Angela M.S. Nelson. “Black Situation Comedies and the Politics of Television Art.” Cultural Diversity and The U.S. Media. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1998
1) Is this a direct conversation or application source? (If you are unclear about the difference between the two, review the “Types of Sources” handout in the Student Handbook.)
This is an application source. The Boondocks Television show didn’t air until 2006 and the comic strip it was based on wasn’t published until 1999. This source was published in 1998, and therefore does not directly discuss either the Boondocks show or comic strip. This source is application source because it chronicles the development of black portrayal in media especially television comedy.
2) What are the author’s credentials in his or her field? (If you are unable to answer this question now with the book in hand, research the author after class—find their profile on a university’s faculty page, search for a self-authored website or a recently published interview, for example).
Editors:
“Yahya R. Kamalipour (Ph.D., University of Missouri-Columbia) is Professor of Mass Communications and director of graduate studies at the Department of Communication and Creative Arts, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN. He has taught university courses at Oxford, England, and Tehran, Iran…board member of the Cultural Environment Movement,” (295)
“Theresa Carilli (PhD., Southern Illinois University) is an associate professor of Communication and Creative Arts at Purdue University Calumet…She has published a book of plas, Women as Lovers: Two Plays (Guernica Editions, 1996). Her work appears in [many famous publications],” (295)
Author:
“Angela M.S. Nelson is an assistant professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) where she teaches courses on Black popular culture, popular music, television studies, and television situation comedy.” (299)
3) Does date of production affect its relevance to your primary source? If so, how?
As said in question one, the Boondocks Television show didn’t air until 2006 and the comic strip it was based on wasn’t published until 1999. This source was published in 1998, and therefore does not directly discuss either the Boondocks show or comic strip. However the fact that it is published in 1998 is relevant because it is still recent enough to have a historical perspective on the development of Black Situation comedies while still giving a contemporary perspective.
4) Who is the author’s audience? Don’t go for the bland “general” or “academic.” The audience for most scholarly sources is academic, just as the audience for non-scholarly sources is often general. Instead, search the introduction and/or first chapter for clues about the intended audience.
The intended audience of this book is the media and/or those affected by the media. “The papers in this book point to the responsibility the mass media have to facilitate cultural awareness and understanding.” This book categorizes the cultural problems of the media and attempts to offer solutions to these various problems. This books goal is to be a “wake-up call to the American mass media to reevaluate their social responsibilities, to realize their crucial role in American society, and to balance their portrayals of cultural groups.” (xxi)
5) If it is a direct secondary source, does the source extensively or marginally cover your cultural object? If it is a applied secondary source, how will you relate it to your cultural object?
As said in question 1, this source is application source because it chronicles the development of black portrayal in media especially television comedy. This article will primarily help me because it categorizes and explains black comedies into three sub-genres: “domcoms (domestic comedies), actcoms (action comedies), and dramedies (dramatic comedies).” This is helpful because The Boondocks falls into all three of these categories at different points. In addition, the article offers a temporal framework to analyze black comedies. Since my primary source came into existence after the time periods described, I can use this secondary source to compare and contract my new-age source to the older black sitcoms.
6) What discipline (ie. psychology, media studies, women’s studies) is the secondary source part of and how does this inform the kinds of analysis/questions it asks of its primary source?
This is a cross-disciplinary source including media studies focusing on comedy, cultural studies, African American studies, and ethnic minority studies. Since it is cross disciplinary in nature, it may not be as in depth with some concepts but the source is useful because it looks at the nature of black comedies from a multidimensional perspective which is what I will need to do to thoroughly analyze my primary source.
7) Which claims do you find most/least persuasive and why?
One of the most persuasive claims is that Black sitcoms often were not actually “Black” because they did not exhibit any actual Black opinions or philosophy. Rather, they were just considered black comedies because the actors were black and used black vernacular which was supposed to imply a black perspective on situations. However, in actuality, there was no cultural context evident in many of these sitcoms and therefore they should not actually be considered “black comedies.” (80) This claim is very persuasive
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