November 17, 1995 Contact: Jennifer McNulty (408/459-2495)

NEW BOOK BY UC SANTA CRUZ SOCIOLOGIST EXAMINES TELEVISION AND RACE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--The Million Man March. The O. J. Simpson trial. The Los Angeles riots. The Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings.

In recent years, current events have put issues of race at the top of the American agenda, and each of these events is indelibly linked with television images, says Herman Gray, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has just published a new book Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for "Blackness" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).

"The interesting thing about the Million Man March, the O. J. trial, and the Clarence Thomas hearings as television events is how they forced people to choose sides," says Gray. "Television's simplistic coverage of events obscures the complicated questions about race, class, justice, morality, and family that came into play with these events."

Television depends on spectacle, drama, and the tension between good and bad, says Gray, noting that recent current events have provided perfect fodder for TV news. Situation comedies, produced by the entertainment side of the industry, rely on a similar formula, says Gray, whose book traces the emergence of innovative black-oriented situation comedies during the 1980s and early 1990s and examines the interplay of television and cultural politics.

Even as television news in the 1980s played into the hands of Ronald Reagan's conservative agenda by airing images of what Gray calls the "black menace"--black male gang members, crumbling black families, and black "welfare cheats"--sitcoms reflected the explosion in black popular culture that was marked by African American literature, film, rap music, and hip-hop style. Ushered in by the success of "The Cosby Show," shows such as "Frank's Place," "Roc," "A Different World," and "In Living Color" pushed the boundaries of network television by addressing issues of importance to blacks, says Gray.

Gray specializes in the way television represents blacks and the way those representations affect concepts of blackness within the black community. He participated in Color Adjustment, the independent documentary film on the history of black representations in television and the just-released three-part series Signal to Noise, an independent documentary on contemporary television.

"The explosion of black youth culture opened up what we saw on television," says Gray. "At the same time, there was an enormous explosion of black cinema, black feminist scholarship, and black sexuality as black lesbians and gay men asserted themselves. What was happening with television was really part of this explosion of black images, as blacks attempted to authorize and author our own representations."

Gray points out that issues of race are not limited to relations between the races. "The discussion of blackness is also about what constitutes the black identity, the black self. It's a discussion that's internal to the black community, and I look at these shows from this perspective," says Gray.

"African Americans are continually engaged in making claims about who we are and what our cultural riches are," adds Gray. "Television is still a place where you can see different kinds of claims being made about what constitutes the black experience."

The television industry is in a constant state of flux, notes Gray. Neoconservatives have again seized on images of race to help them consolidate their domestic political program, observes Gray. Recent network mergers will contribute to a drop in innovative programming, and the emergence of Fox Television as a "recognized player" that can win national football contracts and broadcast the Academy Awards show will erode its commitment to urban black audiences, he predicts. Nevertheless, television remains an important site of black representations, and although particular shows will come and go, black popular culture, as well as black television makers, audiences, and programmers, will continue to impact the look and feel of commercial network television, says Gray.

Many dismiss television as "cotton candy for the eye," but Gray says the medium deserves much more careful scrutiny. He decided to address the question of how television affects ideas about blackness when he became annoyed by the lack of sophisticated discussion about television and race. "I'm interested in the media's role in organizing how we see the world," says Gray. "As a critical television scholar, I became very bothered that the innovative television studies always rendered race as a footnote."

Editor's Note: Herman Gray's office number is (408) 459-3715; his email address is herman@cats.ucsc.edu. Review copies of Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for "Blackness" are available. Call Jennifer McNulty in the UCSC Public Information Office at (408) 459-2495 to request a copy.

(This release is also available on UC NewsWire, the University of California's electronic news service. To access by modem, dial 1- 209-244-6971.)

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