Why not just laugh? Making fun of ourselves on television - portrayals of African Americans in situation comedies

American Visions, April-May, 1993 by Joanne Harris

Making Fun of Ourselves on Television

Should we be laughing at the roles of blacks on television situation comedies? Why even ask the question? Why not just laugh? Because there may be more at stake than aching sides. A veteran television writer, Ralph Farquhar, describes the bad news and the worse news we all must face. "The bad news is, if these shows fail, next year the networks are not going to do any more. The worse news is, if they all make it, next year the networks are going to say, |We made it. We don't need black people to create it. People love these images we're putting out, so we're going to do more.'"

With the surge of black sitcoms on the air, we're seeing a lot of black faces on our television screens, which could lead us to believe that the people in power behind the cameras are the same color. Most of those sitcoms, however, were created by white writer-producers, who develop a show's, philosophy, determine its direction and thereafter hire black writers to carry out their overall plans. Writers are not necessarily hired to be creative; ideas are put before them and they become "problem solvers," according to Eunetta Boone, who writes for Roc, Writers are presented with a situation and must answer the question, "How do we get from point A to point B and make it funny?" she says.

To learn more about, the creative energy behind black sitcoms and the role of black writers in Hollywood, let's go to "the table." That's where a show's writers - who range from executive producer, co-executive producer and supervising producer on down to story editors, staff writers and trainees - work together. In television writing, everything happens at the table. Story ideas are pitched, scripts are read, notes are made, rewrites take place. Sitcom writers get to know one another intimately. "There's a lot of instantaneous bonding because you spend so much time in the room, and writers are always, consciously or unconsciously, making jokes to prove that they're funny or to keep the muscle going," says Thad Mumford, a writer-producer at Paramount Pictures.

Mumford is an anomaly in the business of television writing. Before landing the position of staff writer on the Electric Company in 1971, he worked as a page on the Tonight Show. His biggest credit came after a short stint as story editor for Maude. He was the executive story editor/producer for M*A*S*H for four years. Since then, he has worked on A Different World and Coach. He believes his success "has to do with just dumb luck and the world being different when I started out." Maybe because there were no blacks to help him along, he now reaches out to aspiring black writers.

When Rob Edwards, the co-executive producer of Out All Night, graduated from Syracuse University in 1985, he was told not to even consider moving to California, because black people don't work behind the scenes in Hollywood. "That's when I found Thad Mumford," he says. "I wrote him a letter and said, |What's the deal? How does this thing work?' And he told me.

Edwards has gone from being a production assistant on Mary to a story editor on Full House and A Different World. He admits he's more at ease writing in black rhythms. "I would get into trouble a lot of times on white shows because "I would start pitching stuff from a specifically black childhood, like parents combing your hair. You can't pitch a nap joke on Full House." In seven years, Edwards has worked on six successful shows. He, too, considers himself an anomaly, but he qualifies the statement: "I don't want to come off like I'm the big cheese, but it always seemed to me that there are so many black shows on TV, I just assumed that there were a lot of black writers."

Wrong. There is a shortage of black writers. The handful of experienced black television writers are at work on current series, so that when a new show is created, it's hard to find blacks with producer credits. Ehrich Van Lowe is in demand because he has those credentials. He was wrapping up a season's worth of his new sitcom, Where I Live, when he was yanked into the position of executive director of Roc. Van Lowe has been in the business for nearly 10 years and did his growing up working on such diverse shows as Knight Rider, Charles in Charge and The Cosby Show. "In this industry, it seemed if you were a black writer like myself, who clicked, then you were just shot up to the top, and all the other people in the middle seemed to be falling out."

Bennie Richburg reached "the top" in just three years. He started as a trainee on Fresh Prince of Bel Air and is now the co-producer of the hit Martin. "The type of writing that I do is very hot right now," he explains, "which has enabled me to move up as fast as I am."

"I was kind of a Cinderella story," says Michael Moye, the co-creator of Married With Children. He got into the business in an unusual way - he entered a playwrighting competition and won the Norman Lear Comedy Playwrighting Award in 1977. He left behind a budding career in marine biology to write for Good Times. Then he wrote for The Jeffersons for five years, during which time he reached the position of executive producer. Haunted by the taunt, "Yeah, but can he write white?" Moye co-created what he considered the whitest show, Silver Spoons, in 1982. For the last seven years, he has written for and produced Married With Children. "There's not too many of me, unfortunately," he says.