Different World reboot, then rewatched the original. Here’s what I noticed about representation, HBCUs, and what I might be missing.
This post is me thinking out loud. I haven’t reached conclusions, and I’m not recommending anything. Where I’m unsure or lack the language, I say so.
Going in
A Different World ran from 1987 to 1993. It was a spinoff of The Cosby Show, and it was recently rebooted on Netflix. I went into the reboot wanting to enjoy it. I remembered the original actors, and some of them came back, as regulars and as guests.
My main question was whether the reboot would be “Blacker” than the original. Because what I remembered and what I’ve been rewatching in the original is that is was pretty whitewashed, but was still more representative of some facets of blackness that hadn’t made it onto tv at that time.
How I watched, then and now
I came to the reboot differently than I came to the original. In the 80s I was a kid watching a sitcom, and I wasn’t in a position to see how it was built. This time I came with decades of living, reading, and listening behind me, and a marketer’s habit of asking who a product is designed for.
Rewatching the original now, with that knowledge, is a different experience from watching it new. I can’t un-know what I know. Some of what follows may say more about how I’ve changed than about the show.
What I remembered
I remembered the original the way I remembered The Cosby Show: a Black family presented in a very white way. Doctors and lawyers. Kids who talked about college from an early age as if it were assumed. For the 1980s, that was not common across Black families. The representation probably mattered a great deal then, what many white folks likely thought of as a reach-for-the-stars kind of picture. It also made a fully Black family on screen palatable to white audiences, as long as they acted like any other family in Brooklyn who happened to be Black.
Newer shows like Blackish give a more tangible picture of living a Black life in America, even though Blackish also deals with biracial identity.
What I loved in the reboot
The show bands. The high-stepping, the music, the flash.
My own band background is DCI, and I enjoyed it, but it is militaristic, drilled, and controlled. There is showmanship, but it sits inside classical forms of physical and musical expression. When my high school played Burke High School, I looked forward to seeing the Burke Show Band all week. Burke’s campus sits next to the Citadel’s, so we saw them there often. When Drumline came out, I was thrilled. Now my algorithm has picked up on it, and my Instagram and Facebook feed me show bands and D9 celebrations during those times of year. I love that. It is an amazing form of expression, and it shows up in the reboot.
I loved the family legacy, too. Whitley’s mother and aunt attended Hillman before her, and now Whitley’s daughter, Deborah, the main character, is the third consecutive generation to go there. That gives the show a sense of history the original couldn’t have.
One episode reflected the coordinated bomb threats against HBCUs in 2022. They were frightening, and seeing them on screen made the show feel current in a way the original rarely did.
And I recognized the freshman year. Many of the same experiences I had 30 years ago are in there: the first year of adulthood, which transcends race, and the mistakes that become chances to learn. That’s how wisdom emerges.
Rewatching the original
I started to doubt that I remembered the original accurately, so I rewatched it. As a marketer, I read most of what I saw as one question: how do you make a show about Black people at an HBCU that draws enough white viewers to earn ratings and keep the funding?
- Clothes. Suits and ties, structured jackets, shoulder pads, lots of glasses. Dwayne Wayne’s flip-up glasses are the trademark, but the overall look is classically white.
- Hair. In the early seasons, the women’s hair reads as white hairstyles, either wigs or straightening, weaves, and extensions. No afros, cornrows, or braids. No fades with designs, no angled high-tops. More Black hairstyles start to appear in later seasons, but they stay conservative and are used mostly to establish a character’s identity. A graduate student with dreads, Shazza Zulu (played by Gary Dourdan in 15 episodes), turns out to be a failing student whose thesis was rejected, and he’s called out as a fake. Dreads still sit in the “alt” category, never anything we’re shown as serious.
- Skin tone. The cast skews toward lighter skin. I don’t see anyone really dark. (I don’t have good language for this, because it isn’t my experience. I’ve read about it and heard people discuss it publicly. There is an undertone in the show, and if you listen quietly you can hear Black characters discriminate against each other by skin tone, because different cultures rank depths of Blackness as more or less prestigious. Some of the lighter-toned actors may have been cast because they were biracial. I don’t know.)
