PBS and Diversity

For this weeks’ PBS assignment, I watched three programs that dealt with diversity in some respect: Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, America in Primetime: IndependentWoman and Pioneers of Television:Funny Ladies.

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is filmed by lifelong hip hop enthusiast, Byron James. The one hour documentary features interviews and commentary on the disturbing trend of violence, misogyny and homophobia rampant in hip hop music. Similar to 1968 show, Black Journal, but in a completely different arena, James "blends a discussion of black economic empowerment with a critique of white normative assumptions about beauty and consumer preferences" (Perlman 2011). 

James’ findings focus largely on the performance of the behavior perpetuated in many mainstream TV shows and films that equate masculinity, regardless of race, with violence and the treatment of women as sex objects. As Imogen Tyler points out in her article on chavs and the appropriation of “black American popular culture through their clothing, music, and forms of speech,” James makes the same connection between American working class men and the enjoyment of hip hop culture (Tyler 2008). Hip-hop, like the chavs is a way for people to perform a societal role of power when they have little actual power due to racism or classism.

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes tackles consumer culture as well. The commercial viability of hip hop from the golden age (cited by the program as 1987-1992), switched from confronting issues of white patriarchy to current themes of hypermasculinity. White corporate men in suits discovered that violence, sexualized women and attacks against the LGBT community sells. Those are now the dominant themes required to break into selling hip hop records.

Both other programs I viewed featured women in TV, whether comedians or their characters. Pioneers of Television: Funny Ladies featured a few comedians of color, such as Jackie “Moms” Mabley. If the recent Saturday Night Live debacle surrounding the casting of Sasheer Zamata is any indication, women of color often are overlooked in this arena. Similarly, America in Primetime: Independent Woman featured characters of color, Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) and comments about diversity from Grey’s Anatomy show runner, Shonda Rhimes.

While perhaps public broadcasting has an elitist reputation, what was striking about all three of these programs is the focus on diversity. Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and the two programs featuring TV women openly discuss the cultural issues indicative of traditionally marginalized people, especially women and people of color. From this small sampling, and Amanda's discussion about early childhood programming on PBS, it seems that PBS makes a great effort to include diversity in their programming.