Chapter 5
The Power of the Media: Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts
Media’s greatest power is its influence on personal ideology, what we believe to be true. By understanding the archetypes presented in media, we can better understand how our viewing experiences impact our actual experiences. Seamlessly, our favorite programs become part of our ideological programming. As a result, there is no wonder why so much more attention and money are spent on Hollywood’s make believe – crews, sets, actors – instead of directly on realities like education, environmentalism and civil rights.
In America today, it is not uncommon to hear people use the Orwellian phrase “Big brother is watching you” when describing the Patriot Act, wiretapping without warrants, GPS, or the amount of personal information you are asked to give when buying things. However the power of the media reveals a different strategy. Safe to say, televisions, computers, and Iphones do not watch us in our homes (as far as we know unless your video chat isn’t turned off). No instead, it seems big brother is making sure you are watching everything else but him.
On a daily basis, the amount of information most people get from the media via the Internet, television, video games, and phones dwarfs what most get directly in person from family, friends, and groups they are part of (in religion, philosophy, ethnicity, politics, etc.). Interestingly, we seem to see and hear more from television and computers than from friends and family, who these days “text” us more often than talk to or see us in person. Nevertheless, the most influential forms of media are modeled after television. While Internet and computer games offer more viewing and interactive choices, the images and sounds displayed on computers, all-in-one phones, and personal “play stations” are on the same types of screens as television. However, we cannot smell the air, taste the food, nor touch the people that appear on television and its derivatives. No matter what is seen and heard, on screens it all smells, tastes and feels like glass.
Television informs us about things we often do not have direct contact with in our daily lives. Depending on our individual lot in life and what we choose to watch (i.e. the news, reality shows, scripted sitcoms, dramas, sports etc.), broadcast second hand information becomes first hand knowledge. For example, people often say, “I know such and such happened because I saw it on television”. This idea that seeing is believing is what makes television (and its derivatives) the most powerful medium to tell stories, a custom as old as human civilization.
“Watching and Being Watched”
All television and its derivatives are is mass storytelling. Stories educate and entertain us. They shape our identities and offer escapes from them. We watch television because our friends and family do, because we worship its awesome power to reach so many compared to our own bodies and voices, and perhaps so we can feel a little like God controlling its power with our remotes.While some shows inform, entertain and potentially inspire us, that inspiration to do something in our real own lives often gets satisfied simply by watching more entertaining inspiring stories on television instead.
Telling the difference between reality and fantasy stories on television is something we seem destined to struggle from childhood. As children we naturally blend reality with fantasy during playtime, making imaginary friends, etc. Nevertheless, as we are raised watching television, we often face two conflicting messages. First, when parents watch television with their very young children, they often ask their kids, “now why did that happen?” implying that what they are watching on that screen is as real as what happens in real life. And then there’s that eventual contradiction when a parent has to tell their kid that what they are watching “isn’t real”. Naturally, there becomes an innate confusion as to when television is a tool to learn about reality or to be entertained by things that aren’t real. This is a confusing message indeed when so many busy, self-involved, and/or miserable parents who hate parenting, use television to be the parent for them. Television practically becomes a part of our family educating and entertaining us more than our actual family members.
Watching television does the work for our imaginations to make stories believable. If we listen to an orally told story, our imagination has to create the images. If we read a story, our imagination has to create both images and sound. If we see a picture, we have to come up with the thousands of words it is worth. If we see a play (a theatrical story), our imagination has to block out the audience seats and theatrical limitations. However, watching stories on television, especially with modern technology and special effects, the images and sounds are already as real as anything most people can try to imagine.
However, being watchable is not enough to judge television, technology or media. Only those whocreate and consume (sensual wealth) what is on it (material wealth) can be judged (ideological wealth). And since we often judge our world based on what we see in the media, it is important toknow what you are being sold during the stories being told. Sometimes our favorite shows and stories inspire us to buy and/or buy into things against our best interests.
First, lets get the boring (but important) part of television media out of the way. What stories are aired depend on the networks, corporate sponsors, and amount of people watching them. Networks, Internet sites, radio stations, etc. put shows on the air about stories they hope people want to watch. The higher the ratings (the more people that watch), the more money stations can ask for when selling commercial time during the show’s story breaks to corporations selling products. The sponsor pays stations a lot of money to get their products placed on the show (product placement), or as a commercial, which is effectually a story about a product separate from the story of the show.
