[This week marks the 60th anniversary of the debut of the Batman TV show & the 50th of The Bionic Woman. So I’ll AmericanStudy those shows & three others from the 60s & 70s, all of which happen to start with the letter ‘B’! I’d love your responses and other TVStudying thoughts for a crowd-sourced weekend post that needs no “Applause” sign.]
Three diverse characters and plotlines through which the long-running and legendary Western can help expand our collective memories of the West.
1) Hop Sing: While Bonanza’s main characters, members of the Cartwright family including father Ben and his three sons (and eventually other relatives in later seasons), were all white, the show did feature a non-white recurring character who would become perhaps its most beloved: Victor Sen Yung’s family cook and housekeeper Hop Sing. Much of the time as that second hyperlink illustrates Hop Sing was a minor character used for comic relief, but his presence alone reminds audiences of both the 19th century Chinese American community and the multiracial diversity of the American West. And his character became so popular that in later seasons the writers created episodes focused on Hop Sing and his own identity and community, including one (“The Fear Merchants”) which deals directly with the anti-Chinese sentiments that led to the Exclusion Act (a couple decades after the show’s 1860s setting).
2) “Day of Reckoning”: Hop Sing was the show’s only non-white recurring character, but Bonanza did also dedicate full episodes to other non-white characters and related questions of race and ethnicity in its diverse mid-19th century Western world. One of the most complex is season 2’s “Day of Reckoning,” which features a number of Bannock Native American characters with a range of perspectives on neighboring whites, the future of the West, and more. While the fact that the main such character, Matsou, was played by the Mexican American actor Ricardo Montalban, is a telling one when it comes to indigenous representation in the early 1960s, it also adds one more layer to the episode’s and show’s depiction of the 19th-century West, and could be a way in to highlighting for white audiences both indigenous and Mexican communities in that place and time.
3) “The Wish”: As is often the case with long-running shows, by the later seasons some of the show’s stars had the chance to direct episodes, and the season 10 episode “The Wish” was helmed by none other than Michael Landon (Joe Cartwright). It tells the story of a formerly enslaved man, Sam Davis (the great Ossie Davis), who moves to the area with his family and faces post-Civil War racism. Building on earlier such plotlines, including season 5’s “Enter Thomas Bowers” in which the titular touring Black opera singer (played by William Marshall) is mistaken for a runaway slave and apprehended under the Fugitive Slave Act, “The Wish” makes clear that diverse individuals aren’t just visitors to the world of Bonanza, but were part of its community alongside the Cartwrights.
Next TVStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Other 60s and/or 70s TV you’d highlight?
Leave a Reply