The Skyline Newspaper

Cartoon: Created and Designed by Jonathan Smith, Sul Ross Senior

Why Are There No Black People in “The Jetsons”?

By David Johnson
Skyline Contributor

There’s an old racist joke I heard once that went something like this.

Q: Why are there no black people in “The Jetsons”?

A: It’s a utopia, isn’t it? (or something to that effect)

Racist jokes are by definition offensive, and this one obviously is as well, especially so because it’s not even funny. I heard it occasionally over the years and thought nothing more than that: it was a bad joke.

Recently, though, something clicked, and I realized it wasn’t a joke, it was an answer. The question was something I’d long wondered about the show and never seen addressed anywhere.

If you watch the intro to “The Jetsons,” before George goes off to work or is emasculated by his wallet-grabbing wife, there’s a zoom in on the planet earth from outer space, particularly North America.

It then skips to the family, and then it’s all about stilt houses and floating buildings. So far as I know, no episode involved anyone traveling to the surface of the planet. It’s still there because we can see it from space, and we have to assume those stilts go somewhere, but no one in the show even glances downward, it seems. So what in the devil is below them?

Finally I realized my question was answered by another question, and to a lesser extent its punch line.

“The Jetsons” is a racially homogenous utopia. If I really wanted to get deep into psychoanalytical scrutiny, I might say this represents the ideal view of the white middle class of the early ‘60s who in addition to supporting the nuclear family and stay-at-home mom, still wanted segregation and the ability to avoid all minorities, hence the introduction of robots as maids and other such servants to replace typical minority labor. If this was forty years ago, I’d probably quote Karl Marx and make liberal use of the word “bourgeoisie,” too.

More likely, it was just the standard of the times because other than The Great Gazoo, I don’t remember any non-whites on “The Flintstones,” either, but of course that was a much better show, and there’s a simple fictional solution. Since it was set in the past, ethnically diverse populations didn’t exist at the local level, and you wouldn’t expect to see them. It’s over-thinking what was intended as a cartoon version of “The Honeymooners” with (talking) dinosaurs, but in terms of fridge logic, it’s a relatively easily solved dilemma. In the case of an in-universe solution to “The Jetsons,” the problem is much more troubling.

America is a fairly ethnically diverse country, and this was true at the time the show was written. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t keep becoming so, but the lack of any other skin color on “The Jetsons” suggests something sinister ranging from deportation to outright genocide. I don’t think that happened, though. It’s possible, but we’re talking about a society that finds pushing a button grueling and refuses to travel anywhere without a conveyor belt. Besides, everyone in the show seems fairly nice aside from the bosses, and I don’t think even Mr. Spacely has the stomach for that kind of business.

Perhaps, then, minorities are more common in other parts of Orbit City, and George and his family never interact with them out of chance. Still, you’d expect to see someone with a tan flying a car once in a while.

So the answer to my question of what’s on the ground is minorities. Minorities are on the ground. In effect, the Jetsons are the product and illustration of the progression of white flight, first from the cities to the suburbs, then into gated communities, which eventually became stilted and floating communities.

I imagine the Jetsons’ world is not legally segregated, of course, and no one would consider himself a racist. If you tried telling Jane the racist joke, she’d probably frown at you and cut it off mid-way.

Structurally, it would be true, though. Think about it for a moment: George’s job consists of pressing a single button all day. A trained monkey could do his job, or even a trained robot if you wanted to save money on the bananas and defecation clean-up. Rosie, stated to be a model so old they don’t even make replacement parts for her anymore, is capable of doing George’s job and a dozen others round the clock. George himself could certainly handle dozens of buttons to press, but in fact his occupation is intended to be as inefficient as possible. For this, he is paid well enough that his family lives comfortably on his lone salary.

Judging what was shown of the technology of that future, nearly every job could be entirely automated or fulfilled by a machine. George’s job is actually nothing more than cleverly designed social welfare. If anything, his frequent firings are to keep up the charade that his employment is in anyway performance-related. He’s always rehired within 30 minutes, anyway.

All this is important to the people down below as well. It’s conceivable every industrial and service job is already being accomplished robotically. That means that all of the surface population probably have the same situation as George with straightforward or glorified social welfare, only getting paid considerably less for it to ensure they never improve their economic and social status enough to get off the ground.

Everyone wants off the surface due to the effects of global warming, now in full swing, the smog and acid rain clouds pumped out by the factories where most materials are produced (you know, everything not sprocket or cog in nature), and widespread crime and violence thanks to the lack of viable licit careers and shortage of police protection.

I’d like to see a show about life down there, dealing with the excesses and waste of the segregated elite above. The floating homes probably flush their toilets right out the bottom, and debris from flying car collisions is almost guaranteed to be fatal to someone on the ground. No one up there remembers there is a ground, but the dream of everyone below is to move into a sky-high apartment.

The theme song that immediately comes to mind is of course “The Jeffersons,” where “movin’ on up” gets a much more literal connotation, but since it would be a family that was still working class, this cartoon would be much closer to an adaptation of “Good Times.”

