the Scott Stein

Focus, focus, focus. But on what? I suppose that this essay could very well be about the problem with reviewers today. Rather than explain to the reader why “Handy Manny” is “pleasant enough,” perhaps by providing a telling example, Clarke uses half of her space to editorialize. Why give the information that readers need in order to evaluate the show when it’s so much more fun to write about sensitivity? Yet parents are not reading to get the reviewer’s insights about the importance of favorable ethnic representation on television. Parents want to know if a show is any good, and why. “Handy Manny” is pleasant enough … for some reason readers can only guess.

There’s nothing wrong with editorializing, of course — in editorials. If critics want to write about the representation of minorities and think “Handy Manny” is a good illustration of their point, they should go right ahead. They just shouldn’t pretend that they’re writing a review and then give the work a grade based on its conformity to their ideology, whatever it might be. And their editors shouldn’t publish the editorial and call it a review, in a magazine about entertainment.

One might construct an entire essay on this point, broadening it to take on the general lack of interest by reviewers in the works they’re reviewing. The New York Times Book Review could be highlighted, for its custom of hiring reviewers who have a stake in the issue and even a personal animosity toward the author of the work being reviewed. Many reviews are really just essays on some issue or another, dear to the reviewer’s heart, and deal with the work being reviewed as an afterthought, if at all. This is of little value to the reader trying to determine what movie to see or what book to read. By contrast, Frank Wilson, book editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, sees it as his responsibility to “accurately and precisely describe” what he experiences as a reader and to “report on the books [he] review[s].” I could conclude an essay about non-reviews, exemplified by Clarke’s treatment of “Handy Manny,” with Wilson’s wise advice: “I think that people want to read the review to find out what the hell the book is about, and if you tell them that, they’ll know whether they’ll be interested in reading it.”(2)

That would be a focused essay, and maybe I could write it if Clarke didn’t tempt me by mentioning “The Cosby Show.” To highlight the ethnic insensitivity of the creators of “Handy Manny,” and in an attempt at cleverness, Clarke asks, “Would they have had Dr. Huxtable hauling trash?” The answer, of course, is no, because Dr. Huxtable was not a trash collector — he was an obstetrician. It’s funny that she chooses this example, since one of the most respected playwrights dealing with race in the last century, August Wilson, wrote a little play called “Fences,” which does happen to center on the life of a trash collector, Troy Maxson. Maxson, a black man, was physically imposing and an athlete, had served time in jail, had a violent temper, got drunk regularly, and was unfaithful to his wife. In some ways he was a walking stereotype, and an unfavorable one, and he certainly would have failed the ethnic-role-model standard to which Clarke seems to hold fictional characters. When not admiring his two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson, a black man, might be surprised (were he still alive), to learn that by having his character haul trash, he was being insensitive to black people.

We could extend Clarke’s logic to other writers whose ethnic characters are portrayed in demeaning roles. Perhaps Alex Haley was being insensitive for making his black characters slaves. It would have been far better, and more sensitive, if he had provided young people with examples of successful, upwardly mobile black characters. With some clever rewriting, “Roots” could have been about a black dentist who defies the odds and develops a new technique for root canal. A truly inspiring story, to be sure, and the very thought inspires me to abandon my religion still further. I want to change focus to the problem that Clarke’s logic creates for fiction writers and storytellers of every kind.

When critics view characters as representations of ethnicity, as role models, rather than as individual characters, they put authors in a difficult position. Authors — whether of novels, television shows, plays, or movies — have to make choices about the ethnicities and other aspects of their characters. Often, these choices are virtually dictated by plot and setting, but they can be crucial to a work, as in the case of “Fences.” In other instances, the ethnicity, gender, or religion of a character may not be particularly important. In all instances, one would hope that the choices are made with what is best for the work as a whole in mind. Whatever makes the story seem real to the audience, whatever makes the drama most powerful — in any genre, whatever makes the work, well, work — is what the author should choose. Insisting that all characters must be career role models for their ethnic groups robs these characters of their individuality. It also leads authors — if they take the pressure of criticism seriously — to make all sorts of odd decisions that distort reality and undermine the plausibility of their creative work.

