The Cosby Show – Bitch Flicks

Sisterhood Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Sisterhood Theme Week here.

Sisters in Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl by Tessa Racked

The core of Fat Girl is these two girls, who contrast each other in some very essential ways, but are inexorably bound together by shared experiences. Both are adolescents grappling with the early throes of sexuality, but their divergent appearances and ages leave them in different positions socially, affecting their worldviews.

Black Sisterhood in Television Sitcoms by Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman

While many Black sitcoms revolve around a family, it’s rare that specific interactions between sisters are depicted. While “sisterhood” here often refers to the strong bond between friends, biological sisterhood is sometimes forgotten. Sisters with strong relationships on television display some of the deepest and truest kinds of family love out there.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged”: The Importance of the Bennet Sisters Now by Maddie Webb

But more and more it seems you can judge the quality of modern adaptations on how the filmmakers view Lizzie in relation to her sisters. Even though the representation of women has greatly expanded since Austen’s time, a story that revolves mostly around sisterly relationships remains rare, which makes it even more vital. And while it is true that Austen’s romance has a timeless quality that makes it popular, the narrative of sisterly love remains transcendent.

The Repercussions of Repressing Teenage Girls in The Virgin Suicides and Mustang by Lee Jutton

Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered.

The Scary Truth About Sisters in Horror Films by Laura Power

So what makes sisters such fascinating subject matter for horror films? What makes them both scary and powerful, yet the most vulnerable, both to outside forces as well as to each other when they are threatened? … Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with.

Our Little Sister: Making Enough Room for the Half-Sister by Katherine Parker-Hay

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister is a mature and subtle exploration of the place of the half-sister within family life; how she fits in and how she transforms what we think the family means. … The camera lingers on Suzu’s face in a moment of indecision: will she go on as before, having no feelings for what are essentially strangers anyway, or will she take a leap of faith that will mean her identity will be forever tangled with theirs?

A League of their Own: The Joy and Complexity of Sisterhood on a Baseball Field by Jessica Quiroli

The bond between the sisters is at the heart of the wartime baseball movie, directed by Penny Marshall… Their competitive nature is a motivation to be the best… It’s obvious that Dottie always seems to have one up on Kit, which sets up the relentless struggle of the spirited Kit who wants, finally, to be better than Dottie. … Kit and Dottie are the embodiment not just of sisterhood, but of the true nature of a teammate relationship.

Second Mom Syndrome: Sisterhood in My Neighbor Totoro by Clara Mae

The film shows how Satsuki struggles with this dual role of acting as the most present parent while still being only a child herself. … While Satsuki fulfills the role of mom to Mei, it’s her status as sister and child that ends up saving the day. … My Neighbor Totoro is one of Miyazaki’s best odes to sisterhood, portraying both the struggles but also the benefits of having a sibling at your side.

Little Women: Learning to Love All of the March Sisters by Allyson Johnson

However, the clearest, most poignant development that comes through growing with the films is how ultimately, the love story between Jo and Bhaer and the unrequited love story between Jo and Teddy mean little juxtaposed to the love shared between the four sisters. They are one another’s hearts and souls, evident as Jo writes her novel at the end of the film.

Grey’s Anatomy and Assertive Sisters by Siobhan Denton

Meredith doesn’t feel obligated to form relationships with Maggie and Amelia due to her sibling connections with them. She doesn’t deem it necessary to acquaint herself with Maggie simply because they share a mother, nor does she try to force a friendly relationship between herself and Amelia simply because she’s the sister of the man she loves. This means then, that when these close relationships are formed, they are all the more powerful. They are formed through choice, not responsibility.

My Sister’s Keeper: When Sisterhood Sours in Horror Films by Jamie Righetti

But there’s also a darker side to sisterhood, where rivalries take violent turns and where bonds are almost too strong, superseding everything else including reality. When sisters are pushed to the extremes, when women don’t meet society’s expectations, what does this tell us about the constraints on women to conform to idealized versions of femininity and sisterhood? Are bad sisters just failures or are they simply women with complicated narratives that a patriarchal society doesn’t allow room for?

The Virgin Suicides: Striking Similarities Between the Lisbon and Romanov Sisters by Isabella Garcia

Two sets of sisters, different in circumstance but alike in experience: the four Romanov Grand Duchesses of Russia and the four Lisbon sisters from 1970s Michigan in The Virgin Suicides. … Clear links between the two sets can be drawn, but ultimately reveal that in both situations, living in a gilded cage only leaves behind a haunting memory.

The Sister as Revenant in Brian De Palma’s Sisters by Stefan Sereda

‘Sisters’ displays an early concern with women’s liberation in mainstream American film (De Palma’s collaborator on the screenplay was Louisa Rose). Many of the film’s social complaints remain liberal talking points today: that police can be motivated by racism, that the legal institution can subject women to excessive scrutiny, and that the medical-psychiatric institution remains patriarchal and sexist in its diagnosing and treatment of women. Yet the film’s intersections with disability are more complicated.

Sisterhood with a Capital “S” in The Triplets of Belleville by Laura Shamas

Sisterhood is powerful, magical, and resilient: that’s the sororal message in the celebrated 2003 animated film… Character distinction between the sisters as individuals is not a major focus for writer/director Sylvain Chomet, although each Triplet has different functions/feelings at specific times. The bond of the sisters as a more monolithic force is depicted instead: Chomet presents the unity of sisterhood. … The agency of older women, including the eponymous trio, is vital to The Triplets of Belleville.

