The Flip Wilson Show

Conclusion

Conclusion At the outset of this study, I proposed that the discourse of ambivalence surrounding The Flip Wilson Show should be recognized as part of a concerted aesthetic production rather than just as an aftereffect of reception. Insofar as the show works to elide these two moments, its aesthetic treatment of the audience illustrates this scenario most literally. As we have seen, though, the show’s broader appropriation of the comedy-variety genre sets the discourse of ambivalence in motion on many levels at once. Several of the generic attributes that help produce this discourse are, like the staging of the audience, primarily formal. The show takes advantage of the segmented dramatic structure and the rotating roster of players to address the political, industrial, and institutional challenges facing television in the early seventies. And Wilson takes advantage of the non-naturalistic performance aesthetic to speak in multiple voices that simultaneously address multiple audiences situated at various positions on the racial and political spectrum. The zigzagging genealogy that the use of these techniques traces through the history of American popular performance charges them with an even more determining sense of racial 99 100 Conclusion ambivalence, for it links them at once to the subjugating tropes of minstrelsy and the subversive tactics of vaudeville and the Chitlin Circuit. We might thus say that the cultures and practices of comedy-variety play a significant role in mediating the subject and style of ambivalence inscribed not only in the address of Wilson’s show but also in the provocative discursive space it opens up for debates about identity and representation. Although I would argue that these same racial and aesthetic dichotomies haunt virtually every black comedy-variety show that has aired since Wilson’s, as well as how we talk about these shows, some hew particularly close to the latter’s model for negotiating these dichotomies. Perhaps more than any other show, Cedric the Entertainer Presents . . . revises several of Wilson’s most unique performance techniques in order to engage with contemporary issues of race and performance in popular culture. For example, the episode airing on October 30, 2002, presents an intriguing variation on Wilson’s use of anachronous props to historicize tropes of black performance and identity in American popular culture .1 The scene begins in a fifties-themed retro diner, where a manager behind the counter reminds Cedric—a new waiter in kitchen whites and a paper hat—to embrace the “spirit of the fifties” with “all the dialogue and fun.” Taking this task in earnest, Cedric promptly greets a table of customers with the cowering affect, slow southern dialect, and nervous reverence of the grateful slaves imagined by films like Disney’s 1946 Song of the South. “I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a butter knife than look at yo’ powerful white skin!” he tells two white customers trying to order. With this declaration, Cedric’s character turns to the matter of rushing some “colored” customers out of the dining room and into the safety of the alley. When the baffled manager comes over to calm the commotion, Cedric explains , “I was just trying to stay true to the era.” With this, 101 Conclusion the manager suggests he show a little more “dignity and selfrespect .” Cedric responds with a wink—“Oh, you mean late fifties”—and returns to greet the white couple in his best imitation of Sidney Poitier in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. With Poitier’s fierce elocution, Cedric declares himself a man and not a servant, then storms away from the table. When the confused woman in the couple calls out “Waiter?!” to stop him, he spins around, narrows his eyes, and fires back the defiant riposte that the film made famous: “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” After failing at one more chance to summon the fifties “fun” as the manager demands, Cedric returns to his familiar style of speaking and explains his confusion to the manager: “There weren’t no black people havin’ fun in the fifties!” He is promptly fired, and the scene ends. As this clever commentary on the racial politics of nostalgia and the historical situation of black performance suggests , Cedric’s show blends anachronism, tropes, and pastiche in a discourse on performance that at times greatly resembles Wilson’s. In this respect, paying close attention to how The Flip Wilson Show uses the comedy-variety form...