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Is Equally Entertaining Enough? Diversity on American Television

11 April 2014
7 minute read

American TV embodies social norms while diverting viewers with situations that are amusing, terrifying, or both. The representation of ethnic and sexual identities on TV has been and continues to be a double-edged sword in American cultural life. The periodic inclusions of actors of color, gay characters, or women in positions of authority on TV are perennially discussed as “milestones”, celebrated by some, derided by others.

In 1969, communications scholar Cedric C. Clark identified four stages of minority representation in American TV:  non-recognition, ridicule, regulation, and finally, respect. The representation of many groups has followed this trajectory, although backsliding from respect to ridicule is also frequent.

In the 1950s, the “I Love Lucy” sitcom was America’s most-watched show. It spoofed a marriage between a white woman, the comedienne Lucille Ball, and a Cuban bandleader, the musician Desi Arnez, whose character was “Ricky Ricardo”. Arnez and Ball were married in real life, which contributed to the show’s popularity. In its day it was considered progressive for showing a “mixed-race” marriage (marriage between non-whites and whites was still illegal in most states then), as well as for Ball’s performance while pregnant, but the character of Ricky was full of Latino stereotypes (a hot-tempered man who loses the ability to speak English when upset). Lucy was a bored housewife trying to get Ricky’s attention, the stereotype of a woman who is inferior/unequal to her husband in the outside world and therefore jealous of and frustrated by him. 

In the 1960s, a time of great social upheaval off-screen, TV was dominated by escapist nostalgia:  Westerns with stereotypes of Mexicans as bandits or submissive peasants, Native Americans as Enemy #1, even stereotypes of “gypsies” (see more below). A variation was “The Beverly Hillbillies”, lampooning white country bumpkins who have struck it rich. “The Andy Griffith Show” also rose to popularity then by evoking small-town, Southern, white 1930s America; episode 183 in the sixth season of this show was called “The Gypsies” and features a Romani family placing a curse on the fictional town of Mayberry.

The 1970s saw TV return to the present. The comedy “All in the Family” showed a reactionary father figure, Archie Bunker, arguing with his liberal son-in-law and constantly humiliating his long-suffering wife; Bunker’s bigotry was always lampooned and his character ultimately rejects racism (if not sexism).

The 1980s saw the return of a contemporary “Western” with “Dallas”, a hit even behind the Iron Curtain. The #1 program from 1985 – 1989 was “The Cosby Show”, featuring comedian Bill Cosby as the head of an upper-middle class family (father a doctor, mother a lawyer), which fundamentally altered the image of African-Americans and firmly established an African-American entertainment elite as a presence in American cultural life.

1990s TV was dominated by the medical drama “ER” (which gave the world George Clooney), criticized for portraying young African-Americans as either abused by their parents, as drug addicts, or as gang members. The 2000s saw the rise of “American Idol”, a “reality” competition which, by featuring exemplars of every ethnic and religious minority in American life, reinforces stereotypes around class, ethnicity, gender, heteronormativity and race. Contestants offer themselves up for the all but constant video surveillance that has erased earlier notions of privacy, as well as to the potentially humiliating experience of being rejected by the voting public in the pursuit of celebrity. The show was satirized by the 2006 film “American Dreamz”.   

Lastly, a review of American TV and multiculturalism would be incomplete without discussing the reactionary FOX news channel, whose über-white anchors have been spewing hatred and innuendo as “news” since 1996. Not only were they instrumental in promoting the 2003 Iraq war, their pundits blamed the 2008 financial crisis on “minorities” and have asserted that President Obama “hates white people”. A decade has passed since the 2004 documentary “Outfoxed” analyzed how media tycoon Rupert Murdoch uses FOX to promote the right wing; there are currently no signs that the cultural impact of his propaganda machine is weakening in the US.

