Fighting Charges of Assimilation in Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and The Cosby Show
The critical reception of The Cosby Show, an enormously popular television sitcom in the 1980's, roughly paralleled that of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry's highly acclaimed play of the 1950's. Both the television series and the play helped change the way Blacks are portrayed in the entertainment media. But despite being initially greeted with critical praise, both subsequently fell under heavy scrutiny by many critics for being too assimilationist. However, in both cases, the charges of assimilation may perhaps be too harsh. A Raisin in the Sun, a drama of a middle-class family in Chicago, should not be regarded as a wholehearted endorsement of black assimilation into "white society. " Instead, the play offers a rather realistic view of the complexity of struggles that involves this issue. The Cosby Show, a comedy series about a successful upper-middle-class black family in New York, must also not be viewed as an endorsement of black assimilation into "white society." Instead, the sitcom dealt with universal family issues and posited traditional family values and morals. But most importantly of all, both tried to do away with the prevailing negative black stereotypes in order to promote more positive and realistic representations.
The claim that A Raisin in the Sun expresses the idea of black assimilation can be somewhat justified. Walter Lee Younger and George Murchison openly and consciously admit that desire for the white lifestyle. George has willingly denounced his race rather than uplifted it and is the epitome of a black man that has fully assimilated into the White mainstream. Walter, on the other hand,...
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...revolution, not the just the entertainment industry.
Works Cited
Color Adjustment.Videotape. Dir. Marlon Riggs. Narr. Rudy Dee. California newsreel.1991. 87 min.
Crenshaw, Anthony. "The Cosby Show Changed the Way Blacks are Viewed." Once Upon a Time in the Eighties. (1995) n. pag. Online. Internet. 3 Aug. 1998.
Link to above site: www.engl.virginia.edu/~enwr1016/amc2d/cosby.html
Pouissant, Alvin. "The Huxtables: fact or Fantasy." Ebony. Oct. 1988. 72-74.
Turner, Darwin T. "Visions of Love and Manliness in a Blackening World :Dramas of Black Life Since 1953." The Black Scholar. vol. 25. No.2. 2-12.
Link to the Lorraine Hansberry Page: http://www.%20accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/hansberr.htm
Link to an interesting site which provides some helpful info and question about A Raisin in the Sun:
www.randomhouse.com/acmart/raisintg.html
Right from the first stanza, we can clearly see that the girl emphasizes her passionate feelings towards the boy by explaining how she desires to be close to her love. Moreover, she expresses the theme of love through using a narrative of how she is prepared to trap a bird. Apparently, this symbolizes how she is prepared to trap her lover’s feelings with the desire to live together all through her life. Additionally, the young lady emphasizes on her overall beauty, her beautiful hair, and clothing which is of the finest linen which she uses to attracts her lover’s attention (Hennessy & Patricia, p.
...saying that marriage is a gamble, and that women risk failure by becoming married. Laux speaks to the women with the idyllic views of matrimony and she may be trying to issue a warning to them, or to teach them a lesson about how she feels. This is important to the narrator especially as she repeats the word “again” in the question she asks at the end of the poem. The juxtaposition of the free bird to the housewife constricted to a cluttered room is an important image and helps the reader see the differences between the two. Laux’s metaphor for the female condition is made clear by the end of the poem and is an attempt to make the reader question what the narrator has that women all over the world are so eager to partake in.
“A Raisin in the Sun” is set at in an area where racism was still occurring. Blacks were no longer separated but they were still facing many racial problems. The black Younger family faced these problems throughout the play. The entire family was affected in their own way. The family has big dreams and hope to make more of their poor lives. Walter, the main character, is forced to deal with most of the issues himself. Ruth, his wife, and Travis, his ten-year-old son, really don’t have say in matters that he sets his mind to. Beneatha, his sister tries to get her word in but is often ignored. Lena (Mama) is Walter’s mother and is very concerned about her family. She tries to keep things held together despite all of the happenings. Mama’s husband had just recently died so times seemed to be even harder. They all live in a small apartment when living space is very confined (Hansberry 1731). They all have dreams in which they are trying to obtain, but other members of the family seem to hold back each other from obtaining them (Decker).
A 14-year-old African American boy was kidnapped, tortured, and then shot in the head by two older white men. His body was wrapped in bob wire and found in the bank of the Tallahatchie River. It is said their “motive” to killing this young child was because he whistled at the wife of one of the two men. His body was then put on display by his mother for everyone to see the horrible things that were done to her son. (American Experience) For me, this is directly related to the Hansberry’s political philosophy. Emmett Till’s murder was a huge eye opener for this country. It showed the true hate a disgust that people actually held inside of them against the black race. People couldn’t ignore this just like they couldn’t ignore A Raisin in the Sun when it was released. The biggest factor of this was that his mom put his mutilated body on display for everyone to see and take in. The killing of her son, was almost as if he was everybody’s son in the black community. He was fourteen, and there were groups of young boys that were seventeen and eighteen becoming scared of their own lives. The death of Emmett Till although it was a tragedy, it made for a better tomorrow. Hansberry took the play and the book and made a statement that the world really couldn’t ignore. The things that were being done to black people strictly because of the color of their skin was upsetting. After the murder of Emmett Till, you had communities marching, getting their voice out there, and basically standing up for all their own rights. The Younger’s weren’t a family who dealt with poverty on a high scale. So they was looked at in a way where, here is an average black family who can’t succeed due to their environment not letting them. Hansberry to me is somebody who wants her statement to make an impact such as Emmett Till’s
I chose this video because it raised my awareness by questioning the difference between positive role models, such as The Cosby Show, and positive images for all African-Americans. The issues discussed and comments made by the cast piqued my interest and helped change my perspective on the history of African-American representation in the media, especially in the realm of television. Color Adjustment contains more than just endless ‘talking heads’ – it has elements of fact, history, and professional opinion all blended together in an engaging format. It was extremely exciting to hear the TV producers like Hal Kanter and David Wolper talk about their own productions in retrospect. Most importantly to me, Color Adjustment changed my perspective on African-American representation in the media by challenging me to think about images...