Whether the pressure comes from critics, the culture at large, or an author’s own agenda, the blatant transformation of ethnic characters into role models can cause the disbelief that audiences willfully suspend to unsuspend in a hurry. On the television medical drama-romance “Grey’s Anatomy,” it is glaring that a major metropolitan hospital has three prominent black doctors in leadership positions, including the chief of medicine and the superstar surgeon, but no prominent Jews (unless you count the Korean doctor, who for some reason is Jewish). Of course, there are Jewish doctors working at the hospital (there would have to be), but none is featured in the show. Executive producer Mark Gordon said that what made his show “even more contemporary” than “Friends” was that “Grey’s” features a “cross-section of racial and ethnic characters — it’s culturally diverse.”(3) “Grey’s Anatomy” is certainly an inclusive show. Unless, of course, you’re one of those rare doctors who happens to be Jewish.

(The reader, I trust, sees what I’m doing here — just applying some pressure on the writers to increase representation of a particular ethnic group. We can’t have the television-viewing world starting to think that there aren’t any Jewish doctors. Bad for business. I kid. But seriously, look at “E.R.” while you’re at it).

Fortunately, Gordon also says that what makes creator Shonda Rhimes’s “character[s] so special, particularly the women, is that they’re real. They’re not a type.”(4) Even a show that is proud of its cultural diversity recognizes that individual characters are what viewers connect to. The point of all of this blasphemous, unfocused rambling is that writers risk losing their audience and weakening the quality of their work when they make decisions to satisfy the ethnic expectations of sensitivity hawks.

This doesn’t mean that a show or other dramatic work is doomed if it doesn’t reflect the proportional reality of ethnic representation. The popularity of “Grey’s Anatomy” demonstrates that this isn’t true. But I suggest that the success of “Grey’s” is not connected to its creators’ conscious effort to be diverse and show black characters in uplifting, socially valued roles. (It probably is connected to the good-looking doctors frequently having sex in the hospital.) There’s an entire essay in here somewhere about various efforts by writers to improve society by showing minorities in favorable roles. That essay could contain numerous examples of dramatic work suffering as a result of the writer’s imposing a role-model message where it doesn’t belong. Such an essay would certainly mention that even when a show like “Grey’s Anatomy” does everything it can to put minority characters into prominent, respected positions, the writer can’t please everyone. Devon Carbado at blackprof.com makes this clear:

My sense is that few people would quarrel with the claim that Grey’s Anatomy is reasonably diverse. One aspect of the show is that people of color just happen to be in leadership positions. No one comments on it; no one is surprised by it; no one seems the least bit bothered by it. There are no explicit racial bonds, no explicit racial monitoring, no comments about having to work twice as hard to get ahead. As one newspaper article on the show puts it, “multiculturalism is a casual fact of life.” […] I don’t think the show is colorblind at all. It is color conscious in a particular way — namely, it presents non-white actors in roles that do not explicitly invoke race. That is neither colorblind nor race neutral. This brings me to the second question. Is this kind of representation a good thing? I really like the show — I think it is funny and clever and does not take itself too seriously. Still, I wonder whether one could say that this show is successful because it is racially palatable. Recall that this claim was made of the Cosby Show…(5)

Talk about a revelation. Here I am, going on about “Grey’s Anatomy,” far afield from Clarke’s review, pretty sure that the religion of focus is lost to me forever, and then with an intervention from the heavens (otherwise known as Google), we’re back to “The Cosby Show” and “Fences” and Clarke’s review. Maybe faith and focus still stand a chance, if I can somehow bring all these things together.

The reader might think that it doesn’t matter that a reviewer for an entertainment magazine is unfamiliar with the most famous work of one of America’s most famous recent playwrights. One might expect that Clarke, interested in the plight and representation of ethnic minorities, would have heard of “Fences” and not made the reference to hauling trash. That might be asking too much. But it should not be asking too much of a reviewer of television shows to be familiar with the critical response to television shows, particularly the very famous shows to which the reviewer is referring. Clarke apparently does not recall, but some people were critical of “The Cosby Show” because they believed that it misrepresented the black experience. One need not be a world-class researcher to learn this. A simple Google search for “Cosby Show” offers, on its first page, a link to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, which sums up the critics:

The Huxtables’ affluence, they argued, worked to obscure persistent inequalities in America — especially those faced by blacks and other minority groups — and validate the myth of the American Dream. One audience study suggests that the show “strikes a deal” with white viewers, that it absolves them of responsibility for racial inequality in the United States in exchange for inviting the Huxtables into their living room. Meanwhile, the same study found that black viewers tend to embrace the show for its positive portrayals of blackness, but express misgivings about the Huxtables’ failure to regularly interact with less affluent blacks.(6)

