If You Hype It They Will Come...

Television is filled with diversity today (classy…I think not), but either way you look at it TV has an increasing amount of African American Sitcoms to gay reality shows. The Real World is the first current show that comes to my mind when thinking about the Gray and McCarthy readings. They pick seven strangers and almost every time there’s an African American male/female and one gay or lesbian individual. Sure it makes for “good” drama TV, but understanding the big picture is what I see most often skewed by viewers because they think that one individual represents the entire race or sexual preference. There still has yet to be a sitcom drama that consists of an all black family that deals with realistic problems and beliefs. Like the readings before, a sitcom like that would probably shock and make viewers uncomfortable, so we’re going to have to stick with comedic shows like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and more recently The Chappelle Show (which is a hole other realm of comedy). Shows like Heroes and Lost are great for today’s society because people like the variety and want to see themselves relating to a character, and those multicultural shows allow for that to happen. I mean come on who’s a white, young college student who doesn’t want to be like Peter Petrelli?

As for the Watts reading, I think today’s TV choices for commercials definitely reflect on the success of the Wassssup? Guys. Ads still use other’s “cool” culture aspect to make you think that if you buy the product you will become that much closer to “coolness.” But like I said before, beer is beer and you either like it or you don’t, and quite frankly a person to go that in depth on a commercial like that makes me not sleep well at night. Either way commercials today still go for a multicultural/relatable aspect (much like the sitcoms today) to get viewers to buy in on the hype.