I like TV. I admit it. I always have. As a child, I was sick a lot, and although I was an avid reader, I enjoyed watching TV as a way to forget about shots and nebulizers and medicine and stuff I wasn't outside doing. I think I naturally gravitated towards dramas vs sit-coms because the faces were more diverse. Sit-coms seemed to either be all white casts or if there were non-whites, the characters were typecast and stereotyped. Like many my age, The Cosby Show was the first time I saw a family that was like my own. A middle ( many would argue upper middle) class family of black professionals who dealt with family issues that could happen in any family. And dramas continued to grow and develop more female and minority characters. A number of shows I've enjoyed like NYPD Blue, all the L&O franchises, ER, West Wing, Third Watch, Criminal Minds, CSI etc. had and have diverse casts with decent character development. Cable has done even better, and yes, the TV landscape can be pretty homogeneous still but credit where credit is due. So where am I going with this? Over the orange squiggle-de-jibbit.
I was listening to Thom Hartmann this morning and caught the tail end of a discussion about this season's apparent fixation with "regression shows". Part of the discussion was about this article at alternet:
Why Is TV Suddenly Overstuffed With Buxom Bunnies, Sexy Stewardesses, and Charlie's Angels?
These retrograde images from new shows "The Playboy Club," "Pan Am" and "Charlie's Angels" are the staples of a new season of television in which a post-"Mad Men" old-school aesthetic seems to pervade everything, but without the critique that darker, more nuanced show contains. "Mad Men" (for the most part) warns viewers that underneath the glamour there was a world of gross, painful injustice. These new shows at first glance seem to be imitating the fashion without delving into the finer points.
Confession, I've watched none of these although I did watch the original Charlies Angels growing up and had a love/hate relationship with it. But the main focus of this diary are the "yay 60's" shows.
To some, these are just shows of a bygone era when men were "real men" and flight attendants were stewardesses and one of the few exciting jobs open to women, and sex and sexuality were being de-stigmatized. I'm certainly glad we've progressed but when I see ads for these shows, I remember being a black girl seeing few people like me on TV growing up (like Whoopi, I lived for Star Trek re-runs and Uhura) and wondering, why would I want to watch things that bring me back to a time before we'd made the progress we have? Why would I want to watch shows about a time in our country that was not so great for minorities or women? And my answer is I don't.
When I see ads for Pan Am, I'm reminded of the very real discrimination that took place in the airlines (against passengers and prospective employees alike) and that it took forced integration in the 60s for black women to be hired as flight attendants.
Although as early as 1941 New York state had laws on the books banning discrimination, it was not until black women trying to enter the airline work force insisted on their rights that the airlines relented. Patricia Edmiston- Banks was only 20-years-old in 1956 when she filed an historic case against Capital Airlines (now UAL) when they turned down her application based on race. She won the case in 1960. By the time the Court ordered Capital to accept Banks (or face contempt of court charges), TWA and Mohawk had already hired black flight attendants — probably to avoid the litigation they saw in the Capital case. This delay caused by the court case has hidden Patricia’s status as the first black flight attendant. While Patricia was waiting for the outcome of her case, Mohawk, a regional airlines, hired a young black woman named Ruth Taylor.
COURAGE TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO FLY: AMERICA’S FIRST BLACK FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
So when I see an ad for a show that glamorizes a period that had a very ugly side, it's hard for me to separate the two. And even absent the racial lens, I still see it through the lens of being a woman and remembering the ridiculous and sexist standards women had to meet. Height, weight, looks, etc.
This is why I've never watched "Mad Men". I've been told that there have been episodes that address the racism of the time and that's great, but again, the backdrop of this "glamorous" series is anything but through the lenses I can't remove. When I walk past the windows of Banana Republic and see them bringing back the fashion and selling what to me are images of regression, I remember looking at pictures of my mom dressed similarly and then hearing of the discrimination that this educated woman endured both as a woman and as a black woman. I don't see the sexiness. I see sexism.
I see a time I'm very glad we're past. A time before or during the fight for Civil Rights; a time pre-Roe. A time that holds no appeal for me because to have lived during that time, my life would have been very different. Maybe it's because it's still too recent. i can easily watch "The Borgias" and it's not so raw even though I wouldn't choose to go back to that era either.
I realize that this is "just TV" and no, I don't get that worked up over it. It's a choice I can easily make not to watch certain shows and I do. I just thought I'd share a different way that some of us might see when other just see a TV show.