Comparing Representations of Black Mothers In 1990’s American TV:

‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ vs ‘Sister, Sister’

(December 2020)

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Whilst investigating authentic black masculinity in case study one, class was a recurring factor in the portrayal of male characters within ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”. Class as a separate investigating is vital in understanding representation in ‘black’ television, particularly black family sitcoms. Within this case study ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ will be compared to another popular teen-targeted sitcom- ‘Sister, Sister’, a similar show concept of found and blended families from different ways of life.

‘Sister, Sister’ also aired in the 1990’s (94-96), initially broadcasted on ABC and produced by ‘de Passe Entertainment’, a black owned production company. ‘Sister, Sister’ was picked up by ABC four years after the initial airing of ‘Fresh Prince’, we can assume the ‘black family sitcom’ was favourable for TV following the success of the ‘Fresh Prince’s’ audience reception.

The two shows are incredibly similar in their portrayals of difference between middle-class and working-class black families, ‘Sister, Sister’ having a stark separation between the Campbell’s (Tamera and Ray) middleclass, suburban lifestyle versus the Landry’s (Tia and Lisa) working class, central Detroit lifestyle. The show follows Tia and her mother move in with Tamera’s father’s home and the clash of lifestyles and upbringings begin… as well as the stereotyping.

To recap, ‘The Fresh Prince’ follows Will Smith leave his single mother in Philadelphia to move in with his affluent Uncle and Aunt’s home in Bel Air. The class clash is prevalent in the show, however the representation of authentic black experiences or characteristics in the time period do not seem as forced as ‘Sister, Sister’.

Both shows have interesting takes on the representation of black women, particularly representations of black mothers, sometimes resting on tropes such as ‘the angry black woman’, ‘hood rat’, ‘Bible thumper’ (Kerwin, 2017, p. 64) or ‘jezebel’. Especially compared to the rich, successful, Republican fathers within both shows, the role of the mother is both racially stereotyped for entertainment and potentially symbolic annihilation of the black mother. At the time of production, the 1990’s were a pivotal time for black people in America, see the 1992 Los Angeles race riots as example of racial tensions in the country, the representations of black people in the media were as negatively embedded in the TV language as it had ever been. ‘Black shows’ at this time occasionally focused episodes on black history or black contemporary experience, yet the shows still used stereotypes as comedic or dramatic catalysts and often at the expense of black women. The stereotypes used were not new or newly harmful/racist. Donald Bogle suggests that these character types were ‘filmic reproductions of black stereotyping’ that are now embedded and ‘popularised in American life and arts’ (Bogle, 1998, p. 226). This suggests that when creating shows, the go-to character archetypes are so intrinsically linked to harming minority groups that perhaps black-centric shows still neglect active positive representations in favour of what will sell or be successful.

‘The Fresh Prince’ has two excellent examples of the ‘Black Mother’. In the earlier seasons of ‘The Fresh Prince’, the original Aunt Viv (Janet Hubert) portrayed a strict, driven and often ‘angry’ version of Will’s aunt and the Bank’s matriarch. Ironically, off-screen Hubert has faced the ‘angry black-woman’ stereotype since her replacement on the show, an excellent example for the media’s twisted fixation with representing black women as angry. ‘Sister, Sister’s’ matriarch Lisa Landry, portrayed by Jackée Harry, is a stern but easily manipulated woman. We will analyse the portrayal of Aunt Viv, in season one-three, as the angry black woman compared to Lisa Landry’s gullible black woman.

The ‘angry black woman’ refers to historical racially controlling images, designed to interiorize black women by depicting them as hysterical and unreasonable, permitting non-black people to undercut their statements, due to them being ‘aggressive and rude’ (Kerwin, 2017, p. 64). Aunt Viv plays up to this stereotype by being both a disciplinarian and a successful working woman (a lecturer), feeding into the heteropatriarchal stereotypes in film/TV that presumes women can only choose motherhood or their career and in order to be successful in one, they must abandon the other. Aunt Viv throughout the first season fluctuates between hard disciplinarian and submissive partner to Uncle Phil’s scolding, however when she is represented as angry, she is also represented as vindictive- ‘learning a ballet routine to spite two younger dancers’ harsh comments (‘The Big Four-Oh’), or ‘ghetto’ and irrational with her comedic removal of earrings and rash dart to save Carlton from Compton (’72 Hours’).

Essentially, though most sitcoms are hyperbolic in their comedic actions, the specifics regarding the original Aunt Viv feel forced in that the reactions feel predicable and for a non-black audience, feel uncertain if laughing perpetuates mocking and sustaining stereotyping through comedy shows.

