In response to today's movie night, I thought I would write a blog post addressing how racism is still prevalent today. However, I've noticed that the criticism of all things remotely racist probably isn't the way to go, either. While overexposure of racist occurrences succeeds in criticizing them for the time being, it also makes racism a commonly talked about topic, which I'm not sure is a good thing. This topic has succeeded in thoroughly confusing me, but here is my take on it.
Upon watching the documentary, I learned that a few of my innocent childhood memories have racial roots. I found this quite unsettling, as even the seemingly nonsense "eenie-menie-miney-moe" has chain gang connotations. I also found it interesting that while this is definitely something that has an uneasy past, I don't think we're going to drop the phrase anytime soon. The meaning has obviously been reduced to a game of random selection, and I feel like the main connection people have with this phrase is simply a reminder of their younger years. I wondered if alienating the phrase altogether would make it less of a problem, "one less thing to worry about," so to speak, but I've decided that doing so may simply cause more harm than good. Similar to the controversy over cuss words (namely the n-word), I feel like "banning" something intangible can potentially cause it to carry more weight than it originally did. There is something about labeling something as taboo that makes it even more taboo, if that makes sense.
While I do agree that we have come a long way over the past century, I feel like it would be colorblind to assume that racism doesn't exist today. I've found that anywhere I turn, one form or another of racism can be found. In the documentary, we witnessed black people performing in minstrel shows, degrading their race and further enforcing their stereotype. Reflecting on modern day entertainment, one example I forgot to mention in class is Key & Peele. While I and millions of other viewers have watched their videos and found them rather entertaining, this class has made me rethink the concept of their videos. From portraying contemporary black people to recreating slave auctions, they have risen to fame by using race as their main punchline. On one hand, this reminds me of minstrelsy, but on the other I wonder if I'm over thinking it. In today's society, calling this racist would be considered racist, in the way that constantly bringing up racism is unnecessary. This leads me to concept of colorblindness, as introduced to us in The White Boy Shuffle, and whether trying to achieve it is ideal.
As we exhausted in class today, shows like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody portray a rainbow of characters each with very specific anti-stereotypes. The Asian girl is the dumb and rich, the white girl is smart but poor, and the overseer of all of this is a well kept black man. This made me wonder whether blatantly flipping the racial roles is a good idea or not. I feel like it is definitely a much better alternative to satisfying the stereotypes, but this seemingly purposeful portrayal can cause some people to question its legitimacy. Meaning, is Disney Channel trying a little too hard to get as racially diverse as possible. This made me realize that colorblindness in society is basically unachievable (much to the disgrace of Gunnar's teacher), yet constantly challenging the racial aspects of everything isn't helping things, either. In conclusion, I'm not exactly sure what a probable ideal is, and whether we will see it anytime soon. I definitely think people are trying, though I wonder what the world will look like a century from now.
It's tricky, because it's not the case that comedy or really any kind of performance by black artists that is consumed (in part) by white audiences necessarily partakes in a "minstrel" dynamic. Comedy can be intelligent, penetrating social criticism, and the minstrel dynamic entails an artist being compelled to perform in a degrading, self-mocking way that confirms and reinforces stereotypes, or reduces the artist *only* to a performer eager to please. I don't see Key and Peale in this category at all--their work challenges its audiences, deconstructs ideas about race, not only calling out and satirizing racism in its blatant forms but adding (I'd say) productively to the larger conversation about racial identity politics in the post-civil-rights era. There's a self-aware intelligence to their work that transcends minstrelsy (and, of course, all of their stuff isn't even about race, and that diversity is important, too). We wouldn't want to important historical awareness of the baggage that attends black comedic performance to somehow prohibit any black performer from pursuing comedy. Beatty's novel serves as a good example: it's hilariously funny while still being strongly thought-provoking and challenging, and the critical aspects of the book are intimately bound to its humor. Laughter can produce profound critical insight.
ReplyDeleteBut satire can be tricky, too (see _Bamboozled_ in this category, where an intended "satire" spins wildly out of control when audiences start enjoying it for all the wrong reasons). Chappelle's sudden and dramatic retirement a decade ago was provoked in large part by his unease with the way his satirical/critically astute work was being received in a boneheaded, unreflective, uncritically celebratory way by his (white) audiences. By his own account, he started to feel uncomfortably like a minstrel on stage.
As appalling as the evidence from the blackface era is, like the Jim Crow era in which it flourished, at least the offensiveness and the racism was clear-cut. We're living (and Beatty is writing, and Key and Peele are performing) in a much more ambiguous era.
I completely agree that banning something intangible is dangerous. Not only is it dangerous, I think that outright forbidding people to do something that is not inherently bad(like eenie menie money moe) is kind of wrong. And should we be censoring things that are important to our culture and important evidence of racial injustices? Perhaps we should just be educating people about what it means, but if that happens some people will undoubtedly want to censor it. I, likewise, am very confused. I can no longer say "racism is bad" (which, to clarify, I still believe to be true) and be satisfied. There are so many different types of racism that it can be hard to condemn one without falling into another a little. For example, if one were to say "black people like dancing", that would be a racist generalization, but if someone were to respond to that by saying, "don't force dance onto black people" it could be interpreted as denying the validity of an aspect of African American culture(s) or assuming that the black people are trying to achieve whiteness. This comment has no point. I'm just confused.
ReplyDeleteYour comment on Key and Peele was really interesting. Although it's true that they have some aspects of minstrelsy (portraying African Americans in a not-so-positive light, entertaining white audiences), I think their whole goal is bringing stereotypes to light. Instead of ridiculing African Americans, they make us laugh at the stereotypes and realize that the racist stereotypes are still out there. This reasoning shouldn't be extended to other minstrel examples though. It goes to show that there's a very fine line between what could be considered racist today and what shouldn't but there's no hard and fast rule that can help us determine how we can draw that line.
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