Tv show empire appeals to blacks and gays
Virtual Roundtable on “Empire”
After it debuted last January on Fox, Empire quickly became one of the most talked-about shows on television. Its Shakespearean portrayal of family life, its stylized window onto the hip-hop industry, and its Timbaland-produced soundtrack helped it earn millions of passionate fans (and more than a few critics).
To honor the premiere of season 2—which airs tonight on Fox at 9 p.m. ET (8 p.m. CT)—we asked four scholars of race, new media, and pop culture to weigh in on the phenomenon that is Empire.
Once more unto the breach!
—Gayle Wald: Empire and Entrepreneurship
—Stephen Best: Black Camp
—Erica R. Edwards: Male child Meets Cookie
—Eric Darnell Pritchard: Fashioning Empire
“EMPIRE” AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Gayle Wald
While watching the first season of Empire, I consideration a lot about Madam C. J. Walker. Sarah Breedlove was toiling for $1.50 a diurnal as a widowed washerwoman and laundress in 1905 when she jumped at the chance to become a sales agent for a successful manufacturer of scalp and hair treatments for African Americans. Within a decade, the enterprising daughter of Louisiana slaves had reinvented herself as Madam C.
Dear Empire critics,
In a society that is currently more watchful of media and entertainment pitfalls than ever before, sometimes we are too quick to assess. The speedy jolt of a tweet to pass prejudgment, or the too-full-of-assumptions Facebook essay to sound off on a quick observation, continues to show a culture that misinforms more posthaste than it educates.
To all those who quickly critiqued Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels' groundbreaking prime-time dramaEmpire as nothing more than another television show that is "failing black people": Take several seats and look carefully.
Your misplaced condemnation proves not only that you are showcasing total personal bias but that you are also out of touch.
Critics who pan this show are typically divided into two spheres: They're either advocates of making black television a respectability-politics showcase or they want to improperly use critical race theory.
The former wants programs that showcase blacks in a "proper" not heavy, living behind pleasant picket fences with both parents in the household and all the children getting along just fine and no "ratchetry" to be found among this well-educated faith-based
You are probably not notified of this, considering that this information matters only to TV writers and the people who receive paid to consume their work, but the concluding episode of Empire’s record-breaking first season was titled “Who I Am.” Considering the events of the episode, this title wasn’t just on the nose, it was on the rest of my deal with, too. But that’s the way of Empire; it’s less the measured prestige drama we’ve come to expect and more the broadly rendered parable that thrived in the decades before The Sopranos changed everything. Part of its immense appeal is that it’s a simple, familiar story, and its word is spoken clearly. Empire is blatantly about persona, both personal and cultural.
So much of this season revolved around Jamal coming to terms with organism a gay man in the hip-hop industry and his father’s untempered homophobia, but Lucious’s two other sons struggled with themselves in other ways. Hakeem and Andre fashioned personas that were tailor-made to get their intractable, maniacal father to love them in the ways they were not loved as children. Hakeem became a stereotypical bling-obsessed Lothario w
Therewerefew things more exciting this past television season than the debut of Fox's "Empire." Part Shakespearean tragedy, part telenovela, the Lee Daniels-produced drama managed to not only draw millions of viewers week to week (nearly 22 million for its season finale), but become one of if not the most talked about new network television shows of the year.
With its deceptively catchy music, outlandish plot twists, and scenery-chewing cast led by Oscar and Emmy nominee Taraji P. Henson, the show became part of a larger, ongoing conversation about diversity on TV.
Despite its achievement, not everyone was pleased with how the display represented black people. Some commentators argued that the show exploits black stereotypes for entertainment. In a CNN interview social commentator Dr. Boyce Watkins said that "Empire" is just “coonery” and a “ghettofied hood drama.”
Elsewhere, some people were vowing to boycott the show for promoting harmful images of ebony women via the Cookie Lyon character, while others questioned its trafficking of the "same damaging images of African Americans that we've come to hope for from television."
After all, the show is populated by dozens of
Every week a new article pops up about how strong the ratings are for Fox’s show Empire. Personally, every week I skip over that because I don’t watch the show and don’t concern. No offense to the show or anyone who watches it, it’s just not for me. I have a pretty compact catalog of shows I watch so when there’s a show I don’t care for, I just ignore it. I idea that was normal but then I realized there’s a whole segment of our society that collectively turn into temper tantrum having children when there's a show they don't like that's popular. So now, every week I have to see another article pop up or passed around about how Empire is bad for black people. Come on folks, it's not this serious. If you don't like the show, you don't like the demonstrate . Is there really a need to write a long ass think piece about the ramifications on the black community because of ONE TV show? Don't you think you're overreacting just a minuscule bit?
No?
Okay well then if you can't "beat'em join'em". If folks are going to get page hits off of poorly mind out, poorly written, pretentious as hell think pieces about Empire then I want in on the action. So here is my think piece on why these Em