Cavemen: Slick Racism or Intelligent Allegory?

By Environment Man


Interesting Find: The show is co-executive produced and created by Joe Lawson, a fellow Wake Forest University alum of our president Norris McDonald.

Update: Saw the first episode. Not racist. Funny and possibly a platform to comment on racism and many other isms. Hope the show makes it.

"Crave the Cave"

"Sapes" (Homo sapiens)

"Keep your penis in the genus"

"Shaver"

Allegory: 1) the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence 2) a symbolic representation.

We have not seen an episode of ABC Television's new 2007 sitcom "Cavemen" based on the characters from the Geico commercials. We have read plenty about it though and of course formed some opinions about the commercials. We want to dislike the show as racist for using less than fully developed human beings as representations of Black people. Such a representation is racist on its face, particularly if you believe we are all children of God.

But wait a minute. Maybe there is an opportunity here to comment on the ridiculousness of racism. After all, these cavemen are clearly White. Maybe that is how they can get away with it because if they were Black it probably would not work on any level and would just be universally condemned. But lets look at some possibilities. Will there be any Black cavemen? If not will the NAACP and Al Sharpton complain? The cavemen have white girlfriends. Will there be any kissing on the show? And what about bedroom implication scenes? Now you are messing with interracial dating and miscegenation fears. And on and on. So maybe just maybe this show might just be interesting. We will see.

The cast of "Cavemen" includes, from left above, Stephanie Lemelin, Dash Mihok, Nick Kroll, Bill English, Kaitlin Doubleday and John Heard (Photo courtesy Associated Press/ABC)

Ned Calls Caveman Show Protesters (This is hilarious)