Just a little more searching would have connected Clarke to some of the critics themselves. In 1989, an obscure publication called the New York Times published a lengthy, front-of-the-section, full-page article by an obscure scholar named Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an essay entitled “TV’s Black World Turns — But Stays Unreal.” Gates was critical of the representation of blacks on television in general, and on “The Cosby Show” in particular, writing that “[t]here is very little connection between the social status of black Americans and the fabricated images of black people that Americans consume each day.”(7) In 1992, a book called “Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream,” noted that “critics have begun to accuse [“The Cosby Show”] of presenting a misleadingly cozy picture, a sugar candy world unfettered by racism, crime, and economic deprivation.”(8) One of the critics’ main concerns was that Americans would not take seriously the calls for policies to help minorities if television shows implied that minorities were able to reach the middle class on their own.

Fighting the temptation to challenge the presumed economic and social policy assumptions and preferences of these critics, I can, with a little residual faith, maintain focus and note that none of the above squares very well with Clarke’s dismay at the insensitive decision to make a Latino character a handyman. It does suggest that the real insensitivity is that of people who, like Clarke, would prefer to make the Latino character a wealthy brain surgeon in defiance of statistical likelihood, because it would convince the rest of us that all Latinos are wealthy brain surgeons, and we would then unfairly blame any non-brain-surgeon Latino for his station in life. Clarke’s position seems to be that all characters who are members of a historically disadvantaged ethnic group must be portrayed only as the highest members of society, because otherwise the rest of us will think that all members of that group are menial workers.

To be fair, the audience for the Disney Channel is young and impressionable, and it can be argued that children are capable of drawing generalizations about ethnic groups from a show. I believe this argument seriously overstates the power of media to influence, rather than reflect, reality, and seriously understates the media savvy of even young viewers. But if it’s true, it only means that kids will be likely to think that all Spanish-speaking girls own talking maps and helpful monkeys and are always going on adventures and singing songs designed to give their parents a nervous twitch. We can probably agree that children don’t draw such generalizations from watching “Dora the Explorer,” which perhaps says something about their ability to focus on individual characters rather than ethnic identities.

Though Clarke clearly was unaware of the criticism lobbed at “The Cosby Show,” Gates ended up supporting her, in a way, when he wrote that “the early 70’s ghetto sitcoms (‘Good Times’ and ‘Sanford’) were no more realistic than ‘Cosby’ is. In fact, their success made the idea of ghetto life palatable for most Americans…”(9) It isn’t a good choice to show a minority character living in a slum if that depiction robs “it of its reality as a place of exile, a place of rage, and frustration, and death.”(10) The problem, as Gates sees it, is that characters who should be miserable are not. Maybe we can bring Gates to Clarke’s defense by applying this logic to “Handy Manny.” You see, Manny isn’t bitter that he spends his time fixing things for other people. In fact, he seems to enjoy helping others. So do his tools. And that’s the problem. By making characters in these environments likable and happy, writers are hiding the horror of their circumstances from the audience.

Of course, to improve the sensitivity of the decision to make Manny a handyman, all the writers need to do is make him surly. He should curse, complain about the Man, be harassed by the police. But whatever else one thinks of Gates, he doesn’t make that suggestion. He acknowledges that sitcoms are not good agents of social change, and suggests that blacks should not look to television for their “social liberation.”(11) It’s a wise acknowledgment, because “exile, rage, frustration, and death” don’t usually make for hilarious comedy. And they make for even worse children’s television.

Obviously, Clarke doesn’t contemplate making “Handy Manny” a screed about social injustice, designed to effect political change. She knows it’s a kids’ show. Yet her review never mentions the fact that Manny is competent, conscientious, and respected. He helps people, and they appreciate his work. He regularly saves the day for them when something breaks. How can a character that is this skilled and valued be interpreted as insensitive toward Latinos? There’s even a white shopkeeper who regularly tries to do projects without Manny’s help and who regularly looks like a buffoon when he fails.

It seems that Clarke’s basic view is simply that we shouldn’t show any ethnic minority doing physical labor. It’s fine for Bob the Builder to do it, because children will not stereotype white people as a result. But minorities shouldn’t be demeaned by showing them doing any actual work or using tools. I see that I’m changing focus yet again. Nevertheless, it’s true. Clarke talks of “blue-collar” as if it’s an insult. When did it become shameful to have a blue-collar job, to work with one’s hands and fix things? After all, not everyone can write for an entertainment magazine. And, by the way, I’m pretty sure that my plumber makes more money than I do, and has fewer student loans to repay. Even if he doesn’t, that would be no reason to look down on him or anyone else who does an honest job and provides value to his customers.

