The Comedy of the Black Republican
While I am currently working on political ideology on entertainment television in the 1970s, I do enjoy watching more contemporary television as well. Often, however, I am struck by how apolitical network television entertainment today is compared to the 1970s. In fact, the 1970s constitute a very peculiar period in network television. Especially comedies reveled in a new politically relevant humor, and the ratings ensured them leeway. But by the 1980s, the proliferation and weight of a wide array of interest groups had hampered the comedic freedom. Modern Family recently spent a story arch on Claire (Julie Bowen), one of the main characters, running for city council. Yet, her partisan alignment was never identified. This tactic is quite common in an industry that strives for as wide an audience as possible. There are few, if any, upsides in offending parts of your audience with partisan identification.
This is why I was so surprised to come across an episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish revolving entirely around the idea of the Black Republican. The episode starts with Dre (Anthony Anderson) stipulating facts of life, including:
“Black people aren’t Republicans, we just aren’t. We vote for Democrats. And it’s not just an Obama thing […] black people also overwhelmingly backed this guy [photo of Dukakis in a tank], this guy [photo of Al Gore kissing Hillary Clinton], hell 91% of black people voted for this guy [photo of Walter Mondale holding boxing gloves]. Fact: 91% of Walter Mondale’s family didn’t vote for Walter Mondale. Sure, the other side may trot out a token black face every now and again, but the fact of the matter is being a black Republican is something we just don’t do.”
The show often deals with perceived cultural differences between black Americans and white Americans, Continue reading →
Rainbows and Hippies: Humorous Responses to the Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Decision
Tracy Wuster
Several years ago, we posted a collection of humorous responses to President Obama’s change to support gay marriage. For a follow up, here are some of the humorous responses to the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize marriage across the country.
Responses seem to fall into a few general categories:
1) Celebration of the ruling
2) Comments on the Supreme Court, pro and con, but with no real connection to the recent Obamacare decision (see bottom for examples of responses to that)
3) Connections to the questions of race and the Confederate flag
4) Satire on the institution of marriage
4) Reactions of opponents
Here are a few cartoons and memes that show examples of these trends.
And here are some web-based humorous responses:
Watch Stephen Colbert Celebrate Gay Marriage
The Best Memes About The Same-Sex Marriage Ruling
The ‘Broad City’ stars have the PERFECT response to the gay marriage ruling
The Antonin Scalia “Sick Burn” Generator
We Asked the Nearest Hippie About Scalia: It Was David Crosby
THE SCOTUS MARRIAGE DECISION, IN HAIKU.
Internet memes on the historic marriage ruling
Disasters You Can Expect Now That Marriage Equality Is Here
People Who Are Going To Be Very Disappointed When They Get To Canada
Anything else?
Teaching American Humor: the Great Colbert-Twitter Mediagasm of 2014
Somebody should write something about the controversial tweet from @ColbertReport and how it spawned a backlash on Twitter defined by #CancelColbert. It is big news.
Well, to be fair, almost everybody already has. It even gave the 24-hour cable news outlets a chance to pause in the search for MAL 370. For those who need yet a few more links to stories related to the issues, here they are:
Overview of the issue from the New Yorker
One of the several posts from CNN, formally a news organization
First Post from Cleveland.com – solid with clips and twitter examples
Second Post from Cleveland.com – same useful format
OK. That is a small smattering that should get anyone started down an endless rabbit hole. Let me know if it ever works its way back to this post.
There are no lessons to be learned from what I am calling the Great Colbert-Twitter Mediagasm of 2014 (catchy?). Well, at least there are no lessons to be learned among those who are deeply invested in perpetuating their own righteous indignation on any and all possible sides to the #CancelColbert or #SaveColbert Twitter dynamo. The vast majority of those who jumped into the fray via Twitter have already moved on to the next outrage. For the passive voice phrase “lessons to be learned” to ever be true, to be consummated with actual learning and awareness, the learner would need to engage fully with the complexities of any issue. Who does that on Twitter?
