Othello, Race, and Cultural Memory on Cheers_____15
not. If one watched this episode with no prior knowledge of the play, it would
only be known that the play is about a black man, in Fred’s words, “choking a
white woman to death.” It is important, though, that the role is clearly defined as
“a black man,” though no mention of blackface or how the role was traditionally
performed is ever made.
Sanford & Son9 the only sitcom to ever engage Othello’s race, however
superficially, was produced by Norman Lear, whose prolific sitcom output in the
1970s, including All in the Family and The Jeffersons, was known for dealing
with issues such as race, class, and gender. Cheers, however, was a decidedly
anti-Lear program and a definite product of the Reagan era. While it has been
lauded for its mixing of social classes, all of its primary characters throughout its
11-year run were white. Minorities were a rarity on the show, even among the
extras playing bar patrons. After the explicit confrontations about race on the
1970s Lear programs, 80s sitcoms such as Cheers preferred to ignore racial
conflict.
A consideration of race in Cheers must also take into account the show’s
Boston setting. A largely segregated city of deeply entrenched ethnic enclaves,
Boston in the early 1980s was perhaps best known for the bitter and violent
school busing crisis of the 1970s, in which residents of white working-class
neighborhoods rioted to protest the busing of black students.9 Though it has
surprisingly not been discussed in the literature on the show, setting this allwhite show aimed at a primarily white audience in a city known for its racial
hostilities could not have been pure coincidence. It is the clearest indicator that
Cheers, like many other television shows of its era, wanted to put forth an idea
that the Reagan 80s was a postracial world in which the racial conflicts of the
60s and 70s had been solved. This is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that,
from 1984 to 1992, Cheers and The Cosby Show, a program that put forth the
postracial fantasy from the black point of view, were the twin anchors of NBC’s
Thursday night schedule. Separate but equal was recreated through primetime
comedy. The vision of Boston that Cheers put forth furthered the idea that all of
the city’s racial problems had been solved. The exterior shots of the bar used at
the beginning of every episode were shot at the Bull & Finch Pub in the affluent
and predominately white Beacon Hill neighborhood which, like other uppermiddle class neighborhoods, was largely untouched by the busing crisis.10 This
is tourist-trap Boston, where the residents want to pretend racial conflict does
not exist (and where, due to the lack of diversity, it does not). Though the bar is
supposedly blue-collar, the characters (including Italians such as Coach and
Carla) have a definite air of WASP about them. The distinctive accents and
ethnic identities of working-class neighborhoods such as South Boston and
Dorcester are not heard.
In addition, the Boston Red Sox, Sam’s former team, were a constant
specter on the show. The Red Sox were known, at least among AfricanAmericans, as an overtly racist organization that had been the last major league
team to integrate and had been hostile to Black players into H NN ˌLH