An Empire Within a Family?

Kobe Booth

Mr. Herfurth

English 101-122

November 09, 2017

An Empire Within A Family?

        In all, the hit tv show, winner of numerous NAACP Awards and many Golden Globe nominations for Best Television Drama/Musical Series, Empire is adored by millions of peers not just because it's intuitive, dramatic, and outrageous It's because these Oscar nominated actors represents a well dominated black musical family that strives to make it into building their Empire. In the show, the audience sees characters that represent all types of artist, entrepreneurs, businessmen, regular people,  and all different backgrounds of Americans who show us different depictions of ourselves trying to make it in an Empire what we call life. After reading critics evaluate how amazing Empire portrays a  powerful black family dominating hardship of the music industry. Each of the family members portrays a background that represents all different types of Americans.According to Brian Lowry, a TV columnist for Variety.com, in her 2015 review of the show, says this show exemplifies a  mogul family “Relating among the storylines, it's dramatic, comical, smart, and best of all nimble, by actually making a point about the hardship with working with family”. Empire is a better institution/representation of a musical family than Power being that they show the good and the bad in what makes them powerful.

    Lucious (Terrence Howard) and Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) Lyon are not your typical average Black American couple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But Lyons do indeed illustrate a powerful musical black family quite realistically.

 Luscious is a three-time Grammy award winning Hip-Hop mogul and mostly the center of attention of the show’s duration; Cookie, on the other hand, is not your average mother. She endured 17 years of prison due to the use of four-hundred-thousand dollars of drug money being sold to start luscious music career. She took the fall to protect her family, and she believed that luscious could go big one day. The exemplifies how much a person would do to protect his or her family. Together, they have three sons who are fit in the unique of their family dynamic. The oldest (Andre) who is more so of the businessman who handles all the financial situation with the company, and the other two (Jamal and Hakeem) who are the musical brothers and take after their father by being his artists in the Empire. While not every American family today is fortunate enough to have two parents working and running a multimillion-dollar company.

    But not every American family serious is like Empire. Although Empire is a popular show to many, other commentators would compare The tv series with another successful black family tv show called “Power”. According to True New Jersey,  “Since early 2015, viewers have drawn comparisons between "Empire" and "Power," two popular shows with primarily black casts” (Tylt 1). Both series are about powerful empires and continue to reign in the ratings while in their third seasons. “But Empire says to come on top of the ratings and best choice of representation of what it's like in the music industry” (Lawrence 1). Power has so many different storylines to keep up with and also not a good representation of how a family works together in running a big empire. The actors Omar Hardwick (James) and Naturi Naughton (Tasha) are a divorced couple who are still tied together in with building their company together but go through many hardships and spirals to make ends meet. Also, the show is not a good representation of musical and family because the family is basically separated throughout the entire show. To most commentators, power really doesn’t have good endings as well as Empire with wanting the views to come back and see more of the dialog.  And to put the show's comparison to rest Empires rating averages about 5.5 million views on every Wednesday night it airs. On the other hand, Power doesn’t even meet empire criteria of the same amount of views. The shows Power average in about 2.5 million views on every Monday night, So it seems that Empire is winning in the most views category according to New York Times. Another reason that empire is the best in the representation of a music mogul family because it sticks to the storyline and also gives flashbacks of each other family member history to give the audience a good idea of the character and reasons why they act that way to day. This demonstrates how the empire is a better representation of black musical family than power because of its consistency of showing that thriving for the company (empire) is one thing, but family is always important no matter what.

    If evaluating Empire merit based on how accurately this family represent today’s American power music industry family it is almost safe to say that they  make a believable family.  By showing flashbacks of Lucious having a psychotic mother and was forced to run away and live on the streets, and Cookie being strong that she is, but showing her emotional side (which she rarely does) after realizing spending seventeen years was a sacrifice she had to make to save her family. But it ended up causing so much pain and stress for her father that he died while she was in jail and that took a huge toll on her and made her want to be more about family unity than anything. Also another effect on her was seeing how she felt not being apart of her son’s lives for seventeen years. They also give the audience clips of the boy's difficulties growing up. Andre with his bipolar disorder and not being able to handle his medical issues by going through trials and tribulation to prove to his father that he wasn’t a waste cause he’s not in touch with or missed out his musical side which is a huge disappointment to his father, and Jamal for being gay and not being accepted by his father because of his sexuality, but always had his mother on his side, but being the talented music artist he is gives him some credibility with his father. And lastly Hakeem, he deals with his mommy issues and not ready to cope with the fact that he has his mother in his life now, when she should’ve been there in the first place he explains, but he’s mostly a daddy’s boy cause he’s a very talented rapper and everything his father wanted a son. This shows that the Tv series shows the audience the good and the bad of the family so it can be more so of getting to know them and be more relatable.