Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Television History Lesson for All Interested
Review: Although I initially intended on simply reviewing Bogle's masterwork, I feel that along with a personal reflection on the book, it is necessary to contradict statements made by an earlier reviewer.

Yes, the book is "exhaustive" but never is it boring. Every profile of African-American actors on the tube is carefully detailed and extensively covered, with little asides that make for intriguing reading. To this reader, it is clear that Bogle feels that there have been significant improvements in the representation of Blacks on television, but there are still some significant inroads, in front of and behind the camera, that need to be made. By covering as thoroughly as he has the entirety of those African-American pioneers and trendsetters, the author satisfies those that have longed to see such a mammoth undertaking published.

I, for one, savor the profiles of such underrated performers as Rosalind Cash, Joe Morton, Shirley Hemphill, Juano Hernandez, James Edwards, and a slew of others that labored with many less-than-distinguished parts and managed to create something memorable. It is further refreshing to see the author give the backgrounds of the more familiar African-American superstars like Bill Cosby, Cicely Tyson, and Diahann Carroll.

While I do not particularly care for the programs that have a "monochromatic cast" (Friends, Martin, and the various UPN "black-block" shows), I understand and appreciate Bogle's belief that television shows have a responsibility to inform and present a realistic portrayal of society, be that program a sitcom or a drama.

It is true that television is primarily entertainment; however, in that entertainment, thought-provoking writing and occasional commentary on society is warranted. That is one of Bogle's premises that he eloquently expresses.

This is a top-notch historical/editorial reference that makes for great reading and a worthwhile addition to the library of any fan of the "boob tube."

Rating:
Summary: too narrowly focused
Review: Because I am black that doesn't mean I have to deal with the problems of all black people. That's
not my sole responsibility...all TV is divorced from reality.
-Diahann Carroll, circa 1968

Taken simply as a catalogue of appearances by African Americans on television over the past sixty years, this book is perhaps adequate. It takes an exhaustive (sometimes exhausting) look at the role of black actors on primetime television, decade by decade. Bogle seems to have watched every episode of every TV show that ever featured blacks, from Beulah and Amos n' Andy in the early days, to the slew of UPN shows now, with stops along the way for hits like Julia,Sanford and Son, and The Cosby Show and the many all too brief series like Get Christie Love. He discusses all of them, not just the shows in general, but individual episodes, plus TV movies and black-themed episodes of white shows. Every snippet of TV history is held up and examined like an important fossil in the hands of a paleontologist. But, unfortunately, the various pieces never add up to a coherent whole; the book suffers from the lack of a thesis, from an unrelenting earnestness, and from a woeful absence of perspective.

The overarching problem is that Bogle does not seem to be operating from a defined principle. Is this a story about how African American images on television have evolved and gotten better, or at least more realistic, or is it about how things have really not improved ? How should blacks be portrayed on TV ? Have portrayals of Black America on television been better or worse than the reality of the times ? Have those portrayals been more stereotyped and less realistic than those of whites and other ethnic groups ? These are some of the questions that the author should have asked himself before he began writing and which the reader should expect will be answered by the end of the book. He did not ask and they are not answered.

As a result, Bogle's assessments and criticisms of each show occur in an intellectual vacuum and are often contradictory. Some shows are taken to task because they offered an unrealistic portrait of blacks as living in nuclear, middle class, nonpolitical families. Others are criticized for falling back on societal stereotypes of single parent households, poor families, involvement in crime, etc. If a police show has a black captain, that's unrealistic because blacks weren't put in positions of power. If the cop is black, it's unrealistic because he's middle class and an authority figure. If the crooks are black, that's a stereotype, placing blacks in a bad light.. Well, what the heck were the producers supposed to do ? And doesn't the mere fact that roles were being created for black actors mean something, on some level ?

At times, Bogle's lack of perspective, his blind focus on African Americans, comes across as almost laughable. In his discussion of the show The White Shadow, while complaining that the theme of a white coach having to lead troubled black youths is offensive, and worrying that the players were too often caricatures, he mentions the cast of characters and, without further comment, notes that the token white player was named Salami. Suppose the sole black player on a white team had been nicknamed Watermelon ? People would have been outraged, and rightly so. Had he paused for a moment to consider this one instance of insensitivity to another ethnic group, Bogle might have stumbled upon some of the larger truths about television : it's all caricature, stereotypes, and fundamentally unrealistic situations.

(...)TV, with the unique pressures of its weekly schedule and the need to appeal to a mass audience, has always tended toward banality. In the effort to supply escapist entertainment, it has relied heavily on the mindless, the unchallenging, the consciously non provocative. Bogle stumbles upon this fundamental truth in his discussion of The Cosby Show, whose various problems he is seemingly constrained from criticizing because it is probably the most popular African American show of all time :

The audience understood that The Cosby Show was not about contemporary politics. Rather it was
about culture.