But there may be things useful in the classroom for those desirous of banging their heads on the complexities of American satire. What happens when satire misfires? (That is not what happened in the Great Colbert-Twitter Mediagasm of 2014.) What happens to satire in a digital age wherein the satirical work can be sliced and diced and repackaged and mashed ad nauseam into different mediums with vastly different audiences? What happens in a social media world when a satirist (and/or his corporate media boss) uses something as potentially inane as Twitter as a constant, tireless promotional tool?
Most importantly, what happens when a sharp piece of satire–pairing offensive language concerning Asian Americans with obvious racist language regarding Native Americans in an effort to repudiate any and all such appropriation–gets lost in a media frenzy?
In reference to the Colbert/Twitter issue, we need to consider how a near-perfect bit of satire was transformed into a social-media outrage phenomenon. Normally, that would be a good thing for satirists; it means that their efforts were noticed, that their social criticism was making an impact. In the age of Twitter, however, the satire can easily be erased and forgotten with only the outrage remaining. I should add that “outrage,” in and of itself, is not a problem. A satirist begins by being outraged, but the satirist also begins by being informed. There’s the rub. Who on Twitter ever really cares to be informed? #Hashtag, #hashtag. Trend it.
The Great Colbert-Twitter Mediagasm of 2014–now known simply as #GC-TM2014–TREND IT!–is over. In hindsight, the event provides an opportunity to consider the challenges and limits of satire in the social media age. A satirist mocks human behavior with the goal–however remote–of changing that behavior, or at least demanding some thoughtful social engagement with contentious issues. The Colbert Report is arguably the most formidable venue for provocative satire in contemporary American culture that reaches a large audience. The Colbert Report, The Daily Show , and The Onion, in particular, all provide a consistent and relentless examination of the foibles of human behavior and the absurdities that threaten to undermine the remarkable social and political experiment called the United States of America. It is a golden age for American satire. That is not to say that it is a golden age for the power of satire to change the world.
Although I simply want to look closely at the tweet itself, readers should see the two sketches from the Colbert Report that provide the opening and the closing of this social media firestorm (The Great Colber-Twitter Mediagasm of 2014, as I may have said above):
Colbert on Dan Snyder and the Washington Redskins
Colbert Who’s Attacking Me Now – the Follow Up
In the original piece, we witness a wonderfully tight satirical attack on the efforts of Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, and his effort to resist any and all efforts to make him and his supporters see the obvious. It is a satirical effort to affect public opinion, first, in its short-term target–the Redskins offensive name–and, second, the overall, longterm target–racism. The satire seeks to destroy both by persistent small cuts.
But, for now, that will have to wait. Twitter takes on a different topic.
For this space, let’s simply focus on the tweet that sets things rolling. We start there because the original sketch from the Colbert Show encouraged no firestorm whatsoever. The tweet, written and released by someone in the Comedy Central office, caused the issue in the Twitterverse, which, now, apparently, and to the consternation of long-winded people like me everywhere, is the new normal of democratic media–just what the Founding Fathers and Mothers were hoping for.
Here is the text of the offending tweet:
“I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.”
This is a joke. It is a quote taken from the Colbert Report show that aired on 26 March 2014 and tweeted by the corporate twitter-version of the character “Stephen Colbert,” (Colbert’s personal twitter account is @StephenAtHome.) A play within a play within a corporate twitter feed, wrapped in bacon. The problem of this joke is obvious; it uses stereotypical mockery of spoken East Asian languages as perceived by Euro-Americans who are ignorant and dismissive of any and all foreign languages on the whole. In that case, the language of the tweet perpetuates the stereotypes.
OK, it is easy to see that this tweet/joke contains racially insensitive language, at the very least. However, it is not simply a joke but parody. It is a statement from a character “Stephen Colbert” who is an aggressive and tireless parody of Bill O’Reilly, a bombastic conservative pundit who is clueless of his own racist, simplistic, reductive, self-absorbed commentary day after day after day. As parody, this tweet works. The line works.
