THE NEWYORKER, MAY 4, 2020 81
crisis is represented by a fat gold chain,
which he makes plans to sell—“am I a
coon?” he asks himself—but which stays
on his neck all season long, an albatross.
I
was raised by nineties black televi-
sion. UPN, Fox, and the WB were
flush with sitcoms that featured black
characters living in all-black worlds
who didn’t seem to emit a whiff of self-
consciousness: “Martin,” “The Wayans
Bros.,” “Sister, Sister,” “Living Single,”
“A Different World.” It’s said that only
now are we living in the golden age of
black film and TV, but that judgment
hinges on a thirst for universal appeal.
The rupture between nineties sitcoms
and the current mode of autobiograph-
ical black television reflects the fact that
black artists have joined the ranks of TV
producers, showrunners, and writers. It
also owes something to the investment of
the white critical establishment in black
culture. Today’s satirical series can feel
like extravagant forms of therapy made
by power brokers who are dealing with
the fact that they are no longer broke or
powerless. Issa Rae has “Insecure”; Lena
Waithe has “Twenties,” a fictionaliza-
tion of her early life as a screenwriter.
Hattie, Waithe’s avatar, wants to work
for the showrunner of “My Bae,” a se-
ries that she considers pandering and
cynical. Her boss, folding her arms—a
gesture of encouragement disguised as
one of contempt—suggests that Hattie
make her own show.
Whereas “black-ish” was shot like a
mockumentary, the framing device of
“#blackAF” comes from Drea (Iman
Benson), Kenya’s second-oldest daugh-
ter and his intellectual rival. She is mak-
ing a documentary about her family for
her application to the film program at
N.Y.U., and Kenya outfits her with a
film crew. (“They shot ‘The Revenant’
with less than this, O.K.?” she says.)
“#blackAF” is a messy show about the
mess of making television; Barris’s cast-
ing of some of the “black-ish” actors, and
his recycling of the Greek-chorus motif
(in the earlier show, a team of demo-
graphically diverse people at the ad-
vertising company; in the new one, a
TV writers’ room) gives “#blackAF” a
television-for-television-writers appeal.
Barris is responding, in part, to the cur-
dling of the Zeitgeist since the Obama
era, a period in which any art that seemed
to analyze the performance of blackness
was immediately deemed resonant. On
each episode of “black-ish,” Barris used
a trademark monologue to link a char-
acter’s personal crisis to structural rac-
ism. In “#blackAF,” he parodies the spe-
ciousness of that device. “Being dripped
is literally part of who we are,” Kenya
says, unironically invoking slavery to jus-
tify his Mr. Porter addiction. The show’s
treatment of Juneteenth performs a sim-
ilar function, reminding us of the way
in which “black-ish” commemorated the
holiday with a soaring piece of edutain-
ment. In this series, perhaps truer to life,
Juneteenth is just an excuse to drink
brown liquor and bake a “freedom cake.”
In the fifth episode, which stands out
for its surge of contained conflict, Kenya
is asked to speak on a panel about a film,
which he loathes, made by an up-and-
coming black director. Everyone else,
white and black, seems to love it. In ad-
vance of the event, he assembles a black-
Hollywood counsel, including Tim Story,
Will Packer, Ava DuVernay, and Issa
Rae—who play themselves—over Face-
Time. “We do it all the time with white
stuff,” Kenya says, after he realizes that his
peers are holding back from giving their
true opinion of the film. “Why can’t we
do it with our stuff ?” He is roundly dis-
missed by everyone except Waithe, who
agrees to sit on the panel with him and
to back him up on his critiques of the
movie. But, when the time comes, she
sells him out onstage, praising the film
and babbling on about the power of rep-
resentation. Barris and Waithe are im-
pressively willing to parody themselves,
but the result feels like self-defense mas-
querading as satire.
The other seven episodes blur into
one another, lacking story or situation.
I couldn’t get enough of Jones as a lov-
ing, self-absorbed, rich-bitch mom, and
I will never complain about a Nia Long
cameo, especially one in which she’s play-
ing a hustler publicist. But “#blackAF”
desperately needs fewer riffs and an ex-
panded character universe to leaven its
atmosphere of crushing self-indulgence.
At the end of the season, Kenya has a pat,
sitcom-style epiphany while watching a
rerun of “black-ish” on a family vacation
to Fiji. “Such a good show,” he says to
himself. One kind of innocence allowed
Barris to make “black-ish.” It was another
kind that led to “#blackAF.” Wear our new
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