Good Times Reboot Nothing But Stereotypical Trash

The trailer for Netflix’s reboot of Good Times has finally dropped, and it has much of the general public screaming, “Dynamite!”—not in homage to a tagline from the original sitcom, but in hopes that someone might blow this train-wreck of a show to pieces before it begins.

The original Good Times ran for 6 seasons in the 1970s and chronicled the plight of a resilient and cohesive black family struggling to survive in the projects of Chicago. The show touched on family values and depicted how, despite a system that at the time still disfavored black Americans, people could fight for and earn a higher standard of life. Tenacity and pride were fixtures of the Evans household.

When a fan and follower of the original show hears that a reboot of the show will follow the lives of a new generation of the Evans family, it is natural to assume the work ethic and family values would lead to a more successful and better off household. Unfortunately, the trailer reveals how asinine that assumption is. 

The Evans family of the new animated series is still living in the projects of Chicago, and if the overdue bills shown stuck to the refrigerator are any indication, they are worse off than their predecessors. The two-and-a-half-minute trailer is rife with disgusting and racist stereotypes. At one point the teenage son is shown in a conference with his mother and the principal. When the principal says that the young man will have to repeat the 10th grade for a third time, the mother asks, “Is there anything you can suggest to help him get to the drive-thru?” suggesting that a life in the fast-food industry is the highest honor she expects of her son. As if the question were not disturbing enough, the principal responds that the underage young man might consider a life of amateur pornography on OnlyFans. 

The trailer also wastes no time explaining away the failure of the new generation of the Evans family to continue the progress made by the previous show’s generation. White men in suits are depicted sneakily and maliciously bringing boxes that read “Free Guns” into the neighborhood and dropping them on the doorsteps of the black households while a voiceover says, “It’s the system. They put the guns and drugs on the streets.” This ludicrous and revisionist montage coupled with the presence of a drug-dealing baby in a stroller as a main character offers one message to the black community: You are helpless, hopeless, and doomed to a life of poverty, so you might as well accept it. 

Thankfully, many black Americans have stepped up and called out the show for the racist insult that it is.

Leonard Greene wrote in the New York Daily News, “Last week, Netflix released a trailer of its animated ‘Good Times’ reboot, and everything about it is shameful. Not only is the family still ‘scratchin’ and survivin’,’ as the old theme song goes, now they are showing out and stereotyping.” He went on to write, “’Good Times’ was the earliest example of a two-parent African American household on television. When it debuted in 1975, people of all races tuned in to see how the Evans family were keeping their heads above water. So for producers, including Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, to associate their garbage with a television classic, it is the ultimate insult.”

Depictions of black Americans in Hollywood have been evolving for decades. The 2004 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Crash, showed many facets of racism in America. One of the more subtle scenes involved Terrence Howard playing a successful television producer. He was in conflict with a colleague over the speaking patterns of one of their black characters. The young man was delivering his lines in a way that was “less black.” Howard’s character calls out the insinuation that an audience would not view the character as a black man if he speaks properly. The inherent linking of skin color to sounding uneducated was supposed to be a relic of the past. The entire point of the scene was that in 2004, this type of stereotypical racism on television should be viewed as derogatory and that maybe a positive change was forthcoming.

Here we are 20 years later, and Hollywood is moving in the opposite direction. The new Good Times reboot reinforces that modern black America is synonymous with violence, drugs, promiscuity, poverty, under-education, and hopelessness. It is the antithesis of what the original show sought to impress upon its viewers. And it is a defeatist, victimizing message to a large group of Americans that Hollywood needs to recant swiftly.