Abstract for Video Project
The 1990s Def Jam Cliché of “White people ----- like this,
but Black people? We ----- like this!” represents an under examined genre of
performance in American history; Black people telling jokes about Blackness to
majority White audiences. Humor that reaches across racial boundaries, but that
leaves problematic sentiments on both sides.
Following in the footsteps of Marlon Riggs seminal “Ethnic
Notions,” this video project will trace perceptions of Blackness through
comedic enterprises. Ethnic humor has been a defining feature of the melting
pot we call the United States since it’s founding, but the hidden transcripts
of what we’re laughing at when we laugh about race have rarely been explored in
an open manner.
I set out to answer the question “Should we be allowed to
laugh at performance designed to make us laugh if we now know better?” Is it
plebian and base to laugh at MGM’s
“Swing, Monkey, Swing,” but subversive and informed to appreciate Bakshi’s
“Coonskin?” Is it erudite and worldly to laugh at Fassbinder’s “Whity” but
low-brow and kitsch to love Mondo pseudo-documentary “Addio, Zio Tom?”
Questions like these will be explored from a historical perspective tracing the
lineage of the racialization of humor, from an ethnic studies perspective
exploring how these representations have affected the identities of Black
Americans and then in a further, more radical direction questioning the
viability of ethnic humor created for and by a community in an age of global
media.
By sourcing archival footage, historical animations and also
holding interviews with leading academics and group screenings with follow up discussions;
I hope to gather together evidence that our laughter at ethnic humor can’t be
essentialized into political periods or prejudices.
2 comments:
Dorothy,
What a fascinating project. Your subject is sure to attract a not of interest, not least because it feels so timely—I immediately I think of Stuff White People Like, the viral website-turned-bestseller (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/) and of course Baratunde Thurston’s How to Be Black (http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Black-Baratunde-Thurston/dp/0062003224 ). Yet intriguingly, your project suggests a certain skepticism toward the sense of allowable racial comedy that works like these capitalize on. I think your aim is to question the meaningfulness of laughter as a sign of racial knowledge or consciousness, and perhaps to point out the gatekeeping of what counts as racism—both highly complex, highly valuable goals. I’m not quite sure, though, how you mean to use history to make this point—is this a takedown of the fallacy of progress or an assault on the forms of (historically-derived) privilege that authorize joke-getting or joke-killing? Is this a recuperation of subjective experience from the baleful understanding of the past as a time when people felt and thought a fixed way (e.g. in the Renaissance, nobody cared about women)? If so, is race a special category in this recuperation? Does race produce stronger historical fallacies (of change or continuity) than other discourses?
Finally, I think it would help your readers (particularly those who aren’t strongly acquainted with your subjects) to make statements instead of pose questions about which readings are erudite and which are kitsch. Arguing with a clear example, perhaps one you could link to (Mondo, Bakshi), would be helpfully clarifying here.
Dorothy, while doing some online research at the Houghton (which you doubtless already know is Harvard's rare book & ms. library), I cam across this person, who received a residential fellowship this year. I think you might want to check out her work--she seems like a potential colleague:
Tanya Sheehan
Assistant Professor, Art History Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
“Blacks and Whites: Race and Photographic Humor”
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