A rapper with an inferiority complex has a legitimation problem in a culture of omnipotent egomaniacs and status symbol fetishists. In principle, he only has two options: he accepts that the competition sees him as a joke – i.e. as easy prey. Or he plays with his image and self-confidently stylizes himself as a joke figure. Between these positions, Donald Glover discovered a third variant for himself: He turned the tables and became a rapping comedian.
The son of a postal worker and a governess, growing up in a very white, very liberal Atlanta suburb, Glover lacked the aura of the street — still the quickest route to a hip-hop career alongside talent. His past as a practicing Jehovah’s Witness also did not add to his credibility in the community. On the other hand, on the New York comedy scene — as a teenage member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, later as a gag writer for the sitcom 30 Rock — Glover was often the only African American in the room. This unique selling point also became the trademark of his hip-hop alter-ego, Childish Gambino.
Too “white” for the codes of Afro-American pop culture, at the same time always a projection surface for stereotypical ideas of blackness. For Glover, the role of the gifted child prodigy, who learned early on to withstand the pressure to justify his environment and to moderate expectations, ultimately paid off. At the end of the year the third, amazingly historical Childish Gambino album “Awaken, My Love!” was released. (published by Caroline). And this past weekend, Glover picked up two Golden Globes for his television series Atlanta: Best Actor – TV Series Comedy/Music and Best Comedy Series Creator, Writer and Producer.
This is a double success story that shows that the supposedly conventional comedy format sitcom has real potential for innovation in the golden era of television. At the same time, it is also good evidence that the television series is currently the main space of discourse in the US public, where cultural diversity (also from an economic point of view) is practiced as a matter of course. Just remember the still necessary racism debate #oscarssowhite last year.
In “Atlanta” Glover plays Princeton dropout Earn, who – father of one child, with whose mother he has an on/off relationship – drifts through life in search of a career. His drug-dealing cousin Alfred, stage name Paper Boi, is currently considered the new hotshot in Atlanta’s thriving hip-hop scene. And because Earn doesn’t have a better career plan, he offers to be its manager. An incident outside a club, where Paper Boi “accidentally” shoots a rival, raises the moderately gifted gangster-rapper’s public profile significantly.
“Atlanta” is a milestone even within the current series boom. Never before has a major TV network — Fox media conglomerate FX is part of the Fox media conglomerate — given full artistic control to an African-American writer. And never before has an author exhausted this creative freedom so consistently. The ten episodes of the first season are by far the strangest that has been seen on television in recent times.
Twin Peaks mit Rappern
Donald Glover himself ironically described the series as “twin peaks with rappers” – knowing full well that he is again resorting to references that lead a niche existence in hip-hop quotations. However, the strategy of “Atlanta” behaves in exactly the opposite way. The delirious dialogues and occasionally surreal situation comedy are deeply rooted in everyday life, the language and the socialization of young African Americans in Glover’s age (early 30s). From these, he develops scenic miniatures that demonstrate liberal, structural racism, or cleverly negotiate the contradiction of moving about as a young black man in two very opposite milieus.
This dialectic makes the series a cultural phenomenon that transcends the sitcom genre. Donald Glover once explained that he wanted to make a series for white people who think they know everything about black culture. “Atlanta” manages the feat of spreading an encyclopaedic knowledge of Afro-American everyday experiences into the dramaturgically loose episodes, and at the same time taking the format ad absurdum.
The best episodes do without the generally overrated conventions of a coherent plot and are content with bizarre situational descriptions, such as an appearance by teenage star Justin Bieber – who, however, is played by a black actor. Another episode is filmed in the format of a fictional talk show for an African-American audience (including targeted ), in which a literary critic and Paper Boi discuss the sexism in his rap lyrics – albeit not as equals. These scenarios live less from the comedy of the expression than from the lack of expression, which is what the English term means deadpan was invented.
With the Golden Globes, “Atlanta” has positioned itself alongside current series such as “Insecure” and “Master of None” as the preliminary high point of a new comedy school that continues to advance the game with cultural attributions. In the era of non-linear television, such special interest programs are now the new mainstream.
“Atlanta” is available via Sky. The full first season airs on Fox on March 25th.