Thursday, February 16, 2012

The A-Team



The TV show the A-Team started in 1983 and as the main characters shows three white military men and one black man. The group escape a military prison and are on the run for a crime that they did commit, but under orders, and were framed for and the show follows them as they work as the good-guy vigilantes around the world.

This video shows the opening credits for the show, and there are subtle hints of both gender and race issues throughout. Mr. T's character B.A. Baracus is shown last in the credits of the show, with the other typically American actors shown before him.

This link talks more about the show and the slight racial slurs that are portrayed in it,




"Rounding out the parade of insipidity was the popular A-Team, starring Mr. T. This show centered around the exploits of a fugitive Army Commando unit. Mr. T. gained notoriety as the vicious Clubber Lang from Rocky III. The concern was that Mr. T. presented a very bad vision of African-American manhood. Here we had a muscular Black man dressed in shredded denim and numerous gold chains who spent the majority of his time growling about "fools" and his reluctance to fly. Mr. T. existed in the socio-political framework of Booker T. Washington. His physical and mechanical abilities were stressed, not his intellect. Often, he was called upon to build tanks and cannons out of school buses and refrigerators. The one positive attribute of all these shows was that none were set within inner-city ghettos."

Not only the racial issues, but it shows that women did not play a necessarily important role at this time as they are not featured in the show as particularly important characters or main roles. The legacy of the A-Team however, lives on to this day, as told by the remake in 2010.

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