Over the past 40 years there have been many attempts on TV to promote a multicultural vision of America’s past and present. While few efforts have ever enjoyed the mainstream success of “The Cosby Show”, there have been a few cultural moments deserving of the term “milestone”, the most iconic of which is undoubtedly “Roots”. This 1977 mini-series, based on the novel by Alex Haley, follows an African-American family from the 17th century until just after the Civil War. All of its episodes still rank within the top 100 most-viewed US TV shows of all time, with the final episode ranked as #3, reaching 71 % of the prime time TV audience (36.38 million households).

“Roots” was preceded by “Farewell to Manzanar”, a 1976 TV movie based on a memoir by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. The film portrays the experiences of the Japanese-American Wakatsuki family before, during and after their imprisonment in the Manzanar concentration camp in California during WWII and remains an under-appreciated, unique moment in television history.

Since the 1970s, children’s educational TV on public broadcasting stations, much of it produced by the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), has promoted multiculturalism. The iconic “Sesame Street” show has been a lightning rod for reaction; a Mississippi state commission voted to ban it in 1970 because of its ethnically integrated cast. The show was initially critiqued by feminists and Latino activists and responded to those criticisms, hiring more Latino actors, production staff and researchers. By the mid-1970s the CTW was including cartoons teaching Spanish in its programs. According to a 1996 survey, 95 % of all American preschoolers had seen “Sesame Street” by the time they were three. In 2012, failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made the much-derided mistake of suggesting that funding for such public broadcasting be cut.

Commercial American television, however, is still far from bigotry-free. Well-worn stereotypes of people called “gypsies” or “Irish Travellers” include the crystal ball-gazing fortune teller in gaudy apparel or inbred families making their livings as thieves in American film and television portrayals up to the present day (including at least one recent Hollywood film, Guy Ritchie’s second “Sherlock Holmes” of 2011). The genres of horror and science fiction (not just in film but also, for example, in gaming) traffic in associations between “gypsies” and the occult, with countless examples of the “gypsy curse” serving as a handy plot device. 

Present-day “reality TV” productions, such as National Geographic’s “American Gypsies” or TLC’s “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding” now come complete with websites (perhaps in response to widespread complaints?) that attempt to provide historical context or even to refute particular stereotypes (“all Gypsies tell fortunes”, “Gypsies dress trashy”, etc.). Alas, like the many other “reality” shows that purport to show the “secret worlds” of various groups, the content of these programs is primarily designed to perpetuate mystique, not to demystify. When I asked Professor Ian Hancock in 2012 what US Roma viewers thought of the “American Gypsies” series, he said some found the program’s obvious references to the mafia offensive, while others were concerned that certain aspects of Roma culture were being unnecessarily revealed.

Despite such disheartening recent examples with respect to the Romani minority in particular, the effort to make American television more generally inclusive is still underway. TV characters with various kinds of disabilities (Asperger’s syndrome, blindness, cancer survivors, Down syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, prosthetic limb and wheelchair users) are also on the rise. Actors with disabilities are rarely cast to play these roles, the exceptions being Michael J. Fox on his eponymous show and Chris Burke, an actor with Down syndrome who starred in the series “Life Goes On” from 1989 – 1993.

I would like to close this too-brief survey with a list of American films that deserve more recognition in this regard:

"A Great Wall" (1986) – A Chinese-American family returns to China for the first time in 30 years, experiencing culture clashes
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) – Spike Lee’s drama shows racial tension culminating in tragedy in New York City
"Erin Brokovich" (2000) – Drama based on the real-life story of a single mother who fights a major corporation and wins
"Lords of Dogtown" (2005) – Drama about skateboard culture in 1970s Southern California that explores questions of class
"Norma Rae" (1979) – Drama based on the real-life story of a female labor organizer in the American South
"Pleasantville" (1998) – A fantasy exploring the notion that personal repression results in political and social oppression
"Reds" (1981) – Drama about John Reed, who chronicled the Russian Revolution, featuring interviews with those who remember him
"Smoke Signals" (1998) – The story of a friendship between two indigenous men growing up together on a reservation 
"The Butler" (2013) – Historical drama based on the life of an African-American who works as a butler in the White House
"To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) – Film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about resistance to racism in the South

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