Sisters in Downton Abbey and Fiddler on the Roof and the Slow March Toward Equality by Adina Bernstein

The narratives surrounding the television series Downton Abbey and the musical film Fiddler on the Roof are about change and more specifically, how the daughters within both families represent the small, but important contributions that these characters make to modern feminist narratives. … In both Downton Abbey and Fiddler on the Roof, each trio of sisters takes a step in determining her own fate. While the decisions these girls make may seem innocuous, these steps represent the larger cultural and societal fate that will impact future generations of women.

Sisterhood and Salvation in A League of Their Own by Katie Barnett

Though the simmering sibling rivalry between Kit and Dottie is a thread that runs through the entire film, the importance of sisterhood goes far beyond this. For both women, sisterhood becomes a ticket to another world: a ticket out, but also a ticket in; to friendship, to competition, and to independence. As such, sisterhood exists as a source of empowerment. It is only as sisters that Dottie and Kit ever make it out of Oregon and to the baseball diamonds of the Midwest.

Sense and Sensibility: Sister Saviors in Ang Lee’s Adaptation by Melissa-Kelly Franklin

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. I would argue however, that if we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

Alcoholic Aunts, Homeless Cousins, and Depressed Dads: How Mental Illness Is Invisible in ‘The Cosby Show,’ ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ and Beyond

Black families can be rich and poor and everything in between on TV, but why can’t we show the mental health crises Black families face?

This guest post by Keisha Zollar appears as part of our theme week on Black Families.

When watching Black families in film and TV like Everybody Hates Chris, Soul Food, and Bebe’s Kids, mental illness was/is invisible. I think to myself, which Cosby kid battles with depression? Does Uncle Phil have an eating disorder? And would Dr. Doolittle ever see a therapist?

Are Black families so marginalized in film and TV that we are afraid to show the cracks of mental illness as they actually are?

As many as 25 percent of Americans suffer from mental illness, and some of those Americans are Black.

Growing up in the early-late 1980s and early 1990s, most of the Black TV families I saw were high functioning, white-collar families with an upstanding father figure who was always around, and there was plenty of food on the table. There were also TV shows like Roc, reruns of Good Times, and other tales of the economic divide where I saw a different Black experience. As a kid, my immediate family was more Cosby than Good Times but I did have relatives who were more Roc than The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in their day-to-day lives. Growing up, it felt like TV was holding a mirror up to my family but with one exception: why was no one as sad and anxious as I felt? Why did no one talk about overwhelming emotions? The process of dealing with addiction? The pain of divorce?

I also remember the Black movies of my childhood.

My grandparents took my family to watch Do The Right Thing because my Grandma said, “It’s important to support Black artists like Spike Lee.” I remember the story, the realness, the colors–also what we might call nowadays: “grit.” My parents would show me Roots, Bebe’s Kids, and Nutty Professor with pride and joy.

The movies and television I watched as a child inspired me to pursue my own journey in entertainment. Entertainment was/is a noble pursuit of truth, exploration, fantasy, and more.

Then the economic bubbles of the 1980s-1990s burst and burst and burst…

“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”

-Ernst Fischer

Then in the early 2000s I became an adult; my parents divorced, I struggled with depression and anxiety, I got in therapy, and realized that the TV and films I loved as a child were missing something. Where was the “Real Talk” about mental illness in entertainment? Where was the entertainment that went beyond just telling Black people to pray, to be strong, to avoid sugar and crack cocaine? Why was everyone being so mean about Uncle Phil’s weight in the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?

Uncle Phil’s weight in the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air always seemed to be the punchline. Episode to episode Uncle Phil is fat shamed–by main characters, auxiliary characters, and even by himself. Every character on the show knew Uncle Phil had a problem with food. The adult in me kept thinking, “Why did no one acknowledge Uncle Phil’s cries for help, his risk factors for diabetes, his possible food addiction?”

Then I thought about Hillary’s shopping addiction!

And of course The Cosby Show…

Denise Huxtable was the “wild child,” or a character on TV who was crying out for help. Denise was a beloved character that couldn’t hold onto a job, then disappeared on the show to go to college, dropped out of college, ran off to Africa, married a man unknown to her parents, then showed up on the Huxtable doorstep with her own family, then tried school again and didn’t finish (the order of events in Denise’s life isn’t fully accurate but I’m painting an impressionistic portrait of Black media from my POV, there you go Super Cosby Fans).

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qshPuptg1C0″]

Now there is Theo Huxtable, who struggled with a learning disorder: dyslexia.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxYjKDxYH2U”]

It was a liberating moment on TV to see a main character struggle with education, not because he was “dumb” as a character trait, but because he was flawed. In the episode where Theo found out he had dyslexia he was overjoyed because he had a diagnosis; it was TV saying it was OK to have a learning disorder. It felt like The Cosby Show said it was OK to see if you had learning challenges.

I remember thinking while watching the show when it aired, “This is important, and it’s OK if I have dyslexia too.”

As an adult I know I don’t have dyslexia, but I’m still waiting for my TV moment on an important Black show to describe what I do have: depression and anxiety.

Getting diagnosed has changed my perspective on watching film and TV. I see the PTSD that poverty can cause in cartoon movies. I see eating disorders where I used to see “harmless” fat jokes. I see the stress of being Black in America but no mention of eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, and panic disorder.