However, corporate sponsors don’t get paid just because we watch their advertisements. They don’t get paid until we buy their products. They invest by taking a chance that viewers will want to buy their product after their advertisements air during the show’s story. Therefore, it not only makes good business sense to sell products that a certain show’s audience will want to buy, but makes sense to air shows that will make watchers want to buy sponsor’s products. In other words, demographics are key in determining when to air these commercials and shows.
Now, while some commercials use basic tricks like repeating the product’s name over and over again to get it stuck in your head like the one for the pain reliever Head On: “Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!” others are more strategically placed in relation to the show’s material and when it is aired. Soap operas, and talk shows feature sensational stories geared towards bored bourgeoisie housewives. Not only will they will most likely buy the diapers and cleaning goods advertised during this time of day, but they will want to satisfy awakened sensual urges with something material like furniture or food, even for just a sinful chocolaty moment. Similarly sugary cereals, toys, and video games are aired during kid’s shows during afternoons after school and Saturday mornings.
These days, while you may never see a person of color play a thief in a commercial, color is still used as a threatening symbol to stir fear and discomfort in news. The news that comes on when household breadwinners come home increasingly covers stories about violent youth and interracial violence, even though statistically most violence occurs within race, and statistically youth’s crime rate have been lower than ever. It is profitable for news programs to cover natural disasters and crimes because all the cheapest unskilled journalist has to do is stand by and talk about what they see while the cameras roll and the ratings soar (Rachel Lyons, DePaul University).
The news loves to cover missing, lost, or kidnapped, white children, while missing and/or abused children of color are rarely covered in comparison. Most obviously when caught in sex scandals, white people in power like David Letterman and Gov Spitzer might stay in the news cycle for a month or so, but black people like Tiger Woods and even the late Michael Jackson not only provide news for months at a time, but often there is more attention paid to personal details such as penis size (3/31/10 NYPOST). The news seems to call it terrorism only if the perpetrator is Islamic or Arabic (army doctor at Fort Hood), but not a white disgruntled tax payer (Anti IRS plane suicide). These images and stories play on white insecurities going into commercials for security systems, cars, diamond rings, Viagra and Levitra, and investment portfolios. Then to target today’s growing middle and upper class minority consumers, commercials additionally feature minorities enjoying the same products as white people.
Aside from using color as a threat to white viewers, the media depicts people of color in positions of power in prime time entertainment to distract from the real divisions that continue to exist. Shows likeWest Wing, Heroes, Fringe, Flash Forward, Lost, Human Target feature minorities in powerful protagonist roles such as judges, politicians, company heads, interracial couples, etc., are useful to distract the public from the fact there are twice as many black people unemployed (16%) compared to whites (8%) in 2010.
Similarly, the 24/7 media cycle of crime dramas (Law & Order, CSI) offer a rose tinted view of our justice system relating to race when in reality one out of three African-American men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five in jail, on parole, or awaiting trial while 97% of district attorneys in states that apply the death penalty are white and male. “Thus, crime dramas distract, entertain, and excite audiences while sending several key messages: we live in a dangerous world, yet we have a fair and integrated justice system, where forensics are carefully practiced by police, and where prosecutors always tell the truth and seek justice against the guilty man. This idealized media world of criminal justice allows us to both see the violence and perversion of normal behaviors that intrigue us and generate profit for media conglomerates.” (Lyons)
Aside from deriving its power from those who watch, television and its derivatives derive its power from those who want to be on it. Most everyone wants to be on it because television is the equal opportunity deifier, able to make a star and god out of anyone. The only other media that have reached people on an equal mass scale to television are the greatest selling books, radio and live acts, and religions. And yet to be on television, a person does not need the same intellectual, creative, or spiritual qualifications of an author, a speaker, an artist, or a messiah.
There are exceptional artists, journalists, and politicians who train, climb social ladders, and pay dues that, if they’re lucky, lead to a break for some fame and career in television. However, ordinary, talentless people can become just as famous by simply getting on television. Reality shows capitalize on this mediocre deification so that the majority of lazy undisciplined uninspired Americans can vicariously live through them. As a result many consuming watchers can find escape into a hopeful dream that they too have lives worthy of being watched and made into a reality show. This neediness for expressive and creative recognition blinds many who get on television from seeing how their characteristics are packaged to sell things to polarize, distract, and medicate viewers without regard to their or the viewer’s best interests or intentions.