Consider the first part of the tweet, the set-up: “I am willing to show #Asian community I care…” This is boilerplate Bill O’Reilly in that it mimics his typical moment of minor (very minor) concession to opposing points of an argument or to show his awareness of nuances on some issues. He does this often, and it is often quite unintentionally funny. Colbert thinks so, too. Here Colbert (both in the original sketch and in the edited Tweet) sets up a self-absorbed moment of magnanimous condescension to anyone who may misunderstand his unquestionable good will and fairness. Note the clever wordplay: “I am willing to show...I care...” not more concisely “I am creating a…” The issue for the pundit is his willingness to perform (“show”) his deep compassion (“I care”), like God deciding to give humans a second chance after, say, a flood. Thank you, God. Thank you, Bill.
With that set-up, the hypocrisy and cluelessness of the narrative “I” is revealed by the absurd and racist name of the foundation in the punchline. The “I” is full of himself and empty of understanding. All ego, no awareness. This is parody that targets Colbert’s perennial and ever-vulnerable target: Bill O’Reilly. This is boilerplate Stephen Colbert. And funny. Thank you, Stephen.
To better understand the context that Colbert uses, watch, for example, this bit from the show:
Colbert on O-Reilly’s Insensitivity to Asian Americans
The Tweet did not destroy the joke; it removed the satirical context but kept the parody in place. Its mockery, then, is simply a brief shot at racial arrogance. The full satire is much stronger and deserves more that Twitter could provide. The @ColbertReport tweet put a joke in the world of Twitter divorced from the persona that originally spoke the words. A person reading the quote who has little familiarity with the Colbert Show and little interest in finding out more before reacting and retweeting draws an easy conclusion: #CancelColbert. The many who are tired of seeing such mockery of Asians, along with so many others, in American popular culture, are right to be concerned. And those who dismiss such concerns without trying to seek an understanding of a long and complicated history that informs the angry reaction against @ColbertReport are simply lazy, and they make me tired.
Colbert performs racial parody and satire daily. Suey Park, who created the @CancelColbert idea, has gained some fame. I am not sure if she has made any progress toward her political and social goals. Perhaps. My hunch, though, is that Stephen Colbert is more likely to alter the mainstream popular culture landscape regarding racism than she will. But, really, I hope they both succeed. But I am not going to follow either one on Twitter.
(c) 2014, Jeffrey Melton
Ask a Slave: The Exasperating World of Teaching Tourists about American Slavery
Tourists say the dumbest things. They travel the globe ostensibly to learn and to gain experiences so that when they return home they can do so as more well-rounded and informed human beings. Well, that’s the dream anyway. Tourists are always out of place, they are often pretending to be (much) smarter than they are, and they carry with them a sense of entitlement–all of these factors set them up to be perennially funny as objects of ridicule. Few things are funnier than ignorance, but when it combines with arrogance, then a wonderfully silly comic star is born: the American tourist, a figure of derision for about hundred and fifty years now.
It was Mark Twain who first popularized and perfected the American tourist, in his best-selling The Innocents Abroad in 1869, a narrative of a bumbling five-month tour–America’s first pleasure cruise–across the Atlantic and around the Mediterranean Sea to see the “Old World.” He later built on that persona in other travel books like A Tramp Abroad (1880) and Following the Equator (1897). Twain captured the perils of tourism in many ways, but one of his most effective and hilarious shticks was to mock the inherent ignorance and arrogance of tourists simply by reporting what they said.
Tourists say the dumbest things. Just ask Azie Dungey, an actor who, while looking for stage work in the Washington D.C. area, found roles, as she puts it, playing “every black woman of note that ever lived. From Harriet Tubman to Diane Nash to Claudette Colvin to Carline Branham–Martha Washington’s enslaved Lady’s maid.” Readers here may be too timid to ask this: Is that THE Martha Washington, President George Washington’s wife? Yup. History is fun. Ms. Dungey, during the energy and optimism infused into the presidential election of 2008 and throughout President Obama’s first term, Azie Dungey supported herself by playing a slave who served the first, first family. American irony at its best.
Her role is as “Lizzie May,” a fictional character drawn from Ms. Dungey’s experiences performing as a slave woman at George and Martha Washington’s home named Mount Vernon, now a popular tourist site. And her forum is Ask a Slave: The Web Series. The short sketches recreate many of the questions that tourists posed to Ms. Dungey over the years. Ask a Slave is promoted as “Real Questions, Real Comedy.” It will make you cringe.