Compare Aunt Viv with Lisa Landry, a character who the audience will automatically understand as the comical yet lesser intellectual character archetype within ‘Sister, Sister’. Lisa is ‘street smart’, not university-educated like Aunt Viv, but is the mentor, the ally to the protagonists of the show, Tia and Tamera. Lisa, as the jester, represents the ‘dumb’ sidekick, a character throughout TV/film common regardless of ethnicity or gender but black folk are regularly the sidekick, never the main character- ‘The Fresh Prince’ and ‘Sister, Sister’ do and don’t subvert this trope as the protagonists are black but so are the sidekicks (still).

Lisa is regularly singing church songs, works from home creating clothes and therefore regularly sticks to keeping the home in order whilst Ray works, she acts as the gentle mother for the girls but though characteristics could refer to the stay-at-home mother, Lisa’s character has traits reminiscent of ‘mammies’, an offensive stereotype for black nannies, (or unerotic) black female characters within film/TV.

On one hand, Lisa’s role as mother is traditional within sitcoms in America, regardless of race, but she is dramatically over-trusting and, at times, gullible, referring to her lack-of-smarts and common sense. Her ‘dumb’ characteristics could refer to the stereotype that poorer black people were uneducated and aspirational, the media especially pushed this rhetoric during the 1990’s due to the racially polarised political climate.

Whilst Will Smith’s mom, ‘Vy’(Viola), isn’t a main character for the sitcom, what we know of her is her strict, tough and maternal personality. We know she is a single mother who had Will’s father leave her to raise him alone. Lisa Landry, similarly, has a loving and maternal personality, instantly having Tamera warm to her as a mother figure and she, too, is tough having come from a poorer background.

We see Vy resist romance or celebration of sex/love in the show, mainly when gossiping with her sisters, Vy’s frigid attitude regards her as unlovable or unattainable, whereas Lisa’s fixation on her looks and sexual prowess regards her as the product of blatant hypersexualised stereotyping, most often associated with black women in film and TV.

Lisa is portrayed as ‘loose’, hypersexual and though these representations are both valid characteristics for a woman to have, both rests heavily on the stereotyping of black women. Hypersexuality in black people is a Western myth, dating back to slavery, and ‘black’ became synonymous with “deviant sexuality” (Abraham, 2002, p. 198), and myths created suggested black women have a higher sexual appetite than white women and they “possess a primitive sexual appetite” (Abraham, 2002, p. 198), therefore linking black people to primal creatures as they were ‘barbaric’ in comparison to White purity. This stereotype is perpetuated consistently in the representation of black women, almost as if to allow men and non-black women to assume the black woman as inferior in society based on her ‘morals’ or deviancy in a Western, ‘Christian’ patriarchy.

Vy as the ‘frigid woman’ transcends stereotypes of race but also class. Vy represents the unwed, unlovable, single mother. She is cautious with issues of sex as the single mother is often associated with lower classes; black single mothers especially are made to be synonymous with poverty and being sexually deviant. Whilst the show having a single mother is positive representation of different families and possibly realistic representation, the added layers of her living poorly compared to her sisters more lavish lifestyles suggest Vy represents a classist view on single-parent households, perpetuating stereotypes of black women and their paths of motherhood.

These stereotypes are negative but common in the production of black female characters within TV and these women as mothers is particularly interesting. In a patriarchal sense, the single mothers have ‘failed’ their purpose as woman and that could be due to both their unsexed and oversexed personalities and the working mothers aren’t feminine or ‘woman’ enough to match Western ideals of femininity.

The show’s portrayal of these women as stereotypes associated with black female representation occurs due to the unconscious hegemonic biases within the tv industry, the biases rest on mockery and character assassinations of black women, perpetuating negative ideals about black working and working-class women further in 1990’s America. The show rests on these tropes for humour, however these general stereotypes are embedded in so intrinsically society, within sitcoms they look neither harmful nor degrading.

Bibliography

· Abraham, K., 2002. The Black Woman As Marker of Hypersexuality in Western Mythology: A Contemporary Manifestation in the Film The Scarlet Letter. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 26(2), p. 198.

· Bogle, D., 1998. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (Book Review). Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 75(1), p. 226.

· Kerwin, A. M., 2017. THE 'ANGRY BLACK WOMAN' MAKES REAL WOMEN ANGRY. Advertising Age ; Chicago, 88(88), p. 64.