Color Adjustment
| Color Adjustment | |
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| Directed by | Marlon Riggs |
| Produced by | Vivian Kleiman & Marlon Riggs |
| Written by | Marlon Riggs |
| Music by | Mary Watkins |
| Cinematography | Rick Butler & Michael Anderson |
| Edited by | Deborah Hoffmann |
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Release date
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Running time
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86 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Color Adjustment is a 1992 documentary film that traces 40 years of race relations and the representation of African Americans through the lens of prime time television entertainment, scrutinizing television's racial myths. In some ways this documentary narrated by Ruby Dee is a sequel to Riggs’ Ethnic Notions, now examining racial stereotypes in the broadcast age.
While revisiting American television's most popular stars and shows, among them Amos 'n' Andy, Beulah, The Nat King Cole Show, Julia, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Good Times, Roots, The Cosby Show and others, Riggs portrays an illuminating history of the race conflict as reflected in television. It asserts that African Americans were allowed into America's primetime family only insofar as their presence didn't challenge the mythology of the American Dream central to television's merchandising function. It demonstrates how the television networks managed to absorb divisive racial conflict into the familiar non-threatening formats of prime-time television.
However, the sitcoms surrounding African American characters did not reflect the actual societal values of the time. The sitcoms tended to retreat from the conflict surrounding the Civil Rights movement and pretend that society was "colorless". Clips from the shows are interwoven with the parallel story of the Civil Rights movement as brought into living rooms on the evening news. Writers and producers—such as Hal Kanter, Norman Lear, Steve Bochco, David Wolper, and others—take viewers behind the scenes of their creations. Esther Rolle, Diahann Carroll, Tim Reid and other Black performers ruminate upon the meaning and impact of the roles they themselves played in shaping prime time race relations. Cultural critics Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Herman Gray, Alvin Poussaint, and Patricia Turner suggest that while these television programs entertained, they also reinforced and legitimated a particular notion of the "American Family."
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