And if we can’t get on television, there are plenty of substitutes to get that special affirming high feeling of being watched on a screen. Youtube, social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and video games are great ways for people to watch us, often edited versions or avatars of ourselves, on the same screens pop icons are worshipped. While moderation is key to healthy use or consumption of anything, using the Internet excessively has proven to ruin many interpersonal relationships: “Evidently, matrimonial lawyers have seen a massive spike in the use of social-networking information as evidence of infidelity.” (NY POST 2/11/10).
However, phone companies encourage the opposite in their commercials. Sprint features three people stuck on a ski lift who instead of being social isolate themselves by escaping into their phones for entertainment, the black woman virtually deejaying and listening to music, the white man virtually skiing down a slope, and the white woman virtually working on her tan in the Caribbean. Verizons Big Red commercial: ”Browse the web much better. Update facebook pages better. Ditch your boring job much better, better with Big Red. That 3G coverage let’s you do it. You’ll watch youtube on a horse when you use it. Email friends and family better. Download stupid stuff much better. Get the most great 3G coverage with Big Red.”
The message of these commercials is that what is happening on the Internet, a television derivative, will always be much more enjoyable than what is happening in your real life. Tim Wise, the activist “anti-racist”, explains that white privilege is bad for white people because it breeds unrealistic expectations about life that when unfulfilled can lead to violent crimes like the Columbine shooting. However, the growing accessibility of television derivatives arguably fosters unrealistic frustrating expectations across all divisions of “privilege”.
For us to watch a screen while riding a horse, having sex, kissing, having a conversation, doing a job means that we are more interested in the screen’s story than our life story. Not to mention the fact that we do not care as much in what we are doing in real life as we are in the electric one, making us trust and enjoy each other just a little less with each (un)present moment we share. Simultaneously, any angst or motivation to change our lives within our means for the better in the real world gets satisfied when watching in excess someone else do something extraordinary, funny, or stupid in a featured story on a screen. And then we look for affirmation of being proactive and/or godlike without being either by updating profiles about the most mundane things like what we ate for breakfast, or what someone else just did on television, or what we did virtually (online games like mafia wars, farming, etc.).
Society is becoming more active in the virtual world because simply it is just too hard to be as active in the real one. It takes more discipline and patience to live the story you want to live than watch it. Video recording and updating statuses on screens are not evidence of having a life because if you were really living it, you would not have time to record and make these updates. Life happens while you wait and when nobody is watching. When a tree falls and nobody is there to hear it, it still makes a sound because the tree itself feels it, just like we all experience things when nobody watches us or records a montage of what they see. The surrogate actions of watching and being watched are perfect for the system that wants you to stay with the identity it has assigned you based on the audio/visual symbols of entitlement that you are and watch. To create a new system, we need to notice how the cultural archetypes in yesterday’s stories shape today’s history, as today’s stories, both real and made up, make the history of tomorrow.
“Otherizing and The Color Yellow”
On February 21, 2010 the Simpsons, the longest running American prime time television sitcom and animated show in history, aired a special episode paying tribute to Black History Month (February) called The Color Yellow. What is said about black and white is not special to the writers of this episode, this show, or the Fox network. The Simpsons is only being cited first in this chapter because they have been on air the longest and have been around during the many changes of what is politically correct to say about black and white the last 23 years.
In the episode, Lisa Simpson, the geeky overachieving saxophone playing liberal activist daughter, explores her family lineage when she finds an old journal of a relative in her attic from the 1800’s involved in helping black slaves on the Underground Railroad. Like in so many other sitcoms, characters from the present play their own descendants (or similar roles in society) back in time in the flashbacks. For example, the the oldest, richest character Mr. Burns “plays” his own ancestor, a “white” slave owner in the 1800’s flashbacks discussed in the old journal.
I put “white” in quotes because some question what race the Simpsons are or anyone else on the animated show drawn with yellow skin. However, Matt Groening said he originally drew the Simpsons family yellow in 1987 on the Tracey Ullman Show to make television viewers think there was something wrong with their television reception (citation), meaning to imply the Simpsons are a “white” family drawn as yellow. Additionally, the other ethnic characters are drawn differently - Indian (drawn as brown), Asian (drawn with slanted eyes) and Black (drawn as darker brown) - not to mention many corresponding accents and speech affectations the yellow people don’t share. So in the Simpsons world up until this episode, along with the paler drawn white characters, yellow = white. However, by the end of this episode, Lisa discovers that the Simpsons are descendant of an African-American slave named Virgil (who happened to look and sound a lot like but apparently not related to the town’s black pediatrician, Dr. Hibbert).
