Blog 4

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We live in a diverse world, filled to the brim with different personalities, ethnicity, and cultures. Yet when through various forms of media such as TV and movies, these would have you to believe otherwise. It’s extremely common that most films and movies produced here in America consist of a largely white cast, with the occasional different ethnicity thrown in there. As a result, those who engage with movies the most end up having their perception altered to where they would identify and agree with that the majority of the US is white.

In the late 80’s to early 90’s was a surge of popular family-comedies which usually consisted of a generally vanilla family, where all the problems and turmoil of the episodes was neatly wrapped up in under a half-hour. Examples such as Full House consisted of an entirely white family in an upper-middle class house, on the surface nothing really stands out of the ordinary besides the subtle manipulation on what the idea of a traditional family is. Those who actively watch TV and shows like Full House gain a false perception on the world that how the show presents itself is how things are in the real world.

A reading by Jholly discusses this concept, coming from the opposite side focusing on The Cosby Show in 1984. Unlike Full House, the cast of The Cosby Show were entirely black. This family lives in an impressive high-rise in New York, where Bill Cosby’s character was a gynecologist with a wife who was a lawyer. Just from this it’s clear that this family was portrayed like any other traditional white family at the time, successful, profitable, and put-together.

Taking a second look at The Cosby Show, while conveying different themes, was not an accurate representation of the traditional black family. Instead of taking core values from the traditional black family and communicating that from the environment The Cosby Show instead put a coat of white paint over itself. The Cosby Show was a better catalyst at depicting a black family to predominately white viewers instead of being a show for black families.

When representation is done right it can do amazing things for the community. Not always do people have opportunities to engage and interact with people who differ from them, it’s because of this that hostile opinions targeted towards certain ethnicity’s have emerged. Representation in media is crucial as it plays a huge role in normalizing certain behaviors and characteristics. The point of normalizing a subject is to put it into the public eye that this behavior is just a different way to live, and everyone is so different that these differences should be celebrated and not censored.