i’m really enjoying rewatching moesha
i love it because:
* it’s based on the lives of working class and lower-middle class Black folks
* features Black owned business that are community institutions (the den and the bombay) where intelligent, socially aware Black kids hang out WHILE STILL LOVING GANGSTA RAP
* multiple kinds of Blackness (Dee is Jamaican as is the actress who plays her)
* name checking all kinds of Black popular culture
* A SUCCESSFUL BLACK WOMAN CHARACTER (Dee is a vice principal and breadwinner of the family)
* consistently clowning on Black male patriarchal narratives/values
* talks about real ish that happens to teenagers (pregnancy, coming out, being broke, needing jobs, violence etc)
* tries to talk about intra-PoC issues
* actually had several Black and Brown people working behind the camera (including Asian American—I couldn’t find out specifics—director Henry Chan who has worked on multiple well known and well beloved Black sitcoms: Living Single, A Different World, Sister, Sister, The Parkers, and Girlfriends.)
* acted as a show case for tons of Black artists (musicians, actors, etc) to be show up on television. (i mean moesha has almost relationships with half of the popular Black male r&b singers of the late 90s basically.)
* Black music/art/literature references and performances are constantly being worked into the plot of the show.
* also once again about the lives of working class and lower middle class Black folks. (while the mitchell’s are pretty financially stable, most of Moesha’s friends are clearly from working class families; and part of the tension of the show is how Moesha and the rest of the Mitchell’s navigate that dynamic while still being engaged members of the Black community in which they live.)