Now I watch these shows and I think, maybe I’m making up all this mental illness in the Black community, but then I look at Surgeon General’s reports and check out pages like this.

House of Payne shows the ravages of addiction with a recurring crack-addicted mother, and a few other shows seem to tackle addiction but it seems the vast majority make mental illness invisible. It feels like Black TV and film wants us to ignore or pray away the fact mental illness exists.

Black families can be rich and poor and everything in between on TV, but why can’t we show the mental health crises Black families face?

My desire to see Black families explore mental illness in media is not about victimizing the oppressed in media. I just want to see my own Theo moment on TV; maybe some little Black teenager who is smart and capable, but is sad and cries too much goes to see a nice doctor with her parents. This little Black girl gets tested and gets diagnosed as being depressed and she runs home to tell her parents about her depression. Her parents hear the word “depression” and are relieved at a diagnosis and the audience empathizes and learns, and everyone is OK.

Keisha Zollar is an actor-writer-comedienne. Keisha has been seen on Orange Is The New Black, Celebrity Apprentice Season 14, The Today Show, College Humor, Comedy Central, MTV, UCBComedy, and numerous web-series. Currently, Keisha in post production for An Uncomfortable Conversation About Race and she has recently directed her first interactive sketch called Neggers. She is proud of her latest series In Game, a diverse web-series about LARPing (nerd stuff). Learn more at www.KeishaZollar.com.

Normalizing the Black Family

When Solomon, Eliza, and her two children are both sold, she is sold away from her children. Their new slave owner, William Ford, (Benedict Cumberbatch), feeling guilty when he hears Eliza’s sobs of protests, tries to buy the children, but the auctioneer refuses to sell the them. William Ford takes Solomon and a devastated Eliza to his plantation, where she continues to cry on the journey to the plantation. When Ford’s wife, Mistress Ford, hears of new slave Eliza’s plight she callously responds, “Oh poor thing, well she’ll get over it in a day or two.”

This guest post by Atima Omara appears as part of our theme week on Black Families.

In 12 Years of Slave, the theme of family is a tie that binds throughout the story. While the film depicts the life of Solomon Northrup, a freeman captured and sold into slavery, and his struggle to get back to his life and his family. 12 Years also reflects the lives of other slaves he meets who too are separated from their families. 12 Years is very tightly focused on the systematic dehumanization of Black people in the American South during slavery. This film defines the subhuman view of the Black family in the antebellum South that remained pervasive post the Civil War and into the 20^th Century where its effects have filtered into many films and TV shows.

12 Years A Slave is an autobiographical account told from the perspective of Solomon Northrup, after his capture into slavery. While sitting in his first prison, awaiting to be moved into the South, Solomon meets another slave, Eliza, who was essentially treated as a wife by her previous slave owner with whom she also has two children. After his death, Eliza and her two children are sold away and it is there, awaiting the auction block, she meets Solomon. When Solomon, Eliza, and her two children are both sold, she is sold away from her children. Their new slave owner, William Ford, (Benedict Cumberbatch), feeling guilty when he hears Eliza’s sobs of protests, tries to buy the children, but the auctioneer refuses to sell the them. William Ford takes Solomon and a devastated Eliza to his plantation, where she continues to cry on the journey to the plantation. When Ford’s wife, Mistress Ford, hears of new slave Eliza’s plight she callously responds, “Oh poor thing, well she’ll get over it in a day or two.”

Director Steve McQueen beautifully wove in the humanity of Northrup and the other slaves, which made their enslavement that much more heart-wrenching. When Eliza still sobs days later on the Ford plantation because she misses her children, Solomon tries to silence her. She chides him, “Have you stopped crying for YOUR children?!” He retorts, “They are as my flesh…..I survive…I will keep myself hardy until freedom is opportune.” And Solomon does, ingratiating himself to his Master, William Ford, for his work, he receives a violin in which he engraves the name of his wife and children. They are never far from his mind as he tries to desperately find ways to become a freeman again.

Eventually, because Eliza’s crying becomes to annoying to Mistress Ford, she is removed from the plantation. Mistress Ford’s dismissive comments and subsequent removal of Eliza from the plantation is reflective of the antebellum’s American South’s view of the Black person and the view of their family. There was the economic and biblical justifications for slavery, but eventually enslaving other human beings birthed an American ideology of race inferiority. Nineteenth century US Senator John C. Calhoun famously said, “Never before has the Black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.”

In the minds of white slave owners and their supporters, slavery was a favor to Black people, who could not have lives of their own or feel loss or pain. This ideology is understandable when you consider the horror of what they were justifying. To acknowledge the humanity of Black people would have forced one to acknowledge that slavery was wrong.

Through the evolution of American film and later television, we see the variations of this view that the white slavers have of their Black slaves filter into the lens of white directors, producers, and writers of films and TV shows featuring Black people and their families.