You probably have to read the book to get a feel for how jarring a note this strikes after 300 pages of complaining that innumerable marginal shows were insufficiently political. But it's important to note that Cosby, who had the #1 show on television, actually had the leeway necessary to turn his show into the kind of political platform that Bogle seems to think African American shows should have tried to be, and he did not take advantage of it. Why then expect the many minor and largely forgotten shows that he criticizes throughout the book--shows staffed by actors, writers, directors and producers who were after all just doing their jobs and which were just looking for an audience--to have engaged in some kind of exercise in black empowerment ?

In the end, this book is so limited in scope that, though Bogle does a workmanlike job of describing various African American series, it's hard for the reader to figure out what his point was in writing the book in the first place. It takes on the feel of a reference book, with encyclopedic entries, rather than a coherent narrative. It's occasionally fun reading about some of the old shows (including one of my favorites, The Young Rebel

Rating:
Summary: too narrowly focused
Review: Because I am black that doesn't mean I have to deal with the problems of all black people. That's
not my sole responsibility...all TV is divorced from reality.
-Diahann Carroll, circa 1968

Taken simply as a catalogue of appearances by African Americans on television over the past sixty years, this book is perhaps adequate. It takes an exhaustive (sometimes exhausting) look at the role of black actors on primetime television, decade by decade. Bogle seems to have watched every episode of every TV show that ever featured blacks, from Beulah and Amos n' Andy in the early days, to the slew of UPN shows now, with stops along the way for hits like Julia,Sanford and Son, and The Cosby Show and the many all too brief series like Get Christie Love. He discusses all of them, not just the shows in general, but individual episodes, plus TV movies and black-themed episodes of white shows. Every snippet of TV history is held up and examined like an important fossil in the hands of a paleontologist. But, unfortunately, the various pieces never add up to a coherent whole; the book suffers from the lack of a thesis, from an unrelenting earnestness, and from a woeful absence of perspective.

The overarching problem is that Bogle does not seem to be operating from a defined principle. Is this a story about how African American images on television have evolved and gotten better, or at least more realistic, or is it about how things have really not improved ? How should blacks be portrayed on TV ? Have portrayals of Black America on television been better or worse than the reality of the times ? Have those portrayals been more stereotyped and less realistic than those of whites and other ethnic groups ? These are some of the questions that the author should have asked himself before he began writing and which the reader should expect will be answered by the end of the book. He did not ask and they are not answered.

As a result, Bogle's assessments and criticisms of each show occur in an intellectual vacuum and are often contradictory. Some shows are taken to task because they offered an unrealistic portrait of blacks as living in nuclear, middle class, nonpolitical families. Others are criticized for falling back on societal stereotypes of single parent households, poor families, involvement in crime, etc. If a police show has a black captain, that's unrealistic because blacks weren't put in positions of power. If the cop is black, it's unrealistic because he's middle class and an authority figure. If the crooks are black, that's a stereotype, placing blacks in a bad light.. Well, what the heck were the producers supposed to do ? And doesn't the mere fact that roles were being created for black actors mean something, on some level ?

At times, Bogle's lack of perspective, his blind focus on African Americans, comes across as almost laughable. In his discussion of the show The White Shadow, while complaining that the theme of a white coach having to lead troubled black youths is offensive, and worrying that the players were too often caricatures, he mentions the cast of characters and, without further comment, notes that the token white player was named Salami. Suppose the sole black player on a white team had been nicknamed Watermelon ? People would have been outraged, and rightly so. Had he paused for a moment to consider this one instance of insensitivity to another ethnic group, Bogle might have stumbled upon some of the larger truths about television : it's all caricature, stereotypes, and fundamentally unrealistic situations.

(...)TV, with the unique pressures of its weekly schedule and the need to appeal to a mass audience, has always tended toward banality. In the effort to supply escapist entertainment, it has relied heavily on the mindless, the unchallenging, the consciously non provocative. Bogle stumbles upon this fundamental truth in his discussion of The Cosby Show, whose various problems he is seemingly constrained from criticizing because it is probably the most popular African American show of all time :

The audience understood that The Cosby Show was not about contemporary politics. Rather it was
about culture.

You probably have to read the book to get a feel for how jarring a note this strikes after 300 pages of complaining that innumerable marginal shows were insufficiently political. But it's important to note that Cosby, who had the #1 show on television, actually had the leeway necessary to turn his show into the kind of political platform that Bogle seems to think African American shows should have tried to be, and he did not take advantage of it. Why then expect the many minor and largely forgotten shows that he criticizes throughout the book--shows staffed by actors, writers, directors and producers who were after all just doing their jobs and which were just looking for an audience--to have engaged in some kind of exercise in black empowerment ?

