Empire: Power, Music, and Family Drama Unfolded

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The Social Empire In the pilot episode of Fox’s Empire, a music mogul father, Lucious Lyon, discusses the passing of the corporation torch to one of his three sons just as his convict wife, Cookie Lyon, is released from prison on good behavior. Sent to jail for drug crimes she committed to support Lucious and his dreams, Cookie returns to claim what is rightfully hers: the music company that was started with her $400,000 in drug money. The drama of her return is paralleled by the impending competition between the three sons for the head of the “Empire” company. The entire Lyon family finds themselves dealing with everything from contrasting stereotypical ideas of class, and the controversy of homosexuality in the media during the startup of this ground breaking series. …show more content…

Though every character in Empire still has some sort of role as an entertainer, the show counteracts even progressive television’s inferential racism against black people by raising their social status from the stereotypical bar entertainer to music moguls. Though it follows the lives of a black family, it follows an upper class black family, furthering the supposed “[underrepresented] working-class occupations and [overrepresented] professional and managerial positions,” (Butsch 507) in an unstereotypical light. Lucious’s success can also arguably perpetuate the concept of the American Dream. Starting as a start up rapper from the hood and working his way up to the CEO of a major music empire (no pun intended) shows how television implies success in all aspects of life can boil down to a “career-oriented ideology that [reassures] us that, despite change, everything would be okay,” if you focused on you career (Croteau/Hoynes

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