The film that has the distinction of being the first 12-reel full motion picture film in America is D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1915. Commercially successful, the film was controversial due to its portrayal of Black men as unintelligent, barely human and sexually aggressive. The first talking motion picture in 1929 was Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, where Jolson performed as a white actor in Black face, recalling the minstrelsy

With those promising precursors films, films in the 1930s hardly shifted. With Gone with the Wind or The Littlest Rebel, audiences never knew the stories of the Black slaves who were supporting characters to Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara or Shirley Temple’s little Virginia Carey. Scarlett’s Mammy (played by Hattie McDaniel) we know nothing about, whether she had husband, children, or siblings. Nor do we know much of Virgie’s Uncle Bill (Bill Robinson). Because Mammy and Uncle Billy do not need a family, because their duty is to serve their white families.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” these images of Black people and their families improve barely, especially when theaters refuse to show films with prominent Black leads. Look at the 1950s interpretation of Imitation of Life with actresses Lana Turner and Juanita Moore. At first glance, it is a story of two single women raising their daughters together. Lana Turner’s Lora is a struggling young actress with a daughter who befriends Sarah, the daughter of Juanita Moore’s Annie, who is a homeless Black widow. Because of the girls’ friendship, the women move in together. While you do see the humanity of Annie and the love she has for her daughter Sarah, you realize you don’t see much of Annie’s life outside of that. Annie becomes a maid to Lora and her daughter and is a momma to Sarah. Like Mammy or Uncle Bill, we know little of Annie’s friends, if she ever finds love again, in comparison we do see the love life of Lora’s, her friends, and her career become successful.

The height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and the conscience shift of the country raised awareness as to the plight and actual humanity of the Black American. With that it brought in some changes and new opportunities for Black characters in film. Actors like Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Harry Belafonte, and others challenged the perception of the Black experience in film. In 1961, Black playwright Lorrain Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, about a young Black man (Sidney Poitier) trying to find a better life for his family became a film. Behind the scenes it was a play that almost never happened, because it was a predominantly African American cast it took a long time to secure funding for its debut. And even with its final success on Broadway there was much argument between critics who were primarily white as to whether the experience was “universal” or particular to African Americans.

While the movie industry addressed race glacially, television as a newer medium moved at a faster pace in providing more opportunities for Black family portrayal. In 1968, CBS debuted Julia, with Black actress Diahann Carroll as its lead. It was the first show to depict a Black woman in the lead of a show that was a non-stereotypical role. Julia was a single mother and nurse whose husband had been killed in Vietnam. Today, it’s considered “groundbreaking.” Then, critics (again mostly white) derided it for not being “realistic.” Used to seeing nothing but Black poverty on the news, critics held Julia up to that as the standard for Black American life. The Saturday Review’s Robert Lewis Shayon wrote that Julia’s “plush, suburban setting” was “a far, far cry from the bitter realities of Negro life in the urban ghetto, the pit of America’s explosion potential.” Other critics implied the show was a “cartoon.” Unsurprisingly, Ebony Magazine, whose magazine’s readership and staff are Black Americans, appreciated its significance in showing a “slice of Black America.”

The 1970s brought more Black family focused television; of significance was Good Times and The Jeffersons, both where productions from white liberal showrunner Norman Lear. The portrayals of the Black family vastly improved, if by virtue of the fact that they were getting time on major network television, some shows still would never entirely escape the stereotypical trope in the 1970s.

Good Times featured actors Esther Rolle and John Amos in the lead roles. They played Florida and James Evans, heads of a working class Black family who live in housing project in Chicago. Notably, African American writers conceived the idea and the initial script of the show Norman Lear picked up. Actors Rolle and Amos signed up for the project, interested in a regular series with a Black working class family at the center. Not too long into the show, one of the children of the Evans family, JJ Evans, became a popular character for his phrase “Dy-NO-mite” and his funny antics. As the show progressed, it increasingly focused on him and crazy antics, which recalled the days of Black minstrelsy shows in the early 20^th century, where usually white actors in blackface exaggerated real-life Black circumstances in a cartoonish way and reinforced stereotypes of Black people. The Evans family, particularly JJ, became subject to the long line of stereotypical portrayal of African American family life much to the chagrin of actors Esther Rolle and John Amos. Behind the scenes Esther Rolle left the series in frustration and John Amos was fired.

Lear’s The Jeffersons in comparison was an improvement upon Good Times, in that it showed a working class Black family, who made good and moved to the wealthy neighborhoods of New York. Even though the show took on political topics, it is notable for featuring more of the everyday life of this Black family with its colorful patriarch George Jefferson, played by Sherman Helmsley. The show enjoyed a successful 10-year run. In some ways, The Jeffersons was the grandfather of later Black family-centered shows like The Cosby Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, with Sherman Helmsley reprising his role as George Jefferson to appear on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

As the 1980s dawned there were more Black family-centered shows like 227 and Amen, but one would be remiss in not mentioning the The Cosby Show in the 1980s, which came out of already established comedian Bill Cosby’s stand up act about his family. The Huxtables were an upper-middle class Black family who lived in Brooklyn. Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) and Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) were the parents to their five children. The show was revolutionary for the Black family because it was distinct in featuring the everyday occurrences, drama, and humor of family life. The Cosby Show occasionally dealt with serious issues like dyslexia or teen pregnancy, but it was not a show that focused on racial politics; indeed, that may have been the point. Some criticized the lack of discussion around race or racial politics in the series, fearing that white audiences who embraced the show would consider “racism” a thing of the past. What is certain is that The Cosby Show was viewed as seminal in Black family portrayal on television. When it ended in the early 1990s, there was an influx of Black family-centered comedies that were greenlighted for major network television like In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters, Roc, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Sister, Sister, and the list goes on. Notably many of these shows had African American creators or writers, which allowed for more Black family storytelling.

We have come a long way in the normalizing of the Black American family, but given the diversity of the Black American family experience, it is clear we still have a long way to go in Black family storytelling.

