Sistas 'N the City
By Sarah Rotman
Sistas 'N the City is an animated show featured on urbanentertainment.com,
a site that provides entertainment for the African-American community
(this is part of their mission statement; the content and characters
of all the animated shows and short films is focused on being black
in America). There are four episodes of Sistas now on the site,
each of which features a core group of four African-American women
who "live, love, and dish like only black women can." The
title, and the premise, is a parody of the popular HBO series Sex
in the City, set in New York, which features four wealthy white
female professionals and follows them in their romantic relationships.
Both shows advance the narrative with voiceover from the protagonist,
in this case, Tamika-a lithe, with-it professional (think Vivica Fox
in any movie). Sistas has adopted the sitcom convention of
easily stereotyped characters to allow the audience immediate identification,
and it uses this device to explore some provocative content: Intra-racial
elitism, interracial marriage, class, black masculinity, and black
sexuality. Although the characters in Sistas deal with more
challenging content than their whitewashed HBO counterparts, the weakness
of the show is that the characters are too one-dimensional. The characters
can easily be categorized as familiar stereotypes of black women:
the bourgeois wanna-be white, the sexpot ingénue, the deep-voiced
lesbian, and the stylish professional. Future directions this show
might take would involve getting beyond the stereotypes without shying
away from provocative political content. In doing so, the show may
attract a broader swath of the African-American community. And while
niche markets can be successful, perhaps the show's producers should
consider reaching an audience outside of the African-American community,
so the political and social messages don't fall on deaf ears.
All in all, however, the show does fulfill the potentials of its media
in several ways. It is fully aware that it is not on prime time television,
or even cable, and does not shy away from sexually explicit content
that would earn it severe ratings in other media (two lesbians topless
in a hot tub; a doctor/patient tryst reminiscent of soft-core porn).
Animation allows for some freedom with characters and plot (Tamika's
boyfriend is morphed into a toddler when his mother calls interrupting
their date). The show is able to pinpoint a narrow audience with its
carriage on an entertainment website for the African-American community.
It is just about the right length for comfortable Internet viewing,
and its episodic cliffhangers encourage the viewer to watch the next
segment.