In 2006, the documentary TV series American Gangster debuted as an instant smash, propelling BET Network (which reaches more than 88 million households in the USA, Canada and the Caribbean) to the highest ratings in its 26-year history. After scoring among the ten most downloaded cable shows on iTunes in its first week, American Gangster settled in as cable's #1 weekday original series among black households and, even better, won the coveted demographic of blacks ages 18-34. As of November 2009, there have been three seasons totaling 26 episodes.
American Gangster also crossed over to the white market, with A&E airing reruns on its international Crime & Investigation programming and domestic Biography Channel, and Paramount Home Entertainment attending to worldwide sales of seasons one and two DVDs. (Season three, which aired in the fall of 2008, has yet to be released.) "We know what our viewers want," crows Viacom, the $22 billion conglomerate that owns BET, "and proudly deliver it across the globe through television, motion pictures and a wide range of digital media."
Viacom's pride was justified not just economically but by American Gangster's 2008 and 2009 nominations for prestigious NAACP Image Awards as Outstanding News/Information Series. This was a far cry from the 1950s, when NAACP lawyers sought an injunction in federal court against Amos 'n Andy, the first network TV series with an all-black cast, and urged a Negro boycott of the show's sponsor, all because the sitcom perpetuated degrading stereotypes. Now the same organization salutes BET for spreading equally degrading stereotypes.
Not everyone is thrilled. "Some of these Satanic Jews have taken over BET," railed the Nation of Islam's Minister Louis Farrakhan, deploring American Gangster's besmirching of blacks. "The mind of Satan now is running the record industry, running the movie industry, running television." Admonishing his flock at Chicago's Mosque Maryam, most of whom confessed through a show of hands to having seen the series (by then in the middle of its second season), the septuagenarian holy man groused, "See, we look like we're the murderers; we look like we're the gangsters." Anti-Semitism aside, Farrakhan has a point. American Gangster isn't out to instill black pride — four of the show's five executive producers are white. Their mission is to jack up Viacom's earnings.
Article comments
1 - Adisa
I have a hard time believing that the Minister referred to "Satanic Jews". Please provide a link to the recorded soundbite as proof.
2 - Ruvy
Louis Farrakhan's crap - with a little Jesus thrown in - is the same garbage that Obama has been listening to from "Reverend" Jim Wrong for 20 years.
If someone were to find their way to get rid of these hate inciters, the black people of America would be far better off - except that the identical shit would spring up in ten minutes both in the "black liberation" Christian and NOI structures. So killing these people is useless.
Jew-hatred aside, however, the American media has basically fallen into "Satan's" hands from bandwidth to bandwidth. And America is going to hell with its media.
3 - Alan Kurtz
Adisa, you must be unfamiliar with Blogcritics' formatting style. Words in turquoise indicate a hyperlink. When you hover over it with your mouse, the text becomes underlined and the destination's URL is shown in the status bar at the bottom of your browser. Click it once and you are automatically redirected to that location. Thus, in the sentence where I quoted Minister Louis Farrakhan as saying "Some of these Satanic Jews have taken over BET," his name and honorific appear in turquoise; click those words and you will be sent to YouTube, where you can hear the Minister skewer the Satanic Jews running BET for yourself. [Edited]
Trust me, Adisa, I could not make this stuff up. I don't have that much imagination.