What is said after Lisa and Bart discover they are 1/64th black, and Homer 1/32nd tells a lot about how mainstream media continues to frame black and white in today’s day and age. Bart, the brother, says, “So that’s why I’m so cool”. Lisa says, “That’s why my jazz is so smooth.” Homer, the father, says “And that’s why I make less than my white co-workers.” Of course this is a sitcom. It’s comedy. Nevertheless, the characters were seriously excited with the discovery that they have black in them. To better understand what made them so happy is to better understand the pattern in mainstream media to promote audio/visual symbols of entitlement (stereotypes) that continue to polarize identity in society. Interestingly, this episode did not receive a lot of buzz in reviews nor the blogosphere because of what I believe to be a desensitizing political correctness.
“Otherizing” is a term most often used in reference to discussing minorities. It means “making into the ‘other’ to separate from the ‘our’, referring to the other group in a derogatory way” (Urban Dictionary). Many would argue that the only negative connotation in this Simpson episode about being black was being a victim of white supremacy as in Homer’s exclamation of being paid less, a fault of society and not black people. However saying that black people are cooler and are able to express themselves smoother in jazz is a different type of otherizing, one that progressive minded white people often miss because of their white guilt, and one conservative minded people miss because they believe this part of culture is beneath them.
First of all what makes the character Bart so cool? Because he has been a television cultural icon for 21 years, like Oprah or Michael Jordan? Because he’s creative and mischievous? Because he’s rebellious? Because he’s entertaining? Well, if he’s black, being a creative, mischievous, entertaining, and rebellious kid does make slightly more sense doesn’t it? I mean a white kid doesn’t naturally inherit those angst-ridden skill sets do they? But then can a white kid ever strive to be as cool as Bart? Well they can try and try hard but will apparently never quite get there because, well, they’re white. At the same time, black kids now have more of the same popular young rebellious troublemaking stereotypes to Bart Simpson represents. Sorry everybody. Maybe tune in again after Black History month.
Secondly, in reality, Lisa really is not that “black” for playing jazz so well, despite the old jazz stereotypes. Jazz has been played and played well by “white” people for decades. I always find it fascinating how many Hollywood actors and directors less familiar with music think jazz is so black (except for the crooners like Sinatra of course) and make their jazzy characters sound right out of a bastardized time machine from the 40’s, exaggerating hep talk and jazz jive. Jazz as I will point out in Chapter 8 is arguably the most gentrified, academized black music in American history, not to mention the safest one for white people to appropriate today. I cannot tell you how many hip hop artists of all colors I’ve worked with who consider anything coming out of an acoustic horn “jazzy”. The word jazz has been morphed so many times it’s often a caricature of itself, just like many of the white actors who play “black” jazz musicians or black people in media.
Nevertheless, as an overachieving white geeky jazz student myself, I can understand how thrilled Lisa must have been finding out she had some black in her, giving her more entitlement to do black things since her roots are now that closer to mother Africa. And good for her if it made her feel better in this episode, but what about the rest of white people in real life who want to or do play jazz well or relate any other type of less gentrified “non-white” culture that has become popularly American? And what about those black people that don’t have rhythm and are not musically inclined? What’s wrong with them? Maybe they just have some white in them. Go listen to some ROCK N ROLL!! Or some old heavy metal like the burnt out stoner school bus driver in the show! Alas, maybe we should just drink alcohol to cope with our deficiencies like Homer often does.
So why am I even going there? On one hand, you might be saying who cares about how white people feel? One, they’re in power (especially institutionally speaking). As said before, I believe many white people cling to institutional power, a form of material power, because they just are not in touch with American soulful culture, which has its roots in the black oppressed culture. They do not know who they are without their institutional power, because they are taught that they have less to express and urgently rebel against compared with black people and minorities. That is why so many constantly make jokes about themselves relating to black things, because they are brainwashed to think that black music only speaks to a black experience, an oppressive one they are responsible for, and therefore have no claim to enjoy it except in parody. As a participant, they do not see or respect the universality that black music and culture (or all music and culture for that matter) speaks to. And by not seeing how it applies to their experience, whites neither forgive themselves nor truly accept black people and others as equals. From my experience, this is more an issue with white males than females.
