Ed Piskor’s "Hip Hop Family Tree” (pictured) takes a look at the music's history in a comic book series; young comedians test their chops in roast battles; the Writer's Guild examines the lack of racial and gender diversity among TV writers.
Diversity among TV writers is down from previous years
For months, people have been talking about this year’s Academy Awards, in which every one of the 20 acting nominees was white. Well, the statistics in writing for television are equally lopsided when you consider race, gender and age.
The Writers Guild of America, West examined the 2013-2014 TV season and found that 1 out of every 9 shows on TV that season didn’t have a single female in its writers room. Additionally, according to the guild's study, more than a third of TV shows had no minority writers, and nearly a third of all TV series didn’t have any writers over the age of 50.
Tery Lopez, the director of diversity for the Writers Guild of America, West, spoke with The Frame's John Horn about the lack of diversity in the writers' room and what the industry can do to improve it.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
This the second time you have done this study where you look at a full season of TV shows, and you found that the trend is going in the wrong direction, is that right?
That is absolutely correct. The numbers have dropped for both women and minorities and older writers as well, but the numbers for women and minorities are staggering.
Women writers account for 20% of TV employment during the 2013-2014 TV season, which was down from 30.5% in the 2011-2012 season. Were there certain networks more at fault than others?
I wouldn't call it fault. I think it's more of a responsibility that we all have to take as an industry. That responsibility lies in the hands of networks and studios and agencies as well. It's also about the agencies and which clients are being pushed to these networks during hiring and staffing season. For the Writers' Guild, our responsibility in that is educating our show-runners and letting them know that there are women, older writers and writers of color that are accessible to them and part of the membership.
The trends are going in the wrong direction the way you guys see it. What are the steps that could be done other than calling attention to what the data says?
Our responsibility at the guild is putting on programs such as TV Access Writer Project, which is a program for minorities, women, gay and lesbian, older writers and writers with disabilities. What has happened in the past with this program, in the last six years, half of those honorees — and there's more than 60 — have gone gotten some type of work. So this is our way of trying to help these numbers grow within our union.
But you're still talking about very incremental steps. You're saying that it has to be up to organizations like your own to grow organically?
Exactly. It's our responsibility, and also the networks and studios have their programs that they put on that they're doing their part in. And now we just really need to hope that the agencies see this as a business. Our statistics [indicate] that shows that have diversity come in with high numbers. So diversity does equal good business. And with shows like this year's "Black-ish," "Fresh Off The Boat," "Cristela" and "Jane The Virgin," we are now seeing more pilots with more diversity. With that shift, we're gonna hope that it's gonna change within the writers' room as well.
You also looked at the executive producer or show-runner positions. These are the people who are really hiring the writers, and in a large part, they're also casting their shows. You found that minorities occupy just 5.5% of those positions, which was down 7.8% in 2011. So I think what happens there is that the people who are making the hiring decisions, as they become less diverse, their inclinations may be to hire less diverse writers.
That's the thought process behind it. If there were more Shonda Rhimeses, we'd see more diverse shows. Shonda is a great example. Her staffs are very diverse and our hope is that these writers of color, women writers, that they move within the ranks from staff writer to story editor to executive producer to creators and show-runners. Once they do and they fill that portion of the market, they are gonna do what show-runners do everyday — they hire who they know and who they've been working with and have experience with. Once this happens, the concentration of women and minorities writers get to those positions of power, which are show-runners and creators.
Anything goes at The Comedy Store's Roast Battle
The roast is a sacred tradition for stand-up comedians – maybe a little too sacred. The form has essentially remained unchanged from the classic Friars Club roasts of the 1960s and '70s to the more recent Comedy Central installments featuring Pamela Anderson and James Franco.
But a group of comedians is taking the roast to new, ever more insulting places at L.A.'s venerable Comedy Store.
Roast Battle is part-wrestling, part-rap battle. In two to three rounds of head-to-head competition, two stand-ups — typically unknowns who know each other — trade insults for a raucous audience and celebrity judges who eventually choose a champion.
“It’s a new take on the classic Friars Club roast,” says Jeremy Craven, a participating comedian. “This is what happens if the person you were roasting was allowed to roast you back.”
Brian Moses created the Roast Battle after trying to settle a dispute between two fellow comics. After recommending they slap each other to a resolution, he instead recommended: “How about you guys write some jokes about each other, and instead of slap boxing, we’ll do verbal boxing?” Moses says “they wrote some jokes and everybody in the room loved it.”
What comics love is a forum to test boundaries – sexual, political or racial. While stand-up is traditionally an outlet for social criticism, mainstream comics have more to lose by tackling sensitive subject matter than those who perform at Roast Battle.
