1.22.2006
Watching Race (Film and Media Studies)
Title
Gray, Herman. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Field
Film and Media Studies
Summary
Gray states that the aim of Watching Race is to "extend these critical discourses [of identity and expressive culture] and cultural strategies, particularly as they bear on commercial electronic mass-media forms, especially television. I examine critical debates about black expressive culture and black cultural productions within television as a means of exploring processes by which questions about the American racial order - and, within it, blackness - are constructed, reproduced and challenged." (1) The author focuses on the 1980s as a time in which television/commercial culture should be viewed as a "resource and a site in which blackness as a cultural sign is produced, circulated and enacted." (2) His methodology is firmly within the realm of Cultural Studies, drawing much of its premise from British Cultural Studies - that is, a serious interest in popular media that does examine the texts at stake for possibilities and productivities, but maintains a materialist critique and boundedness to the ways in which these texts are / can be- produced and received. He explores the 80s and Reaganism's use of blackness as a cultural sign to codify and reconfigure American conceptions of self / other towards a particular conservative end. He posits Reaganism, and its reliance on televisuality, as the backdrop for the kinds of representations of African Americans circulating in that era. He discusses these representations as circulating as part of the construction/claiming/contestation of blackness for African Americans themselves and its shifting meaning within dominant culture . "I want to locate television representations of blackness, then, at the intersection of social and cultural discourses within African American communities and dominant culture." (36) Further, in setting up his case studies of three shows of the 1980s, Herman is careful to locate the possibility of such programming within a history of representation of blackness on television (Amos and Andy in the 50s, Nat King Cole in the 60s, What's Happening / Roots in the 70s, and the Cosby Show in the early 1980s) and the material and commercial shifts in the television industry (corporate takeovers of the major networks, competition from cable and VCRS leading to niche marketing, the inception of the FOX network, etc.) - an important part of this inquiry as an approach to television as its own "political economy, industrial organization, and technologies, because these structures are central to television's construction, organization, and circulation of blackness." (57)
Gray designates television of the 1980s as belonging to three kinds of discursive practices, dictated by the framing and assumed privileged gaze of the show.
1. Assimilationist - Family Ties, The Golden Girls, Designing Women, etc. Here race is seen as an individual, inconsequential attribute. "The historic and contemporary consequences of structured social inequality and a culture deeply inflected and defined by racism are invisible and inconsequential to the lives of its citizens." (86) "The privileged subject position is necessarily that of the white middle class." (ibid)
2. Pluralist or Separate-but-Equal - Family Matters, 227, Amen. These shows recognize "race (blackness) as the basis of cultural difference (expressed as separation) as a feature of U.S. society." (87) However, these shows are constructed under the premise that this black world is parallel to a corresponding white world and use the same means of normative representation. Further, these shows depend on a totalizing, universal representation of blackness.
3. Multiculturalism/Diversity - A Different World, In Living Color, Frank's Place, Roc, etc. These programs are framed from an African-American perspective as opposed to a dominant white middle class framing / gaze. They often blur the genre of the television sitcom, not always relying on easy resolution. "Television programs operating within this discursive space position viewers, regardless of race, class, or gender locations, to participate in black experiences from multiple subject positions." (90)
Gray then goes on to closely examine A Different World, Frank's Place and In Living Color as very different examples of the 3rd discursive practice of representing blackness. He has a lot of praise for the first two, but is clearly uncomfortable with the satirical ambivalence of In Living Color.
The book concludes with a chapter on hyperblackness and black youth culture and reiterating the move from struggle around the representation of blackness in the media to mere representations of racial difference
Keywords
Blackness ("the constellation of productions, histories, images, representations, and meanings associated with black presence in the United States: (12)), Struggle, Expressive Culture, Cultural Sign, Popular Imaginary, Hyperblackness.
