The definition of sitcom lies in the name; a sitcom is a “situational comedy”, which entails a radio or, and most popularly, television comedy series that consists of characters that carry over each episode, typically centred around a friend group, family, or workplace. The idea around sitcoms is that the word “situational” acts as an umbrella term for different types of scenarios from social situations and life experiences mixed with the comedy genre to create an easily digestible and relatable show to watch or listen to with family. The representation of Black voices and faces in the media is important, and to maintain acknowledgement is to retell history. That is why I chose this topic. This paper will discuss the timeline of Black American sitcoms from their origin to their peak, the obstacles faced in marking their existence, how they got to where they are, what the future holds for the genre, and the possible transformations that will be made to them.
How and Why it all Started: An overview of how things have been done in the past
The first American sitcom was Sam ‘n’ Henry, a radio show made in 1925, about two African American men, Sam and Henry, who, due to the Great Migration, moved from Alabama to Chicago, where the show “takes place”. Sam ‘n’ Henry reflected the various obstacles that African Americans faced in the 1920s, including those in the South, dealing with Jim Crow policies and the resistance to their presence by white Americans after the migration to the Midwest and the North. In 1928, Sam ‘n’ Henry would become Amos ‘n’ Andy. The voice actors, two white men, Freeman Godsen and Charles Correll, sourced their characters’ voices from the dialects used in 1800s blackface minstrelsy, also known as “hybrid dialect”. Sean Bellaviti, professor for MUS 505, explains that Hybrid dialect was found and popularised by blackface performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who would walk around neighborhoods in New York, listening to the overlapping accents of Black people, Creole people, and people of other cultures, and then mock it in his performances (Bellaviti, slide 5). Sitcoms transitioned primarily to television around the 1950s with shows like I Love Lucy (1951) and The Honeymooners (1955), along with many other stories centered around the experiences of white Americans, with minimal to no accurate representation of African Americans. Amos ‘n’ Andy was adapted into a television series but was met with backlash from the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, who launched a protest against the show. This backlash led to Amos ‘n’ Andy being cancelled in 1953.
The desire to work in television in America extended beyond white people; however, that was not reflected or, rather, projected on screen. The representation of Black people with prominent television roles was slim, if not nonexistent. The bridge between no representation of Black people and the uprise of Black sitcoms were the shows Beulah and Amos ‘n’ Andy. Beulah was a TV show starring Black actress and cultural Icon Hattie McDaniel as Beulah. As McDaniel’s website states; It [Beulah] is notable for being “The first show to star an African American woman (“Beulah TV Series | Filmography | Hattie McDaniel”), but the problem of the misrepresentation and stereotyping of African Americans remained in these shows. Beulah was a TV show about the Black minstrelsy caricature, the “Mammy”, who is depicted as an older dark-skinned Black woman devoted to serving the white family that enslaves her and is happily willing to jeopardise her own safety to do so. The Mammy takes pride in her life being centered around protecting her white “family”. This show, along with this stereotype, is problematic as it strips Black women of their autonomy and identities and perpetuates the reductivist notion that they exist solely to support and better the lives of white people through helping around the house, raising their families, carrying the emotional weight of their problems on their backs through being their confidants, through abuse, and so on.
What was the bridge between no representation of Black people on TV and Black sitcoms?
The content of Beulah, when referencing the script, was undoubtedly intended to mock Black women and Black people in general; however, a good performance can triumph mockery, and when given the opportunity, Hattie McDaniel reclaimed her autonomy in small ways, by allowing her performance to speak through Beulah, almost making the words in the script secondary to their sound and how they made the viewer feel, and in doing so, subconsciously humanised Black woman to non-Black viewers, and allowed Black viewers to see themselves in a light different to the negative way they were used to. Mack Scott eloquently explains this by saying, “Although the words she spoke hardly constituted a rebuke of mid-century stereotypes, the way Hattie McDaniel delivered the line was. The award-winning actress enunciated every word perfectly and silently solicited the audience’s respect by keeping her chin high and utilizing facial expressions to add depth and humanity to her performance” (Scott 2). These mannerisms were employed by many African American actresses in the mid-twentieth century, evoking those same feelings in viewers and inadvertently “preparing” white audiences for more Blackness on their screens, which would surge in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and the early 2000s.
