On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 8:09 AM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: For the younger list members, there has been a long and heated controversy about "Amos and Andy" going back to its radio days in the 40s and 30s, then intensifying when it was brought to television. I remember as a kid identifying A&A as the epitome of racist television, and then as a late adolescent running into old black people who argued that A&A had been one of their favorite shows on radio and TV, and that it was one of the few TV shows that provided a platform for Black actors and comics.
On Friday, July 24, 2015 at 11:02:26 AM UTC-7, Tom Wolper wrote: > > About Amos & Andy: it started as a radio show voiced by white actors doing >> dialect. When it went to TV, while it did provide acting opportunities to >> African American actors, it did not give them an opportunity for an honest >> portrayal, they could only play stereotyped caricatures of African >> Americans and that is what the mostly white audience saw. >> > On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 2:56 AM, 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV < [email protected]> wrote: > I couldn't disagree more with the characterization of "Amos and Andy." > While it labored under the control of Correll and Gosden, as far as the > television version of the show goes, with the exception of Andy, George > Stevens, and Sapphire, the characters were hard-working intelligent > professionals who were anything but stereotyped. It was one of the few > places audiences could see black lawyers, doctors, and business owners who > acted like real people and not like caricatures who mumbled and were comic > relief for white actors. > > Yeah, the show had problems, but stereotyping wasn't one of them. > So, between them Tom and Dave do a pretty good job of illustrating the range of debate I alluded to that has raged on about A&A since it started on television in the 1950s. I think there is merit in both positions, though perhaps an in depth analysis of the program is beyond the scope of the current thread. But, note a couple of important things: 1. When Dave says that "with the exception of Andy, George Stevens, and Sapphire, the characters were... anything but stereotyped." this has to be understood in the context of the show. Andy of course is half of the titular main cast of the program; Sapphire became the most powerful embodiment of a deep and extremely limiting and damaging stereotype of African-American women as loud, shrill, emasculating and unproductive, and the George Stevens he references is The Kingfish, the character and stereotype that this thread turns on. The Kingfish was a lazy, dishonest conman - and in the television programs many of the episodes focused more on him than Amos and Andy. So Dave's statement is a little like saying: "with the exception of Elyse, Mallory and Alex, the Keaton Family on Family Ties was an accurate portrayal of white middle class American families in the 1980s". Except of course none of the characters on Family Ties are drawn in as harshly a caricatured manner as the main characters in A&A, with none of the negative and damaging consequences. There were good things about Amos and Andy (both comically and socially); but it simply is not true that stereotyping was not one of its problems. 2. In the context of US TV in the 1950s and 1960s, A&A probably did have a net positive portrayal of African Americans. Most White Americans would have only seen Blacks portrayed as various degrees of servants or criminals on television and most films, and A&A did include a range of intelligent and productive characters that, while common and well known to African Americans, would probably have seemed exotic to most Whites. And a lot of talented Black actors and comics who otherwise would either not have gotten work, or only in more demeaning roles, supported themselves and their families and had a career because of Amos and Andy. 3. Regardless of the final evaluation of Amos and Andy (and whatever that winds up being, it would be complex and multi-faceted), there is no doubt that the voice associated with The Kingfish is today a stereotyped and even racist marker. It is similar to the Uncle Tom image; one might want to argue that the original character in the novel is a counter-stereotype used to provide White people with positive images of African Americans. Whatever the success of that argument in the context of the novel, there is no doubt that today, the "Uncle Tom" image and traits are viewed by African Americans as offensive. Indeed, the reason Stewart used a Kingfish inflection in his Cain "impression" obviously was to be derogatory. 4. So there really is no valid debate about this - The Kingfish voice is a negative and racist stereotype, and would be taken as such by anyone who recognized it. Stewart's defense (which, again, I agree with) is that his whole schtick involves taking an obvious and unfair stereotype about public figures and absurdly exaggerating it to cut them down to size. He does this with Shumer and other Jewish personalities; he does this with Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, and so on; and he is irritated that otherwise "liberal" social critics draw the line at him doing the same thing with Black stereotypes. Where I am not critical of Stewart doing the bit, I am critical of him pretending not to understand how edgy and dangerous it is, and the inherent differences between he as a Jewish comic lampooning Jewish stereotypes and he as a Jewish comic lampooning Black stereotypes. It is a bit like white people who like to pretend that a word like "WASP" or "Cracker" is equal to a word like "Nigger" in power and damage. I would defend a skilled White comic (which Stewart is) telling a well crafted joke that uses the word "Nigger", and defend him against African-American critics who would basically be arguing that only Black comics are allowed to use the word in a joke. But only a moron (which Stewart is not) would try to pretend that there was nothing particularly fraught or dangerous about a white comic telling a Nigger joke, and this, on a smaller scale, is what Stewart did. What Stewart could, and maybe should have done is put his brilliant comic talents to the task of acknowledging these complexities, while still asserting his right to make the joke. I think Cenac's real mistake was in not articulating this (which was his actual position) - apparently because in his mind Stewart he could not or would not actually get into it at that level. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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