Secondly, many believe white people have so many other expressive outlets to be, well, white in. However, as I have noted before even the whitest Rock has its roots in blues, the souls of black people. Besides all classic white Rock eventually starts with Jimmi Hendrix. Elvis is rooted in Little Richard and Jackie Wilson. Some may say that White people just need to suck up any low self-esteem in these black aspects of American soulful culture. Many minorities and oppressed people argue that the only thing that will change the system is to empower themselves academically and institutionally. However by ignoring the other white variable, low soulful self-esteem, you will not solve the equation to change Uncle Tim’s system. This lack of a birthright to this expressive power, this Uncle Tim perception ingrained in white people, produces a Sambo effect by default, constantly otherizing other minorities despite any of their academic and institutional achievements.
In media, conservative and liberal white geeks alike need to discuss, recognize, and explain how they relate to the black aspects of American culture. How do liberal white geeks (and some jocks) often self deprecate in the presence of minorities they praise, and then justifiably turn right around and participate in the appropriated spoils of music (rock and jazz), language (vernacular slang), and so many American expressions (fist pounds, struts, dances) rooted in the souls of blues people – black people and people of color? This is one of the biggest questions missing in the media of entertainment and news, one that is answered in more detail in Chapter 10. This chapter focuses more on how the question is avoided in the media through the jokes and polarization of the Tim’s media machine.
By progressively looking up to and glorifying “black people” as soulful superiors, eventually deep down white people will be less willing to share and let go of their institutional power, because they will have nothing else to be superior in. That is why it is important to address the Uncle Tim. White people need to empower themselves soulfully side by side, and toe to toe with minorities in American culture so that for one, they can if they wish to honestly help institutionally empower those who need allies from within the system. And two, if and when material institutional power is torn from white people through gradual “mixing” or a sudden revolution, they will have access to the more dynamic powers that exist outside of whiteness defined by material power, specifically in ideological, and sensual ones found in the soulful arts. Besides white guilt, the Uncle Tim issue is not often recognized as a degrading archetype because of how underfunded and under-appreciated the arts are in our society compared to the fields of science, math, and language. By acting like fools relating to other cultures, Tims continue to disrespect and shape potentially enlightened white people’s intentions, abilities, when participating in American soulful culture.
We, as white people, will not be able to truly stop “otherizing” minorities until we stop “otherizing” ourselves, which can only happen when we collectively recognize why we have and continue to take and copy from minorities. At the same time we need to recognize why we embarrassingly make fun of ourselves and awkwardly separate ourselves from them because of this history. White people cannot leave it to black people to understand and treat our psychoses. No black person can speak for why white people act like “Tims”, the ultimate in degraded whiteness, any more than white people can speak for why black people act like “niggers”, the ultimate in degraded blackness. But if we are honest with each other, I believe we will see how our individual reasons are connected within the broader system that plays us off each other. A system that uses media to influence how we act based on the presented identities and ideologies.
As I played in the Chops Horn section with Ray Chew for a Teddy Pendergrass tribute at a NABOB banquet (National Association of Black Owned Broadcasting), I heard Reverend Al Sharpton say something very universal. When Sharpton, an honoree at the banquet, shared a powerful story about a rapper on his radio show who argued that “nigger” was okay to use. Later the rapper got into law trouble and approached Sharpton to help him because his civil rights were being violated. Sharpton said he replied “niggers don’t have rights”. He ended the story with a great universal phrase “What defines you confines you”, which I believe is equally applicable to the glorification of the Uncle Tim in the media and his rights to soul. As the most politically correct racial stereotype exploited in the media, Tims are most often corporate white men in their 20’s through 40’s. Nine out of ten times when seeing bad singing or dancing in commercials it will be a white person, and today white people have been conditioned to identify with and glorify the hell out of it.
