Mad White Men

The TV show Mad Men. Hmmm I have to stop and think about it. Mad Men-- There are two things that stand out in my mind about his show. Its an Emmy winner, there are no Black Folks and its gotten the Oprah Seal of Approval. Is it me or am I just seeing things. Recently there was this clip on youtube-- I have really weened myself away from traditional TV because its become what I like to coin as "network." Network for those who don't know is award winning screenplay by Paddy Chiesky in which it really tells of things to come regarding the shape of television. Murder of the week, kidnapping of the week, terrorist of the week: its really what we have become. I am more inclined to watch YouTube or Daily Motion or even Hulu strictly because with 1000 on HDTV I can't seem to find a damn thing on. Hence YouTube. Anyway while watching my dose of YouTube, I came across this news article discussing the need for male studies. At the cornerstone of the piece was the show MadMen. Looking at the news piece and of course just a glimpse of the show something obviously was missing. Black Folk. Damn... The show is set in 1960s where "real men were men." OK to me that's a wee bit hard to swallow part due to the fact that, that same line was also uttered by Archie Bunker- America's favorite bigot portrayed by one of America's biggest progressive liberals, Carol O'Connor. I guess the reason why I'm not attracted to a show such as Mad Men is because it to me represents a celebration of White ideology. Its almost as though the program operates as form of revisionist history in which people of color have conveniently been placed figuratively back to the back of the bus if only for 60 mins per episode. Now there are professors in the academy who wish to use this program as a model for male studies. As an African American Man, and father this maddens me on a plethora of levels but today I will just choose one, and that would be again how the media functions as an agent of cultural positioning. Again, not having seen the program, I am concerned with the fact that as the program functions as a nostalgic piece of television, is the program really relevant. I think I am not attracted to the show because simply put, I don't see any aspect of me at all in the program. Not that I was alive in the 1960s but the black experience in the 1960s really isn't that damn euphoric. While white folk were sipping scotch, downing martinis listening the rat pack-- Black folk were catching hell on a daily basis. Under employment, families being split apart so that some income would come in rather than no income, human rights, civil rights, asserting one's sense of masculinity in the presence legalized apartheid in the United States--(white folks had Uncle Sam where as blacks had Uncle Jim-Crow); I digress as I write a incoherent sentence. The point I am trying to make here is that as Oprah works to celebrate whiteness in her lauding of MadMen who has the iniative to offer a counter reading of MadMen. It would be so cool if some one were to take the base material from Loraine Hansbery's Raisin In the Sun and develop that into a series (preferably shot in black and white). That play germinated with so many topics that honestly it took African Americans out of the monolithic images of White America. Unfortunately, that would not be profitable in our commercialized economy. Again, I sigh as I sit on the sidelines and watch