Pop Culture

King: Critics must applaud, not condemn representation on network TV

Let’s talk about representation. A lot of stuff is flying around about new TV shows like “Empire,” “Black-ish,” and now “Fresh off the Boat.” All of these shows have come under fire for misrepresentation.

The flood of think pieces that follow every new show where minorities are featured only adds to the endless Internet data garbage pile, and more importantly, it discourages any representation at all. It happened with “Modern Family,” it happened with “Looking” and it’s happening now.

Giving people the opportunity to tell their story is crucial. Shaming a show because it doesn’t agree with the way you experience a culture, even if it is your own, is a veiled way of saying, “I’m not comfortable with this different understanding and so I’ll paint it as being “wrong”. There are millions of people in each community; each one of their stories can’t cram into a half an hour of TV.

A black family living in the suburbs is the focus of ABC’s new comedy “Black-ish.” Andre, the father, played by Anthony Anderson, is black and is married to Rainbow, a biracial woman, played by Tracee Ellis Ross. One of the biggest complaints about the show is that the family is black, but not black enough, as in, they don’t act black enough –whatever that means. The title of the show might lend to this perceived “whitewashing”.

“Fresh off the Boat,” the next float in ABC’s apparent multicultural parade, tells the story of Taiwanese-Chinese boy whose family immigrates to America and their humorous attempts to assimilate and adjust. Obviously, the title itself is problematic. Many critics of the show fear that white people will misappropriate the historically derogatory term. Others condemn it for its horrible fake accents and the fact that Randall Park, who plays the main character’s father, is a Korean American, not Taiwanese American, like the role calls for. Park addresses this flawlessly in a recent blog post:



“People are hungry to see themselves represented on television, and people rightfully want to be represented properly. Getting a television series on the air is an incredible feat…Getting one about an Asian American family on the air is a frickin’ miracle…I believe [“Fresh Off the Boat” is] a step toward more varied representation on the small and big screens.”

The only new show that seems immune to this hypercritical attention is Fox’s “Empire.” Critics are hailing the show for its portrayal of a powerful black hip-hop mogul and the dynasty he heads, including, most scandalously, a gay son.

It is, however, counterintuitive that a show about a black family wouldn’t get called out on stereotyping when the wife gets out of jail for a 17-year drug sentence, the patriarch throws his gay son in a trash can and shoots someone in cold blood, all in the first episode.

The only complaint to be found was from Eric Deggans, a writer for NPR. He explains, “And positioning the white girlfriend as a Machiavellian schemer with the duplicitous Andre seems a troubling and too-obvious knock at black men who dare to date Caucasian women.” So the only complaint about this almost-exclusively black show is about its only white component.

Representation begins in the writers’ room. Empire currently has four black writers out of eight, as well as a black co-creator, Lee Daniels. Looking’s Director Andrew Haigh, creator and Executive Producer Michael Lannan, as well as most of its writers are gay. “Fresh off the Boat’s producer,” Eddie Huang, and author of the eponymous memoir that serves as inspiration for the show, is a child of immigrant parents from China.

Entertainment needs to be monitored though, there’s no doubt about that. TV misrepresents communities all the time, and we must continue to call out those who propagate that misrepresentation. These shows aren’t the end of this problem, but they’re not the beginning, either.

Eric King is a sophomore magazine journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @erickingdavid.





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