Amos 'n' Andy (was: PC and Dialects in fiction)

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 14, 2004, at 8:07 PM, James A. Landau wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Amos 'n' Andy (was: PC and Dialects in fiction)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> In a message dated  Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:49:34 -0400,  Wilson Gray
> <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET>
>
>>  I, as a black person, have found some
>>  presentations of Black English annoying. For example, Piri Thomas, a
>>  one-hit-wonder from about 40 years ago, was famous for fifteen
>> minutes
>>  for his novel, "Down These Mean Streets." In this work, whites and
>> his
>>  fellow Puerto Ricans simply speak idiomatic English. However, *all*
>>  blacks speak a version of the old vaudeville-stage "Negro
>> eye-dialect"
>>  that a script writer for Amos 'n' Andy would not have stooped to use.
>
> What I find interesting is that you use Amos 'n' Andy as a reference
> standard.

No. I used a particular book by a particular author as my reference
standard.

>
> "This was the show that became an American fixation in the dear,
> departed
> days of radio.  In the television version, which first appeared in
> 1951, Alvin
> Childress was Amos, Tim Moore was the Kingfish, and Spencer Williams
> was Andy.
> In 1966 CBS withdrew the programf rom syndication and overseas sale
> after
> several civil-rights groups protested that it was a distorted portayal
> of Negro
> life in the United States."
> (Ref 1 page 158)

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

>
> Only two seasons (78 episodes, however another account says one season
> and 39
> episodes) of the TV version were filmed, but these  episodes were rerun
> endlessly until 1966.  I have seen exactly one episode and my vague
> recollection
> was that it was standard assembly-line sitcom with a script that could
> have been
> used by a sitcom that had white actors without anyone noticing.
> However,
> this applies only to the episode I saw and might not apply to many of
> the other
> episodes.

And what has this do with the price of tea in China?

>
> The writers of the radio show (which ran from 1928 to 1943) were also
> the
> voices of the show: two white men named Freeman Gosden and Charles
> Correll.

Those guys were European-Americans?! You can't be serious Now, why
didn't I know that? It's most probably a consequence of my innate
inferiority, leading to a total lack of any knowledge of American
cultural history as it relates to us "African-Americans."

> For a favorable but, I think, balanced account of the radio show, see
> ref 2,
> which includes a short but serious discussion of the dialect used on
> the radio
> show.

I'm not interested in anyone else's opinion of the dialect used on the
show and I'm not interested in your opinion of that opinion. I'm
satisfied with my own opinion of it, which I have yet to state, as you
may have noticed. Nevertheless, I appreciate your caring enough to wish
to point out to me the error of my opinion, just in case that it should
turn out to be erroneous, once that I've stated it.

> What should an African-American think of the radio show as a show?
> Should it
> be denounced as a collection of stereotypes?

Does some form of mind-control exist, such that, once this nonsensical
question has been answered to the satisfaction of those who consider
this a question worth asking, to ensure that what we
"African-Americans" think about this triviality will be made conform to
the requirements of European-Americanthink?

>   Ref 2 gives a few citations of
> debate within the African-American community of the time about the
> radio show.
>  The TV show was the subject of considerably more negative reaction,
> which
> could be due to its being a quite different show, or could be due to
> the fact
> that a good deal of water had gone over the dam between 1943 (when the
> radio
> show ended) and 1951 (when the TV show debuted).

As a member of the "African-American" community of the time, I had no
interest in this topic when it was fresh and I see no reason to concern
myself with it, now, forty years later.

BTW, those dates can not possibly be correct. The radio show came on in
Saint Louis at 7:30 on Sunday evenings, followed by "Gunsmoke," well
into the 'Fifties, since I graduated from high school in 1954 and the
radio show was on for at least a couple of years beyond that, perhaps
till 1957. Those radio shows may well have been re-broadcasts of old
shows, for all I know, but the show definitely was still being
broadcast in Saint Louis at that time. I'm not sure when the TV version
began, since I was in the Army, stationed in Germany, at the time. My
guess is that the start date for the TV show was more likely 1961 than
1951, since it was still on after I got out of the Army. Of course, if
your dates are correct, given that it's only my opinion that they're
not, what I saw was probably a re-run. In any case, I did see the TV
version a couple of times, but I was never able to get behind it. I was
too accustomed to the radio show to make the necessary transition. The
TV actors sounded nothing like the "real" Amos 'n' Andy and did not
look like them. The TV show was simply too inauthentic for me, since
I'd cut my teeth, so to speak, on the original Amos 'n' Andy.

I accept your claim that the TV show was re-run till 1966.

