I think, in Welcome Back, Kotter(1975-1979), Gabe Kaplan’s choice of setting the show in school is very interesting and proper because school is a most likely place where people from different ethnicities gather and interact with each other. Class is not as serious as the work place, so it will not create much tension when micro-jokings(which is not severely offensive) of ethnicity is brought up. What’s more, students in high school are usually not mature, and they like joking of anything without taking it seriously, so their joke of ethnicity would be taken as lighthearted. Who would care what children say?
When the carefree high school students meet the comical teacher Gabe Kotter (Gabe Kaplan), a series of amusing stories happen spontaneously.
I would not say the school in this show is inviting because it is pretty corrupted. First, the students, no matter which ethnicities they are from, do not care about education. Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) is the one who does not care about education that much, but dreams of becoming a basketball super star. Freddie is the only African American in the class; portraying him as careless about formal education but obsessive with basketball dream suggests the society’s typical stereotype against African-Americans as not paying attention to education. Another student, Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta), an Italian American, who seems like a leader of the class, cheats on test, and tries to bribe the teacher. He behaves like a gang leader in Goodfellas who gives command to the other “gangsters” in the class. He leads the silent rebellion against Kotter when Kotter does not agree to pass Freddie, and decides that the introduction should start with him. The principal Mr. Woodman (John Sylvester White)is corrupted too. He even comes to persuade Kotter to pass Freddie because he wants to see the basketball team win. Kotter himself is too amusing to monitor the students. Facing the undisciplined students, he cannot do anything. Overall, this is a very bad school based on what we watched so far.
However, I have to agree that this show is really funny. I do not see many offensive jokes about ethnicity, or maybe I do not realize it because I am not familiar with the stereotype the New York society has on different ethnicity. I am more familiar with people’s stereotype toward African American, perceiving them as not caring about education. However, even though it is bad to stereotype people, the minority should also make effort to improve themselves to get rid of people’s negative stereotype against them.