In the end, this book is so limited in scope that, though Bogle does a workmanlike job of describing various African American series, it's hard for the reader to figure out what his point was in writing the book in the first place. It takes on the feel of a reference book, with encyclopedic entries, rather than a coherent narrative. It's occasionally fun reading about some of the old shows (including one of my favorites, The Young Rebel

Rating:
Summary: I anticipated a leisurely read...
Review: But, it was not to be. So now I am resigned to another turgid review. To paraphrase a line from 'Law and Order,' this guy is so far left, he has to turn to his right to see Thurgood Marshall. And, that succinctly, is as close as I could come to figuring out where he really stood on anything. Making a case that African Americans are subject to superficial representation on television is not an overwhelming challenge, the problem is Donald Bogle found fault with nearly every program that has ever graced the airwaves. He evinced all of the attributes of elitists who propound an ideology Thomas Sowell defines as the 'anointed vision,' where the only consistency you can expect to find is inconsistency. Mr. Bogle appointed himself arbiter of approved imagery for African Americans on network television, and did not grade on the curve. Implicit in his dissertation was the entitlement to conveniently reverse his views where newly offered postulations contradicted earlier pronouncements.

Mr. Bogle's decade-by-decade coverage, commencing with the one shot Ethel Waters Show in 1939 and extending to second-tier network programming of the current era, was initially comprehensive but took on a turn towards superficiality in the later years. For the purposes of this book, the rare appearance of black performers during television's early years was a mixed blessing. The author was afforded the opportunity to provide incisive commentary for nearly every show where a black performer was either host or cast member, including a paragraph or two about performers who appeared only as guests on weekly series' or variety shows. By the 1980s, the growth in the number of African Americans appearing on network shows forced the author to adjust his focus; he began to concentrate on actors or shows - including made-for-television movies - he considered significant, providing only to tangential reference to others.

Mr. Bogle's attempts at candor often descended to cantankerousness. A number of programs and actors, in some cases without clear justification beyond the author's personal leanings, were unmercifully criticized. While disdain for 'Amos n Andy' is largely universal, transporting those images to a specific skit from 'In Living Color' in the 1990s, or arriving at the conclusion that 'Kingfish' was the role model for Martin Lawrence, or 'Beulah' established the paradigm for 'mammy roles' to infinity, was reductivist, and a clear disregard for factoring since research of his premise necessarily conflates the associated time spans. He neglects to consider, the shows he cites as a baseline have been out of the public eye for 35 to 40 years. His assessment of some actors like James Earl Jones whom he described as 'A fake old windbag' was simply mean-spirited. At one point, he expressed mild surprise to discover Nell Carter is an intelligent person, a clear implication some of his anxiety may reside in personal inability to distinguish between an actor playing a part and the actor as an individual.

I do not presume objectivity was ever a consideration for Mr. Bogle, but he absolutely slavers for some actresses (Ethel Waters, Cicely Tyson, Madge Sinclair, Rosalind Cash), is subtly critical of physically larger actresses, and far too often fails to modulate his views by the tuning fork of qualitative performance. At one point, he notes the early criticism of Bill Cosby's acting in his 1960s series, 'I SPY,' directly stating he found the critical views to be accurate. A few paragraphs later, Mr. Bogle mentioned Mr. Cosby received an Emmy for his role that very season, but ignores the obvious question of largesse versus genuine merit. At different junctures, he is highly critical of Jackee' for infusing so-called black mannerisms on '227'; later he applauds Phylicia Rashad for adding so-called black mannerisms to her characterization of Claire Huxtable, on 'Cosby'; and still later he is effusive towards Madge Sinclair for the absence of such mannerisms on 'Trapper John, M.D.' Time after time, the 'Achilles heel' of the historian, interpretation of an earlier time through a prism of refracted modern views, overwhelms his text. Mr. Bogle expressed pointed disdain for network management and program sponsors who conceded to the pressures and sensitivities of an undeniably prejudiced southern market, yet he dismissed or obviated the realities that a black demographic was not sufficient at the time to justify continuation of 'controversial' programs. He infers television is autocatalytic, that steadfast endorsement of a show would have dissipated entrenched attitudes with the broadcast of more episodes forcing a reversal in the practice of affiliate preemption, but he offers little evidence, then or at any time since, where his position is substantiated by actual results.

Mr. Bogle has an idealistic view of television and a level of expectation that it is unlikely to be met even in the segmented market of the present era, where cable has modified what is deemed to be acceptable market share. His book is worthy of investigation for a chronology of actors, actresses and shows. With regard to sociological impact, he seems to be merely the obverse of that he labels unconscionable, while reality is somewhere in between.