A Raisin in the Sun is a play telling the story of an African-American tragedy. The play is about the Younger family near the end of the 1950s. The Younger family lives in the ghetto and is at a crossroads after the father’s death. Mother Lena Younger and her grown up children Walter Lee and Beneatha share a cramped apartment in a poor district of Chicago, in which she and Walter Lee's wife Ruth and son Travis barely fit together inside.
Lorraine Hansberry in her play, “Raisin in the Sun”, attempted to explain the feelings of the average African American Male in the 1940s. This persona, which is portrayed in the character Walter, had experienced a severe feeling of depression and hopelessness. In order to understand this source of grievance, one must relate back to the Great Migration and the dreams it promised and the reasons why many African Americans sought to move to the North. A desire to achieve freedom from racial injustices and poverty was the prime factor that encouraged Blacks to abandon the south. However, these dreams where soon crushed as African American noticed that Northern whites had still maintained unequal segregation and where as stumbling block to Black advancement. The consequences of a “dream deferred”, as Langston Hughes called it, was dependency on others, alcohol addiction, as well as dysfunctional families.
In Lorraine Hansberry “A Raisin in the Sun”, the issues of racial discrimination, the debate of heroism, and criticism is vividly displayed. The play, which was written in the late 1950’s presents itself in a realistic discerning matter that implicates the racial division among the black family and white America. The play insinuates Walters’s heroism as well because of the black family’s struggle not to become discouraged in trying to obtain the world riches and still maintaining human dignity. When Hansberry wrote “A Raisin in the Sun”, many critics questioned the motive behind her play because it showed the America the world wants to grow oblivious to. This presents the reality of racial discrimination and heroism for the black man among
A Raisin in the Sun is written by a famous African- American play write, Lorraine Hansberry, in 1959. It was a first play written by a black woman and directed by a black man, Lloyd Richards, on Broadway in New York. The story of A Raisin in the Sun is based on Lorraine Hansberry’s own early life experiences, from which she and her whole family had to suffer, in Chicago. Hansberry’s father, Carol Hansberry, also fought a legal battle against a racial restrictive covenant that attempted to stop African- American families from moving in to white neighborhoods. He also made the history by moving his family to the white section of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood in 1938. The struggle of Lorraine Hansberry’s family inspired her to write the play. The title of the play comes from Langston Hughes’s poem which compares a dream deferred too long to a raisin rotting in the sun. A Raisin in the Sun deals with the fact that family’s and individual’s dreams and inspirations for a better life are not confined to their race, but can be identified with by people with all back grounds.
It is already a very well known fact that African Americans went through a lot of torment through the 1920s until the later 1960s. Even as time went by, only a small amount of things changed. Racism may have died down a bit, but remains in existence. The play A Raisin in the Sun by African American female, Lorraine Hansberry, depicts the real life of African Americans between the 1920s and the 1960s. This time period for an African American was rather tough. The living situations for African Americans were made even more difficult than they would have already been due to their skin color and the government's decisions (ex. Jim Crow laws).
A Raisin in the Sun is a play set in the south side of Chicago during the 1950s. During this time the civil rights movement was happening and racial tension was at a high. Many African
Hultkrantz, Ake. Belief and Worship in Native North America. Ed Christopher Vecsey. NewYork: Syracuse University Press, 1981.
... model for how the entertainment and media industries depict black people must change. Despite the progress that blacks have worked toward since the days of slavery, society continues to give in to the monetary benefits of producing self-disparaging entertainment and media. It is not only up to the directors, editors, producers and writers to establish this change, but it should also be the demand of the people, or the consumer. If the images of black people in the media are improved the outlook within the community will improve as well. Not only will positive goals and achievements become more realistic for black people if the media outlets discontinue their practice of equating blacks with aggression, lawlessness and violence, but a greater good will also result for whites, which would be represented by a true autonomy and equality in American society.
Racism has been evident all around America, even before this country was officially created over two hundred years ago. Prejudice and racism are not uncommon words in American history, because many disputes, such as war and protests, have emerged from the topic of race. This has been a common practice in the past, and is still a common practice today. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the effects of racism are shown in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s. The effects of racism were very cruel during this time, and Harper Lee reflected this through characters, such as Atticus, Jem, Scout, Mrs. Dubose, Aunt Alexandra, and Calpurnia in To Kill a Mockingbird.
As readers we can see that Hansberry contrasts George's view on African identity with Beneatha's. Also, the conversation can display that there are lots of different perspectives on this issue within the black community. By giving us these sorts of complex perspectives, Hansberry makes the play truly universal. Works Cited Mays, Kelly J. -. The Norton Introduction to Literature.