It's pretty disparaging to hardly ever see any black people on television shows and in film when you're black. The reason why people were upset about a lack of black characters on a show like Girls—one that tries to champion itself as being an accurate and holistic portrayal of the millennial in a New York City—is because it makes blacks seem like the other. The reason why people have no place to get upset at a show like Mad Men is because the absence of black folks is telling you something very specific, that blacks were unquestionably the other in the 1960s. The absence, which may not always be an intended exclusion, and especially if it is never an intended exclusion, perpetuates at the very least an institutionalised form of racism and discrimination.
It's no different than the marginalization women find themselves in on and behind the camera. This issue isn't new by any means though. In the 1970s, blaxploitation films were made as a reaction to the scarcity of black heroes and strong characters in Hollywood.
That brings us to this Mad Men parody called Don-O-Mite, which is a blaxploitation of the show about advertising that really isn't about advertising at all.
It was made by the advertising firm Leroy & Clarkson, which interestingly, has a staff that more closely resembles that cast of Mad Men than the cast in the parody, but there's been plenty of digression here.
The skit is amusing. Watch it. Laugh. Share it.
[via Uproxx]
