Before the Oscars and its subsequent cancellation by Hollywood, Will Smith had become the untouchable star of Hollywood. A renowned actor capable of playing the funniest and saddest characters, with an unparalleled charisma and a good humor that made anyone fall in love.
From Aladdin to I Am Legend, Will Smith had forged an unparalleled name for himself in Hollywood, which finally exploded with the Oscar he won on the same day that everyone was all over him. But it’s important to remember where it all came from, because Smith’s task was not only to grow as a first-rate actor, but to bring a Black Power to the entire globe from the quiet, the fun and the costumbrism. Because what he did with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air still resonates today.
The rapper who conquered television
In 1988, a Will Smith, coyly known as The Fresh Prince as a rapper, made a worldwide impact with Parent Just Don’t Understand, the title track of his second album. In the music video for the song, which won the Grammy for best rap, graffiti taken from the American subculture adorned a room with white walls.
The only extra decoration was a vintage boom box, a haven of harmony for any hip hop lover. But the strange peace was soon disturbed, when Will’s supposed mother burst into the room and berated him for a multitude of generational disagreements: from the brand of sneakers he wore to the hamburger he decided to eat at McDonald’s.
With the focus on a modest adolescent rebellion, Smith and his partner DJ Jazzy Jeff managed, with this song, to take rap to a hitherto little explored avenue: costumbrism. Although hip hop had already achieved great popularity around the world, it was still rooted in a vindictive way that groups such as Public Enemy or Run-DMC extolled. However, Smith brought fresh ideas to the genre that had less to do with social justice and more to do with general empathy. And, thanks to this, he managed to spread rap around the globe.
While it is clear that The Fresh Prince was influenced by the earlier groups, the musician and later actor succeeded in bringing a new vision of racial equality to the world. Whites were no longer the focus of the struggle. Now they could be perfectly identified by lyrics that, without losing the essence of whoever wrote them -someone coming from a lower social class and who had had to make a name for himself thanks to his efforts-, spoke of global feelings.
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince was the group that best portrayed the end of the eighties, with special emphasis on the generation that was coming of age. But the band’s main member still had to take the big step into fiction, turning his “costumbrist Black Power” into a global phenomenon that would mark several generations during the following decade.
An African-American story
The origin of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air lies in Benny Medina, a music manager who, together with his partner Jeff Pollack, decided to portray his own life in a television series. Medina had grown up in East Los Angeles, the poorest neighborhood in the city where he witnessed, day in and day out, episodes of crime and violence. He seemed doomed to continue down the path that his family and acquaintances had already taken, but he became close friends with a young white man who lived in Beverly Hills. Medina managed to be allowed to live with him, so he went from being condemned to a life of squalor to becoming a top producer.
However, the message he was going to give with an autobiographical work was far from what he thought. Medina did not want it to be implied that a white family saved the life of a poor black man who had nowhere to drop dead. Thus, without leaving aside the essence of the fiction he was preparing, he made the rich family African-American. As he explained in Ebony magazine, “this way we could explore the prejudice between people of color, as well as the class difference between them”.
In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, whites had no place, they were just a necessary filler for secondary characters. All the main characters were black, but this did not influence -for the worse- its success. It was one of the most followed series of the nineties, and not only in the USA. In Spain, thanks to its original broadcasting on regional channels and later on Antena 3, it became an unparalleled reference that made those who grew up in this generation know, in a humorous tone, the American reality regarding social classes.
Similarly, in Latin America the series arrived under the name El príncipe del rap (in Bel-Air), emphasizing the figure of Smith as a hip hop singer. Thanks to its broadcast in practically all the countries of the continent, this reality, much closer to its culture, also made an invaluable place in the cultural imaginary.
With social inequality as the main trump card, in the same family we could see a scathing businessman like Philip Banks coexisting with his butler Geoffrey Butler. As they all started from the same minority base -the African-American ethnicity-, the class struggle was left behind to give rise to a reading much closer to the American dream of John F. Kennedy.
However, the addition of Will Smith to the formula gave way to social issues much more identified with their culture, without fear of portraying alcoholism or criminality driven by few opportunities. Smith covered the series with a cool aura that made it attractive to people of all ages; any controversial topic ceased to be controversial when it passed through the actor. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was one of the first great cultural products that brought hip hop to the forefront, in a way that helped many of us discover a musical panorama that was difficult to reach through other channels.
From the first to the last actor in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, everyone seemed perfectly cast for their role, but the choice of Will Smith was the key to making the show work. Not for nothing did the actor play a character with the exact same name as him.
Parallel lives
Born in West Philadelphia -as the opening of the series portrays-, Smith’s life had been far from that of Benny Medina. He attended a private Catholic school and, despite the fact that his family was not particularly wealthy, he never had trouble advancing in his career. In fact, he received a scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) -according to him, because they needed black kids to fill out-, although he put it aside to dedicate himself to rap.
Despite his few biographical similarities with Will Smith from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the actor had managed to become the icon of a decade. Only he could portray the problems suffered by his collective with a huge smile on his face, making us all put ourselves in his shoes and understanding each of the nuances brought by his character.
As time went on, his facet as a top-notch actor led him to move away from what he was first known for, but it was the six years in which he took the lead in this distinctive character that made him who he became in the following decades.
Beyond The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was not the only show that promoted the Black Power costumbrista. Family Matters was the other great production that boosted this subgenre in the nineties. Premiered a year before Will Smith’s series -in 1989-, its conception was not too far from any sitcom created until then.
Initially, the series centered on Carl Winslow, a police officer who had to serve as the father of a large family. But, midway through the first season, the inclusion of annoying geeky neighbor Steve Urkel changed the series forever. Instead of continuing to portray the comings and goings of a traditional family, the focus shifted to the peculiar figure of this endearing and annoying neighbor.
Cosas de casa had an unprecedented impact internationally. In Spain it arrived in a similar way to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, with a large audience during its broadcast on Antena 3. But it had an even greater impact in Latin America, especially in Mexico and Argentina. The secret of its success lay in Steve Urkel, a character played by actor Jaleel White, but both the plots and the characters followed a classic sitcom structure.
It was not intended to innovate in any way. In fact, it did not even resort to hip-hop culture as was done in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But the fact that all the main characters were black made the collective feel identified without prejudice.
Along with Cosas de casa, several similar projects emerged. In 1996, Nikelodeon premiered Kenan and Kel, a sitcom that ran for four seasons and was a big hit, especially among teenagers. Basically, the plot was based on the misadventures of two hyperactive African-American friends, who went through all kinds of misfortunes because of their crazy ideas.
Sister, Sister, a comedy based on two African-American twins who were separated at birth, also triumphed during these years. A few years later, Disney continued to exploit this phenomenon with children’s series such as Raven and The Proud.
There are many productions that, during the 1990s and early 2000s, showed us that the African-American community had its own interesting voice in the television world. Thanks to their unabashed costumbrismo, they made an impact like never before in the West. And, for the first time, they sparked purely American debates around the globe.
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