Rating:
Summary: PRIMETIME BLUES a politically biased take on black TV series
Review: In all of the 512 pages of Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television, the most telling sentence is author Donald Bogle's admission that "no one television show can answer everyone's needs." Ironically, this admission comes in the middle of Bogle's critique of "The Cosby Show," Bill Cosby's landmark 1980's sitcom that showed a middle-class black family doing well for itself, and surely one of the most popular sitcoms of its era.

It doesn't take a major historian of television to show that African Americans have been incredibly wronged by most television entertainment. Besides the obvious cases such as "Amos 'n Andy," Bogle goes to great and justifiable lengths to show many other cases where stereotypes abounded, such as Louise Beavers as a maid giving her all to a bland white family in "Beulah," and Hazel Scott, a unique and talented TV singer whose career was eventually undone by the '50s Communist witch hunt. Bogle also cites examples such as Martin Lawrence's career-boosting sitcom "Martin" to show that pandering, black entertainment has hardly gone by the wayside. Bogle also writes in a very down-to-earth style that subtly makes his case for positive black entertainment.

My biggest problem with the book is that Bogle is all too eager to examine each and every black sitcom and dramatic show in a socio-political prism. In Bogle's view, "The Cosby Show" suffered for overlooking political issues such as the 1985 Howard Beach killing of a black man, even though "The Cosby Show" never claimed to be politically oriented. (In any case, Cosby was far subtler about such issues, as when his sitcom son Theo sported an "Abolish Apartheid" poster on his wall and the show called no huge attention to it, though Cosby had to fight for that poster behind the scenes.) And the short-lived but critically acclaimed "Frank's Place" is taken to task by Bogle for being <i>too</i> different (no laugh track; filmed with a multi-camera movie-type set-up)--exactly the kind of unique programming for which Bogle pleads most of his case.

Most abominably, Bogle's idea of an exceptional black sitcom is "The Jeffersons," simply because it depicted George Jefferson as an up-and-coming businessman who made it on his own terms. As a long-time (admittedly white) viewer of the show in my teens, I feel the show had a lot of punch in its early years but eventually deteriorated into a slapstick sitcom. My most overwhelming memory of the show's later years is its opening montage that included clips from a show in which George and Louise dressed up for a costume party. Who did they dress up as? George did Charlie Chaplin, while Louise did Mae West--two blatantly white entertainment icons. What sort of message do you suppose <i>that</i> sent to young black viewers?

Prime Time Blues is an easy read (no small feat at over 500 pages) and offers some insight into the occasionally glimmering desert that is black television entertainment. But when one reads Bogle's criticisms of nearly every black show in history--even the ones that tried to make some headway for blacks--one wonders exactly what kind of show would make Bogle happy.

Rating:
Summary: "The" book of African Americans in the history of television
Review: Just a splendid, engrossing work that details the history of African Americans in television. More than just a cursory glance, Bogle unearths all sorts of African Americans who have made contributions, no matter how small their part.
For everyone who wants to see a reference for 1) where we have been as far as minority representation on tv 2) where we are now and most importantly 3) where we SHOULD BE.
Essential for anyone who has a real passion for the medium!

Rating:
Summary: Both the potential and the disappointment of TV
Review: Prime Time Blues considers both the potential and the disappointment of the television medium as a vehicle for fostering equality and civil rights, examining African Americans on network television and the shows which have fostered racial stereotyping through dramas and shows. Television has distorted race images in the past and continues to do so today: Prime Time Blues explores exactly how.

Rating:
Summary: A CLASSIC,BUT WITH A FEW FLAWS
Review: PRIMETIME BLUES is an excellent history of African-Americans
on primetime television,from the days of "Beluah" to "The Parkers".Smart,honest,and very,very,very insightful,PRIMETIME
BLUES makes you want to read even more.But if I had to put in
some complaints,it'd be Donald Bogle's political bias.Suggesting
that all Blacks live rough and that any Black show that wants to
show a normal,calm Black family is phony.And at times,PRIMETIME
BLUES comes off a textbook as well.But anyway,buy this book
for excellent coverage of Blacks on your TV screen!

Rating:
Summary: A CLASSIC,BUT WITH A FEW FLAWS
Review: PRIMETIME BLUES is an excellent history of African-Americans
on primetime television,from the days of "Beluah" to "The Parkers".Smart,honest,and very,very,very insightful,PRIMETIME
BLUES makes you want to read even more.But if I had to put in
some complaints,it'd be Donald Bogle's political bias.Suggesting
that all Blacks live rough and that any Black show that wants to
show a normal,calm Black family is phony.And at times,PRIMETIME
BLUES comes off a textbook as well.But anyway,buy this book
for excellent coverage of Blacks on your TV screen!