Source: The Creator Of ‘Blackish’ Doesn’t Want To Talk About Diversity
Finally, someone gets it. Hollywood is the font of what eventually becomes the pop in pop culture. They’ve always enjoyed the role of being shapers of opinions and creators of reality out of mostly fantasy. From the early days, TV shows portrayed the idyllic American family in shows such as Leave It To Beaver, My Three Sons and Father Knows Best to name a few. Much of the narrative and accepted norms of American culture were shaped by such shows.
In reality, the squeaky clean lives portrayed by most of these Wasp-y scenarios likely didn’t necessarily reflect the experience of the average viewer. Westerns were also a big part of pop culture in those days and undoubtedly they were also stylized romantic depictions of the cowboy life. But in most cases, the stories revolved around characters and situations linked to otherwise normal people. Characters exhibited many of the bedrock values of American culture; unimpeachable honesty, strength, resilience and bravery. Those values came to represent Americans worldwide regardless of the actual reality. People globally embraced these ‘American values’ portrayed in entertainment because there was an aspirational aspect about them and likely different than their native experiences.
Somewhere along the way in recent years, the stories took a back seat to the background as the hurty feely sensitive crowd started to require characters that aligned with some idealized quotient of demographic representation. In efforts to eradicate perceived stereotypes of races, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. As an example, it’s hard to find any cop show on television today which doesn’t feature a black supervising officer. When and if Asians are portrayed at all, they are typically doctors or Kung Fu experts…or both.
When stories specifically revolve around the day to day angst about being a minority, the entertainment value collapses and the show resembles a social studies class at Berkeley. Nobody enjoys a sanctimonious lecture disguised as entertainment…think Al Gore and Michael Moore. More importantly, one note shows are boring…think Al Gore and Michael Moore.
Far from being inclusive, the balkanization of race as portrayed by socially ‘responsible’ television shows serves only to exaggerate differences in people rather than to portray their stories as…just stories. The obsessive need to be inclusive ironically creates more division as stereotypes become reinforced and caricatured, probably the opposite of the intent. The laudable aspect of American culture as portrayed by entertainment was that color and race were not explicitly played up. They were about themes and about “us” as in the royal “us” which includes everyone. Now it’s popular to showcase “us” and “them” with the implication that the audience will identify with a featured clique. This is not entertainment and it is not art. It is the dulling of the edge of creativity that artists are always railing for. They are forcing stories to be told only through a certain acceptable prism. It’s as if someone were forced to submit a financial report via the medium of interpretive dance. We don’t want lectures. We want entertainment.
