Commentary by BlackKos Editor JoanMar
A confession right up front: I have never watched an episode of Seinfeld. Never, ever. Never watched an episode of Friends, either. I do have friendly acquaintances who speak of both shows in very laudatory terms and look at me askance when I confess my sin of never feeling the urge to watch them. Both shows are said to be among the most popular sitcoms with Seinfeld in the running for the title of the greatest show ever.
CNN’s new series History of the Sitcom purports to take us back to the good ol’ days of the situation comedies that had us glued to our tv sets on those special nights.
History of the Sitcom reunites audiences with the television friends, families, and co-workers they grew up with while introducing cutting-edge comedies that are sure to be your next binge-watch. The eight-part docuseries produced by Cream Productions features over 180 original interviews with sitcom icons including Norman Lear, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Lisa Kudrow, Jason Alexander, Kelsey Grammer, Kim Fields, Tim Allen, Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, George Lopez, Mel Brooks, Isabella Gomez, Bob Newhart, Ted Danson, Joey Soloway, Jimmie Walker, Judd Apatow, Dan Levy, Zooey Deschanel, Chuck Lorre, Mara Brock Akil, Helen Hunt and many more, breaking down how sitcoms have helped generations of Americans navigate an ever-shifting cultural landscape.
Last Sunday, I had not really planned on watching the show, but I was too lazy to change the channel and so the latest episode became background noise, droning on as I got stuff done. Suddenly I heard something that had my ears perking up. “Seinfeld was a show about nothing.” Whoa! What was that? “Seinfeld was a show about nothing,” said someone. I’d heard that phrase before but somehow the smugness of the delivery grabbed my attention. The story goes that some white men went to NBC and pitched a show that had no plotline other than white men talking to each other and they were successful! They got it produced! The results for the first season reflected the creative talent of the main actors of the show — the show bombed and bombed hugely. The reviews were downright brutal, the ratings paltry, but NBC (all white men, of course) execs thought that what was then The Seinfeld Chronicles deserved more time to prove itself, and so they ordered more episodes. The execs were going to make this mediocre, unproven show into a hit because they had the power to do so. The network gave the show the prime-est primetime slot — right after Cheers which, at the time, was their most popular sitcom. With that massive lead-in audience, Seinfeld the show and Seinfeld the actor had no option but to succeed. Seinfeld the show became a household hit, Jerry Seinfeld became a multi-millionaire and gained the reputation for being a creative genius, and the rest is history. White men failing up.
“See, this should be the show. This is the show.” “What?” “This. Just talking.” “Yeah. Right… Just talking? What’s the show about?” “It’s about nothing.” “No story?” “No, forget the story.” “You’ve got to have a story.” “Who says you gotta have a story? Remember when we were waiting for that table in that Chinese restaurant that time? That could be a TV show.”
Now imagine for a moment that ANYONE other than some white men would have had the audacity to pitch a show about nothing to ANY of the media houses. Do you see that show on any media outlet? Imagine for a moment that somehow lightning struck and the project got the okay and they bombed that first season, do you see them renewing that show and giving it a prime slot? Not gonna happen. Hasn’t happened in the history of television thus far. White privilege in action, baby.
Friends not so friendly origin
This iconic show was about six young people living together...no, I’m not talking about Friends, I’m talking about Living Single:
Created by Yvette Lee Bowser and starring Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, Kim Fields, Erika Alexander, T.C. Carson and John Henton, Living Single followed the personal lives and professional experiences of six friends living in a Brooklyn brownstone. Over the course of five seasons, which ran from 1993 to 1998, the series became a ratings hit for Fox and one of the most watched Black programs of the ‘90s. //
“You’ve never seen these women before,” Fields said of the premise about “four Black women in that twenty-something age range who are in New York and trying to make it.”
Living Single was one of the most popular shows in Black households. The story goes that NBC execs (them again) saw the Fox show, loved it, and decided to create one just like it but with an all-white cast, and thus Friends was born. NBC threw money at that all-white show and their marketing team went into overdrive to make it the success it became. Both shows were produced on the same studio lot and it’s said that the LS’s accommodations looked like hovels when compared to that of Friends. White privilege making all the difference.
"The difference between Friends and Living Single is one of marketing and skin color," Alexander told Shadow And Act. "What does Paul Mooney say? 'They have the complexion for the protection,'" she laughed.
While Friends went on to a ten-season run with each cast member raking in $1 million per episode, Living Single never received the financial success of its successor.