The success of Black sitcoms
Between 1954 and 1970, the Civil Rights Movement was taking place, and in 1964, Jim Crow laws were largely overturned, leading to integration in many fronts, including the workplace, which in turn, called for openings in roles in front of and behind the camera in the entertainment and radio and television industry. This is when and where the influx of Black sitcoms began, with shows like Sanford and Son (1972), and Good Times (1974). Good Times was a highly influential show in the Black community as it represented Black people in ways that could be related to universally, not solely consisting of characters reflecting white supremacist ideals and being centered around stereotypes. As mentioned by the Television Academy Foundation, the parents in the show instilled in their children family values and morality, and the children had their own individual hobbies, were goal-oriented, and were intelligent (“Good Times”). This show was another step forward for the normalisation of Black people being positively represented in the media. Time passed, and 80s classics like A Different World (1987) and others, helped pave the way to birth what is referred to as the “Golden Age of Black Sitcoms”, this era was given this name, because of the influx of Black sitcom classics, like, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990), Living Single (1993), Sister Sister (1994), Smart Guy (1997), The Wayans Bros. (1999), and many more, all of which individually and collectively gave Black audiences variety, choice, and Black youth the opportunity to see themselves beyond a reductive stereotype. Media representation goes beyond just seeing oneself, as explained by Dana E. Mastro and Linda R. Tropp: “Negative, stereotypic depictions were found to reinforce adherence to the unfavourable stereotype among those who subscribe to the belief” (Mastro and Tropp). The psychological impacts of media on the human brain shift thought processes, influencing the life experiences of those being portrayed. That is why it is imperative that writers, producers, and directors be cautious with the way they choose to portray people, especially people from marginalised communities.
What does the future hold for Black sitcoms?
Hollywood’s history is rooted in anti-Black racism, and with this comes systemic side effects of racism, like colourism. As for what the future holds, an important conversation that, in my opinion, has yet to be fully addressed by the media is colourism, the discrimination of someone based on the tone of their skin, mostly within their racial group. In the Disney sitcom KC Undercover (2015), Zendaya’s character’s family is dark skinned, except for her, the lead, who is biracial with long straight hair; the same follows with Talia Jackson’s character in the sitcom Family Reunion (2019). Her character, Jade McKellan, is meant to be primarily Black, however, the actress who plays her is also biracial and light-skinned. Another example is the sitcom My Wife and Kids (2001), where the daughter, Claire, was played by a dark-skinned Black girl, Jazz Raycole, in season one, and then was replaced with a light-skinned, biracial girl with long, loose-textured hair, Jennifer Freeman, for the rest of the show.
When dark-skinned Black girls are portrayed in the media, especially sitcoms, it is often to support the story of their lighter counterparts or perpetuate negative stereotypes. Biracial and light-skinned Black women do not speak for the experience of all Black women, and the media acting as they do invalidates and makes invisible the very real and very valid existence of dark-skinned Black women. Black women being primarily represented as light-skinned with long, silky hair sends the message that to be deemed as a woman who deserves to be the focus, be loved, beautiful, popular, quirky, clumsy, smart, ditzy, funny, or just to plain out have her story told, she mustn’t be dark. She must be light—have proximity to whiteness, and in my eyes, an innovative and revolutionary transition would be Black sitcoms that normalise dark skinned Black women at the forefront of stories. Not just one, but many- and I am in media production to make that happen. Overall, representation is deeply important to the livelihoods of Black people due to the infulence mass media has on shaping the mind of its audiences, and, this fact has led to the suppression of positive Black representation on screens, and overtime has been proven factual due to the increased positive exposure, post the civil rights movement, when Black people gained more control over their narratives. With more Black voices being platformed, the future is promising, and hopefully, issues like colourism will be addressed, so that Black youth of all shades can relate and look up to television characters with ease.
Bibliography
Bellaviti, Sean. Unit 2: Minstrelsy. 20 Jan. 2025, p. 5.
“Beulah TV Series | Filmography | Hattie McDaniel.” Hattie McDaniel, hattiemcdaniel.com/filmography/beulah-tv-series.
Bourne, Kevin, and Kevin Bourne. “BLACK SITCOMS FROM THE 1950’S TO 2020’S.” SHIFTER Magazine, 8 Nov. 2024, shiftermagazine.com/film-and-tv/black-sitcoms-from-the-1950s-to-2020s.
“Good Times.” Television Academy Interviews, 20 June 2023, interviews.televisionacademy.com/shows/good-times.
The Mammy Caricature – Anti-black Imagery – Jim Crow Museum. jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/mammies/homepage.htm.
Mastro, Dana E., and Linda R. Tropp. “The Effects of Interracial Contact, Attitudes, and Stereotypical Portrayals on Evaluations of Black Television Sitcom Characters.” Communication Research Reports, vol. 21, no. 2, Mar. 2004, pp. 119–29, doi:10.1080/08824090409359974.Scott, Mack. “From Blackface to Beulah: Subtle Subversion in Early Black Sitcoms.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 49, no. 4, 2014, pp. 743–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43697336.
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