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Essay on A Look At A Different World And In Living Color
"In Living Color" has now been on the air for two seasons. The Fox Broadcasting Network provides the home for the program. Keenen Ivory Wayans, the twenty-three-year-old black producer of the program, recently appeared on Phil Donahue's talk show with members of the cast to discuss, among other matters, the program's controversy. To the credit of Wayans and the cast, "In Living Color" won this year's Emmy Award for outstanding comedy/variety show based on its first season.
The show is totally irreverent. They have spoofed everyone from Mike Tyson to Oprah Winfrey, Little Richard to Captain Kirk, Della Reese to Louis Farrakhan, and a host of other characters including homeless men, illiterates, gossips, and thieving televangelists.
The program's best skits deftly reveal that pointed political commentary can occur in the context of comedy, and the exceptionally talented cast delivers the comedic goods. When the comedy is on, it's fresh, but at it's worst, the program simply serves up the same old stereotypes that have long plagued the disempowered.
Donahue challenged Wayans and the cast to speak to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation's, or GLAAD'S, assertions that the program's portrayal of black gay men in the popular skit "Men on Film" is less than flattering, given the way AIDS, gay bashing, and other sorts of violence have put the gay and lesbian community in a position of increased vulnerability.
Wayan's response was, "Well, first off, all the sketches on the show have to be looked at within the context of the show, and it's not as though we isolate any particular group.
We make fun of everybody, and so analysts don't think that anybody should have a chip on their shoulder--when it's a free-for-all. And the other thing, too, is, the sketch is not a bashing sketch. We don't....
