During Courtney and Katie’s wonderful dyad presentation they discussed television and advertising in the media. As Katie was discussing shows of all white casts and all black casts she mentioned the show “Sister, Sister.” That title struck me because I used to be a huge fan of the show when I was in middle and high school. Recently, ABC Family has been showing re-runs of the show. So, today while I was eating lunch I thought I would take a step into the past and watch the show.
In this particular episode the girls soon to be boyfriends were being introduced. If you haven’t watched the show “the girls” are Tia and Tamera Mowry who are twins. The main plot revolved around Tia and Tamera and their lives with their mom and dad. Lisa Landry is Tia’s adoptive mother and Ray Campbell is Tamera’s adoptive dad. They all live under the same roof, which could raise eyebrows because Ray and Lisa are not married.
In Courtney and Katie’s dyad they concentrated on how in white shows black people are always in the background, but in this particular show white people were usually always in the background. Tia, Tamera, Lisa, Ray, Jordan (Tamera’s boyfriend), and Tyreke (Tia’s boyfriend are all black. The twin’s best friend, Diavian, is also black.
This show was origianlly aired on ABC and then got cancelled for a year. After a year passed the WB picked it up and the show ran for 4 years. Why did ABC cancell the show? And is it suspecious that the WB just so happened to pick up this black sitcom?
I love that Sister, Sister has black characters, but where are the white characters. It seems that shows can either have an all black cast, or an all white cast. I feel like they really aren’t ever mixed together, and I wish they would!
4 comments:
I think that is the question of the hour; why aren't the shows mixed-up? Any comments
I think it's interesting that you mentioned how shows that revolve around Black people only have Black characters, and shows that apply to White people only have White characters in them. I have always wondered about this myself when watching shows like Bill Cosby, the Prince of Bel Air and Bernie Mack.
Based on watching these shows, it totally demonstrates where we are today with race. We still have many forms of racial segregation when you look at the whole big picture with the media. It really makes me wonder why a country like ours with so much diversity that is supposed to be integrated and a society that discourages exclusion based on race still isolates these figures. It's like we still haven't moved ahead with racism and accepting people of different cultures and backgrounds to be mixed together in social settings.
On the other hand, I try to look at shows like you mentioned about Sister Sister for not being diverse because they want to make shows that appeal to different people because many people of different races in real life are used to being around their own culture, and want to have shows and forms of media that make up those cultures and traditions. For example, one of my favorite shows is the George Lopez Show, which is a show with a Mexican family. More than likely Mexicans will watch this show more because they can relate to things in the show regarding their culture and have a better understanding about what's happening or know reasons for certain traditions or practices portrayed about the Mexican culture.
I believe the same thing applies for Black People and other races as well. Therefore, you can’t necessarily think that it’s due to exclusion of races for Blacks and Whites not socializing with each other. I think it is just because people want shows that revolve around their own heritage.
After all, if you go to a foreign country like the Philippines and tune into television, all you will see are Filipino actors and actresses because they are part of a cultural group that the audience in that country can relate to. Filipinos have their own game shows, soap operas, reality shows, sitcoms, movies and news casts.
The reason I used this example is because my wife who is from the Philippines also subscribes to a Filipino media network on the Internet called ABS-CBN, so she can watch all of her media favorites because these things all relate to her culture, and most of the programs are in her language.
However, she still likes to watch American shows too, and keep up with our newscasts and other programs. Therefore, there are different perspectives on looking at the situation that pertains to isolating race and culture in the media.
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