A typical example is a Microsoft Vista commercial during the Holiday season of 2008 featuring a late 20’s/early 30’s white male at the desk of his office job about to use his new laptop with Microsoft’s Vista operating system. An older white gentleman walks up to his desk singing about how great the computer is to the melody of “Deck the Halls”. A white woman joins in, followed by a young black man as they all sing jollily in tune and in sync. Towards the end of their song, the young man overwhelmed with Christmas joy and excitement over his computer joins in the caroling, singing awkwardly super high. As soon as he blurts out his contribution to the song, the other employees in the commercial stop singing, look at the white young man in disgust, and walk away leaving him awkwardly alone embarrassed for trying to sing in the first place.
Another popular commercial is for Freecreditreport.com featuring its faux indie rock band of three young white guys singing a song about “the credit roller coaster” where one of the lyrics is: “so throw your hands in the air and wave em around like a wannabe frat boy trying to get down”. During their singing a white jock dressed in preppy baseball cap in the roller coaster does this exaggerated awkward version one of those fist pumps first made famous by Arsenio Hall in the 90’s. A very prominent Tim in commercials is Charlie Sheen in the Hanes underwear commercials, as he begs to hang out with Michael Jordan who keeps rejecting him out of some sense that Sheen is not worthy of his company; just another clingy white guy trying to extract some coolness from his “airness”. Are there any examples of black people being rejected by white people in commercials this way? Of course not. That would be racist.
Tims exist in many movies and television shows as well. In the movie, “Undercover Brother”, Neil Patrick Harris plays the white assistant, Lance, who dances awkwardly to 70’s disco funk as a comic foil to the hip smooth hero, black comedian Eddie Griffin. On the Colbert Report December 2, 2008, Stephen Colbert, who often invokes the Tim archetype on his show, awkwardly did the “snake” and a few other “black” dance moves in a segment about his envy and jealousy that Kanye West’s album was selling better than his own “Stephen Colbert’s Christmas Album”. This is comic relief everyone can safely relate to without political repercussions. However, imagine a young white boy looking at such an image, and being afraid of trying to sing or dance for fear that he will look awkward and be abandoned, or worse be laughed at. More than any other stereotype, white people, especially straight white males are exposed to this stereotype from the very first time they ever turn on a television. Such fear of expression drives straight white men away from relating their own life experience to music, their body, and other cultures regarded as more entitled to such expression.
Of all of the otherizing Uncle Tims in media, the two most influential of the past ten years are the famous movie character Napoleon Dynamite, the alienated white geek from a small town Western high school who unexpectedly dances during a class assembly, and Judson Laipply, the motivational speaker made famous for his six minute Evolution of Dance routine on Youtube. Unlike the great white hopes of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever (1977) or Kevin Bacon from Footloose (1984), these are “practical white hopes”, where all that is needed for a white person to be considered good is courage to look silly, while parodying dances rooted in black culture.
In Napoleon Dynamite (2004), the climax of the movie is when Napoleon decides the best way to help his best friend Pedro’s bid for class president is to perform a solo dance routine in his honor. After practicing hours watching hip-hop dance instructional videos, he dances to Jamiroquai’s Canned Heat under a spotlight on stage during a school assembly. His deadpan expressionless face, one he has throughout the movie, shows that he is quite serious about his dancing, despite his awkward flailing, undulations, and gyrations. After his performance, his classmates cheer loudly in celebration to the surprise of the stereotypical jock sitting in the audience, who picked on him throughout the movie. Pedro gets elected as a result of Napoleon’s buzz worthy performance, Napoleon gets a girl and happy endings are all around for our underdogs.
However, while Napoleon is an icon to so many geeks, and white people hoping for acceptance on the dance floor and real life, it only further establishes hopelessness that alienated geeks, or white people, can ever by rhythmic, soulful, or dynamically expressive beyond being a joke. Sure everyone cheered like it was a moving performance but do not forget. IT IS A MOVIE, where camera angles, panning, editing and a script is used to entertain the viewer just like the audience shots during Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent performance, or any other reality show or news program. Try his moves in real life and watch what happens.
The movie’s message was clear. The mostly white high school was envious of the geeky white kid who had the courage to confront the stereotype that white people cannot dance, or rhythmically express themselves seriously. While Napoleon’s intention was serious, the dancing still sucked, yet because of the Hollywood reaction, moviegoers take for granted understanding that this is the low standard for white people. The call for white celebration was courage instead of skill, hope instead of strategy. The physical discipline and dance experience required to make a good dancer of any other race, or walk of life did not apply to Napoleon because he was a geek and he was white. Even if he were not a geek, like a Ben Stiller in Along Came Polly, or a Jimmy Fallon doing a dance-off with Parker Posey on his Late Nite show (3/13/10), or the multitude of Saturday Night Live hosts and repertory players who dance fucked up for a cheap laugh i.e. Zack Galinafakis, Taylor Lautner, he would still be considered “good” and entertaining. But if he were black, a geek or not, the dancing would not be funny. It just wouldn’t make sense.
