Is Flavor Flav a Modern Day Coon?
By Diane Littlejohn
Flavor Flav!!! Its like watching
a bad car wreck. You know you shouldn’t be watching it, but you
just can’t turn away. His momma named him William
Drayton, but the world knows him as Flavor Flav. Member
of influential and socially conscious hip-hop group,
Public Enemy, Flava Flav has gained recent success
on urban America’s answer to The Bachelor, “Flavor
of Love.” In the hit show’s second season,
20 women of all races, sizes and weave lengths compete
for the affections of Flavor Flav. With his top hat,
coattails and cane, resembling a burnt Jiminy Cricket,
Flav romances his lovely ladies by taking them out
on elaborate dates, eliminating one girl each show.
Complete with lots of catfights, chaos and cussing,
Flavor of Love is the ultimate guilty pleasure.
First off, it’s just hard for me to believe
that women half his age actually want to settle down
with the 47-year-old, father of six and former crack
addict, Flavor Flav. And second, are the aspiring models,
singers, actresses and pole dancers really there to
share Flav’s supposed riches or to advance their
own fledgling careers? In the show’s first season,
Flav was duped by his first pick Hoopz, who was only
on the show to get her 15 minutes of fame.
Wearing his trademark oversized
clock, so he always knows “what time it is,” sporting fluorescent
pimp suits and flower print pajamas, Flavor Flav is
quite a caricature, oops, I meant character. It’s
great TV, but is grilled-out grandfather Flavor Flav
a modern day coon?
Activist Paul Scott has accused
Flavor of performing a “coon act” on a modern-day minstrel show.
Criticism of his coonery are not new to Flavor Flav,
who was criticized by his Public Enemy band mates for
his romance with the six-foot former flame of Sylvester
Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen. But should Flav really
receive the hailstorm of criticism he does, or is Black
America taking itself too seriously? I think a little
of both. Flavor Flav isn’t the only negative
image of Black America on television today. Video hoes
gyrate their hips to and fro on every music channel.
And with Snoop Dogg’s, “Girls Gone Wild” videos,
legendary Chicago pimp, Bishop Don “Magic” Juan,
the Yin Yang twins sounding like retards yelling “Hanh” and
scores of other rappers and comedians selling their
souls for a piece of the American dream, Flav is hardly
alone. But should we hold our black entertainers accountable
for the images that they portray on television? Or
should we stop taking ourselves so seriously and chalk
it up to being “just entertainment?” You
be the judge.
