with origins in our countries past, as slavery ritualistically removed cultural rituals and names from slaves in replace of fabricated construction as property. Lastly, the two children in the show offer a cuteness quotient that many family shows will use. The antics of the two little tricksters provide comic relief and are really hard not to fall in love with.
References to grape soda, hair products, fried chicken, and cur-royales are cultural symbols that are stereotypically part of black preference. However, for the most part, the show presents a father fearful of raising a son, values fashion, acquiesces to the master at work, and takes a back seat to his wife in the hierarchy of the family. You have millennials who are less interested in black culture than they are assimilating into phones, field hockey, with little interest in the history of black struggle. When the little kids don’t refer to the other little black girl at school as the “other black girl,” but rather the girl that smells like turkey burgers, are we as an audience supposed to believe that this is a representation of how the world actually is, or are we to assume that if we all assimilate work hard, educate ourselves, and leave class and race behind we too will be rewarded.
Regardless of the content, the success of any television show depends on audience share. The larger your audience, the higher your Nielsen ratings, the higher the ratings, the more profit that can be derived from selling commercial airtime. In an article from the Huffington Post creator of the show, Blackish Kenya Barris stated that he hopes the show will translate as an applicable lesson on race relations and cultural assimilation in today’s America. I will not argue against the show as a fun artifact of family entertainment, but to make the case that the show is a tool for cultural progress or that it challenges the current social relations of contemporary American society can be contested both qualitatively and empirically. Satire has been used as a political tool for generations, but the claims by the producers and the network that this show somehow is culturally progressive or a positive development for marginal communities runs counter to my argument that shows like Blackish is hegemonic proposals designed to gain consent by selling them as tools for social change, when in fact they only offer themes of consumerism, elitism, self-gratification, and rarely address mature issues about the nature the black struggle or suggestions of solidarity. As Neil Postman reminded us, there will be no boogieman or draconian overlord oppressing our humanity, but we will, in fact, Amuse Ourselves to Death.
According to CNN Money, Empire, Murder, and Black-ish are widely regarded as 3 of the biggest successes of the 2014–2015 TV season. Which gives credence to analyzing the show critically. It should also be noted that ABC has been trying to find a successful running mate for its other successful brands that fit its family-friendly lineup and also help grow its audience share by shifting its demographic. ABC has basically tapped into the success of the WGN by offering shows featuring black lead characters on Shonda Rhimes produced shows like Scandal and Murder, and all black families on Empire and Blackish mixed among its heterogeneous lineup of family entertainment. I think it would be safe to surmise that executives in the boardroom began developing strategies for creating Blackish rather than a lone screenwriter pitching a script offering a narrative of the ideal modern black family as an art project aimed at racial equality on TV. The form always follows the function and when Disney owns ABC you can be assured that function is profit. According to Variety ABC has been looking for a suitable comedy companion to “Modern Family” for years, and just may have found one in “Blackish.” The troupe is a method of dramatic structure taught at schools such as the Second City known as a fish out of water, or a clash of context. This very same structure was used on the show the Beverly Hillbillies generations ago. When the BHB first appeared in 1962 blacks on television weren’t portrayed as protagonists. In this case, the crackers stood in as the working class made good, but the slack-jawed yokels fall into the same trappings as the Johnsons do on Black-ish. Therefore, I argue that the race of the underdog in such narratives is replaceable, and shows like Black-ish fail to represent anything other than the pursuit of the mythical American Dream, a dream which creates nightmares rippling through our society, where consumerism trumps solidarity, the values of the working class are marginalized, and the reality of the struggle on the streets is rendered non existent.
Is there hope for more democratic media? Can we find alternative voices, which provide compelling counter-hegemonic critiques and create conversations about race and class in a critical yet still entertaining way?
As a communication scholar, I have spent a good deal of time researching dramatic structures and attempting my fair share of counter-hegemonic narratives. I’ve found that the constraints that certain genres have to limit the type and amount of representations that can be offered. The political economy behind the creation of a prime-time family comedy constrains the media to fit a number of business-related needs. Namely, that a show like Black-ish is able to net as large an audience share via appealing to as large a demographic as possible. Therefore, the symbol used will be a predictable formula of stereotypical jokes that represent class and race. However, genres such as sci-fi, supernatural, small town, dystopian, horror, historical, and mystery often tell stories of appealing to the more skeptical of audiences. In addition, serial episodic formats can provide a space for scriptwriters to introduce narratives that challenge stereotypical images of race by offering alternative realities from the status quo through ensemble built casts with no central protagonist.
As for the half-hour comedy show, I can think of a few examples that offer highly intelligent counter-hegemonic narratives. Norman Lear’s All in The Family, Dave Chappelle’s short-lived sketch comedy show Chappele Show stood on the shoulders of comics like Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks to create sketches that satirized and poked fun of cultural practices with sharp wit, and political nuance. In the sketch, Clayton Bigsby Chappelle depicts a slack jaw blind black man who grew up in a racist family in the rural south. The plot and setup are harnessed by character through Clayton’s handicap Clayton was unaware that he himself was a black man. He would grow to rise through the ranks of the KKK, and unbeknownst to the other members who also protected their own anonymity with hoods never found out about Clayton’s heritage until he has risen to power within the organization. In addition, the members had come care for Clayton “The Other” because once the aesthetic of skin color was removed the fellow Klansmen found common ground with Bigsby in hate of the Boogeyman that working people often construct to scapegoat fears which run counter educated critical thinking skills so lacking in pockets of poverty. Sketches like this put Dave Chappelle on the map, and also caused the Comedy Central executive team to put constraints on the comedian’s process and material. Apparently, even though Chappelle’s audience was loyal and strong, the advertisers became weary of his radical voice. Dave ended up walking out on the show and moving to Africa for a year in protest to the entertainment industry.
Ultimately, if there is any hope for more democratic depictions of race in popular culture, the means of production will have to belong to the people. The social relations will have to change first in order for the representations themselves can change, and a new worldview to emerge. Until then, we can expect to see more shows like Blackish being touted by the industry as examples of progress in Hollywood.