When Judson Laipply’s youtube video “Evolution of Dance” first came out in 2006, a number of people emailed it to me suggesting that I could benefit from learning some of his moves. Others emailed me saying that this guy was my competition. When I watched it for the first time, what struck me most of all was smooth his six minute mix was. Each song played long enough for him to dance the “style” associated with the music, before moving on to the next song featuring a different dance.
Originally, as an inspirational speaker Laipply did the dance to end his “life is change” motivational speech, demonstrating the ultimate example of how a person should be able to change, adapt to, and tackle life without fear, by showing how he can dance to every evolving style of dance dictated by the chronological order of music in his routine. He unexpectedly found fame when some students he was lecturing asked him to post his routine on youtube. To his surprise after only a day or so of it being posted, it received millions of views and history was made.
Interestingly in an interview on staytunedtv.com, Laipply said he first got his idea for his routine in 2001 when he saw a black comic talk about the ways white people dance at weddings. Inspired, he took his experience as a former aerobics instructor and a guy who always “liked to go crazy” at parties he made his routine. While Mr. Laipply seems very sincere in his inspirational message for helping people change, his dancing reveals he does not mean change racial stereotypes. In my humble opinion, practically every dance Laipply does on in his famous six minute routine is the white equivalent of a black person in overalls with shoe polish on his face and “Buckwheat” hair, eating watermelon while making observations in black ghetto slang about how kind President Bush was to his people in Hurricane Katrina. That is the real significance of the Evolution of Dance. And every day, hundreds of thousands of people eat it up, especially white people awestruck by his “greatness”. Most people view the clip on youtube only to comment about how many millions of hits the clip has gotten so far.
With his newfound fame and perhaps even because of it, like a privileged house slave, Laipply is conveniently ignorant of a few things. In the same interview, as a now self-proclaimed expert of popular dance he says his routine starts with Elvis’ “Hound Dog” because there were no solo dances before the Rock n Roll era. According to him “only partner dances” existed during the swing era and earlier. However, any true expert of American popular dance knows about the Charleston, Cake Walk, and even soft shoe tap dance from these earlier eras. Also despite his fame, numerous television appearances including Oprah and the Today Show where he shamelessly wears t-shirts with soda brand names, he explains that his clip is famous because of the joy, forgetting the black comedian’s “joke” from where his routine originally conceived.
The joke is that the dances he does in the ways he does them are stereotypically white and cliché. Many mimic the actions of trivial events associated with upper middle class white life style void of any passion, sense of urgency, and ultimately “soul”. Again, some of these once include “the shopping cart”, “the lawn mower”, “the sprinkler”, and the “grab your foot and jerk your knee like a black person dance”. The only somewhat impressive part of Laipply’s routine is his transition from a robot dance into a moonwalk and then into the worm. However as impressive and “black” as those dances look, he still lacks what many b-boys lack, who are all flash and no substance. He lacks any sense of rhythm or serious urgency.
His fairly smooth transitions between all of these moves mask his lack of connecting to what’s happening rhythmically in the music. The “robot dance” might as well be done to the music of an opera, and it would still look cool, because of the symbolism he is invoking by doing a “black dance”. Additionally, there are countless times I have seen white people at weddings and parties doing the “worm”. The “worm” is a favorite among white people because it’s flashy and can be initiated at any point rhythmically in the music. Nobody cares what beat you do the worm to because people will point and ooh and ah at the very fact that you jumped into the floor head first (easier than it looks), and kicked up your legs and chest in worm like fashion.