Other Thoughts
"Television is the medium that surrounds our everyday lives without appearing to do so, intrusive without being obnoxious, a part of our common sense. Like Reagan's rhetoric, television can confront, represent, and circulate immorality without appearing hostile, judgmental, or most important, racist." (34)
This book was good and important. I can't say I found it that interesting, but I know that it was looking at these shows through a framework that hadn't really been done before - not about positive or negative representation, but as Herman repeatedly says, it is about figuring out how blackness operates at multiple discursive sites (here, televisual sites), is informed by political, historical, and social realities, and in turn, is part of a process of a struggle for meaning. So actually, yeah, I thought the methodology chapters and the framework was excellent and really useful.
I had a problem with the chapter on In Living Color - it actually exemplified an issue I have with a lot of the work that is bound up with British Cultural Studies. I get that this isn't a rescue project with uncritical praise of subversion. I also get the need to stake a claim that television is an important part of how blackness is constructed - and that it is difficult to walk the line between taking the text seriously while not going overboard and forgetting the material realities that structure both what we see and how we can see it. I think this is important, obviously. But once again, humor and pleasure are sort of like these stinky, weird, undisciplined things that can't be fit into this framework. I just don't know what to make of this statement: "What is most troubling to me about In Living Color's parody is not so much its humor, but its use of humor in the service of ambivalence."*
And all the episodes of a Different World that he thought were so great , like the apartheid episode (where they all did a "South African" dance at the end? Seriously, that episode?), were actually pretty corny. So I guess I am saying that the actual "case studies" were unconvincing. But what do I know - I was about 9 years old when all of that stuff was on television.
*I mean, I get bogged down in stuff like this when I try to explain why Sarah Silverman totally sucks even if white boys think she is all subversive and hot - but I guess that is because I hate irony. Ha ha, I am lame. But seriously, Sarah Silverman, you are not outside of ideology - you are just weird and racist.
Other QE Works Cited
Allen, Robert. Channels of Discourse. (Film and Media Studies)
Hall, Stuart. Encoding/Decoding. (Film and Media Studies)
hooks, bell. Black Looks (Film and Media Studies)
Gray, Herman. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Field
Film and Media Studies
Summary
Gray states that the aim of Watching Race is to "extend these critical discourses [of identity and expressive culture] and cultural strategies, particularly as they bear on commercial electronic mass-media forms, especially television. I examine critical debates about black expressive culture and black cultural productions within television as a means of exploring processes by which questions about the American racial order - and, within it, blackness - are constructed, reproduced and challenged." (1) The author focuses on the 1980s as a time in which television/commercial culture should be viewed as a "resource and a site in which blackness as a cultural sign is produced, circulated and enacted." (2) His methodology is firmly within the realm of Cultural Studies, drawing much of its premise from British Cultural Studies - that is, a serious interest in popular media that does examine the texts at stake for possibilities and productivities, but maintains a materialist critique and boundedness to the ways in which these texts are / can be- produced and received. He explores the 80s and Reaganism's use of blackness as a cultural sign to codify and reconfigure American conceptions of self / other towards a particular conservative end. He posits Reaganism, and its reliance on televisuality, as the backdrop for the kinds of representations of African Americans circulating in that era. He discusses these representations as circulating as part of the construction/claiming/contestation of blackness for African Americans themselves and its shifting meaning within dominant culture . "I want to locate television representations of blackness, then, at the intersection of social and cultural discourses within African American communities and dominant culture." (36) Further, in setting up his case studies of three shows of the 1980s, Herman is careful to locate the possibility of such programming within a history of representation of blackness on television (Amos and Andy in the 50s, Nat King Cole in the 60s, What's Happening / Roots in the 70s, and the Cosby Show in the early 1980s) and the material and commercial shifts in the television industry (corporate takeovers of the major networks, competition from cable and VCRS leading to niche marketing, the inception of the FOX network, etc.) - an important part of this inquiry as an approach to television as its own "political economy, industrial organization, and technologies, because these structures are central to television's construction, organization, and circulation of blackness." (57)
Gray designates television of the 1980s as belonging to three kinds of discursive practices, dictated by the framing and assumed privileged gaze of the show.
