In the pilot of the show, we learn the basic premise of Everybody Hate Chris, a semi-autobiographical sitcom in which Chris Rock recounts his middle-school experience in early 1980's Brooklyn. We learn that the Rock family has just moved out of the projects and into an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant Young Chris is excited about the move, however his excitement diminishes when his mother tells him that he will be taking two buses every day to become the only black student at Corleone Middle School. In this way, two social issues serve as inspiration for the bulk of the show’s comedic content. In Chris’s home life, the issue of class are largely explored, while Chris’s struggles at Corleone Middle School seem to focus on questions of race. …show more content…
International media companies strongly prefer universal and highly relatable comedies when looking to pick up American sitcoms; however, this usually just means white, middle-class, family-focused shows. Something of the Home Improvement variety. Thus this white, middle-class experience becomes the ubiquitous standard of living, something that will appeal to everyone in the international TV marketplace. Using this “whiteness”, any show that deviates from this norm, such as those sitcoms that incorporate black slang, hip-hop culture, racial politics, and working-class settings, automatically get brand as “ethnic” and are only shown on either the single nights networks used to have dedicated to black entertainment or on niche networks, like BET. Yet, the breakthrough success of The Cosby Show finally allowed for a way out of this particular network configuration. The show’s producers would not make any explicit references to the politics of race and keep the narratives focused on “universal” family themes in exchange for a white viewership. But because white audiences have historically associated poverty with “blackness” and classified middle-class status as “white”, these family-friendly stories were placed in a context of wealth and class privilege on The Cosby Show. The commercial success of The Cosby Show has left an upsetting legacy: to get on the air, class must be