Of course, the official version for the origin of Friends says nothing about “copying” from Living Single.
Kauffman and Crane began developing Friends under the working title Insomnia Cafe between November and December 1993. They presented the idea to Bright, and together they pitched a seven-page treatment of the show to NBC. After several script rewrites and changes, including title changes to Six of One[2] and Friends Like Us, the series was finally named Friends.
Keep in mind that Living Single (August 22, 1993) was first, then watch an episode of Friends (September 22, 1994) and see the similarities.
Racism mucks up everything. A CNN production that had the power to unite us, given our shared history, became for me a reminder of all the inequities. Last weekend’s episode of The History of Sitcom left me feeling bitter and resentful, and all because someone boasted about the brilliance of the creators of “a show about nothing.” They might well have been boasting about the power of white privilege.
And CNN, if you gonna tell the story, it would behoove you to tell the whole sordid tale and not so blatantly rescript history so as to hide the part race played in the success — or lack of success — of both black and white shows. I did notice that your contributors/analysts only mentioned race when reviewing the history of Black sitcoms. You need analysts who are a little bit more “woke,” or honest, I am thinking.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Formiga competed in the first Olympic women’s soccer tournament in 1996. Last week began her record-setting seventh Games.
The Brazilian footballer is one of many Black sportswomen who have made Olympic history — whether they are the firsts, the record-setters or the most decorated athletes in their country. These feats have often been achieved despite their environments. Black women athletes face sexism, racism or both while attempting to compete, depending on the region.
Formiga was born during her country’s ban on women’s soccer. American Alice Coachman, the first Black woman gold medalist, was discouraged from participating in sports. Could Aída dos Santos have medaled in 1964 if she’d been provided guidance, an interpreter, a coach or a uniform? She finished fourth in the high jump in those Tokyo Games.
“Athletics is still the poor cousin of national sport, so imagine what it was like in those times,” dos Santos told Universo Online. “Me, a woman, poor and Black.”
Black women athletes often achieve despite their lack of resources. Globally, there remains a lack of investment for women and girls who want to participate in sports from the youth to the professional level. Still, Santos, Formiga, Coachman and many other Black women have helped make the Olympics what they are today. And whether their achievements were downplayed or ignored, their names remain in the record books. These are just some of the Black women who have broken down sports barriers in front of them — and some who’ve followed in their footsteps.
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To achieve at the highest of high levels and still be told that you have more to prove is the epitome of ridiculosity. (Yes, it’s a word. A word made to describe this type of foolishness right here). Biles’ ability to continuously compete at a level of excellence while being under such tremendous pressure and stress is a feat in and of itself.
This world will swallow you whole and then forget you existed if you let them. So no, Simone owes us nothing. She owes herself everything. Good for her for pausing to re-align. She has a combined total of 30 Olympic and World Championship medals. Sis deserves a mental health break.
Similar to Simone, Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from the French Open two months ago for mental health reasons is something we should see more of. These are actions we should applaud as examples of how to incorporate balance into our lives for the sake of mental health. We live in such a success-driven society that sometimes we forget we are human. That human part comes first.
Prioritizing mental health at the top of your career takes courage and an enormous amount of self-love. These ladies should each be proud of being able to recognize that no amount of success is worth their mental health. They put themselves first. Naomi’s upset on Tuesday doesn’t diminish her greatness. Ranked at Number 2 in the world, she stepped onto that court already a winner, and she left just the same.
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“Oftentimes, we have to poke history, like, ‘You are sleeping. What is going on? Wake! Wake up!’” said Victor Ehikhamenor, a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist, to the Guardian.
His body of work, which encompasses large-scale tapestries, metalwork and pointillism portraits, is featured in the new exhibition Retro Africa: Do This in Memory of Us, a collaboration between the Nigerian gallery Retro Africa and New York-based gallery Lehmann Maupin that gives the viewer the opportunity to question and possibly reframe history.
“For the longest time, if you look at the history of western art, there’s a lot of representation of great white men, of patriarchy, and all of that, which is a [display] of white masculinity,” Ehikhamenor said. “You go to museums, that is what you see. And you are looking, [asking] ‘Where is my father? Where is my great-grandfather? Where are my ancestors? How are they represented, if not in anthropological photographs that were taken by colonial masters that came? How is our artwork represented in museums?’”
