Revolution Televised.pdf

What You See Is What You Get 73
“hidden transcripts.” 57 A black audience familiar with the characters
in many of the skits was able to understand these performances
on a different level and recognize a different level of humor in them,
and therefore the show served as a community-forming locus.
Wilson was clearly in his element when he presented the numerous
African American characters he developed on the show. Regulars
included Herbie; the Good Time ice cream man, who despised
children; Freddie Johnson, the Mack, who wore the crushed-velvet
suits recently resurrected by Austin Powers; and Charlie the chef.
His most famous and lasting portrayals were the Reverend Leroy
of the Church of What’s Happening Now and Geraldine Jones.
Wilson was occasionally accused of reincarnating the stereotypes
of Steppin’ Fetchit and Amos ’n’ Andy. However, this critique was
based on the tenets of uplift, the fear of what white America would
think of the black characters that Wilson presented.
Wilson lampooned the black church with his character Reverend
Leroy, who was based on his Washington Heights childhood
preacher, Reverend Ike. In 1971 he told the New York Daily News,
“I was very impressed with him, and I was always amazed that
he wasn’t well-educated. But, in his simple way, he was dynamic
and exciting.” 58 Wilson’s act has a historical basis. The African
American relationship with institutionalized religion is rooted in
contention. 59 Stripped from their homeland and their own religious
practices, Africans were forced into accepting Christianity, the
same religion that provided the justification for slavery. The notion
of suffering today for the benefits to be gained in the afterlife was
indoctrinated into the slaves with the hopes of their developing acceptance
of their circumstances. When the black church came into
its own, it also began to reflect the class divisions in African American
society. 60
In the 1920s, Carter G. Woodson’s seminal work, The Miseducation
of the Negro, echoed these concerns; while acknowledging
the important role that religion could have, Woodson warned,
“It is very clear, then, that if Negroes got their conception of religion
from slaveholders . . . there may be something wrong about it,
and it would not hurt to investigate it.” 61 However, these are concerns
that many African Americans would prefer to keep within the
black community and behind the closed doors of the black church.
When Wilson took this character to weekly television, there was
an acknowledgment of the incongruities of the church. Reverend
Leroy, while preaching the word of God, was unethical, and there