Achievement of the American Dream of an African American...

The Huxtable family in The Cosby Show represents the overarching achievement of the American dream through an African American family. According to Marvin Riggs’s 1992 documentary Color Adjustment there were two types of images of African Americans in the media. On one hand, the news showed the social and racial tensions that enveloped the post-civil rights era. On the other hand, primetime television depicted social harmony among the races–an image that most Americans understood as inaccurate. In the 1980s, most African Americans lived below the poverty line and primetime television hesitated to present that challenged ideology of the American Dream to the viewing public. Henry Louis Gates Jr. argues, in Color Adjustment, that the Black urban sitcoms demonstrated both the greatest potential for representing Black life in television’s history and also the greatest failure. Residing comfortably in a Brooklyn brownstone, the Huxtables embodied a nuclear and solid family resolving everyday issues of urban life, showing that African Americans could move beyond the stereotypical realm of crooks and servants. The world of the Huxtable family created an aspirational fantasy for minorities groups. The â€Å"I’m With The In Crowd† episode succeeds in creating this sense of hope for African Americans by idealizing the Huxtable family through the use of costume and set design, while perpetuating certain African American stereotypes through acting methods and the non-diegetic laughter ofShow MoreRelated Prejudice and Discrimination are Alive and Well Essay1594 Words   |  7 Pagesperson in a high position, or acting the leading role in a movie, this has been going on since the start of movies and television. In fact, Hattie McDaniel, in 1939, played a maid in Gone With the Wind, and although she was one of the stars of the show, it did not change the assumptions that black women should be representatives as servants to white wome n. Some contemporary films that also distorts the view of black women are, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Passion Fish, these two films offered viewersRead MoreLena Horne9265 Words   |  38 Pagesto 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television. Adding to the challenge of maintaining such a career was her position as an African-American facing discrimination personally and in her profession duringRead MoreEssay about Gendered Media9688 Words   |  39 Pageswhite men as women (Basow, 1992 p. 159), or children’s programming, in which males outnumber females by two to one, or newscasts, in which women make up 16% of newscasters and in which stories about men are included 10 MEDIA’S MISREPRESENTATION OF AMERICAN LIFE The media present a distorted version of cultural life in our country. According to media portrayals: White males make up two-thirds of the population. The women are less in number, perhaps because fewer than 10% live beyond 35. Those who