5/9/2018 Blog homework
The Fox network show Empire tells the story of a family in Chicago
and the family feud of money and fame. The show stars Terrence Howard as a successful
hip-hop artist who rose from the ghettos and build the multimillion dollar
company to support his family in the expense of ratting out his now ex-wife and
ex-business partner over a drug deal gone bad. Howard must choose between one
of his three sons as the heir to his company, but the resurgence of their mother
joins the battle of who can become the successful heir of the company. I think
the show is boring and un-original, but it does have some good moments from an
anthropologist and scholarly view.
The show stars mostly an all-black cast
because of the setting in Chicago and the origin of the family coming from the
ghettos and was affiliated with a gang. The family, more so with the father (Terrence
Howard), started out as a gang banger who was trying to support his family but
also trying to promote to get a start on his hip-hop career. He gets his break
in the expense of betraying his wife on a police deal to avoid prison. Fast forward
17 years and Howard with his three sons enjoy their high life style but still
has some connections to their past. This is a great example of tokenism and
cultural appropriation. Howard started with nothing but found success and is
now seeing other people from his past beneath him. Even so as betraying his
best friend and killing him just so he can enjoy his comfy life. Howard doesn’t
feel remorseful for killing his best friend because Howard and he are no longer
in the same social status so killing his best friend was the same as squishing
a bug to his point of view.
.
Cultural
appropriation is the concept of the dominant culture of society adopting elements
from the minority culture. This aspect can be seen in Howard as he is the only
one of the main cast in the upper class to still have some attachment to his
past. This also puts Howard into the spotlight as a Black man being on a pedestal
as a prime example of success with his multimillion dollar company.
Howards
family is also a prime example of assimilation as his sons have completely abandoned
their old lives of living in the ghetto and happily live the high life. Howards characters sons, Hakeem, Jamal, and
Andre, all live the luxurious lives of being in the upper class.
Hakeem is a rising star in the hip-hop
world, riding off his father’s success. Don’t
really care about this guy. He is a playboy and an embodiment of all hip-hop
artists that eat up all the fame and gives a bad rep to musicians.
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| Hakeem (left) and Jamal (right) |
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| Andre |
Jamal is a talented songwriter and
singer but is shun by his father because of his open homosexuality. This is my
favorite character because of how in-depth this character is. Homosexuality is
a taboo in the black community and this taboo is shown in the show as his Howard
shows resentment towards Jamal for being gay.
Andre is the oldest brother and is the
most successful of the 3 brothers. A college graduate and CFO of his father’s
company, he is the most distant from the black community.
Overall the show is a great show to
pick at and study from. But as an actual show to watch, it is quite boring.
I have not seen Empire before, but I can see how it is a great show to watch critically for everything we have been learning about in class. What stood out most to me in your post was the description of how they came to fame and money. This is because while reading your post my first thought was, did the show start out with them having a lot of money or does it tell the story of how they reached their success? When you explained the gang part and how the main guy had to deceive people to get where he is it made me roll my eyes. I thought, can someone say annihilation? It has become important for me to see how writers of shows, that do not have all white casts, on how they tell the story of what happened before the show. For me to find out this is the story for this show made me again roll my eyes, like really why does it have to come from a place of gangs, is it because they are black? Seems like an easy stereotype and trope to go by in my perspective and made me really not want to watch the show.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link (https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2015/03/18/393785570/does-foxs-empire-break-or-bolster-black-stereotypes) to an article from NPR asking if Empire really breaks cultural stereotypes. I think this quote from the article says it best as we talked about it in class, "It's an example of how, in a world where network TV is growing more ethnically diverse with more shows about more different kinds of nonwhite characters than ever before, questions of how those characters connect to long-running stereotypes become more complex."