While it makes sense to analyze representations of race from a narrative perspective—focusing on how a media text frames blackness through its characters and stories—it cannot be the only way to examine these topics. Like all media texts, television is a collaborative process. We tend to focus on the most obvious contributors to a television show: the actors, directors, and writers. Yet the final product that makes it to the screen is also shaped by other creative talents who likewise contribute to the text: set designers, costume designers, music supervisors, and individual actors all bring their personal touches. Therefore, if we focus strictly on the types of images that a show presents as opposed to how the show visually articulates those images, then we risk missing out on the elements that make Empire unique and distinctive.
Therefore, by turning our attention away from narrative and toward some of the stylistic elements in Empire—in this case, fashion—we can reveal how the show codes blackness into its representations. This way of “encoding” blackness, to borrow from Stuart Hall, serves dual purposes. First, it functions to save valuable narrative time. As a melodrama, Empire often relies on appeals to the audience’s emotions rather than detailed character development. The show needs to cover a lot of ground—love affairs, murder schemes, and secret children—and the twists and turns of the plotlines can easily dominate the story. While the series often addresses race quite explicitly, it prioritizes the interpersonal conflicts between the characters more, a hallmark of the melodramatic mode.
Second, this process of encoding serves to allow Empire to engage in more nuanced, culturally specific explorations of racial identity than its narrative format and targeted audiences allow. As I mentioned above, Empire does not avoid explicit portrayals of race and racism. Yet, as a show that deliberately courts both black and nonblack audiences, Empire must balance cultural specificity with universality. In other words, the show is very measured in the way that it presents blackness, in order to avoid making the show “too black” and therefore, presumably, unrelatable to nonblack viewers. Whether it is true that too much blackness in the show’s diegesis would alienate nonblack viewers, it is very clear that those responsible for bringing the world of Empire to the small screen thoughtfully curate where and how blackness appears. For instance, the show makes visual connections between the fictional Empire dynasty and the real-life Motown Records via Lyon family patriarch Lucious’s (Terrence Howard) hairstyle and clothing, subtly coding blackness into the “background” of the text while saving the “foreground” for more immediately relevant plot developments. This makes sense if we think about the fact that Empire airs on FOX, a network that has only recently begun to produce racially diverse programming, in spite of its early reputation as a home for black-cast (and black-produced) content.1 As a program whose viability is largely predicated on its success with both black and white audiences, Empire must walk a fine line to provide viewers with content that is culturally specific as well as able to cross cultural lines.
On Empire, fashion is more than simple costuming: it provides information about the individual characters and connects them to broader aspects of black culture. A quick sketch of the main male characters demonstrates how the show accomplishes this. The first season of Empire focuses on the Lyon family’s interpersonal conflicts and how they deal with external threats to their music empire. The three brothers of the Lyon family—Andre (Trai Byers), Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray), and Jamal (Jussie Smollett)—are radically different from one another, as conveyed through their styling. Andre, the CFO of the company, is the one son whose role is in the business side of the company, rather than the artistic side. He sports traditional business suits in dark colors and wears his hair in a conservative, closely cropped style. His thoroughly respectable attire signals his own respectability politics, the idea that members of a minority group make themselves less culturally specific and thus more acceptable to mainstream society.2 Hakeem, the rap superstar of the family, dresses in hip-hop fashions and accessorizes with oversized jewelry consistent with rap “bling” culture. He also wears his hair in a high fade style with intricately shaved designs on the sides of his head, another emblem of hip-hop style and a throwback to 1990s black urban hairstyles. Finally, Jamal, the most musically gifted of the trio and a talented R&B singer, sports a hipster fashion aesthetic: slimmer-fitting clothes than Hakeem that combine a range of styles from urban to bohemian. His style conveys how Jamal does not fit neatly into existing categories of either fashion or personal identity, an important detail that reinforces his character’s initial journey to reconcile his sexual identity with the private and public image that his CEO father, Lucious, wants him to present.
FIGURE 2.1. The styling of the three brothers of the Lyon family—Andre, Hakeem, and Jamal—conveys their deep character differences.
As the head of the Empire dynasty, Lucious Lyon’s wardrobe and styling ground the show in black culture, past and present. In the pilot episode, Lucious wears his hair in a chemically straightened style, what we would call a “perm” or a “relaxer.” The style is an anachronism, belonging more to the era of 1940s and 1950s black male fashion rather than 2015, when the show premiered and takes place. Producer Lee Daniels claims that Howard’s coiffure was the actor’s own choice, not the result of a discussion with Daniels or the vision of the show’s creative team.3 Melissa Forney, Empire’s lead hairstylist, confirms that Howard had initial creative control over his character’s hair and wanted it to look “old school.” As an “old school” hairstyle, Lucious’s hair most readily calls to mind the “conk” hairstyle of R&B mogul Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, and one of the real-life figures on whom Howard’s character is based.4 Lucious’s clothing during the first season furthers this connection: We see him in wide-collared shirts without ties, turtlenecks paired with blazers, vests, and silk scarfs draped around his neck. All of these sartorial choices visually connect him to a past era of black music production.
Although Empire takes place in current-day New York and centers on the worlds of hip-hop and R&B, Lucious’s styling makes a visual connection to previous eras of black music making. Moreover, the style suggests the era before “black is beautiful” came into popularity and black men (and women) sported chemically straightened hair instead of their naturally curly and kinky textures. In this way, Lucious’s hair in the pilot suggests that not only his hair but also perhaps his thinking is regressive. This fits neatly into a narrative about how his “old school” values do not allow him to accept that his son is gay.
Of all of the characters on Empire, however, it is Taraji Henson’s Cookie that has truly captured the hearts of fans and on whom much of the discussion about fashion centers. Arguably the heart of the show, Cookie’s character spans the most narrative and identity categories. When viewers first meet Cookie in season 1, scenes switch back and forth between flashbacks of Cookie in prison and present-day scenarios that show her trying to reclaim her place as the head of the record company. The show must find a way to capture all of the qualities that make Cookie who she is: tough, sexy, and business-savvy on the one hand, yet simultaneously warm, loving, and vulnerable on the other. In addition, the show must convey the time that Cookie has lost during her seventeen-year incarceration, a theme that informs much of her character. Because Cookie’s character development alone could fill up an entire television show, the show uses her clothing as a kind of narrative shorthand.
FIGURE 2.2. Cookie’s meticulously crafted wardrobe has clear cultural reference points and offers narrative shorthand for her character development.
How does Empire convey Cookie’s class status and character traits? Her wardrobe is a meticulously curated assemblage of items that have clear cultural reference points. Stylist Rita McGhee selects Cookie’s ensembles to suggest several things about Cookie’s inner self and how she presents herself to the world. Her clothes, McGhee asserts, are Cookie’s “armor” as she operates within a hostile environment.5 In the first few episodes, Cookie often appears in animal prints to suggest several key aspects of