Racism’s Back Door: A Mixed-Methods Content Analysis of Transformative Sketch Comedy in the US from 1960-2000

Abstract

Comedy that challenges race ideology is transformative, widely available, and has the potential to affect processes of identity formation and weaken hegemonic continuity and dominance. Outside of the rules and constraints of serious discourse and cultural production, these comedic corrections thrive on discursive and semiotic ambiguity and temporality. Comedic corrections offer alternate interpretations overlooked or silenced by hegemonic structures and operating modes of cultural common sense. The view that their effects are ephemeral and insignificant is an incomplete and misguided evaluation. Since this paper adopts Hegel’s understanding of comedy as the spirit (Geist) made material, its very constitution, and thus its power, resides in exposing the internal thought processes often left unexamined, bringing them into the foreground, dissecting them, and exposing them for ridicule and transformation. In essence, the work of comedy is to consider all points of human processing and related structuration as fair game. The phenomenological nature of comedy calls for a micro-level examination. Select examples from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1968), The Richard Pryor Show (1977), Saturday Night Live (1990), and Chappelle’s Show (2003) will demonstrate representative ways that comedy attacks and transforms racial hegemony.

Comedy In the Perspective of Performing Arts Management: Systematic Literature Review

“…The sub-theme of comedy as a tool is divided into several study categories, namely: tools of resistance to stereotypes (Bower, 2014), subversive efforts (Quirk, 2016), and racial resistance (Kim, 2020). In addition to resistance efforts, comedy is also used as a tool to identify social life (Smith, 2015), as social criticism (Tonder, 2014), a political campaign tool (Quirk, 2016), a marketing tool (Warren et al, 2018), a learning tool (Azadbakht, 2019), and art creation (Setyawan, 2018).…”

Representaciones étnico-raciales y de género como instrumentos generadores de humor en el Perú

“…El sketch es un formato que se caracteriza por los personajes recurrentes, parodias, situaciones absurdas, y la aparición de miembros que caracterizan a otros o a ellos mismos (Marx, 2019). Generalmente tratan temas de actualidad, y dan discursos transgresivos, formulando críticas a ciertos organismos y movimientos, o hacia preferencias políticas, religiosas o ideológicas (Kim, 2020). Son de corta duración, y se construyen desarrollando un solo tema específico (Karlsen & Villadsen, 2015).…”