Fox’s Empire has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from almost everyone in the media industry—from critics to newscasters to talk show hosts—Empire is a success story. Viewership numbers reflect this: Nielsen billed Empire as the highest– rated freshman show in 10 years, with each episode of the season gaining more viewership than the last.
The show portrays a powerful black family’s rise to success in the music world and the drama that accompanies. In the wake of the show's success, critics asked, “How are black people being portrayed in this show? Are stereotypes being broken or reinforced?”
The Lyon family, the primary focus of the show, rose from a life of selling crack in West Philadelphia to owning one of the biggest record labels in the country. But their fame came at a price when the family’s matriarch, Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson), took the fall for her husband and was sentenced to seventeen years in prison for selling drugs. The show picks up when Cookie is released from prison, and the rest of the Lyons are living in luxury because of patriarch Lucious Lyon’s (Terrence Howard) success as a rapper and music mogul.
The show is produced by Fox, and with Fox’s conservative bias, it's unsurprising that particular storylines and cultural tropes run through the show. In the second episode, President Obama is referred to as a “sellout,” and Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) jokes the police are coming to shoot him. In another scene, Lucious critiques rap music during in an interview, stating that rap encourages racism and violence. The incident mirrors the sentiment expressed during Morning Joe after the SAE video scandal. Empire, in its early character development, seems to promote many demeaning black stereotypes. Lucious is characterized as a “brute,” and his ex–wife Cookie as an “angry black woman.” The themes of the show itself also reflect both the “rags–to–riches” and the “money can’t buy class” tropes.
But Empire wouldn’t be such a resounding success if all it did was promote stereotypes. Rather, as the episodes progress, the characters’ stories become nuanced. Cookie’s loud, ready–to– throw–down character is complicated by her love for her sons, her latent romantic interests in Lucious and her sheer business acumen.
Andre, who is portrayed as the sellout of the family because he went to Wharton and married a white woman, becomes a more complex character when we discover the roots of his bipolar disorder. We see how his wife stood by him through his initial diagnosis, destroying interracial marriage stereotypes. Even Lucious’ hatred of Jamal’s sexuality is layered, and the more we see of it, the less Lucious seems like a brutish bigot. His disapproval is not rooted in religion or hatred for his son, but rather in his fear of society’s reaction to the son of an important figure in rap being gay. As evidenced by Lucious’ completely altered stance on homosexuality when he realizes that Jamal is perhaps the most reliable heir to his company, Empire Entertainment.
Lee Daniels says the Lyon family’s success story is no different from that of the Kennedys. If we wait for continued character development, which Daniels will certainly deliver, we will likely see that Empire is just another, more colorful, story of the American dream.
