Riggs Untied : Filmmaker Looks at Blacks on TV and Doesn’t Like What He Finds

As a youngster, documentary filmmaker Marlon T. Riggs couldn’t identify with anybody he saw on television because there were no series featuring black children.

Then in 1968, NBC introduced the sitcom “Julia,” starring Diahann Carroll as a nurse and single parent who was raising a young son, cute-as-a-button Corey (Marc Copage).

“I watched the show as a kid feeling wonder and joy to see Corey, who looked like myself, when anywhere on TV, I found nobody that resembled me or anyone in my family,” said Riggs, 35, who stirred up controversy last year with his “Tongues Untied,” a documentary that explored the lives of gay black men and aired on PBS.

“I found no black children except for Farina in ‘Our Gang,’ which of course didn’t anyway in the remotest sense come close to what I knew as a black child. But here Corey was someone who seemed to resonate my own experiences.”

But did Corey really reflect Riggs’ own experience as a young black child growing up in America? In fact, has any TV series?

Riggs latest documentary, “Color Adjustment,” Monday on PBS’ “P.O.V.,” explores the history of blacks on television, from early sitcoms such as “Amos ‘n Andy” and “Beulah” to the phenomenally successful “The Cosby Show.”

Woven among clips from those series, and ones from “I Spy,” “The Nat King Cole Show,” “Good Times” and “Roots,” are observations from cultural critics as well as performers Carroll, Esther Rolle (“Good Times”), Tim Reid (“Frank’s Place) and producers Hal Kanter (“Julia”), Sheldon Leonard (“I Spy”) and Norman Lear (“Good Times”).

Riggs said most African-Americans view black series with ambivalence. “Whether it is ‘Good Times’ or ‘The Cosby Show,’ what I am trying to say is (we need) to look beyond the seductive qualities of the images (of blacks) and to ask what the images say about our culture. What does it say about the communal experiences? How, in those images, certain kinds of experiences are displaced, erased and made invisible.”

Carroll said she is proud of “Julia,” the first sitcom to star a black actress in a professional, non-domestic job. Julia and her young son, though, lived in a picture-perfect world that didn’t reflect the racial tensions and problems of the ‘60s.

“She was about entertaining the American public and (Kanter) wanted an American black woman that was part of what the television scene was at that time,” Carroll said. “It was single mothers, they were all attractive and learning about being in the work place. Some of them were raising children, and most of them didn’t have husbands. I think Hal did a hell of a job.”

“Julia” was a hit, reaching No. 7 in the ratings its first season.

Riggs doesn’t believe blacks have moved forward enough. Though he finds Fox’s “In Living Color” quite funny, he said, “I find a lot of it reminds me of minstrels. In this case, it is blacks willingly and lucratively donning a black face in a metaphoric sense to make the culture laugh.”

He said he finds “The Cosby Show” regressive. “In many ways it returned us to that happy household where none of the social ills in the external society intrude.”

Riggs discovered that despite its stereotypical portrayals, many blacks love “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” which aired on CBS from 1951 to ’53.

“It was brilliant,” said Carroll, who has a library of the series. “The actors were excellent.”

Riggs even admitted he found himself laughing uncontrollably and feeling guilty while watching episodes. “How could I be a scholar, who was black, and laugh at something that was so terribly derogatory? What I was laughing at in many ways was the power of the comedy as comedy, but also the power, in particular, of the portrayals of those very accomplished black actors.”

Riggs said he believes television would be improved if there were more African-American dramas and fewer sitcoms. Instead of offering escapist entertainment such as “Cosby,” Riggs said, series should inform and educate.

“Television should provide a means for our society to solve deep-seeded problems and anxieties over any number of troubling issues, whether of race or class or sexuality or changing family life.

“It is a means of addressing what most disturbs you. But we need to address it in such a way that it can be absolved at least in your mind, so you can wake up the next day and feel society, in fact, is stable and you have a place in it.”

“P.O.V.: Color Adjustment” airs Monday at 10 p.m. on KCET and KPBS.