1. Assimilationist - Family Ties, The Golden Girls, Designing Women, etc. Here race is seen as an individual, inconsequential attribute. "The historic and contemporary consequences of structured social inequality and a culture deeply inflected and defined by racism are invisible and inconsequential to the lives of its citizens." (86) "The privileged subject position is necessarily that of the white middle class." (ibid)
2. Pluralist or Separate-but-Equal - Family Matters, 227, Amen. These shows recognize "race (blackness) as the basis of cultural difference (expressed as separation) as a feature of U.S. society." (87) However, these shows are constructed under the premise that this black world is parallel to a corresponding white world and use the same means of normative representation. Further, these shows depend on a totalizing, universal representation of blackness.
3. Multiculturalism/Diversity - A Different World, In Living Color, Frank's Place, Roc, etc. These programs are framed from an African-American perspective as opposed to a dominant white middle class framing / gaze. They often blur the genre of the television sitcom, not always relying on easy resolution. "Television programs operating within this discursive space position viewers, regardless of race, class, or gender locations, to participate in black experiences from multiple subject positions." (90)
Gray then goes on to closely examine A Different World, Frank's Place and In Living Color as very different examples of the 3rd discursive practice of representing blackness. He has a lot of praise for the first two, but is clearly uncomfortable with the satirical ambivalence of In Living Color.
The book concludes with a chapter on hyperblackness and black youth culture and reiterating the move from struggle around the representation of blackness in the media to mere representations of racial difference
Keywords
Blackness ("the constellation of productions, histories, images, representations, and meanings associated with black presence in the United States: (12)), Struggle, Expressive Culture, Cultural Sign, Popular Imaginary, Hyperblackness.
Other Thoughts
"Television is the medium that surrounds our everyday lives without appearing to do so, intrusive without being obnoxious, a part of our common sense. Like Reagan's rhetoric, television can confront, represent, and circulate immorality without appearing hostile, judgmental, or most important, racist." (34)
This book was good and important. I can't say I found it that interesting, but I know that it was looking at these shows through a framework that hadn't really been done before - not about positive or negative representation, but as Herman repeatedly says, it is about figuring out how blackness operates at multiple discursive sites (here, televisual sites), is informed by political, historical, and social realities, and in turn, is part of a process of a struggle for meaning. So actually, yeah, I thought the methodology chapters and the framework was excellent and really useful.
I had a problem with the chapter on In Living Color - it actually exemplified an issue I have with a lot of the work that is bound up with British Cultural Studies. I get that this isn't a rescue project with uncritical praise of subversion. I also get the need to stake a claim that television is an important part of how blackness is constructed - and that it is difficult to walk the line between taking the text seriously while not going overboard and forgetting the material realities that structure both what we see and how we can see it. I think this is important, obviously. But once again, humor and pleasure are sort of like these stinky, weird, undisciplined things that can't be fit into this framework. I just don't know what to make of this statement: "What is most troubling to me about In Living Color's parody is not so much its humor, but its use of humor in the service of ambivalence."*
And all the episodes of a Different World that he thought were so great , like the apartheid episode (where they all did a "South African" dance at the end? Seriously, that episode?), were actually pretty corny. So I guess I am saying that the actual "case studies" were unconvincing. But what do I know - I was about 9 years old when all of that stuff was on television.
*I mean, I get bogged down in stuff like this when I try to explain why Sarah Silverman totally sucks even if white boys think she is all subversive and hot - but I guess that is because I hate irony. Ha ha, I am lame. But seriously, Sarah Silverman, you are not outside of ideology - you are just weird and racist.
Other QE Works Cited
Allen, Robert. Channels of Discourse. (Film and Media Studies)
Hall, Stuart. Encoding/Decoding. (Film and Media Studies)
hooks, bell. Black Looks (Film and Media Studies)
# posted by SMRT : 7:41 PM
