Ho Lee Fuk: Using Racial Humor to Show that Sum Ting Wong with the Idea of Post Racialism

Most of my understanding of race and ethnicity comes from the media that produces and circulates safeguarded images of racial minorities. Therefore, I take a humanities approach to dissecting the racialized images that I see onscreen.  Hasinoff ( 2008) chimes in, “On network television, people of color are often  represented in a mostly white colorblind assimilationist content in which racial difference is superficially visible but typically not discussed except in terms of  individual prejudice” (p. 330).  As a woman of color, I emulate representations which can be used to my benefit.  For example, in 7th grade I was undoubtedly the star of the middle school talent show.  I channeled the character “Homey da Clown.”*  Hit a white girl over the head with a large stuffed sock and say “I don’t think so.  Homey, don’t play that” and I was hilarious.  Several television programs use racial humor cleverly.  According to Avila-Saavedra (2011), “Historically in American television, comedy has opened the pathway for increased representation of ethnic minorities” (p. 271).  I know firsthand how these representations can be translated into real life social spaces.  I argue that although racial humor reinforces racial hegemonies, the use of racial humor is necessary because it is subversive and does positive ideological work by making the issue of race visible and by offering alternative and less threatening representations.  In this blog, I will use discourse analysis to demonstrate how racial humor can entertain audiences while also shattering the idea of post racialism by using Person of Interest, 30 Rock, Don’t Trust the B---- in Apt 23, and Sleepy Hollow as my texts.

 

Racial humor can be manifested without the mention of race.  The following exchange in the Person of Interest (CBS, 2011-Present) episode “Critical” does not explicitly mention race, but for viewers in on the joke, it doesn’t have to.  The following exchange takes place as John comes to Leon’s rescue.

John: Geeze, Leon, what did you do to piss these guys off?

Leon:  You heard of gold farming? Selling multi player online game currency for real cash? It’s all the rage. People make millions! They take their business really seriously. Especially the Russian Mafia.

John (after immobilizing the attackers):  Does it look like I play video games, Leon?

The discernable joke is that John is a badass saving the world one (social security) number at a time.  The embedded joke about gold farming is a complex, layered joke which more than likely requires a subject to be familiar with “World of Warcraft.”  Nakurma (2009) writes “buying and selling in-game property for real money, is widely considered the worst, more morally reprehensible form of cheating” (p. 129).  Leon is a tiny, reprehensible Asian man who got caught embezzling large sums of money.  “Many (though by no means all) gold farmers are Chinese, and there is a decidedly anti-Asian flavor to many of the protests against “’Chinese gold farmers’” (p. 130).  It is estimated that 80% of gold farmers are Chinese.  Nakaruma indicated “The problem with gold farmers isn’t they are Chinese; it is that they ‘act Chinese’” (p. 139).  The joke works because Leon performs the role of “Chinese gold farmer” in two ways.  Leon could ethnically pass as Chinese, and being the little shit that he is, he was hunted down because he was “acting Chinese.”  The casting of a white character would be much less entertaining because that character would not be encoded with all of the preconceived notions Leon exemplified. The selection of an Asian gold farmer dismisses any claims that Americans have moved beyond race.  Furthermore, Leon is seen as this meek little character juxtaposed against two huge Russians trying to inflict harm upon him.  He is the victim.

           

Racial references in comedies hold a special place in my heart.  Rossing (2012) wrote “Postracialism animates contradictions and tensions that offer fertile ground for humor, and humor, in turn, directs attention back to often overlooked discrepancies and social failing” (p.45).  The following 30 Rock (NBC, 2006-2013) scene from the episode “Aunt Phatso” is a perfect demonstration.

Tracy:  Hey Grizz.  Hey Dot Com.  Get me a black coffee.  By which I mean a Sunkist.

Liz:  How could you think we’re Grizz and Dot Com?

Tracy: Because I don’t see race you white bastards!

This hilarious exchange satirizes postracialism.  B’brie and Hogarth (2009) said “White power and control seems to be invisible to white power-holders (p. 104).  Liz and Jack order Tracy around all the time.  Therefore, it is startling not only for Liz (and Jack) to be ordered around by Tracy, but to also be mistaken for two big Black bodies.  Moshin and Jackson (2011) explain, “We have not only moved past race, the thinking goes, we have moved beyond racism---we are now a color-blind nation, a post-identity nation, where markers of difference and Otherness are no longer consequential”  (p. 214).  The irony is Tracy is the one who doesn’t see color which is subversive since white is typically defined by not being black.  When he calls them “white bastards,” he proves that color does indeed exist.

            Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (ABC, 2012-2013) is a comedy that substitutes race for social class in the episode “It’s a Miracle…” The following exchange takes place at a soup kitchen where James Van Der Beek and his assistant, Luther, are serving food to a man in line.

James: I’m sorry, I think you’re wearing my jacket. I must have left it on the chair back there.

Homeless Man: No I am wearing my jacket.

James:  No, that’s mine. I paid $1500 for it.

Homeless Man: You don’t think I can afford a $1500 jacket. Why? Because I’m black?

James:  You’re not black.

Luther: I’m black.

This is also a hilarious scene based on the sheer absurdity of it.  What is a matter of social class becomes a matter of race.  A homeless man can’t afford a $1500 jacket.  That’s really not that funny because the average person can’t.  The homeless man marking himself as “other” by calling himself black in front of a black person is genius.  Watts (2005) wrote that whiteness is not only being white (p. 190).  Luther being a snobby gay man enriches this labeling since he can be read as less black.  Dyer (1997) explains a tension between Blacks and Whites:

Black is a privileged term in the construction of white racial imagery….White discourse implacably reduces the non-white subject to being a function of the white subject, not allowing him/her space or autonomy, permitting neither the recognition of similarities nor the acceptance of differences except as a means for knowing the white self (p.11).

Luther may be a function of the two white subjects here, but he staked a place without being kicked down.  He is not the butt of the joke and the scene would still be funny without him, but alas he is not the threatening one.

 

            In the “Pilot” Episode of Sleepy Hollow (Fox, 2013-Present) race is tackled head on.  Even though there is an element of uncomfortableness, it is handled so flawlessly that it is effective.

Abby:  Mr. Crane.  I’m lieutenant Abby Mills.

            Ichabod:  (Laughs) Female lieutenant. In who’s army?

Abby:  You’re not going to break character, huh?

Ichabod:  You’ve--- been emancipated, I take it?

Abby:  Excuse me?

Ichabod:  From enslavement?

Abby:  OK, I’ll play along here.  I am a black female lieutenant for the Westchester County Police Department.  Do you see this gun? I’m authorized to use it----ON YOU.

Ichabod:  If you’re insinuating I endorse slavery, I’m offended.

Abby:  Wait, back up? You’re offended?

Ichabod:  I’ll have you know I was a proponent of the Abolitionist Act before the New York Assembly.

Abby:  Congratulations. Slavery has been abolished 150 years. It’s a whole new day in America.

Ichabod:  Ohhh.  Well I am pleased to hear it.  I, on the other hand, remain shackled here.  How do I remove these damn manacles? 

Abbie:  You don’t.  I do.

The characters are able to take a historical, touchy subject and turn it into something humorous by highlighting what each participant has at stake.  Abby gets to be offended that he brought the issue up.  Ichabod gets to make an emotional plea to her about how he was against slavery and now he is enslaved.  It is moments like these that disrupt colorblindness by challenging what is taken for granted.

            In conclusion, television delivers many statements about race whether consciously or unconsciously.  Nakayama and Krizek explain how these messages will be decoded by varying audiences based on hierarchies, “The notion of position refers to how life experiences both enable and inhibit particular kinds of insight” (p. 291).  Television provides very limited representation, so comedy is the opportunity where impact can be made.  Rossing noted, “I argue that humor functions as a critical cultural project and site for racial mean-making that may provide a corrective for impasses in public discourse on race and racism.” (p .45) I agree with this assertion.  I know that using racial humor can work to enforce stereotypes, but I am also aware that it can make minorities like myself seem less threatening.  Nakayama and Krizek explain the discursive space of white by writing “White is a relatively unchartered territory that has remained invisible as it continues to influence the identity of those both within and without its domain.  It affects the everyday fabric of our lives, but resists, sometimes violently, any extensive characterization that would allow for mapping of its contours” (p. 291).  It’s time to map those contours.  White people can make use of racial humor just as well.  I once knocked over my classmate and his desk in government class and he asked me if it was because he was white.  Even the 60 year old teacher laughed.   I think race relations would be much better if more people could learn to break down these barriers by using racial humor to get race into the public discourse.

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*Homie Da Clown is a character off of In Living Color (Fox, 1990-1994)

*Title is making light of Asiana Flight 214 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmclgO6w0C0

 

More on Chinese gold farming hatred http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dkkf5NEIo0

 

 

 

 

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Nakayama, T.K. & Krizek, R.L. (1995).Whiteness: a strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of

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Rossing, J.P. (2012). Deconstructing postracialism: humor as a critical, cultural project. Journal

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Watts, E.K. (2005). Border patrolling and ‘passing’ in Eminem’s 8 Mile. Critical Studies in

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Dyer, R. (1997). White. New York: Routledge.

 

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