Atima Omara is a political strategist of 10 years who has served as staff on eight federal and local political campaigns and other progressive causes. Her writings focus on gender, race, and politics but also how gender and race are reflected in film and popular culture. In her sparetime, she reads, watches movies and documentaries, and attends film festivals when she can. You can find more of her writing at www.atima-omara.com. She tweets at @atima_omara.

‘Chef!’: The Perfectly Imperfect Marital Eroticism of Janice and Gareth

Gareth does not “happen to be Black”; the pressure on him to conform to white culture, to avoid limiting his own narrative, mirrors the show’s own need to conform to that culture, to avoid limiting its audience. This conflict is slyly embodied in plausibly deniable food metaphor.

Janice and Gareth's stressful ideal — Janice and Gareth’s stressful ideal

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Black Families.

If I had to point to one screen marriage that shaped my childhood ideas about marriage’s potential as positive partnership and intense intimacy, it would be Janice and Gareth Blackstock on the first two seasons of the British sitcom Chef!. The original writer, Peter Tilbury (working from star Lenny Henry’s concept), left after two seasons, and the final season’s crude divorce drama only highlights what made Tilbury’s vision so brilliant. In the final season, Janice is not a fully rounded partner, but an obstacle and challenge for Gareth. Where her constructive criticism was a form of protective support, it is now scornful nagging and abandonment. Her desire for a child is now her main motivation and source of conflict with Gareth. The third season’s Janice is the irritating, castrating and baby-crazy screen wife that viewers have seen a thousand times before; the contrast illustrates everything that was subtle and human about Janice’s original characterization.

From a racial perspective, Chef! might be compared to The Cosby Show, as portraying an exceptionally talented, sophisticated, and wealthy Black family. But where the Huxtables effortlessly “have it all,” somehow combining two careers and a large family with inhumanly minimal friction, the Blackstocks acknowledge that their lifestyle demands real sacrifice. Janice had to leave a flourishing career in the city to accompany Gareth, after his promotion to head chef of a prestigious, rural restaurant; she is outspokenly frustrated and eager to work again. When the restaurant has financial problems, the couple must sacrifice their house and car to buy it, admitting that the resulting tension “feels like you’ve eaten a lorry-load of All-Bran.” They are childless, and the conflict between their workaholic careerism and their hopes for children is openly explored. Each has a defensive facade of toughness and hyper-competence, but their scenes together explore the toll that this facade takes and the vulnerability it conceals. The sitcom’s central comedy is the farcical exaggeration of Gareth’s intimidating facade – “totally driven. We’re talking severe personality disorder here” – and its contrast with his inner softness. The perfection of Janice and Gareth’s marriage is not based on a perfection of their lives or personalities, but on their shared concept of marriage as a space of solidarity that accepts flaws and conflict.

That model of acceptant marriage is the bedrock of the show. In the opening credits, the lyrics “I’m the best, so do not test, the top of my profession” play over a montage of Gareth’s hyper-competence – working out and preparing the immaculate tools of his culinary trade – broken only when he briefly strokes the glossy picture of Janice that hangs in his locker, as though for reassurance. This image of her face comes before Gareth’s own face, underlining her importance to the show. Janice’s character can be read as rewriting the Sapphire stereotype, exploring the loving foundations of constructive criticism and the emotional intimacy of openly expressed frustration. Gareth’s farcical posturing can equally be read as parodying hypermasculine models of Black manhood, as much as bad-tempered celebrity chefs, while his sensitivity and capacity for nurture is his character’s true strength. The show’s unusually erotic portrait of monogamous marriage compares with the marital eroticism of Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” which, along with the self-identified feminist’s proud adoption of Mrs. Carter as a title, radically rejects stereotypes of absent fathers in the Black community. John Legend’s “All of Me” video showcases similar aesthetics of marital eroticism, while that song’s description of loving “perfect imperfections” is a good summary of Janice and Gareth’s relationship. But reducing their relationship to a cultural trend of Black marital eroticism would be far too limiting: it is, quite simply, television’s most perfectly imperfect marriage.

As well as the strain of hyper-competence, Chef! confronts the cultural tensions in narratives of Black exceptionalism, mainly through Everton, Gareth’s never-really-liked-you-anyway-probably-flush-your-head-down-the-toilet-as-soon-as-look-at-you old schoolmate, who shares Gareth’s working class, British Caribbean background. Though Janice and Gareth help Everton, by offering him an unpaid apprenticeship in Gareth’s kitchen, it is clear that this is owing to the restaurant’s desperate finances, with Gareth particularly reluctant to take Everton on. On the surface, Everton fills the familiar role of goofy sidekick. Actually, although his unfamiliarity with restaurant etiquette causes some farce, he is capable and acquires skills steadily as the series progresses. The comical embarrassment that Everton causes Gareth is less a reflection of his foolishness than of his culture.

Gareth squirms at Everton’s pride in Caribbean cooking, having fully internalized cultural messages about the superior prestige of French haute cuisine and frequently boasting of his two Michelin stars. He automatically assumes that Everton is a “dope-head” (the marijuana belongs to a white co-worker) and fiercely attacks him for it, separating himself from that cultural stereotype with a barked “I hate dope-heads!” Gareth’s intense rejection of his own culture is rooted in personal conflict with his parents. Again, this tension is expressed in culinary terms: his mother’s neglect is illustrated by her incompetence as a chef, or perhaps by Gareth’s bitterness over that incompetence, while his father abandons the family for a short-order cook. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, young Gareth answered “an orphan.” Janice becomes insecure when Gareth shows admiration for the cooking skills of pretty, blonde sous-chef Lucinda, though he is otherwise “Mr. Monogamy.” Dominant stereotypes of Black life – absent fathers, neglectful mothers and attraction to blondes – are all slyly embodied by the show’s cooking metaphors, giving complicated symbolic resonance to Gareth’s determination to master society’s most prestigious cuisine.

