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Since its invention, television has been one of the biggest influences on American culture. Through this medium, multiple visions and disparate voices have attempted to stake a place in viewer consumption. Yet even as this programming supposedly reflects characteristics of the general American populace, television-generated images are manipulated and contradictory, predicated by the various economic, political, and cultural forces placed upon it. In Shaded Lives, Beretta Smith-Shomade sets out to dissect images of the African American woman in television from the 1980s. She calls their depiction "binaristic," or split. African American women, although an essential part of television programming today, are still presented as distorted and deviant. By closely examining the television texts of African-American women in comedy, music video, television news and talk shows (Oprah Winfrey is highlighted), Smith-Shomade shows how these voices are represented, what forces may be at work in influencing these images, and what alternate ways of viewing might be available. Smith-Shomade offers critical examples of where the sexist and racist legacy of this country collide with the cultural strength of Black women in visual and real-lived culture. As the nation's climate of heightened racial divisiveness continues to relegate the representation of Black women to depravity and display, her study is not only useful, it is critical.

Launched in 1980, cable network Black Entertainment Television (BET) has helped make blackness visible and profitable at levels never seen prior in the TV industry. In 2000, BET was sold by founder Robert L. Johnson, a former cable lobbyist, to media giant Viacom for 2.33 billion dollars. This book explores the legacy of BET: what the network has provided to the larger US television economy, and, more specifically, to its target African-American demographic. The book examines whether the company has fulfilled its stated goals and implied obligation to African-American communities. Has it changed the way African-Americans see themselves and the way others see them? Does the financial success of the network - secured in large part via the proliferation of images deemed offensive and problematic by many black communities - come at the expense of its African-American audience? This book fills a major gap in black television scholarship and should find a sizeable audience in both media studies and African-American studies.

In January 1977, I, along with over ninety million other Americans, watched at least one episode of the television miniseries Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Over the eight days of the broadcast, the audience grew, and debates regarding its impact filled media outlets. In the weeks and months after the show aired, the impact was measurable as many families sought out genealogists to research family histories and college campuses saw increased interest in African American Studies. Vernon Jordan, executive director of the National Urban League, commented, “ Roots was the single most spectacular educational experience in race relations in

Television’s synergy with the Web initially seemed inconceivable to network executives. With the rise of Internet use, newspaper and magazine articles announced the impending death of television. While that was clearly hyperbole, network executives, though often anonymously, expressed their fears that Web content would siphon off viewership and thus advertising dollars generated by television programming. Fears may have been quelled with the evidence of the success of television shows first made available streaming on network websites and then for paid download through digital servers such as iTunes.

On November 4, 2008, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show via satellite. One of the more memorable moments of the interview came when Cooper expressed shock that DeGeneres was unfamiliar with the hit Bravo television show The Real Housewives of Atlanta. “You mean you don’t know about NeNe?” he demanded incredulously, referring to cast member NeNe Leakes—the most outspoken and self-proclaimed “realest” of the Housewives. Cooper’s segment, along with his admission that Leakes was his favorite of the cast, brought even more attention to the already widely debated show, the first of Bravo’s Housewives series

Why is it important that a Black woman created, wrote for, and co-produced¹ two highly-regarded television situation comedies that engaged a variety of Black women’s health issues while at the same time these issues were being reduced, simplified, or altogether ignored in mainstream American hip hop? Mara Brock Akil tacitly responded to this question when asked why four episodes of the third season of Girlfriends (2000–2008), the situation comedy she created and co-produced for UPN, addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis among Black women in America. “I have things I want to say,” explained Brock Akil, “about bridging television’s gap between

In a recent debate over the problematic characterization of Bonnie Bennett, the only Black female recurring character on the CW network series The Vampire Diaries (CW 2009), my challenger insisted that with all of the qualifiers I insisted she have, “maybe this is another hidden reason there are no minorities on television: everything becomes an issue and you just can’t win.” Indeed, the main qualifier I suggested that the series allow the character to possess—an innate sense of cultural difference—is difficult to grasp and maintain. However, I do not accept that just because race is difficult, it is

Although the cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (CBS, 1972–1984) averaged only nine new episodes a year during its twelve-year run (compared to a more standard production cycle of twenty-five to sixty new episodes a year for other cartoons), the show remained a highly popular option for young viewers on late Saturday mornings. By the time of the series’ network premiere in 1972, the cartoon’s animated African American stars—Weird Harold, Dumb Donald, Fat Albert, Rudy, Mushmouth, Bucky, Russell, and Bill—were familiar and recognizable to American audiences as originating from Bill Cosby’s boyhood community of North

At best, our knowledge about the lives and experiences of Black gay men is limited to a series of stereotypes, snap judgments, and ridicule. In terms of television media product, this aforementioned knowledge has been packaged mostly within the framework of comedy: a red-leather-clad Eddie Murphy talking about the most effective ways to shield his ass from the gay male gaze in the 1983 HBO stand-up performance Delirious ; Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier’s effeminate film critics Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather on the 1990s television variety show In Living Color ; fashionista panel members Miss J and Andre Leon Talley

Aaron McGruder’s “The Return of the King” (2006) is one of many of the artist’s controversial episodes, yet it stands out because of the criticism it received among mainstream media outlets and civil rights leaders. It was the ninth episode to air from his series The Boondocks, which is an anime show that airs on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim cable channel. McGruder presents the following scenario in “The Return of the King”: What if Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) did not die after his April 4, 1968, shooting and instead awoke after being in a coma for thirty-two years?

As activists and political leaders in Brazil call for increasing rights, recognition, and redress to address the multiple forms of marginalization that Afro-Brazilians have endured, media has become an increasingly important sphere through which different constituencies mobilize to advance a project of racial equality. Among these groups enlisting available media resources was a group composed predominately of Afro-Brazilian media professionals who joined together to launch the TV da Gente (Our TV) television network, Brazil’s first television station with the mission to produce racially diverse programming directed toward a Black viewing audience.

In the United States, daytime soap operas are often critiqued as escapist fantasies with narratives that provide leisure and pleasure for middle-class and stay-at-home mothers. The storylines typically involve forbidden sexual liaisons and business relationships, with physical and psychological behaviors that center on powerful families. One family unit usually represents “old money” while the other family represents “new money” or an upwardly mobile group with aspirations of power, status, and influence. The economic differences are usually the source of conflict between the families, around which all other social relationships develop. The temporal space expands and contracts to accommodate storylines, which

Although discourses regarding 1980s representations of Blackness on television heavily focus on The Cosby Show, its NBC spin-off series, A Different World, depicting student life at a historically Black college, was equally groundbreaking and deserving of critical attention. Looking to transfer the appeal and audience share of The Cosby Show to A Different World, the spin-off show’s first season centered on the life of The Cosby Show’s star Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet) at Hillman College. A Different World’s story provides an illuminating case study of the role and power of television producers, highlighting their influence over a show’s narrative and