Watching the teachers of Willard R. Abbott Elementary lament over the public education system in America, while dissing colleagues who dislike pizza, has become a weekly ritual for many television connoisseurs like me. Abbott Elementary, Quinta Brunson’s situational comedy, is a masterclass in mockumentary filmmaking that touches upon the issue of race in modern-day America, while featuring a mostly black cast. However, this is not the African-American community’s foray into the genre. The Emmy-winning show is a product of decades of rich black sitcoms that dominated television screens in the 1980s and 1990s. While the genre has suffered setbacks in the aughts, a revival seems to be on the cards.
Minstrel shows
The rise of black sitcoms can be traced back to the early 19th century when minstrel shows were the foremost medium of entertainment in America. Blackface minstrelsy became a uniquely American form of theatre which involved mostly white actors donning blackface make-up to represent African-Americans on the stage, while showcasing the community as lazy, dim-witted and cowardly. Each show consisted of dance and music performances, comic skits, and variety acts. This soon made space for black-only minstrel troupes that toured the country while reinforcing the racial stereotypes on stage and by the mid-19th century, this form of theatre became America’s national art form.
But, in the wake of the American Civil War, the performances dwindled and new forms of theatre such as Vaudeville took over. The Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century also helped alter people’s perceptions of black culture. But minstrelsy did not go out of business until the mid-1970s. Partaking in minstrel shows opened the entertainment industry to African-American performers with many famous actors, composers, and singers such as W.C. Handy, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, and Butterbeans and Susie getting their first break in these shows.
Reinforcing racial stereotypes, perpetuated by these shows on television, helped television networks garner ratings; Amos ‘n’ Andy, a sitcom on CBS in the 1950s is one such example. The negative stereotypes promoted in the show got the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) to protest its airing and soon the network was forced to cancel it.
While black sitcoms continued sparsely on networks, the genre saw a boom in the early 1970s with shows such as Sanford and Son, Good Times and The Jeffersons where themes of upward mobility and healthy family dynamics were stressed upon. However, racism continued to plague the writers’ rooms and sets.
Actor John Amos, who played James Evans Sr. in Good Times, was fired for his vocal opinion on the lack of diversity among the show’s writers and the overall negative stereotypical portrayal of the character J.J. Evans.
Challenging stereotypes
Cast of ‘The Cosby Show’
Things started to take a turn for the better in the 80s with The Cosby Show. Bill Cosby urged the audience to look past race and invite the Huxtables onto their television screens; the fact that they were an upper-middle-class American family only helped his case. Cosby was a pioneer in subtly breaking the negative stereotypes associated with the community and the show went on to tackle complex issues such as dyslexia and teen pregnancy during its airtime. The Cosby Show drove home ratings for NBC mainly because it represented an honest portrayal of an affluent African-American family.
Inspired by NBC’s feat, other networks soon joined the race to get a share of the ratings pie by producing black sitcoms leading to a boom in the genre in the late 80s and 90s. Shows such as Family Matters, Martin, Roc, Living Single and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air advanced the critique of race in America while occasionally indulging in stereotypes to do so. They also dared to experiment with heavier themes and tones of drama started to seep into them. However, in the late-90s, many of these beloved sitcoms were taken off the air.
Change in viewing habits
As neighbourhood gentrification started to get more pronounced in the United States, its shadows were reflected on network programming with many major networks diversifying their catalogue to cater to the young white American man, a move that pleased the advertisers. The top television shows in white households were no longer the same as the most watched in black households. For example, in 1997, Seinfeld was the top-rated show in white households but ranked 50th in black households while Between Brothers took the pole position in black households and only made it to 112th rank in white households.
However, newer networks like the WB and UPN stepped in to fill the vacuum for a short time period only to restructure their catalogues and cater to the white audience once they cemented their standing in the industry, a move previously adopted by FOX. According to The New York Times, the number of black sitcoms on television plummeted from 15 to six from 1997 to 2001.
Many black creators also began to view situational comedy as a weary vehicle to relay the African American experience to the audience at large and made strides towards adopting dramas with a hint of comedy.
Renaissance on the cards?
A still from ‘Harlem’ Season 2 | Photo Credit: Prime Video
Black creators like Tracy Oliver and Issa Rae are shifting gears in the comedy genre and bringing laughter and joy back to stories about African-Americans. After finding fame through their web series Awkward Black Girl in the early 2010s, the duo went on to create pathbreaking shows such as Insecure and Harlem that depicted the community with nuance. There was no moral message at the end of each episode and their characters had the freedom and privilege to be spoilt and flawed.
In 2014, ABC’s Black-ish which follows Anthony Anderson, a father and husband trying to create a sense of black cultural identity for his affluent family of six, successfully revived the network-based black sitcom sub-genre with the show enjoying a 79% non-black viewership, according to Nielsen, a global performance management company.
It is widely believed that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd by the American police impacted the entertainment industry at large and the streaming services were some of the earliest adapters to the change. Close to a month after the protests were triggered, Netflix launched a ‘Black Lives Matter’ collection in the United States that included movies and shows such as Ava DuVernay’s 13th and When They See Us, Mudbound, Orange Is the New Black, Dear White People, and Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film, Moonlight. The streaming giant soon followed it up by licencing seven famous black sitcoms — Moesha, The Game, Sister Sister, Girlfriends, The Parkers, Half & Half, and One on One.
Currently, shows such as The Ms. Pat Show, The Upshaws and Abbott Elementary are raking in viewers, thanks to the proliferation of streaming platforms across the globe and the push to diversification in Hollywood that is gaining traction. Streaming platforms focusing on black content like BET+ (Black Entertainment Television) are grabbing eyeballs too.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth,” a practice often encouraged by black situational comedies. While the full impact of the BLM movement is yet to be seen, the beginning of a reformation in the black comedy sub-genre looks promising.
