ABSTRACT
In commercial television culture where assumptions and representations of African Americans continue to operate largely within limits of assimilation and pluralism. Author regard Frank's Place as a moment of displacement, an attempt to push the limits of existing television discourses about blacks. The representations on Frank's Place are expressions of the most recent struggles over the representations of race in general and African American culture in particular. To understand the lineage of black representations that made a series like Frank's Place possible, the author want to situate show in relationship to series that preceded it as well as to other contemporary black oriented series. While Frank's Place's rewriting of African American representations in commercial network television offer alternatives to dominant representations, there are even limits to this most hopeful set of representations. As Frank's Place pressed the limits of dramatic and comedic television representations of black Americans, it illustrates the hegemonic strategies of containment operating in the commercial television system.
