Let’s Review # 4 — Are we seeing a new era in black representation on TV?

Photo credit: Ted Major via Flickr

We Review…

This review session comes courtesy of listener-friend Ben. He wondered about the differences between television and film when it comes to black leading actors. And Ben also wondered which audiences shows, such as Empire, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder, were trying to draw since a lot of the media coverage has been about the racial diversity of these audiences’ shows.

For some historical and contemporary production context, we spoke with:

Dr. Robin Means Coleman is chair of the Department of Communications at the University of Michigan. She joined us to share the trajectory of black inclusion on American television since its beginnings in the 1940s.

Dr. Darnell Hunt is director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American studies at UCLA. He shared with us data and insights from the Center’s annual Hollywood Diversity Report. Dr. Hunt co-wrote the report with Dr. Ana-Christina Ramon [PDF]. He also gets to the heart of Ben’s opening question comparing what’s happening on television and in film.

Featured in this episode…

Have you watched any of these shows?

Are we seeing a new era in black representation on TV?

Should we be more concerned with behind-the-scenes production moreso than representation?

What’s happening behind-the-scenes? Is there progress there?

Spoiler alert: nope. But that doesn’t stop us from having a great, informative conversation.

Beulah

Amos n’ Andy

Julia

Fresh Off the Boat

Scandal

Empire

Jane the Virgin

For Your Review…

Dr. Means Coleman recommends Fox’s Empire. She contrasts it with Power on Starz. These are shows with black leads dealing with power, money, and family. Why not check out both? She calls Empire, “almost telenovela in its impulses,” which sounds fun.

Danielle Thomas played Dee Thomas on What’s Happening!! Photo credit: ABC Television (eBay item photo front photo back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Jenn (aka Dee Thomas from What’s Happening!!) is going to do a sistah a solid and recommend Kim’s co-edited volume Stories of O: the Oprahfication of American Culture. Read it and find out why it takes so long for Kim to respond to the question, “Do you like Oprah?”…which people ask a surprisingly high number of times in a year. The book is less about Oprah as a person and more about her as a “culture industry.” What’s the greater meaning for race, gender, class, and sexual politics for Oprah to have such diverse investments and power?

Ja’net DuBois played Willona Woods on Good Times. Photo credit: CBS Television [Public domain], via Wikimedia Com

Kim (aka Willona Woods from Good Times) recommends Sleepy Hollow. When you discover a TV show all on your own, it’s as if you’ve discovered a band before your friends. All kinds of snobby pride in one’s taste can run amok. Luckily, I learned that Jenn watches it, too. So do legions of black nerds on Twitter, hence #SleepyHolla. Get engrossed in Abbie Mills and the reawakened Ichabod Crane’s fate as “The Witnesses” who must protect us all from an assured apocalypse of the Four Horsemen kind.

Thanks to Mark Brush and Peg Watson for production assistance.

Creative Commons-licensed music courtesy of Eladla and Jaspertine.

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Have questions or show ideas? Email us at letusreviewpodcast@gmail.com.