There’s probably an entire essay to be had here on the topic of elitism and snobbery directed at the pickup truck crowd, and maybe another essay on how society’s looking down on hard physical work affects the children and their expectations about life and work (it always comes back to the children, after all). But, rejecting my religion altogether, I’d like to shift focus dramatically, even theatrically, and ask my readers to imagine the meeting that led to “Handy Manny’s” concept. You just know that someone said, “Hey, let’s combine ‘Dora the Explorer’ and ‘Bob the Builder.’” Both are successful shows — because kids love tools and construction and building things, and because parents think that if their kids hear a Spanish word once in a while it will help them get into Harvard. (Though if this sort of thing actually helps kids learn a language — which is very doubtful — what we really need is a show called “Handy Chung,” with a Chinese-speaking repairman. Perhaps I digress). The point, of course, is that the handyman and the Spanish speaking were probably a package-deal dreamed up by a marketing department.

Clarke’s critique is counterproductive, because ethnic insensitivity is the very last thing that anyone at the Disney channel or any other media company wants to be accused of, and what she says could influence future decisions. Because of it, the next show may feature a Latino brain surgeon or condominium developer, but since little kids like talking tools more than they like scenes of bloody surgery or dull real estate transactions, it is more likely that the next character who fixes things will simply be a white person. It’s the safer choice. The cost is one less minority character on television (if you’re at home keeping count, as Gates is).(12) While many readers might not particularly care about racial representation on television, it is clear that Clarke does. Yet it seems perfectly plausible that some minority actors will be out of work if more critics and the viewing public express attitudes like hers.

In that environment, no sane casting director would hire a black actor to portray any kind of criminal on any of the eighteen versions of “CSI” and “Law and Order.” And what else is on TV these days? Add to this the many other television and movie roles that Clarke would apparently find unacceptable for minorities (from super villains to that wife-murdering Othello to any ordinary worker driving a pickup truck), and you have a lot of unemployed minority actors. Not that actual people matter when a television reviewer has the world to save.

That pretty much brings us full circle. Maybe not a circle, but some nameless shape that loops around in random directions and only barely connects at the end. You might have noticed in this essay an almost imperceptible failure to follow a straight line. But here we are at the conclusion, and despite my sins, there’s still a chance to show that this really is one essay with a general point, a thesis, maybe. Perhaps a restoration of faith is imminent. Could it be, even salvation? A conclusion should sum up and bring together the major points. What were they?

There was something about the proper way to write reviews, and reviewers not knowing about famous plays, and the critical response to “The Cosby Show,” and a bit of nonsense about “Grey’s Anatomy” and Jewish doctors, and a request for a show with a Chinese handyman so my son could learn the language for free, and a cheap shot at my expensive plumber, and a thing about writers and the choices they make, and half of an implication that someone will be offended no matter what authors do with their characters, and a crumb of a notion that artists can’t satisfy the competing interests of political correctness and shouldn’t even try, and maybe a hint of commentary about the way some people make everything about race, and a completely inappropriate mix of source-based analysis and giddy sarcasm, and a half-hearted reliance on “losing the religion of focused essays” to connect the whole thing. Perhaps there’s even a lesson for writers in this very conclusion — subtle, of course — about the importance of having a clear thesis, and yes, focus, and at least a modicum of discipline. Got that? See my point? Good.

Amen.



NOTES:

1. Entertainment Weekly #895/896 (September 8, 2006) 167.

2. Liz Lopatto, “An Interview with Frank Wilson, Part I,” The Kenyon Review (December 2, 2006)

3. "Shonda Rhimes, creator of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and a Chicagoan of the Year," Chicago Tribune, posted on December 21, 2005 by Maureen Ryan, The Watcher. A Chicago Tribune Web Log.

4. Ibid

5. Devon Carbado, "The Racial Anatomy of Grey’s Anatomy," Blackprof.com (September 27, 2006).

6. Museum of Broadcast Communications

7. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “TV’s Black World Turns — But Stays Unreal,” New York Times (November 12, 1989) H1.

8. Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis, “Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream,” (Westview Press, 1992) 2-3.

9. Gates H1.

10. Gates H1.

11. Gates H1.

12. Gates writes: “Blacks retain their fascination with black characters on TV: Many of us buy Jet magazine primarily to read its weekly television feature, which lists every black character (major or minor) to be seen on the screen that week” (H1).