Each Roast Battle features a “Black Guys” corner where stereotypes run rampant, and a “White Racist” corner where America’s latent racism is brutally satirized. When a “Black lives matter!” chant breaks out after a racially-themed joke, the White Racist yells out: “Not in Ferguson!” Boos and laughter follow.
Moses and the other comedians are drawn to the anything-goes environment. “You can be as open and free as possible as long as it’s funny,” Moses says. “We’ve done a good job of being funny.”
The battles generally take place between unknowns, but the establishment is impressed. “There aren’t a lot of places you can say anything,” says Jeffrey Ross, who is known as the Roastmaster General for his appearances at every Comedy Central roast. “Roast Battle is that. It’s a temple of free speech.”
Ross is a regular judge at Roast Battle, and he has brought friends such as Sarah Silverman and Dave Chappelle along to be guest judges. “This is an extension of our animalistic instincts.”
Roast Battle has been compared to the brutal brawls of Fight Club and the rap cyphers of 8 Mile, but Ross has a different take. “It’s like the American Idol of insult comedy,” he says. Though he runs the judging, Ross declines the Simon Cowell part: “I like to think of myself as the Paula Abdul.”
'Hip Hop Family Tree': Comic book artist Ed Piskor inks a comprehensive history of rap music
Pittsburgh-based comic book artist Ed Piskor has a deep love of hip hop music, and his obsession isn’t limited to collecting classic albums.
Piskor has devoted countless hours to painstakingly research, write and illustrate a history of the musical genre in his comic book series, “Hip Hop Family Tree.” The first two published volumes span the formative years of 1975-83, and Piskor is on the hook to do a total of six separate volumes for Fantagraphics Books.
Piskor joined The Frame recently to talk with host John Horn about what he learned during his research for the series, how Robert Crumb influenced his project, and what hip-hop heavyweights think about his work
Interview Highlights:
What makes hip hop and comic books such a natural marriage?
There are alter egos in hip hop and alter ego in mainstream superhero comics. But the thing I like that is similar between both of them is just how they're both kind of cultural bastard children, and they make parents nervous when their kids are into them too much.
Did you know this history pretty well or did you have to go out and research it before you had to start illustrating and writing?
I am a fan, for sure, but I'm handling this in a journalistic fashion as much as possible, so I need to corroborate my sources, get this thing to be as accurate as possible. I want to create something that is highly comprehensive so that if a fan or scholar or academic who is interested in learning this history, to get all of this information in one place, they're forced to use a comic book, which is very important to me. I really believe in this art form, so I like the idea of forcing people into having to read a comic whether they like it or not.
Were you surprised about some of things that you found during your research?
One thing that did really surprise me was the important role that the downtown Manhattan art world played in the proliferation and growth of hip hop culture, because it was very close to dying out and being finished in the early '80s before people like Debbie Harry from Blondie and Fab Five Freddy brought the graffiti artists to downtown Manhattan. By bringing those guys to Manhattan to add ambience to their art gallery shows, they would bring people like Afrika Bambaataa and other DJs, so that artists who lived in the city didn't have to travel to the big scary uptown scene to check out what was going on with this new hip-hop thing.
What was Deborah Harry's role in all of this?
Debbie Harry was like an art patron who was indiscriminate in her love of art. And what she heard from Fab Five Freddy about this thing that was happening in the Bronx, I feel that it mirrored a lot of what was going on at [the club] CBGB to her — a lot of the punk rock movement and aesthetic that piqued her interest. She went uptown and caught a couple shows and was completely mesmerized. A lot of people think that Run DMC were the first rap music act on Saturday Night Live, but that's not true. She was a host in the very early '80s and she brought the Funky Four Plus One...She discovered them from going uptown with Fred to check out this hip hop scene that she'd been hearing about. So she played a very very important part.
(Fast-forward the video below to 11:00 to see Debbie Harry intro the Funky Four)
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What are the influences you cite as an illustrator and an author?
My influences in terms of art and comics are pretty standard, guys like Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, The Hernandez Brothers. Almost everybody from the Fantagraphics family generation one. I don't say that because they are my publisher, it's just that for a while they were publishing the best comics that existed throughout the '80s and early '90s. Something that they all share is how they were able to have the confidence to allow their id to be showcased within their comics. Which is something I'm struggling with and I have to grow as an artist to be able to accomplish that.
Right now what I'm doing is these kinds of historic comics where I'm able to separate myself from the subject matter. I almost consider the hip hop comic to be kind of a companion piece to some of the stuff that Robert Crumb was doing when he was showcasing and featuring old blues musicians that he liked and adored and loved. Those were probably the most influential comics.