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February 2019 Vol. 56 No. 6

DuCille offers an eloquent analysis of the relationship between representations of people of color and their absence in television from the 1950s to the present. She skillfully blends her comprehensive, historically grounded research with personal memories and her present connection to television. She focuses on media examples important for her and her family—one of the few black families in a predominantly white community. She considers game shows, early situation comedies, music programs, Shirley Temple films, murder and detective mysteries, Norman Lear productions, “Roots,” Shonda Rhimes programs, Court TV, and the problem of Bill Cosby. DuCille’s argument is most explicit in chapter 10—“The ‘Thug Default’: Why Racial Representation Still Matters”—where she makes connections to current events and shows how perceptions are inextricably linked to our TV experiences. “The thug default means that every black body is suspect, subject to search, seizure, service refusal, and the stalking surveillance of retail racism, in daily assaults, including those in which it is dignity that is damaged rather than a life that is taken.”

--K. Sorensen, Bentley University

Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.