Gareth’s broadly accented Caribbean father is introduced in the first season’s “Rice and Peas” finale, goading Gareth into trying to cook Caribbean food. The master chef is humbled by being forced to learn from Everton, highlighting his detachment from his roots, while Everton reveals a genius for Caribbean cookery that rivals Gareth’s own skill at haute cuisine. By the end of the second season, Everton has become a confident chef who combines Caribbean influences and haute cuisine, unapologetically owning his cultural identity but refusing to be limited by it. However, this is only made possible by the opportunity the Blackstocks have given him; their strained and self-conscious hyper-competence is a necessary first step to wider cultural change. Through Gareth’s complex relationship with Everton, Chef! foregrounds the tensions of so-called “choc ice” (British for “oreo”) cultural positions, without simplistically condemning them. The show’s Wikipedia entry commends Chef! as “a landmark programme in the sense that Henry plays a character who just happens to be black; the fact of his blackness does not limit the narrative or the audience the series reaches.” This misses the point. Gareth does not “happen to be Black”; the pressure on him to conform to white culture, to avoid limiting his own narrative, mirrors the show’s own need to conform to that culture, to avoid limiting its audience. This conflict is slyly embodied in plausibly deniable food metaphor.

Back to Janice. Janice is all kinds of awesome as a character. A brilliant businesswoman, she is practical in all the ways the flamboyant artist, Gareth, is not, but shares his preoccupation with status. Janice is hilariously open about her materialism, yet prepared to sacrifice everything for Gareth if absolutely, absolutely necessary. Both Janice and Gareth are self-conscious social performers, but the basis of their relationship is their shared recognition of that performance’s artificiality, by no more than a quirk of a smile or a raised eyebrow. Their affinity, beautifully shown in their common flaws as much as in their virtues, creates the deep understanding between them. Janice is strong, but this doesn’t prevent her from admitting weakness: “I’m going to be brave in a minute. But, just right now, I’m going to break down completely, OK? I don’t mean a dignified tear or a trembling lip, I’m talking wet, snotty bawling!” With a sharp-tongued wit of her own, Janice may often play the foil to Gareth’s shrieking manbaby, but she is allowed to be his equal in comedy as well as in business. Gareth is also allowed to be Janice’s equal in emotional vulnerability: “I’m not going to cry because I’m a big boy now, but if I wasn’t, or if I was a ‘New Man,’ we could be talking wet, snotty bawling here.”

The Blackstocks’ relationship is physically intimate; Janice’s frustration is a running gag as Gareth’s workload leaves him too tired for sex, but the couple’s sex life remains “well above average.” Indeed, jokes about Janice’s sexual frustration only highlight how much more sex she’s depicted getting than other sitcom wives. It is less spectacular intimacies, however, that make the relationship convincing: Lenny Henry and Caroline Lee Johnson capture the subtleties of body language that convey affection and mutual reassurance in long-term relationships. Secure in this foundation of bodily affection, the Blackstocks are free to argue and vent their frustrations openly. Much of their relationship’s conflict springs from Janice’s sense of being neglected by her workaholic husband; that is, it is fundamentally rooted in the pair’s deep love for each other. When the final season’s (male) writers attempted to create drama by escalating the couple’s rows into full-blown separation, they could do so only at the expense of Janice’s character, flattening her into unsympathetic coldness. While this season shows how important Janice is to Gareth, through his devastation when she leaves and his desperation to win her back, that demonstration was unnecessary. Chef! wasn’t another clichéd show about a man who doesn’t appreciate what he has until it’s gone. The co-dependence of Janice and Gareth was fundamental to all their interactions.

Such co-dependence may be criticized. Janice would struggle to pass a Bechdel test, as she relates so exclusively to Gareth, though I see this as reflecting her rural isolation and the sacrifices she has made for Gareth’s career. Janice regularly complains about her loneliness, career frustrations and feelings of neglect; the insufficiency of a life that revolves only around her husband is core to her role. Such a portrait, of female frustration with the confines of a dependent role, can be as valuable as portraits of ideal female solidarity and independence. Janice needs a sense of vocation, which she gains by managing Gareth’s restaurant. Janice also needs friends and interests beyond her husband, which is explicitly addressed in the Tilbury-scripted episode Private Lives. In the finale of Chef!, Gareth’s underlying issues, his cultural identity crisis, and neglect of his private life, are tackled as he must sacrifice a trip to Paris to fly instead to Jamaica with Janice and work on their relationship. But the (so very male) writers of the final season are mistaken to interpret Janice’s relationship as the source of her frustrations. It is Janice’s life that is constricting, as she shares Gareth’s conflict between her materialist ambition and her emotional needs. But her marriage is a model of mutual support and open communication.

This is classic “patriarchy hurts men, too”: if a woman is understood only in relation to men, this means her male partner must be unfairly burdened with sole responsibility for her entire psychological well-being. The fact that the (oh so painfully male) writers could see no solution to Janice’s problems but a choice between divorce or more sex, with a romantic holiday to Jamaica thrown in, points to deeper problems in our concept of relationships and female roles. A chance for Gareth and Janice to grow as individuals, within the supportive framework of a relationship that needed no repair, would have been the more perfect ending for this perfectly imperfect marriage.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVBSKVsr0a0″]

Janice and Gareth: they’re the best, so do not test.

