Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 68

66

Popular Culture Review

concerns many families and young people hold in common, thereby
contributing to a better understanding of the diversity and humanity
that blacks share with other citizens." The goal of the show was not
to define what black Americans are like, or to portray a
quintessential "black family," but to represent what all Americans
have in common.
Mark Crispin Miller argues that although Cliff seems to rule his
home and control his life, he is still subservient to the fact of his
blackness. Miller reads most black male characters on TV as
representing contained threats, from Arnold on "Diff'rent Strokes" to
"Tlie A Team's" Mr. T: characters who could be read as potentially
dangerous, but who are subdued by the material luxury and
consumerism of the American way. According to Miller's scheme,
"The Cosby Show" is a hit with white Americans, "in part because
whites are just as worried about blacks as they have always been"
("Deride " 213). Miller's criticism is not so much of the show itself as
it is of the cultural values and social conditions which have produced
it. If we limit ourselves to the program, however, I feel that we must
praise it for its non-stereot)q>ical depictions of African-American
characters and for its consistent use of a variety of ethnic actors.
Michael Omi argues that a movie or television program cannot be
criticized as "too white," "too black," or "too ethnic" as long as it does
not p>erp)etuate stereotypes. This is especially true in a medium in
which time constraints actually render stereotypes desirable for their
ability to convey a character type to a large number of people in a
short amount of time. While "'The Cosby Show" may use this method
of character definition in other instances—as we shall see in our
discussion of gender—it firmly avoids racial and ethnic stereotyping
as a means of identifying a character. Omi also defines a type of
culturally instructed "common sense" of racial and ethnic identity,
what he refers to as "racial beliefs"—what we learn to expect from
members of certain races and ethnicities. "The Cosby Show" takes our
racial beliefs—to borrow Omi's term—and toys with them,
decontextualizing and defamiliarizing what we think of as the
typical African-American family. The vision of black families in the
news media generally fulfills a recognizable formula with
predictable ingredients—an urban setting, drugs, crime, gangs, single
parents, and poverty. The increasing visibility of this media-image
contributes to the racial beliefs of many contemporary Americans.