Shadow and Act has reported that the Boondocks is making a return to television for a fourth season. Let all the lampooning of the Black community begin.
I’m kind of excited for the show’s return. For those who have been living under a rock, or don’t have cable (whichever applies), The Boondocks is a satirical cartoon series, created by Aaron McGruder and based upon his comic strip of the same name. The show tells the story of America from the perspective of Black men and is probably one of the most intelligent and provocative representations of black life there is on television.
Fused with lots of social and political commentary, there is no topic that is off-limits. From gay gangster rappers to the Black community’s Jesus-like worship of Barack Obama, the Boondocks offers the ugly truth: harsh, uncomfortable and sometimes funny. Who or what will McGruder take on next? Basketball Wives? The rise of Herman Cain, Alan West and other notable Black Republicans? The hype around Red Tails…oh wait, he co-wrote that film so probably not.
Aside from my obvious enthusiasm for the show’s return, I wouldn’t be a critic if I didn’t say there were certain elements of the show that I have always been less enthused about like the outing of Tyler Perry – while funny, it just wasn’t cool. The Boondocks took great pleasure in lampooning Perry’s drag persona Madea through the guise of Winston Jerome, a theater cult leader who uses Christianity and his cross-dressing stage to seduce men. Besides being homophobic, the unprovoked attack against Perry seemed a little too much like Black on Black crime for my taste. Also, I don’t appreciate the irresponsible way in which urban, poor black communities are portrayed as being full of lazy, ignorant “ni**as” without the context of class and race. That is a reoccurring theme in the show, which reminds me a lot of how some Black folks will “other” other Black folks of a different economic status.
And finally, I take issue with the complicated and often heavy handed depictions of Black women.
On the show, the representation of Black women is dubious at best. In fact, a large number of female characters that exist within the realm, which is the Boondocks world, are loud, fat, ratchet single moms, prostitutes or video vixens. This is not to say that all of McGruder’s gender politics are messed up but that his representation of women, particularly Black women, borders on the line of misogyny.
One of the characters on the show that exemplifies this is one of the three central characters: Robert Jebehiah Freeman. He is the white haired Tuskegee Airman and former participant in the Civil Rights movement, who lives in the suburbs with his two grandsons, Riley and Huey. Freeman is an interesting character because of his clear issues with Black women. First, he holds a grudge against Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks because he too refused to give up his seat yet it was Parks, who was the one pulled off the bus and indirectly sparked the Montgomery Bus boycott. Secondly, in his overall interaction with women, he regularly and unapologetically refers to them as “bitches.” Usually a typical Freeman storyline goes something like this: Robert meets an attractive woman, finds out that she is crazy, gold digger or a ho (and I mean an actual prostitute) and then the woman, who have been framed as the problem, is chased away.
The only exception to this frequently played storyline comes in the way of the widely circulated Season 3 episode “titled “The Lovely Ebony Brown.” It began with Freeman being counseled by friends Uncle Ruckus and Tom Dubois on his inability to find the perfect black woman. Uncle Ruckus, a self-hating character as the name suggests, offers his thoughts on what Freeman should do including: “The key to happiness is to eliminate all black women from your life.”
Uncle Ruckus other pearls of wisdom includes “Black women don’t want to be happy” and “A black woman’s body is the temple of doom” and finally “Black women don’t jog. That way they don’t sweat out all them industrial strength toxic avenger chemicals they use to straighten out their hair.”
Eventually Freeman meets Ebony, the perfect Black woman – and by perfect I mean a Black woman who exercises regularly, doesn’t have any children, educated yet submissive and not materialistic. She is so “perfect” that even Uncle Ruckus abandons his anti-Black women rhetoric and falls in love with her too. Finally finding his match, Freeman then proceeds to sabotage his relationship with his own insecurities. And eventually he scares the perfect Black woman away. Here we the viewers are supposed to learn just how much of fault Freeman is for his failure to have a healthy and stable relationship with a Black woman. However, what is more obvious is that Ebony has to be the “perfect” representation in order to be appreciated. This plays into the whole idea that Black women with children, that are overweight (even as 71 percent of Black men too are statistically overweight, a point that I will keep reinforcing every time a Black man mentions weight and Black women in the same sentence – even if it is a cartoon character), or have any other “flaws” are undesirable, and it plays right into the whole meme that these so-called attributes are the reason why Black women, by far and large, are undesirable or unworthy of affection.
Maybe I’m making a lot more of this than I should. I still love The Boondocks but I just can’t help but to feel uncomfortable at the apparent sexism in the show. In fact the only regularly featured “black” female character is Jazmine Dubois, the naïve, cherub faced biracial sweetheart, who constantly struggles with her multiracial identity. While her character is probably one of the better representations of women in the series, she also fits into certain favorable and agreeable personality archetype about lighter skin toned women in the Black community.
Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.
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