Retro Africa: Do This in Memory of Us features three Black artists, Chéri Samba, Nate Lewis and Ehikhamenor, and is curated by Retro Africa gallery owner Dolly Kola-Balogun. Through the exhibition, Kola-Balogun, a 27-year old UK-born Nigerian gallerist, curator and hotelier, endeavors to remove the voyeuristic lens of Africa and center Africans in the storytelling, shifting from a historically colonial perspective to a contemporary, autonomous one. She sees the exhibition as a conversation, telling the Guardian: “It’s a dialogue between three different black experiences and black people who have different upbringing, different backgrounds, but a common ancestry and a common lineage, some of which is a conversation about historical blackness and our tradition. This is a dialogue amongst black people, within and to black people, and in that dialogue the rest of the world is the audience.”
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Twenty two years after the historic Pigford v. Glickman class action lawsuit was filed, the attack on Black farmers and Black land ownership remains. The case was originally filed in 1997 by a Black farmer named Timothy Pigford. The number of plaintiffs later grew to 400, as Black farmers brought allegations that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) discriminated against them in allocating disaster payments, as well as operating and land ownership loans. More importantly, the lawsuit brought to light that the USDA failed to adequately investigate racial discrimination claims. In 1999, the first Pigford settlement and consent decree was approved for an amount of $1.06 billion in debt and tax relief, and cash payments. The settlement’s agreement had structural issues, many claimants filed late, and the class counsel failed to properly represent the farmers. However, the Pigford suit was successful in that it set the precedent for Keepseagle v. Vilsack, a suit filed by Native American farmers, and the Hispanic and Women Farmers and Ranchers Claims Resolution Process. Another community that was inspired by the demand for Black agrarian justice and the Pigford case is Acres of Ancestry/Black Agrarian Fund.
In 2012, Acres of Ancestry/Black Agrarian Fund was established as the Black Belt Justice Center in response to the second approved Pigford settlement of $1.25 billion in 2010 after learning that 60 percent of claimants were denied. “Over the years we realized that we couldn’t do this work to restore the Black agricultural land base in a silo,” said Tracy Lloyd McCurty, Executive Director of the Black Belt Justice Center and co-founder of Acres of Ancestry. Following the fallout of the Pigford settlement, the center took an ecosystem approach to their work that remains focused on obtaining justice for Black farmers while preserving Black agrarian history and culture. Today, it is a community of attorneys, heritage quilters, researchers, writers, fiber artists and others who are committed to justice for Black farmers. “We are combining our various expertise, talents, magic to dismantle institutional discrimination with the USDA but to also stand fully in our freedom,” said McCurty. The legal support provided for Black farmers is through Acres of Ancestry’s Black Farmer’s Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign, which is pushing for restitution, compensation for economic harm, stopping anti-Black racism, debt cancellation, land, federal and state tax relief and access to non-extractive capital.
Lloyd Wright, farmer and former director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights, recalls how his father also dealt with the prejudice of the USDA. His family’s farm is in Westmoreland County, Virginia and he explained one common practice of the government, was ill-advising Black farmers on what and how to plant on their land. Farmers then had to dig up the new crop and were not allowed to harvest it. “My father got to the point where he no longer worked with the USDA,” Wright said. By the time Wright himself became an active farmer, he had already started working with this department so “they wouldn’t try to hang me out to dry,” Wright explained. Now in a volunteer capacity, Wright continues his advocacy work through an informal network with the Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Policy Research Center. He also works with a number of community based organizations including Acres of Ancestry to “do what I didn’t get done when I was director.”
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The US could soon be facing dual migrant crises stemming from unrest in Haiti and Cuba. In response, the Biden administration has preemptively warned migrants not to try to come to the US by boat.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently confirmed that any migrants intercepted by the US Coast Guard off US shores will not be allowed to enter the country — they will be turned back or, if they express fear of returning to their home countries, repatriated to a third country.
“The time is never right to attempt migration by sea,” Mayorkas said in a press conference earlier this month. “To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.”
The policy isn’t new. Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have employed this interdiction approach to prevent Caribbean migrants from reaching US shores. But although it was always done under the pretense of protecting migrants from the very real dangers of that journey, it resulted in many Haitians being returned to certain peril in their home country over the years and, under the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, languishing in what one federal judge called a “prison camp” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were held after being intercepted at sea.
A. Naomi Paik, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, studied testimonies from those migrants for her book Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in US Prison Camps Since World War II. So I called her up to ask her more about the US’s history of intercepting Haitian migrant boats, what became of the migrants held at Guantanamo, and how the Biden administration can better address the humanitarian needs of Haitian migrants coming to the US today.
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