- Music. The party scenes play what the network considered neutral music, which is ultimately white music. I’m not hearing Black artists of the 80s. You can chalk that up to rights and permissions, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think the network decided Black music would turn viewers away. Boyz II Men show up a few times in later seasons. My read is that they were a harmony group singing about universal themes, so they didn’t get “too Black” with rap or the violent subjects many people assume belong only to Black music. (That’s my interpretation of why they were chosen, not something I know.)
- Majors. Highly respectable ones. Dwayne is an engineering and math major, Kim is pre-med, and there is a business major. Sinbad arrived as the comic relief.
I couldn’t see any of this in the 80s as in any way out of the ordinary for black people as I was going into my college years as a second generation college student, so what I saw then was people just like me, just black; I couldn’t see the other pieces that surrounded that narrative. That’s part of the point: white viewers have to be conscious of this and look for it.
Season 4, and what I’m still noticing
I’ve made it to season 4. A white actor, Andrew Lowery, has joined the cast as Matthew, a character with no last name. My guess is that ratings or feedback said the show was too Black and not diverse enough. That’s a guess, not something I know.
There’s another absence I want to describe, and I’m trying to be descriptive rather than judgmental. Caricatures of Black people have long leaned on a set of exaggerated features: wide, rounded noses, full lips, large rear ends. These are caricatures, and many Black people look nothing like them. On this show, the actors/characters have almost none of those features. Most women in particular have modest busts and very little curve. Noses are narrow and defined, and none has especially full lips.
Season 4 opened with several women returning from summer break having lost weight, in more form-fitting outfits. That’s when it hit me. I didn’t see it until season 3, mostly because it’s emphasized more in women, and I don’t usually look at women that way.
I suspect this connects to casting, but that’s speculation. I don’t know anyone’s background, and I don’t know how to say this well. I’m saying only that the look on screen is narrow.
Saved by the Bell with a different cast
Parts of the original feel very familiar to me from Saved by the Bell: the story arcs, the kinds of episode topics, and especially the fashion. Both follow the characters out of school and into post-school and married life.
In my memory, the original didn’t deal with Blackness in the US head on often enough. I think that reflects white executives and producers, ratings skewed by white viewers, and a general bias toward what they could get away with and stay on the air. (To be fair, the show did take on heavier subjects in later seasons, and I haven’t checked every episode.)
I’m also comparing it with Roseanne and The Golden Girls, shows with very different casts, ages, and settings. Somewhere around season 3, all three start tackling abortion, being gay, rape, and calling out racism. A Different World does it more subtly. (I’m not sure how to frame this comparison. Maybe it’s just the sitcom arc.)
The reboot, and one thing I’m waiting on
The reboot’s cast doesn’t read as lighter-toned the way the original’s does. It also has a character from Ghana & Nigeria on the continent of Africa, not African American. I expected that distinction to come up, and maybe it’s saved for later seasons. It’s an interesting dynamic. I still have to go back to specific reboot scenes and see whether there’s more range in faces and bodies than in the original.
Where my experience runs out
I know people who attended HBCUs, and I know professors who teach at them now. My own time on an HBCU campus is thin. I’ve been to South Carolina State a couple of times, decades ago, for an academic competition. We went to one building, did our challenges, got judged, and learned who advanced. It was spring, so no football. I don’t remember anything about the campus itself. I’m calling myself out on that.
If you ever get the chance to go to a Black band competition, go. It is incredible.
What I’m asking myself
You can’t know what you don’t know, but you can know to ask the question. The one I’m asking is: What am I missing? What don’t I have in my experience that would help me make this connection? I find that a useful jumping-off point, and AI can be one place to start, though not something to depend on completely.
Your turn
- Have you seen the reboot?
- Have you rewatched the original? Both are on Netflix.
- Does the new one stand up?
- Is it a good extension of the original?
- Is it a more authentic picture of Black college life at an HBCU?
