Core Response #3 - Kallan

I found it interesting that Gray takes a moment to explicitly note that the networks’ “recognition and engagement with blackness were not for a moment driven by sudden cultural interest in black matters or some noble aesthetic goals on the part of executives” and instead were driven by economics (68). The fact that TV executives are driven by economic rather than cultural or aesthetic aims seems to me to be a given, but perhaps readers in 1995 had different (less cynical) expectations of the industry so that Gray felt the need to state the obvious. If we wait for commercial television to put cultural and/or artistic goals ahead of economic interests in order to produce interesting television (to watch or to study), we will be waiting a long time. As we know and as Gray demonstrates, however, the economy does not operate in a cultural vacuum. Though most of the shows Gray mentions used Black TV-families to promote dominant conservative individualist values, there were rare exceptions, and the pressure to at least “acknowledge the complex and changing realities of race, gender (though not sexuality), and class in U.S. society” (61) opens up possibilities for negotiated readings. The social and cultural conditions that produced economic incentives to speak to Black audiences lead to television that should be approached with suspicion but did open “a discursive space…where black programs, stars, and audiences figured more centrally than ever before” (61).

In a way, Han’s case study of ImaginAsian Television offers an interesting counterexample. ImaginAsian TV was a failed attempt to construct an imagined Asian-American audience that was driven, in part, by the desire to improve representation and seems to have been borne out of a good-faith interest in exploring Asian-American life and culture. While Gray’s analysis suggests that networks were basically forced to finally address Black audiences, ImaginAsian TV took a top-down approach when they tried to construct an Asian-American audience based on their own ideas about what that meant. While this offers a rare exception to my sense that TV executives are never motivated by cultural interests (although Han also notes that increased spending power also played a key role), Hong and co. failed because they fundamentally misread and misconstructed their audience (as only “a transcultural second generation who share collective identity using the English language” (283)). Both pieces examine the construction of imagined audiences and highlight the fact that nobler intentions do not guarantee better outcomes.