When tourists reveal their ignorance and arrogance, we have what is called in the profession “a teachable moment.” A traditional method of trying to encourage a learning process is called the Socratic Method, named after Socrates that famous smart guy from ancient Greece. He is dead now. The method involves getting people to ask questions and from the answers to encourage more questions and thereby lead to the gathering of knowledge–and, from that process, achieve the gaining of wisdom. Or something like that. Tourists all over the United States (and the world, for that matter) are often encouraged to ask questions of their guides. At many historical sites, guides are often complemented by historical re-enactors to create “living history.” It is an appealing bit of stage craft. “All of history is but a stage, and we are merely reenactors and tourists.” Shakespeare wrote something along those lines. I just updated it.
But when the questions are so clueless, what’s a slave to do?
Well, the actor Azie Dungey performed her role to the best of her ability (and with much patience), but all the while she collected information, and now, as Lizzie May, she has some different answers to give. She, with the help of other members of the crew, are re-enacting those tourist re-enactments and providing the rest of us with our own funny teachable moments. The first episode immediately reveals why the online comedy series has caught fire.
Lizzie May is a significant expansion of the role that Ms. Dungey played at Mount Vernon. She is able to provide answers that would have gotten her fired at Mount Vernon, all the while maintaining a demeanor that is seemingly polite and deferential and that the original role demanded. Yet the answers are assertive and thus subversive. She thereby provides a compelling satirical voice. The resulting humor is well worth viewers’ time and offers us our own teachable moments.
Ignorance is funny. It has always been funny because it provides us the wonderful opportunity to laugh at someone else’s stupidity. Fortunately, there is an endless supply of it, so humorists can always find some facet of human behavior to exploit for laughs. When the subject matter is tied to the legacies of slavery, the humor has an unavoidable edge. One thing that the tourist questions reveal beyond their stupidity is a desperation for self-affirmation, or an almost pathological need to lessen the horror of slavery, to give many modern tourists more distance from the slaveowners and supremacists in their racial family tree. The need is understandable; the ongoing moral cowardice, however, is tiresome to say the least.
Meta-Racist Airplane Jokes: The Foolish Audience and Didactic Humor
What do you call a black man flying an airplane? A pilot, you racist.
It is not complicated, but this meta-joke activates a complex meaning-making process. The setup connotes a genre of racist jokes, inviting the listener to imagine what possible stereotype about black men will fulfill the question in an unexpected way. The answer of “a pilot” is surprising precisely because it is unsurprising. If orthodox racist jokes tend to fulfill psychoanalytic models in their ability to express otherwise forbidden acts of expression, this joke plays more on the surprise theory by inverting dramatic irony to pleasurably expose the listener’s own prejudices and ideally creating some positive self-awareness in the process.
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something a fictional character does not. I read the above joke as an inversion of that particular form because the “audience” for this joke is the one kept in ignorance until the moment of the punchline. Though not necessarily given to social justice for every listener, this joke is ideally didactic in that it makes a pleasurable game of exposing the listener’s prejudices. Neither this form of humor nor its seeming aspirations to a small lesson in social justice are limited to verbal jokes though. To illustrate these points, I turn to an example that uses visual and verbal language to similar ends with relevant contemporary implications.
In 2003, Chappelle’s Show aired a sketch titled “Diversity in First Class.” Although given to left-leaning rhetoric, Chappelle’s Show was not above admissions of prejudice in certain situations. Taking place on a commercial airplane, the camera pans past a pair of men coded as Middle Easterners by their clothing and language. Engaged in a heated discussion, their performance displays aggression in both speech and hand motions. Clearly meant to invoke the image of Islamic terrorists, its original airdate less than 18 months after 9/11 framed its reading in terms of that national trauma. Subtitles further encourage reading the pair as a threat, adding verbal cues to the visual language connoting terrorism. But as the men continue, the subtitles reveal the true nature of their conversation.
By leading his expectations in one direction before dashing them, this contradiction between image and reality makes the viewer foolish. Not only that, but these Others discuss a well-known bit of Western pop culture, making their conversation familiar and laughably non-threatening.
