Being so enraptured by the development of movies, television, and the technological advances that brought us to the modern age, my favorite genre of film is film noir. Watching I Love Lucy was one of my favorite TV shows when I was younger, and it still stands the test of time today. In fact, Lucille Ball was a very prominent comedian and her husband, Desi Arnaz, was not the typical husband of the era. The show itself was groundbreaking.

In the time where women were not so much as seen with a main role as men were, I Love Lucy took off with flying colors and it’s really no surprise; the show had it all when it came to representation. A Cuban husband and a whimsical red-headed lead was what made the show memorable. In fact, Lucille Ball is one of the few comedians of her time to be a female and be top billed. Even in the time where interracial couples were seen as taboo, I Love Lucy still flourished. The humor was in good taste, with little to no racial remarks for comedic relief. Sure, the humor can be sexist in little ways with stereotypical female behavior – like with the most memorable scene where Lucy and Ethel eat the chocolate off the assembly line. The temptation of eating the chocolate was too much for Ethel, and even gives up before Lucy when the line moves too fast.

But, even with that stereotypical representation of women and chocolate (and maybe in the workforce as well), the show still kept a pretty positive image for women. However, not all the shows of the era were all pretty and perfect when it came to representation.

Though a cartoon, Tom and Jerry had poor taste when it came right down to representation. A cat and a mouse, how racist can it be, right? Wrong. In one of the episodes, a black maid named Mammy is petrified of Jerry. She’s shaken in a chair and drops numerous items – dice, a ring, dentures, a razor, and various buttons and bobby pins. Seems harmless enough, but it points to violence, gambling, and possibly stealing. The ring on her finger would not have fallen off as easily as slipping out of a pocket. (Shown below at 1:18)

Along with that incident, Tom and Jerry and even The Looney Tunes were famous for their blackfaces – especially in the earlier years. In fact, until the civil rights movement, when blackface ended, many cartoons and movies used blackface as a comedic move. Fred Astaire could be seen tapping away with blackface, Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple as well. For more than fifty years, blackface was a very big laugh to many people and just stayed with the industry – from minstrel shows, to vaudeville, to movies. Shown below is just some of the famous scenes where blackface was used.

I Love Lucy was indeed a diamond in the ruff. Ten years after the first episode aired and one year after the last, The Dick Van Dyke Show came about with a prominent female lead who was her husband’s backbone. Though Mary Tyler Moore’s character was not the main lead (the shows not named for her, after all), she led many movements with housewives all across the nation and spurred about just as much female empowerment as Lucille Ball had.

All in all, the era of movies and shows that I love the most was plagued with the most racism and the most misrepresentation, and often put down in a poor manner, However, as I Love Lucy suggests, not all was bad with the era - the diamonds in the ruff are much better than anything else.