Our protagonists would be black (they could be any ethnicity, but this works the best as contrast), both mother and father would work, perhaps more than one job each. The father would work as a mechanic for outdated robot models, putting him outside the sham welfare system and giving an opportunity for an appearance by Rosie the Robot Maid to visit and establish where this family fits in “Jetsons” continuity. The mother would work a welfare, button-pushing job she’d get fired from permanently once their family started earning too much money, and something else on the side, maybe craft related.

The daughter and son would both go to school, and being older, the daughter would work somewhere, too. At 14, she’d graduate and work full-time. She or the son would have artistic/intellectual aspirations, mainly to round out the sitcom formula and give potential for episode plots.

Neighbors, friends, etc., would be other ethnicities, and since this is a television show, they would probably be stereotypes played for laughs, but they wouldn’t have to be. Everyone would struggle to make ends meet and hope there’s not too much month left at the end of the money.

If I were writing the show, the plot would follow the family’s struggle to make and save enough money to move up above the clouds, but each episode would be more concerned with the results of the society we already know and what they take for granted, how ridiculous it all is, and ultimately how this family, despite wanting to move away and despite being materially worse off than families like the Jetsons, isn’t substantially more miserable for it. It wouldn’t be realistic because things would be mostly okay within a half-hour, no one would starve or die, and it would always stay a comedy, but the family’s head and problems wouldn’t be in the clouds. 

It would certainly be more interesting than “The Jetsons.”

Olof Pilar and the Olympic Wake-up Call

Steve Lang
News and Publications

A fool and his money are soon partying.” --Anonymous

With the 2008 Olympic torch relay underway, scenes of past glories are illuminated.

For native Minnesotans, Olof Pliar rekindles memories.

Olof’s talents were recognized at childhood. A large-for-his-age six-year-old, he wandered through his parents’ farmyard one day when he spied a weasel zipping into the henhouse. Knowing little of a weasel’s habits save for the fact that the critter threatened to interrupt Olof’s steady diet of scrambled eggs and deep-fried chicken, the lad lumbered into the chicken coop.

Intent on assaulting a setting hen, the weasel found itself caught in mid-leap in Olof’s powerful grasp. The lad took the squirming, squalling varmint outside, cocked his arm and hurled a 50-yard forward pelt into the fork of a cottonwood tree.

A few days later, Olof drop-kicked a marauding badger over an 11-foot lilac bush, at a distance of 64 strides, marked off by his 6-5 father. When a snapping turtle crawled in the yard, Olof grabbed the intruder by the tail, tucked the reptile in the crook of his arm, spun once and discus-ed him into a slough on the edge of the property, a good 240 feet from the house. Later, he was said to have caught a fox stealing a Rhode Island Red in the 150 yards to the nearest stone fence, but some of his feats might be figments of the imagination. I won’t mention the day he allegedly knocked down a circling crow with a rock, either.

Naturally, Olof’s athleticism, speed, dexterity and other talents drew the attention of sports fans, coaches, scouts and promoters. He was courted for various all-star teams from grade school, and throughout his formative years, starred in every imaginable form of competition, from marbles to marathons. He proved to be a stellar hitter, ace pitcher, sharp-shooting basketball star, rampaging runningback, peerless placekicker, and almost certain to represent his state and nation in the Olympic decathlon. And, he traveled to every contest on his bicycle.

Olof was offered and accepted a full four-year scholarship to the University of Minnesota, the shrine of athletic prowess before professional sports franchises found homes in the Upper Midwest. He won most valuable player awards as a freshman in football, basketball, baseball and track, and that summer, was invited to the Olympic trials for the upcoming games in Rome. After two days of tryouts, the track and field coaching staff recognized that Olof was not only the best decathlete on the squad, but probably in the world.

Unfortunately, as many life travelers learn, the road to ruin is often paved with good intentions. The coaching staff, in an effort to keep Olof’s talents secret from the rest of the international field, disguised him as an equipment manager, selected two of his teammates as the decathlon entrants and penciled him in as an alternate. At the last moment, one of the decathletes would be scratched due to injury, Olof would enter in his place, breeze to victory in the decathlon and bring home the bacon and glory.

When in Rome, Olof learned that idle hands...and feet...could lead him in other directions than rigid training. He loafed, and did as the ancient Romans did, engaging in a wave of frivolity and raucous behavior that soon left him exhausted. On the first day of the decathlon, he slept on the infield grass at the Olympic Stadium instead of warming up.

During the final call for the 1500 meter run, Olof’s coaches frantically searched for their missing star, and finally found him dozing near a stack of hurdles.

“Get up and run, Olof, the 1,500 meters are about to start!” a coach shrieked.

Olof shook himself awake, stood up to stretch, and just as quickly, tumbled into a heap on the ground.

“I can’t coach, my legs are asleep!” he groaned.

A trainer was summoned, and he began to massage and tug on Olof’s legs...

...just as I’m pulling yours.

In short, Olof was disqualified, and in anger, his coach ripped the nametag of Olof Pliar off his jersey, tore it into pieces, and threw the paper into the air.

As the bits settled to the ground, the letters of Olof’s name spelled out a new message...

...April Fool.

Steve Lang seldom plays the piano, but he often plays the fool.