>
> Actually you seem to be using Amos 'n' Andy (and you don't specify
> whether
> you mean the radio or the TV version)

The original version, not that TV shit.

>  not as a social document good or bad but
> as a standard bad example of how NOT to reproduce AAVE.  Have you
> listened to
> either the TV or the radio show and are therefore speaking as someone
> who has
> observed a fair sample of the dialect or would-be dialect employed?

Amos 'n' Andy was a "social document"? And all this time I've
considered it to be merely an old sitcom.

Did I or did I not specifically state that my criticism was with
reference to so-called "eye-dialect," the only possible way to attempt
to reproduce the sounds of non-standard speech on the printed page of a
standard printed book as used by a particular author? Did I not also
specifically provide the title of the book, with the name of its
author, so that anyone who cares about this topic as much as you
obviously do could see for himself what it was that I was claiming to
find "annoying." You will also note that I did *not* say "offensive."
Did I not also specify precisely what it was about that author's use of
eye-dialect that I found annoying? Do you wish to deny me the right to
decide for myself what I find annoying?

>   Or are you
> accepting at second-hand what could be an urban legend about the
> speech used
> on the show?

This is not worthy of comment.

Rest assured that my experience of Amos 'n' Andy is absolutely at first
hand. I listened to the show from my very early childhood through my
very late teens.

>   (Compare people, like me, who have never read Uncle Tom's Cabin
> and therefore could not tell you whether the title character is or is
> not what
> is now called an "Uncle Tom".)

I've never read the book, either, though I have ridden past  Onkel Toms
Huette in then-West Berlin. I recall reading somewhere or other that
Uncle Tom was *not* an Uncle Tom and that he was quite a heroic man for
someone of his time and in his place [no pun intended].

>
> I might add that I personally would be unable to tell a bad
> reproduction of
> AAVE from a good one.

Of course you could. You underestimate yourself.

>
> Ref 1: Arthur Shulman and Roger Youman _How Sweet It Was: Television: a
> pictorial commentary with 1435 photographs_ New York: Bonanza Books,
> 1966, no ISBN.
>
> Ref 2: URL http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/aa.html
>
>           - James A. Landau

I became accustomed to listening to it as a child in Texas, while
living with my maternal grandparents. There were only three programs
that my granddad care about: major-league baseball (he had been a
catcher in his youth and had a permanently-deformed right forefinger as
a souvenir of those days); Gabriel "Ah, there's good/bad news tonight"
Heatter and the News; and (Ah! Ah! A-ah!! Don't touch that diall! It's
time for) Amos 'n' Andy"!, not necessarily in that order.

Sapphire:  Andrew H. Brown! You ain't got sense enough to come in out
the rain!
Andy       : Yes, ah has! Ah done it lotsa times!

"Holih mackle, dae-uh, brothuh Andih!"

"And starring Hattie McDaniel as 'Sadie Simpson!'"

FWIW, I never gave a thought as to whether the language used by Gosden
and Correll was authentically "African-American." Once again, I turn to
anecdote. A friend of mine grew up in Israel in a household in which
both Yiddish and Hebrew were spoken. As a consequence, she naturally
grew up fluent in both languages. Though she had only rare occasion to
speak Yiddish, she understood it as well as she understood Hebrew. In
fact, it wasn't until she was sixteen, according to her, that she came
fully to the understanding that Yiddish and Hebrew were separate
languages. Before then, she had been under the impression that Hebrew
was merely the version of Yiddish that was to be used by children.

By the same token, I became accustomed to the language of "Amussa
Nandy," as I, as a child, understood the name of the program to be,
long before I was aware of the concepts of "dialect" and "race" and
their social ramifications. It was just people talking on the radio. In
photographs in ads for the program, Gosden and Correll were always
shown in blackface, but I didn't know that that had any meaning. I
could see that there were two European-American guys with something on
their faces. But, since these photos were always in B&W, I had no clue
as to what the color of that stuff on their faces was, nor did I have
any idea that the fact that they had the stuff on their faces indicated
that they were making  fun of the skin color of "African-Americans,"
because I didn't understand that colored people were stereotypically
considered to be of only one skin color and that that one skin color
was uniformly considered to be black. In our household, the skin tones
of my own family members ranged from white to the color of "black"
coffee. Likewise, since I had no concept of "dialect," when I listened
to A&A or to anyone else on the radio or in person, I heard only
language. It wasn't until I was in the first grade that the light
slowly began to dawn that a person's skin color had a specific meaning.
It took even longer for me to realize that a person's speech patterns
also had a specific meaning.

BTW, in addition to A&A, we also listened to and enjoyed the "Beulah"
show. AFAIK, this program did not make it to TV.

-Wilson Gray