Humor Studies at the American Studies Association Conference 2012
Tracy Wuster
The Humor Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association organizes a number of panels each year for the annual American Studies Conference. This year, we sponsored two panels and a business meeting. The conference takes place this week in San Juan Puerto Rico, and the humor caucus panels are scheduled for Thursday. In addition, other great humor based panels are scheduled for Friday and Sunday. Please check them out if you are at ASA.
Here are the details:
Thursday
12:00 PM – 1:45 PM
042. Caucus: Humor Studies:
Race, Resistance, and the Imperial U.S.: Nineteenth-Century Humor in the Classroom (A Roundtable)
Puerto Rico Convention Center 208B
CHAIR:
Jennifer Hughes, Young Harris College (GA)
PANELISTS:
John Lowe, University of Georgia (GA)
Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University (OH)
Gillian Johns, Oberlin College (OH)
Jennifer Hughes, Young Harris College (GA)
2:00 PM – 3:45 PM
064. Caucus: Humor Studies:
The “Post-Racial” Panopticon? Reflexivity, Race, and Resistance in Comedy
Puerto Rico Convention Center 208B
CHAIR:
Lanita Jacobs, University of Southern California (CA)
PAPERS:
Mary Beltrán, University of Texas, Austin (TX)
Blacking Up for Laughs: Televisual Blackface and “Post-Racial” Cultural Memory
Kimberly Springer, Ohio State University, Columbus (OH)
“Be Your Own Hater”: Katt Williams, Neoliberal Politics, and Black Comedy
COMMENT:
Lanita Jacobs, University of Southern California (CA)
4:00 PM – 5:45 PM
087. Business Meeting of the Humor Studies Caucus
Puerto Rico Convention Center 208B
Friday:
2:00 PM – 3:45 PM
185. Awkward Black Comedy 2.0: A Roundtable Discussion
Puerto Rico Convention Center 204
CHAIR:
Danielle Heard, University of California, Davis (CA)
Awkward Black Comedy 2.0 brings together Issa Rae, Elon James White, and Baratunde Thurston, three popular web-based comedians who explore issues of black identity in a distinctly twenty-first-century landscape, into a roundtable discussion with Bambi Haggins, Danielle Heard, and Ralina Joseph, three scholars whose recent scholarship theorizes current modes of African American humor and examines questions of representation, “post” identities, and resistance.
Sunday
12:00 PM – 1:45 PM
397. Comic Reversals: Tripping on the Domestic Rug and Bringing Down the Imperial House
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102B
CHAIR:
Alison Suen, Vanderbilt University (TN)
PAPERS:
Julie Willett, Texas Tech University (TX)
Fathering an Ironic Mix: Imperial Spit and the Decline of Neoliberal Testosterone
Cynthia Willett, Emory University (GA)
Occupy Anarchy: Comic Animals, Playful Reversals, and the End of Empire as We Know It?
Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University (TN)
From Rosemary’s Baby to Twilight: There is Something Funny about Pregnant Horror
COMMENT:
Alison Suen, Vanderbilt University (TN)
Stand-up Sunday: Michael Richards, Six Years On
For the contemporary stand-up comedian, the digital age presents both benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, comedians receive great publicity and access to new fans via platforms such as Twitter (which is a custom-made forum for joke tellers) or on podcasts such as Marc Maron’s WTF.
On the minus side, the ease with which audience members can record the audio or visual of an act means that material can be taken out of the comedian’s control and circulated in the digital realm before the wait staff even drop the checks. If there’s an altercation or a line that is crossed in an inexpert manner, the mater can spiral into something viral — and that’s not always good for a comic’s reputation. Just ask Michael Richards, who just this week found himself on Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” web series, apologizing again for his racist tirade at the Laugh Factory six years ago. Well, he doesn’t apologize so much as he shows how it still weighs heavy on his soul.
“Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” constitutes Seinfeld’s foray into new media, taking the breezy style he developed in stand-up and sitcom, and playing it out on the web with decent production values. Seinfeld gets to indulge his passion for cars — he picks up Richards in a “1962 VW split-window double-cab bus in dove blue, primer grey, and rust.”
“Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” also allows Seinfeld to chat with comedian friends, including Larry David, Alec Baldwin, and the comedy duo of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. (I think Reiner and Brooks just might have a future in the industry!)
The episode with Richards involves several doses of nostalgia.
Michael Richards: Those were good days.
Jerry Seinfeld: Those were good days.
Michael Richards: You gave me the role of a lifetime.
Jerry Seinfeld: You gave me the experience of my lifetime, getting to play with you.
Voter ID Laws and the Question of Political Satire
Tracy Wuster
Most of the time, politics is a serious business. People tend to take the government fairly seriously–our laws, our government, our rights. True, traditionally Congress has been an object of fun, and politicians–from Abraham Lincoln to Sarah Palin–have been the butt of jokes. But the importance of political humor–from parody to cartoons to satire–might best be seen as a reflection of how seriously people take politics.
In this highly political year, I have been very interested in questions of how political humor functions in American society. Recently, I discussed the satire of the RNC and DNC conventions on the Daily Show. Similarly, Self Deprecate’s contributions to our site and his site have tackled the current state of political humor.
One political issue that I have been increasingly concerned with this year is distinctly not funny: voter suppression. While proponents of voter ID and other voting laws argue that voter fraud is a real issue (apart from their clownish attempts to prove voter fraud by committing voter fraud), critics of these laws have argued that they are better explained as politically motivated efforts to suppress the votes of people of color, the poor, and the elderly. As John Dean argued in a blog post entitled, “The Republican’s Shameless War on Voting“:
There is absolutely no question that Republicans are trying to suppress non-whites from voting, throughout the Southern states, in an effort that has been accelerating since 2010. It is not difficult to catalogue this abusive Republican mission, which unfortunately has spread, in a few instances, to states above the Mason-Dixon Line as well.
Other stories back up this argument:
Harold Meyerson on the Washington Post
Charles Blow in the New York Times
Recent developments in voter laws in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states also testify to the seriousness of this issue. Those with any historical sense hear echoes of past efforts to restrict suffrage for political gain and based on cultural prejudice. Serious stuff.
Where does the humor come in?
Let’s start with Gary Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” strip from July 23 of this year:
And from the next day:
And check out the rest of the series: here, here, here , and ending with this one:
But that wasn’t all…
The Mount Rushmore of Mount Rushmores
It is a threadbare premise, for a medium still in its pull-ups. When we think of greatness, whose face goes on the largest of sculptures—formed by God but finished by men—vandalizing the Dakotan landscape?
For the field of American humor I’ve had one year to think it over. Last September my friend Steve (whose real name is Mark, but in these kinds of online articles an alias is typical) said to me:
“Twain is sort of the great white whale of American literature. Dickens assumes the same type of stature for 19th century England. And Tolstoy (sorry Mr. Dostoyevsky and my beloved Mr. Chekhov) occupies the place for Russian literature. Who for France? Hugo? What a Mount Rushmore for 19th century literature.”
I agreed with Steve, but turned the direction of our conversation to something even more trivial: American humor. Putting very little thought into it I said:
- Ben Franklin
- Mark Twain
- Groucho Marx
- Richard Pryor
Of course, the problem is limit. I immediately regretted the absence of George Carlin, but I didn’t know if he trumped Pryor. I couldn’t remove Groucho to include both influential standups when Marx represented the long stretch of Vaudeville and Jewish humor that shaped early Hollywood. And Franklin? You don’t see a lot of comedians today reference Ben Franklin as a significant influence on their craft, but then again what politicians model themselves after Washington? At the time it didn’t matter. Steve agreed with my list.
“I think you’ve nailed the Mount Rushmore for humor…Franklin is the headwaters. Essential. But you’ve got a nice spread of eras there, too. If we were confining this to movies and television, we could throw out Franklin and Twain and make room for Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball (hate to leave Fields out). But they don’t make the cut if we’re looking to represent all of American humor. Groucho is one of the few humor masters, by the way, who mastered almost every medium available to him: vaudeville, Broadway, movies, radio, television, books. And he could get laughs in a stunning variety of ways: monologues, acting, singing, dancing, ad-libbing, sophisticated word play, low slapstick. Pretty remarkable career.”
Humor in America 