The new amazon series “Them” by Little Marvin is about injustices within America and a family experiencing the eye of the storm of Jim Crow laws and redlining. Each character experienced their own identity crisis due to their environment. The family as a whole are singled out in a all-white neighborhood in Compton easily making them the others. The oldest daughter, Ruby, attends an all-white school nearby where she experiences what she thought the family was running away from since they moved to the west coast. She then begins to experience her identity crisis by wishing she was white. The father, Henry, knew it would be a struggle being the only black aero engineer at his new job. Time after time he is subtly reminded that he is black and beneath them. The wife, Lucky, is driven crazy by the neighborhood wives with an interesting form of torment. The ladies sat outside her house and everyone played a different tune on the radio making a disturbing sound that blared into the house. Her pervious experiences back south along with current issues she was facing in her new home, temporally drove her mad.
This series can be related to Toni Morrison’s Recitatif dealing with power based on social class and race. It was hard for the neighbors to believe that a black family could afford to live in the houses they live in let alone a black man making more than them. Roberta flaunted her social class and displayed her embarrassment of communicating with a black women in front of her friends. The family was looked at as if they were bringing down the neighborhood and in return the community projected their fear towards them. Much like in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, after 9/11 Changez experienced the same projection fear of the community based on how he looked. Just as Changez became more bold in the heat of the moment, the family did the same.
Within the series Them, I think the creator wants the view to question the past traumas of African Americans and the beyond difficult transitions that are still today being made. Also, the series does have a sinister portion to it but I also believe that the creator wants the viewers to also question and distinguish the two evils that the family is dealing with, sprits and racism.