"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." - James Baldwin
I love and will continue to love the nostalgia of Full House. However as Baldwin points out, I am this best fit to criticize and bring awareness to the racism that plagues our everyday. In that sense, I offer my critique of this episode.
The widespread and normalized nature of anti-Blackness (dumas & ross, 2016), a dominant form of racism in the U. S. (Boutte et al., 2024) seeps into the consciousness of young learners even before they enter schooling to become inundated with Eurocentric texts. This pervasive issue is perpetuated through various media that often contain harmful stereotypes and caricatures of Black people. Sentiments of anti-Blackness can be covertly embedded in popular media, such as classic and contemporary situational comedies (Author, 2023). A prime example is the classic late 1980s early 1990s sitcom, Full House, which was relaunched as a spinoff, Fuller House, 30 years after its finale. The Eurocentric Full House premiered on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network and was watched by both non-Black and Black households alike.
In an episode of Fuller House (2020) titled "Fuller Thanksgiving," White, cisgender, monolingual Danny Tanner, the father known for his type-A, up-type neat freak, "mixes things up" when he pays a holiday visit to his daughters, DJ and Stephanie, now in their late 30s and early 40s. In this episode, Danny is portrayed as stereotypically Black, using Black slang, wearing baggy pants, sunglasses, and a large gold chain with a pendant of a gold Pit Bull, a dog breed often stereotypically associated with Black owners.
Upon his arrival, the family is stunned by his behavior, which is implied to be characteristically Black. The first words he utters are, "Heeeey, my peeps! What's crack-a-lackin'?" He then demands fist bumps from his bewildered family. When his grandson asks, "Is that your Ferrari parked outside?" Danny responds with an exaggerated phonology perceived as Black, saying, "True dat." Appalled, other family members make comments like, "I "just threw up in my eyes", "I miss my sweater-wearing, Honda-loving nerd bomber dad" and Excuse me, sir, but have you seen our dad? Because if you do, could you tell him that we are concerned about whatever this is?" to which he replies, "Mos def, Steph." Though he never explicitly attributes his newly acquired lexicon and phonetic renderings to Blackness, he references the Urban Dictionary as he continues to use Black slang. In addition, he misrepresented Black syntax through uttering ungrammatical constructions like "So me being the daredevil that I be." The be verb is a feature of Black Language often misrepresented by non-natives to the langauge, such as instances like this (Young 2014). To compound this performance of anti-Blackness, indirect assaults on Blackness occur throughout the episode in the form of words directed at several of the estranged visiting cousins, such as "animal," "filthy," "bad guy," and "criminal." These dehumanizing associations echo the problematic portrayals of African American/Black people that have permeated popular literature throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
While Danny's misrepresentation and disrespect of Blackness is deeply problematic, his family's reaction reflects an equally troubling anti-Blackness as they stare and question him with disdain and disgust. This point is crucial because not only did adults who loved Full House as children tune into Fuller House, but their offspring (the next generation) also grew to love this unconventional yet traditional family, dubbed "America's Favorite." Moreover, the issue lies not solely with the show itself but with the normalization of anti-Blackness inherent in its fabric. When passively consumed by children and their parents, coupled with a lack of culturally sustaining Black-centric texts or those portraying themes beyond heroes and holidays, and even worse, texts portraying African American/Black people in disoriented and dehumanizing ways, this perpetuates a vicious cycle of generational injustice that continues to inflict harm on the Black community.
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