Nighttime TV has more series than ever dominated by black characters, from NBC’s “Rhythm and Blues”-about a white deejay at a black radio station-to Fox’s “Martin”-Starring the comedian Martin Lawrence as a talk-radio host. (A key reason is economics: a 1990 Nielsen study showed that black households are watching TV in record numbers, averaging nearly 70 hours a week, compared with 47 hours for nonblack households.) But not everybody calls that progress. Many critics, scholars and producers have condemned the new shows for having a simplistic, unreal view of black life. At his recent induction into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fames, Bill Cosby excoriated the networks for spewing out “drive-by images” which, he said, reinforce shallow stereotypes. TV blacks “think funny about theft,” Cosby told NEWSWEEK. " They think funny about gross movements towards the female. How many times has the punch line been, ‘We’re going to kick butt’? How many times has the punch line been about genitalia or big breasts? If this is ‘black,’ then it’s like the Peggy Lee song: ‘Is that all there is?’"
In fact, that’s not all there is. Individualized, attractive black characters pop up in dramas like NBC’s “Law and Order” and “I’ll Fly Away” and comedies like NBC’s socially conscious “A Different World” and Fox’s “Roc.” Moreover, many white comedies serve up their share of ethnic stereotypes: nebbishy Jews (NEWSWEEK, Oct. 12) and godfatherish Italians. But what’s disturbing about the African-American buffoons is how they dominate the limited black programming on the tube.
Such characters have followed a straight line from “Amos ’n’ Andy” in the 1950s to the black “minstrel” shows of the 1970s (like “Good Times”) to today’s witless black twentysomethings. “It’s as if nearly all you had to judge white people on was ‘The Three Stooges’,” says Elvis Mitchell, an African-American media critic for National Public Radio. Indeed, when Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill sparred on TV last year, “they offered a picture of professional blacks that most white Americans found completely unfamiliar,” says Jannette Dates, author of “Split Images: African Americans in the Mass Media.” In this year’s sorry crop of sitcoms, most TV producers have fallen back on tired, overused motifs we’ve seen before:
On NBC’s “Rhythm and Blues,” Bobby Soul (Roger Kabler) is a hyperkinetic R&B deejay hired to lead struggling WBLZ “to the promised land.” When the station employees find out he’s white, they react with dismay. “He stands out like Wesley Snipes in a bowl of rice,” says one. Besides its unflattering portraits of bigoted blacks and Soul’s cartoonish exaggeration of jive, the show is a throwback to “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Webster,” in which little black children were socialized, or “saved,” by more knowledgeable whites.
The tube overflows with black males consumed by their own testosterone. “This girl walked by in a dress so tight– POW!–I could see her heart beat,” says Vidal, wearing a JUST DO ME sweat shirt on “Out All Night.” After each crude remark, sidekick Jeff knocks him in the head. “She want me. She want me bad!” pants a neighbor on “Martin.” “These shows reduce black men to libido,” says Marlon Riggs, director of the PBS documentary “Color Adjustment,” about African-American images on TV.
Several shows draw laughs from familiar images of black cowardice and irresponsibility. Even “Here and Now,” produced by Bill Cosby, includes a Stepin Fetchit foil to play against Malcolm Jamal Warner’s upstanding worker at a youth center. One minute the character is hustling Knicks tickets in exchange for stolen snow tires; the next, he cringes behind a desk when gang members burst in. “It’s 75 years after ‘Birth of a Nation’,” says Mitchell, “and we’re still crawling.”
Producers of these shows say critics unfairly apply a double standard. Why, they ask, doesn’t anyone complain about “Seinfeld,” with its cast filled with dysfunctional white Yuppies? Rob Edwards, cocreator of “Out All Night,” insists that there’s nothing wrong with balancing his straightarrow main character with Vidal for laughs. “Comedy is about human frailty,” he says. " You can’t have a bunch of perfect characters doing perfect things." Edwards seems to miss the point: comic foils are fine, but Vidal, like too many black characters, remains a one-note stereotype, despite recent attempts to deepen him by portraying his lechery as a mark of bravado.
Vidal’s hardly the only black TV character who seems strangely real world. One problem is that whites still control most shows about blacks. They often miss the nuances of the landscape they’re writing about. “You can’t do this by guessing,” concedes Andy Borowitz, whose record is mixed: he’s the cocreator of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” (one of the better black sitcoms) and cocreator of “Out All Night.” “Too often you have eight white writers in a room with one black trainee, and they ask him, ‘Do blacks still say ‘def’ a lot?”’ (Apparently, the trainee gives different answers.)
Another problem is that network executives are still gun-shy about airing-and nurturing-black dramatic series that go beyond sitcompoopery. In 1988, after one season, CBS yanked the widely praised yet low-rated drama " Frank’s Place," starring Tim Reid as a New Orleans restaurateur. Today there are no black-dominated dramas on the air. " In the 1950s, if you were an African-American, you’d better be off the streets at certain times of day," says Cosby. " TV is the same way. You’d better be off the air by 9 o’clock."
Despite the wave of regressive sitcoms, the news isn’t all bad. A number of half-hour comedies offer honest portraits of African-American life. “Roe,” starring Charles Dutton as a Baltimore garbageman, treats its characters with dignity, though it isn’t very funny. And while taking heat for falling back on stock characters, “Martin” portrays its leading man’s relationship with his girlfriend with humor and complexity. What’s clearly needed are more showcases after 9, where the best adult programs, such as “Northern Exposure,” thrive. Actually, it may be time that Bill Cosby himself put his talent where his mouth is. He’s done it before, with the “I Spy” drama in the ’60s and “The Cosby Show” comedy in the ’80s. Is " You Bet Your Life" the best you can offer us now?
