When I was a kid, I refused to watch Happy Days. I was 13 years old when the television comedy, focused on White teenaged friends and their families in 1950s Milwaukee, first aired on ABC. By the time the hit show went off the air in 1984, I was 24. During that time, I never watched a complete episode of the show, nor have I watched it since–not even reruns in syndication. Why watch a show that not only has nothing to do with my world, but has in fact rendered me invisible?
My problem with the series started with the title, and its “America in the good old days” premise. I found it disturbing. It even made me a little angry. Even at 13, I knew that what constituted happy days for many White Americans were anything but for me and mine, and Black America in general. Even today, it bothers me that my mother loved the show (and it’s spinoffs, Laverne & Shirley and Joanie & Chachi) and watched it religiously, which is why I ever saw any of it at all. (Ironically, I’ve come to respect and even admire several of the actors on these shows, especially Henry Winkler and Ron Howard, forever immortalized as Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli and Richie Cunningham, respectively.)
As I transitioned from teenager to young man, becoming a journalist and student activist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., along the way, I became even more aware and repelled by how Happy Days pretended that the overt racial violence and Jim Crow discrimination that was alive and well in the 1950s either never happened or just wasn’t important. Of course, the cast was all White virtually through its entire decade-long run. In fact, the only Black actor to play a role of any significance at all on the show was Jack Baker, who played Bill “Sticks” Downy, a brother the Fonz hires to play drums in Richie’s band. Ironically, that piece of trivia was barely noticed in the 1970s, as Black actors were rarely hired as regular cast members on “White” shows regardless of the period they were set in.
Fast forward to 2011. It’s been just a few weeks since FOX aired the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, a celebration so bereft of African Americans that it could easily be transported to the 1950s America of Happy Days and no one would even blink. (Okay, gay female host Jane Lynch may have given them a clue that something was amiss.) I mean, both Paul Robeson and Marion Anderson would have refused to perform at that worldwide broadcast of the television industry’s colossal failure at achieving the diversity and racial equality that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought and died for decades ago. (Or did he? If it didn’t happen on Happy Days, did it really happen?)
I hope I’ve given you some idea why I was never compelled to watch the critically acclaimed Mad Men, despite the fact that it is a four-time winner of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and that many of my friends (yes, most of whom are Black) absolutely love the show, which focuses on a fictional 1960s ad agency. It’s also why I have zero interest, at least so far, in the new shows Pan Am, ABC’s series about flight attendants in the 1960s, or NBC’s The Playboy Club, set in 1963. The good old days of Mad Men, Pan Am and The Playboy Club all send a familiar message to Black actors: no positions available. But leave your resume, just in case some token roles open up.
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Let’s see. The adventures of top advertising industry execs in the 1960s? No positions available. (Look at the industry today. Nothing’s changed.) Blacks didn’t get to make their mark as leaders in advertising until they began launching their own firms in the late 1960s. The perils and passions of flight attendants in the 1960s? No positions available. The first Black flight attendant, Ruth Carol Taylor, was hired in 1957 by Mohawk Airlines, which did not provide passenger service (she was fired six months later for getting married, a no-no for an industry known for its outrageously discriminatory hiring policies). It took years for major passenger carriers to be forced to make token hires of Black flight attendants, with major carriers like Pan Am and stewardess unions fighting integration tooth and nail every step of the way.
How about frolicking with Playboy bunnies in the 1960s? There is at least some hope on this front, one because eternal playboy Hugh Hefner consistently pushed against racial barriers both at his mansion and in his magazine, and two because sexuality has always been an area where Black women, if only on a token level, could gain limited entry into the White world, nightlife being a prime venue for such interaction. Fittingly, The Playboy Club does have at least one Black cast member, Naturi Naughton as Bunny Brenda, who aspires to become the first Black Playmate in Playboy magazine (a color-line that was actually breached when Jennifer Jackson was selected as Playboy‘s March 1965 Playmate). Will we get to meet Bunny’s family, friends, boyfriends (assuming they are Black)? Like I said, leave your resume, just in case. (A Black Playmate spin-off? Slow your roll, playa.)
At least Mad Men has earned respect by consistently telling a story that is a historically accurate representation of the racist and sexist reality of the era it portrays–just one of the reasons my Black friends like it so much, but which also pretty much eliminates all but token opportunities for Black actors. Pan Am tries to have it both ways, reportedly planning to cast a Black flight attendant on the series even though there was likely no such thing on commercial airlines back then. If true, this is literally tokenism in fact and in fiction; cowardly at best, PC pandering at worst. If you’re going to cast a show about a Whites-only profession in an era of open racial discrimination in hiring, then just do it–don’t fake the funk.
Don’t get me wrong; nostalgia has its place in the hearts of Black Americans just as it does for White Americans. But that doesn’t change the fact that when it comes to happy days, we won’t find them looking over our shoulders. Our best history is in front of us. That’s clearly the case for Black actors and the television industry in general, at least on the equal opportunity, programming-that-looks-like-America tip. So when it comes to nostalgia TV, wake me up when we get to the 1970s, when American icons like Earl Graves, Don Cornelius, George Clinton, Max Robinson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Andrew Young, Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Althea Gibson, Susan Taylor, Jessie Jackson, Gordon Parks, Tom Burrell, Richard Pryor, Billy Dee Williams and Maynard Jackson hit the scene. Make some TV series’ about those “happy days.” Dramatize those American stories. (Of course, you might have to actually hire Black actors and put Black casting directors, writers, producers and studio execs in charge.) Until then, I’m just not feeling the love.