"The Fresh Prince of Bel Air". The Erasure of Dark Skin Black Women

Abi Lewis

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Academic Paper from the year 2022 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: A, Ryerson University, course: Me...

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Academic Paper from the year 2022 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: A, Ryerson University, course: Media Studies, language: English, abstract: The "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" is a popular and influential Black sitcom in pop culture history, as it presents one of the first American portrayals of a prestigious Black family unit. The sitcom will be the subject of this research because it presents aspects of dominant Whiteness, colourism, through a narrative analysis, to observe how dark-skinned Black women are represented in Hollywood. In this study, I look to investigate these 3 questions, "How is Black beauty represented on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air? 'How do the character traits given to dark-skinned females differ from the character traits given to their lighter-skinned counterparts? And do these differences represent colourism? and 'What do these differences of Black skin tones represent on the show. To investigate this question, my research used narrative analysis to observe dominant assumptions around skin tone, character representations, and character interactions. Using narrative analysis as my primary research method, my study utilized a deductive coding list, by observing 10 episodes of the show Fresh Prince of Bel Air. As a result, my research findings outlined how the use of characters, storylines, and interactions were formed to create narratives of colourism and beauty ideals and inferiority. The study used Critical Race Theory (CRT) to analyze these codes and identified themes of essentialism, and colourism. Through the analysis, the study illustrates the film characters Hilary, Aunt Viv, Jasmine, and Phil's mother as dominant representations of Whiteness, and portrays how toxic ideals of Black beauty are displayed.