Why Season 2 of Empire Fails to Live Up to Expectations
Staff Writer: Jana Henson, ’19
The first thing we notice is the noise. Thousands of attendees rally around a stage that rests at the front of a large green lawn. The camera pans around the crowd, resting on the signs and tee-shirts emblazoned with their message: “#FREE LUCIUS”. Suddenly, the crowd is silenced. They are all transfixed on a person clad in a gorilla suit being lowered onto the stage inside a man-sized cage. They watch in awe—or in my case confusion—as this person grabs the bars, howls, and throws themselves around the cage and beats on their chest until they are set down. The mysterious person slowly steps out of this tacky costume and is revealed none other than Cookie Lyon, clad in an equally tacky outfit.
She hypes the crowd up, her dress—made from a combination of peacock feathers, mesh and sequins—glinting in the light. Cookie tries and succeeds in sending the message to the crowd that Lucius Lyon,her ex-husband, is a victim of the mass-incarceration epidemic (when in fact, he’s just plain guilty). Although Cookie was successful in sending her message to the crowd, the combination of spectacle and artificiality in the season premier of the hit television series Empire sends a completely different message to the viewer. This isn’t the Empire we once knew and loved.
Season one of Empire was a refreshing burst of color in an otherwise whitewashed television and film industry. It captured our hearts and minds through its bold statements about homophobia in the hip hop industry, the “true” lives of entertainers, and offered a new definition of the “American Dream”.
However, this season Empire has diverged from its original vision of portraying the lives of a black family in the entertainment industry and their definition of success in America. The show has become a superficial mess characterized by poorly cast guest appearances, (Chris Rock’s portrayal of drug kingpin Frank Gathers comes to mind) and the Tyler Perry-esque melodrama undercut with comedic relief.
Empire’s badly executed attempt to up the ante this season has led to an inadvertent maintenance of “black pathology”. The idea that black culture itself impedes the progress of its people, and injustices inflicted on black people is immediately reciprocated as gun and gang violence. Black pathology is used to rationalize Cookie, Hakeem, and Andre’s failed hostile takeover of Empire. Lucius’ cold-blood murder of Frank Gathers is a ferevent example of ; the actions of these characters are seen as result of their culture, not their decisions as individuals. Empire also presents the idea that the only way to become wealthy and successful as a black person is through music or drug dealing, and success achieved through any other way comes through abandonment of one’s blackness. We rarely ever see a successful black individual outside of the entertainment industry, and those we do see are constantly antagonized.
Should Empire should be written off completely? Of course not. But the recognition that they are limiting a powerful, diverse show to its stereotypes, is certainly due.
Until then, I’m parting from the Lyons.
