How so? :dubious:
Well, if the objection to “Amos & Andy” is that it made black men look like buffoons, well… was Kingfish really any more of a buffoon than Martin Lawrence’s character was?
I don’t think “black people are buffoons on this show” means a show is racist. Especially a COMEDY show, in comedy of all genres worldwide, buffoonery is a comedic technique. What matters to me is, is the purpose to make the viewer laugh because he’s a black buffoon and they really are like that, or is the humor that he’s a buffoon on a black show? I know it’s in the eye of the beholder, but especially with the case of Martin 2 of the 3 creators were black, and the executive producer was black. I’ve never heard a single black person that found the show offensive, and the show uses pretty much the exact same tropes and techniques all sitcoms use, just with a black-oriented perspective. Can’t see the racist there.
Fair enough- but in my view, Kingfish wasn’t much different from, say, Ralph Kramden- he was a guy with a big mouth that got him in trouble, big schemes that always failed, and big dreams that never came true.
A big part of the problem is that practically nobody has SEEN any of the old “Amos & Andy” shows. Everybody has HEARD a million times that they’re racist and offensive, which means almost nobody dares broadcast them any more. It’s not so much that black activists have seen these shows and proclaimed them racist. Rather, it’s that they’re ASSUMED to be racist, because “everybody says so.”
I think that’s just it, it’s one of the “common sense” things that is actually wrong and just gets passed around. I have only heard the shows because I listen to a lot of old time radio shows, I’m probably the only person my age who I know has ever actually heard the show.
I like it. I think it worked best on radio, where you can’t see the characters. Then you can focus on the voices and joked instead of the “wide eyed, shuffling, slackjawed” stuff you saw on TV. Truthfully, the show could have been done with any characters that were all idiots and been just as funny. Think of Kingfish as Moe Howard and Andy as Larry or Curly. They’re all idiots, but one is just barely smarter. And Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll were very good voice actors, too.
BTW, having seen the series and the 1930 movie, my opinion was the series was funny. I just didn’t think the movie was funny. The funniest part to me was when Kingfish lines up a job for Amos and Andy’s cab service. It’s gonna be worth $20, and Kingfish explains he should get a 10% fee for lining up the job.
At the end of his calculations, his 10% fee is $12.
Also worth noting is that the TV series followed the radio series, which had in a large part evolved into “Kingfish and Andy.” Amos had a family, and the writers felt that that limited his comedic involvement, which de facto promoted Kingfish to top banana. Amos was the voice of reason and often just introduced the program.
The radio program was also one of the first “It was all a dream” set-ups. One of the story lines in the 1930s was about Amos going on trial for murder. The old series, as noted, was really a serial, and the story line went for months before it was revealed to be a dream.
Also, I’m not a particularly religious, sentimental, or holidayish person, but the Christmas episode is really nice.
Martin was an embarassment to the entire human race. (I heard he was such a jackass that Tisha Campbell refused to be near him when she came to film the final episode)
I’m British, so I’ve never seen nor heard Amos 'n Andy. I’ve come in to comment on the Black Buffoon character. When I was a kid in the sixties the only black people I remember seeing on telly were buffoons and I’m sorry to say it played right into the ignorant racism I’d been growing up with (I grew up in a pretty white town, the only black kid in primary school arrived when I was 11).
Incidentally it was seeing Martin Luther King on the news that opened my eyes to the possibility that there was more to black people than I knew.
I recently went through an old time radio phase and listened to a lot of Amos and Andy.
I feel quite confident in saying–It’s only racist if you are.
The situations are almost universal and have next to nothing to do with the characters being black. Two white guys doing the voices–eh uncomfortable maybe*. Counterpoint to this “The Cleveland Show” has a white guy voicing Cleveland. ::shrug::
- even the creators in hindsight realized doing their one feature film in blackface was not a good idea.
Tim Moore (the Kingfish) was a great comedian. Spencer Williams (Andy) was a director and producer in the days of the Black Cinema. I’m glad that the show got them some exposure to the White community.
The documentary: http://www.hulu.com/watch/48119/amos-n-andy-anatomy-of-a-controversy
I have no doubt it played into ignorant racism, but other sitcoms on TV at the same time included *The Goldbergs *(Jewish), *Life with Luigi *(Italian), Mama (Sweedish) and the incredibly stupid women of I Love Lucy, I Married Joan and My Little Margie. Stereotyped buffoons were a staple of comedy.
Well, of course, I never saw those either, the point I was trying to make was that the only black people on TV (that I saw on our two channels in the UK in the sixties) were buffoons. Foreigners in general were funny it’s true but they weren’t all portrayed as stupid and they got on to serious programmes sometimes too.
Remember that, at the time, a lot of people had family members who were fresh off the boat, or not so fresh off the boat, and comedy based on laughing at your funny neighbors, relatives and, especially, in-laws has always been big. In fact, it might be the very core of comedy. See: My MIL in 1976 and Terry Jones in drag.
I completely understand and agree with your point. The major problem with something like *Amos 'n Andy *or Disney’s Song of the South wasn’t that the work itself was racist or stereotyped, but that there was little else in popular culture to offer a different portrayal. If you wanted to see a black person on TV in 1951 and you weren’t watching Amos n’ Andy you had to hope there was a Negro entertainer on one of the variety shows that week.
I grew up during the 80s, in a relatively wealthy family. This means that all of the best comedies I saw, growing up, were The Toy, The Jerk, Brewster’s Millions, and so on. By the intention of the people writing these comedies, these were major slams against wealthy people. The wealthy can’t have any meaningful relationship with their family or kids, they prey on the poor, etc. When I watched the films, I just saw a wealthy guy who with failed relationships, who was a mean boss. I didn’t take it as representative of all people, just the specific character, since I had actual life experience to tell me otherwise.
The writers of the films were explicitly classist and, in a way, reprehensible. By definition, most people aren’t wealthy, and so the only portrayal of the life of the wealthy they ever see is in film, or that they hear via song lyrics. It would make sense that people would stretch the story of the characters to the entire class of people, since they don’t have any great way to know better.
But since it’s a story about only the characters you actually see – not a monologue, stating that all people are a particular way – there’s nothing forcing you to extend what you see to everyone. If you know better, then the material stops being offensive.
Amos and Andy is probably like that. The writers may or may not have been racist, and written their characters according to a belief that they were representing everyone black. If they were, it’s a racist work, regardless of how you interpret it. But so long as you aren’t racist yourself, you’d probably never realize there was anything amiss with what you are watching.
You’re in luck- Amos ‘n’ Andy is one of the most widely available American old time radio series. There are lots of places to listen online. Try here: Amos and Andy at OTR.Network (Old Time Radio)
Wow. Why’d you have to take turns?
I heard a clip during a class once and it reminded me more of Sanford and Son than anything else. I think what might have stuck in African-Americans’ craws about A&A was not so much the content as the minstrelsy, white actors playing black-stereotype characters.