Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 66

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Popular Culture Review

the program's producers killed his character, leaving the Walker
family fatherless.
Herman Gray maintains that an assimilationist view prevails in
1980s sitcoms. Basic attributes of "individualism, racial invisibility,
professional competence, success, upward social mobility, and the
routinization of racial issues" are stressed, at the expense of racial
community, conflict, diversity, and individuality (227). As social
problenas are removed from the core family in 1980s sitcoms, so, too,
are racial issues marginalized and fragmented. "The television
world of situation comedy is one where race and racial issues are
simply points of personal difference and not sites of social, cultural
and p>olitical organization and interaction" (Gray 238). Gray finds
this symptomatic of a general trend in which not only TV shows, but
also society and government have shifted definitions of racial
inequality and discrimination from the group to the individual.
Mary Ellison maintains that contemporary black characters and
shows fail twice: first, by not working to expand black self
comprehension and self-concepts, and second, by not "explaining black
life to misapprehending whites" (76). This raises a crucial question,
and one which I do not pretend to answer here, which is whether or
not it is a television program's responsibility to edify and enlighten
its audiences.
Bill Cosby's first significant television role was in "I Spy "(196568), the first network drama to feature an African-American in a
regular role. The role was unusual because it did not have to go to an
African-American actor. Previously, almost all black characters had
been created and written as black characters or for black actors, but
this role could have just as easily gone to a white actor without
altering the show's premise or scripts. From 1969-71, Cosby starred in
"The Bill Cosby Show", in which he portrayed high school track
coach Chet Kincaid. MacDonald describes the show as having a
"black ambiance" which "Julia" lacked, but adds that it was
certainly not a "black show" (118). Kincaid, who was obviously
educated and comfortably middle-class, might occasionally pick up a
Ray Charles album, or a photograph of Martin Luther King might
appear on a wall, but little overt mention was made of the character's
racial status. Heathcliff Huxtable might be viewed from one
perspective as a contemporary version of Julia and Chet, who
portrayed "the 'good life' to be achieved by those blacks who did not