Deconstructing Mayberry: Utopia and racial diversity in the Andy Griffith Show

Abstract

The popularity of the Andy Griffith Show has elevated its community of Mayberry into the pantheon of other more famous utopias. The series has received criticism in recent years due to its all-white cast and its absence of any racial minority representation. However, because Mayberry's central claim to utopia is communal harmony and redemption of the social Other, the Andy Griffith Show must undermine the dominant ideolgy to remain utopic. Consequently, the social Other can be read as the racial Other. Using the strategy of deconstruction within existing utopian scholarship and discpourse, it is possible for Mayberry to be racially coded as other than white due to how it negotiates and redefines structures of whiteness, otherness, and ideology.