Brigit McCone has unrealistically gendered catering expectations, since her father was the chef at home. She writes short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and she now lives off baked potatoes.

Call For Writers: Black Families

Some questions to consider: What constitutes a Black family in film or on television? Are representations of these families realistic or true to life? What are audiences who consume this media intended to understand about Blackness or the Black experience? What kinds of stories are allowed to be told and which are still suppressed?

Our theme week for January 2015 will be Black Families.

Though not as prolific as white families, Black families are a popular subject for television and filmmaking. Black family comedy makes up a large portion of that representation, from classic sitcoms like The Cosby Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to slapstick films like Are We There Yet? and Dr. Dolittle. Many films like Dr. Dolittle are remakes of older films that originally featured white people but now star a predominantly Black cast (Annie, The Nutty Professor, etc.). There’s even an entire sub-genre of Black comedy that involves men cross-dressing as a matron or the family matriarch (Big Momma’s House, Madea’s Family Reunion, etc.).

On the other hand, there’s a host of critically acclaimed dramas that involves Black families with at least an element of the tragedy (The Pursuit of Happyness, Roots, 12 Years a Slave, The Color Purple, etc.). Many of these celebrated stories deal with serious issues like slavery, dysfunction, poverty, gang violence, and/or abuse.

Some questions to consider: What constitutes a Black family in film or on television? Are representations of these families realistic or true to life? What are audiences who consume this media intended to understand about Blackness or the Black experience? What kinds of narratives are allowed to be told and which are still suppressed?

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Jan. 23 by midnight.

Roots

The Pursuit of Happyness

Boyz in the Hood

The Cosbys

12 Years a Slave

Annie

Baby Boy

Beloved

Grey’s Anatomy

Barbershop

The Nutty Professor

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Black-ish

Madea’s Family Reunion

Love & Basketball

Sister, Sister

Big Momma’s House

The Color Purple

Family Matters

Akeelah and the Bee

This Christmas

Moesha

Sparkle

Diff’rent Strokes

Dr. Dolittle

The Secret Life of Bees

American Gangster

Sanford and Son

In the Hive

Eve’s Bayou

Bebe’s Kids

Everybody Hates Chris

Soul Food

Seventeen Again

Are We There Yet?

The Boondocks

Red Hook Summer

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

Crooklyn

The Perfect Holiday

‘Love Jones’: The Soundtrack of the Neo-Soul Generation

‘Love Jones’ does more than captures a moment in time in the late 90s. It creates the point when neo-soul established itself as the music of all of us with artistic inclinations, those of us leaving fantasies of teenage love affairs behind for a more realistic image of making a relationship work. And, yes, for some of us it brought about a sexual awakening that helped us accept that sex could exist outside a relationship if it’s truly wanted that way.

Love Jones movie poster

This guest post by Inda Lauryn appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.

The summer of 2000. I share my extensive music collection with my friends. In this collection: a three-year-old soundtrack to a film I never saw in the theaters but caught on video in the dorm on a night that turned into a communal viewing. I and my summer buddies listen to this soundtrack so much that we even know the background noise to a spoken word poetry performance taken directly from the film, so when we watch the film on a bus trip to an amusement park, we not only recite the poem, but also the audience reactions. We have a great time and I have a personal memory associated with one of the best film soundtracks of the late 90s.

That film: Love Jones. The 1997 film has the distinction of providing the neo-soul generation with its soundtrack. Juxtaposing Lauryn Hill and Maxwell with The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the combination of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane practically captures the essence of the burgeoning “neo-soul movement” during the mid-1990s. As the unofficial neo-soul soundtrack, Love Jones also shares an honor with the classic Super Fly soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield: many who know the film and the soundtrack agree that the soundtrack is decidedly superior to the film. (A snippet of Mayfield’s “Give Me Your Love” even appears in the film set in his hometown of Chicago.) However, seeing the film again with nearly 20 years between its release and the present day gives me more appreciation for the film, what it captured during its time, and the soundtrack.

Soundtracks to Black-cast films have always been as important as the films themselves and often attracted some of the most popular acts of the day, much like the soundtracks for Jason’s Lyric, Panther, Waiting to Exhale, and The Best Man. In some cases, they are extensions of the story on film, letting the audience relive a moment in which the song plays a crucial part. In some ways, they are a form of fan fiction with tracks not found in the film still somehow becoming relevant to the story being told. Dionne Farris’ “Hopeless” playing over the opening montage of black-and-white photos depicting Black life in Chicago brings as much nostalgia to the listener as it does to Nia Long’s Nina Mosley as she laments the end of her engagement. It represents the state of Nina’s relationship with ex-fiance Marvin (portrayed by Khalil Kain) as well as her role as a photographer. The dialogue that introduces Larenz Tate’s Darius Lovehall and his friends (two of whom are portrayed by Bill Bellamy and Isaiah Washington) definitely draws its inspiration from the burgeoning spoken word scene that colored the Black coffeehouse scene before it was co-opted by the mainstream.

