PRIME TIME
With the success of Sanford and Son, Good Times, That's My Mama, and The Jeffersons, it would seem that the Modern Black Sitcom (as opposed to Amos 'n Andy 'n' Beulah) is a concept whose time has arrived. Not so. It's more devious than that. The important thing to remember is that when dealing with TV not only are things often not what they seem, they are often less than they seem.
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Blackwashing The White Experience
PRIME TIME
by Richard Walls
With the success of Sanford and Son, Good Times, That's My Mama, and The Jeffersons, it would seem that the Modern Black Sitcom (as opposed to Amos 'n Andy 'n' Beulah) is a concept whose time has arrived. Not so. It's more devious than that. The important thing to remember is that when dealing with TV not only are things often not what they seem, they are often less than they seem. Four comedies (one good, one undecided, and two wretched) are all we really have here. If there's any "breakthrough" involved it's about the employment of black actors and actresses, little more. The shows are about as relevant to the big Black Experience (it has to be big - it rumbles and reverberates as it cracks through the icy whitesheet of predominant reality) as Ozzie and Harriet has to do with my alleged White Experience. Black people are being offered the choice of identifying with clowns in a vacuum; possible proof to all the neo-humanists out there that the great unifying Elmer's glue for the disparate aspects of humanity is the desire to be manipulated, preferably in a pleasurable and palatable manner.
This isn't so surprising when you consider that the main thrust of movies, books, TV (and magazines), is to manipulate: to make you stand up, smile, get pissed, sit down, cry - all right on cue. Sometimes, when the emotional manipulations are strong enough or the cues are subtle enough, it becomes a kind of art or even Art if such a word is still viable when speaking of original TV material. More often it's something less. Which brings us back to TV sitcoms, category: black.
Sanford and Son is the best of the lot for two reasons. Firstly it got niggers (stand up). More specifically (sit down) it has Redd Foxx, who has developed a character (with some help from writers, I imagine) which exploits the artifacts (Ripple, ribs, etc.), attitudes (a bored naivete, a wry and cunning sense of survival) and language (including the word "nigger" as used by blacks in times of trust and distress) of a contemporary strata of black society heretofore ignored by the tube as comic material (and did you ever notice that Foxx pronounces the word "aunt" as "ant" whereas Desmond Wilson pronounces it "aunt" causing the actors to make an unintentional generational division of a peculiarly black nature between the characters they're playing? Huh? Did ya?). The second reason that this is the best of the black sitcoms is because it's funny.
Not so funny is Good Times, a sloppy show whose prototypes rarely mesh into a convincing family and whose frequent attempts at poignancy are embarassingly misplayed and misplaced -you can't say "we suffer, we are noble" after twenty-five minutes of bad schtick from Jimmie Walker and lame oneliners from the rest of the cast. And Esther Rolle should be playing heavy drama. She beams dignity like a blacklight beacon but she has no idea of how to play comedy. In the context of this show her dignity becomes a bore. And that's not funny.
That's My Mama. Christ. A pseudohip Leave It To Beaver with Clifton as the nice kid always gettin' into some kinda "who cares" trouble abetted by his best friend Earl, who is even more harmless than the legendary Eddie Haskell, and Mama! Both parents rolled into one, spunk with no funk. You can't play it that safe and still be funny. It's the same pablum-filled hole white sitcom fell into years ago and rotted in until All In The Family rejuvenated the genre, slightly. As if to compensate for all these black-on-white-on-grey characters they (who?) have inserted a peripheral parody of a hip parody called Junior, a cat so surrealistically activated that you expect that any minute he might do something really funny. But don't hold your breath.
The Jeffersohs, as of this writing, is only about a month old so it's difficult to tell how bad or good it's going to turn out. Sherman Hemsley has moments as the lead, playing an asshole in the Bunker tradition but with a black edge. He's interesting to watch, for awhile, while he struts and bellows, the little bully ready to jump on ya - he even jerks when he's standing still like a wired drunk. Another sign of possible life is an interracial couple, which is a nice touch. They've already started what will no doubt become a running gag as Jefferson keeps anticipating the white hubby calling his black wife "nigger" or some other juicy pejorative. But the weirdo neighbor who started out as an original is fast becoming that old low comedy standby of the very intelligent person (he speaks five languages, knows a little about everything) who is hopelessly eccentric. The show has potential but it's running down fast.
It could be that I'm wrong. It could be that watching so much TV has turned my brain into cheeze yoyo and that these four black shows have significance and humor. It could be that the comedy goes past me and that this is about the best one can expect from humorous interpretations of the big Black Experience. Then I think of Richard Pryor and my perspective on black sitcoms comes back - it's all just a different shade of crap.
