Revolution Televised.pdf

This Ain’t No Junk 99
they move in. A tire here, a lamp there, then you have a big
wide-rimmed hat in your living room and then cockroaches
in your kitchen, and pretty soon your whole house is full of
Puerto Ricans.
lamont: I knew the real reason would come out—you’re prejudiced.
You’re never going to get used to the idea of Julio being
our neighbor. Well Julio is our neighbor, and he is my friend,
and he’s not doing anything wrong.
The play on Sanford’s prejudicial attitude continues when the
surveyor shows up and has an obvious Latino accent. His name is
Manuel Eduardo Estaban Gonzales y Rodriguez. Although Fred is
concerned, the surveyor assures him that “the legal boundary comes
from the county recorder; it cannot be changed.” Fred realizes that
he has overplayed his hand in this round when he is informed by
the surveyor that Julio owns the majority of the land on which
Fred’s junkyard sits. The trickster is defeated by his own greed.
Another example of the trickster outdoing himself occurs in the
episode entitled “Home Sweet Home” (1974). A Japanese investor
offers the Sanfords and their neighbors money for their properties
so that a brewery can be built. When the Japanese investor visits
and offers twenty thousand dollars, Fred pretends to have sentimental
attachment to the property. Although the company makes
a counteroffer of over twenty-seven thousand dollars, Fred, sold
on the idea that he can get the price up to thirty thousand dollars,
refuses the offer. The Japanese family, so convinced of Fred’s attachment
to his home, withdraws the offer rather than uproot the
Sanfords. This trickster, like Brer Rabbit in animal fables, often outfoxes
himself.
Sanford and Son as Night-Club Stage
Redd Foxx took the atmosphere and training from the Chitlin’
Circuit into the venue of mainstream American television. Although
he made some concessions to network television—primarily the use
of certain so-called coarse words—Foxx saw Sanford and Son as a
continuation of Redd’s Place. As then-coproducer Aaron Reuben
reported,
Foxx comes up with names like Tangerine Sublett and Leroy and
Skillet, consummate performers he worked with in the $25-a-week
nightclub days. The names befuddle the NBC casting department,