Nina and Darius on a date in Love Jones

Mellow and smooth, the Love Jones soundtrack creates that Black boho ambiance that permeated the flawed but still believable and enjoyable film. As a Black college student at an HBCU, seeing Black artists onscreen making a living as artists held a certain appeal even though my life was taking a drastically different trajectory at the time. But for me, the depiction of that lifestyle remains the most romantic aspect of it. The images of Nina and Darius heading off on their first date on his motorcycle (or scooter) is definitely a romantic image reminiscent of films such as Roman Holiday－only I’m seeing it with people who look like me. I’m seeing a Black woman wooed, looked at as if she could launch 1,000 ships and start a war between nations. I’m seeing a Black woman change a man’s life with the power of her existence.

Of course, in the romance genre, miscommunication drives the film, but it becomes irritating quite quickly. Seriously, the entire premise of the film relies on the understanding that Nina and Darius deny they are in a relationship, but rather they’re just kicking it. Interestingly, this uncertainty that things will work out in the end is actually one of the things I appreciate most in this film now that I’m in my mid-30s. But at least while watching Nina and Darius fumble around like teenagers for an hour and a half when I was in my early 20s, I got a depiction of a lifestyle few would achieve and a soundtrack that made it all worthwhile.

Furthermore, I saw Nina and Darius bond over music. Darius’ first meeting with Nina at The Sanctuary prompts him to rename his poem in honor of his newfound pursuit of the beautiful Nina. They meet again when Nina decides she needs an Isley Brothers CD and Darius tips her to a Charlie Parker track she’s never heard before. They go to a reggae club, The Wild Hair, on their first date, growing closer. The extradiegetic music works just as well. How many of us immediately think of the beautifully shot sex scene when we hear Maxwell’s “Sumthin Sumthin (Mellow Smooth)”? The jazz underscoring many scenes adds to the neo-soul, spoken word vibe permeating the film. The jazz score does more than create the background music all films use. It indicates sophistication, a film made for grown folks in an era when many Black films focused on coming of age or the second coming of Blaxploitation films.

Nina takes photos in Love Jones

In fact, the very essence of neo-soul comes together quite nicely in one collection. Lauryn Hill’s “The Sweetest Thing” gave us all that romance we wanted in our 20s: feeling the sensation of the kiss upon the collarbone and fingertips on the small of the back. Hill and the others in the neo-soul bracket gave us most of our music memories in our 20s. We were between enjoying our parents’ music that music such as Hill’s harkened back to and we were outgrowing the pop-radio oriented R&B of our adolescence that did not quite grow up when we did. Many of us first heard Duke Ellington’s and John Coltrane’s timeless duet “In a Sentimental Mood” on The Cosby Show, but the film brought it back to us in a new context, the rekindling of a romance between two young adults when Nina decides sex would cheapen a date that had been so perfect. (She was wrong by the way.) Cassandra Wilson’s incredible vocals on “You Move Me” evokes memories for the characters of what they lost and what they could have had if only they tried harder to make it work. Out of context for those of us revisiting the soundtrack, the sensuality of the track provides a perfect backdrop for one of those evenings.

Like many soundtracks of the time, Love Jones also includes songs not used in the film, usually to showcase new talent or to add more to the mood of the film. Trina Broussard puts a new spin on an old R&B staple and amazingly does not muck it up considering she covers a Minnie Riperton classic, “Inside My Love.” Admittedly, I heard her version before Riperton’s, but her version does the lyrics justice. The 20-somethings even got a taste of our adolescence with the Xscape cover of “In the Rain,” both because many of us first heard Keith Sweat’s version in our youth rather than The Dramatics and also because we grew up with Xscape (or Xscape grew up with us). While not used in the film, the song reminds us of the ways the rain itself added to the film at key moments, making Chicago an essential part of the film’s overall charm. In Chicago, we see Darius futilely running after the train to tell Nina goodbye as she heads for New York to pursue a career opportunity. In Chicago, we see Black communities going through their trials and tribulations in love and life.

Of course, the overarching theme of the Love Jones soundtrack is romance. But it is an adult romance differing from the lyrics we often heard in hook-up, club culture songs that still bang today. To borrow from George Michael’s assessment of his hit song “I Want Your Sex,” “It’s not about fucking. It’s about fucking within a relationship.” This is what Amel Laurieux sings about in Groove Theory’s smooth “Never Enough.” This is what Meshell Ndegeocello gets at with that below the belt bass line in “Rush Over” with Marcus Miller. It’s definitely what Cassandra Wilson croons about in her orgasmically magical “You Move Me.”

A shirtless Darius in Love Jones

Love Jones does more than captures a moment in time in the late 90s. It creates the point when neo-soul established itself as the music of all of us with artistic inclinations, those of us leaving fantasies of teenage love affairs behind for a more realistic image of making a relationship work. And, yes, for some of us it brought about a sexual awakening that helped us accept that sex could exist outside a relationship if it’s truly wanted that way. Of course, in the trajectory of a romance film, the relationship has to prevail. But there’s no judgment of Nina and Darius when they both tell themselves the other is just a temporary situation.

For me, the Love Jones soundtrack represents a trip back to my college days in New Orleans as much as it does a time when Black-cast films showed me images of my aspirations as well as an escape. It was my coming of age into adulthood and that awkward territory called relationships. It was the time when The Brand New Heavies began to speak to me more than Boyz II Men and other acts with hit machines behind them. The soundtrack represented the moment I entered the grown folks club.

Inda Lauryn has been previously published in Interfictions, Afropunk and Blackberry, A Magazine. She is currently working on a few fiction projects and blogs about women in music at cornerstorepress.wordpress.com.