Laipply often says in his interviews that all a person needs to do to be a good dancer (like him) is to lose their self-consciousness and go crazy but like a snake oil salesman, this truly is false advertising. What he says is music to most white people’s ears, neglecting the importance of rhythm, spatial awareness, or physical discipline. To say that losing fear and going “crazy” makes good dancing is like saying throwing cans of paint randomly onto a blank canvas makes good art. Some people might get a therapeutic release in letting go of their inhibitions and enjoy defying rules of what’s pleasant to watch on the dance floor all in the name of free expression and rebellion. But this free expression and rebellion is just that: IN NAME ONLY. To freely express and be rebellious, you need some type of vocabulary, and the discipline to learn it, specifically the discipline to train and feel in rhythm. Discipline to feel and express, especially as white people, requires much more work and introspection than so called experts like Laipply would have you believe, because it’s a tougher pill to swallow not to mention to sell.
As complex human beings, we have much more in our heart and soul, a more dynamic range of emotions to be expressed than just balls to the wall “crazy”. So please let me direct a few questions to the popular dance expert, Jud Laipply. Excuse me, Mr. Laipply, what if you want to learn to be more than a funny jokester on the dance floor who does comical versions of old black dances because you have no serious commitment to your body or rhythm? How would you dance if you’ve had a bad day and just want to move passionately? Angrily? Sexily? Frustratedly? And most of all RHYTHMICALLY? If you want to be “exhibitionists” void of any real “emotional content”, then by all means continue doing the caricature dances of Mr. Judson Laipply. If you want to learn to express yourself in more ways that really reflect who you are and who you want to be, keep reading.
“Opposite Archetypes: Black/White, Left/Right”
Over the last eighty or so years of television, the roles of black and white in media have changed both in the depiction of dancing and family function. The Simpsons show how far we have come from the days of Leave it To Beaver. Shows featuring black families like The Bernie Mac Show have come a long way from the days of Amos n Andy. Similarly, today’s movies that glorify the Napoleon Dynamite styled dancing have come a long way from the days of Fred Astaire’s movie musicals (or even Jerry Lewis’ for that matter).
Interestingly it seems, once black roles in sitcoms approached economic and social equality in the 80’s, a dysfunctional society dependent on polarized role models was ready for white to be redefined as well. Is it a coincidence that the high level of family dysfunction in today’s sitcoms, like the Simpsons, Family Guy, and Arrested Development, involve white families? Obviously in reality, dysfunctional families of all colors and classes exist but what is seen on television sitcoms seems to differ (well with the exception of the cartoon Boondocks). The watershed moment for romanticizing family dysfunction and bad white dancing in media seems to have happened in the late 80’s.
Sure Leave It to Beaver and many shows prior to it in the 40’s and 50’s depicted suburban functional white male dominated couples and households. As the 60’s civil rights movement, television sitcoms depicted a changing social landscape of race. Here is a timeline of sitcoms from the late 60’s to early 90’s with the changing black and white family roles in media sitcoms: Brady Bunch(1969)/Julia (1968), All in the Family(‘71)/Sanford and Son(’72), Maude(’72)/That’s My Mama(’74), Happy Days(’74)/Good Times(’74), The Waltons(’72)/The Jeffersons(’75), One Day At a Time(’75)/What’s Happening(’76), Eight Is Enough(’77)/Different Strokes(‘78), Family Ties(’82)/Cosby Show(’84), Married with Children(’87)/Family Matters(’89), Roseanne(’88)/Fresh Prince of Bel Air(’90).
Of all of these shows, the one that turned the tide was the Cosby Show in 1984. Sure the Jeffersons was the first sitcom to feature an upper middle class African American family: a humorously socially abrasive dry cleaners executive, his wife, fully grown son, and neighbors including an interracial couple. There were also a lot of African American stylized gesturing throughout the show, from Helmsley’s celebrative dancing to his maid’s (Marla Gibbs) timing and attitude. However, the Cosby Show went steps further to redefine what black could be, featuring an upper middle class doctor father, a lawyer mother, and five children spanning all ages.
Compared with the Jeffersons’ “black” inflections in language, swagger, and behavior, Cosby’s main characters were, for better or worse, much more f white friendly. His show dealt with family issues framed with the universal humor that makes Cosby such a comic genius. Cliff Huckstable’s (Bill Cosby) humor was much more mainstream compared with the abrasive George Jefferson humor that could sometimes intimidate white people with the frequent use of the word “honkey”, etc. I mean it was funny, but maybe not to everyone. Nevertheless Bill Cosby’s kept focus on African-American heritage by incorporating jazz and soul music in his episodes, like the famous Anniversary episode where the whole family lip synched Ray Charles’ “Night and Day” in tribute to their grandparents. Other episodes featured jazz stars, including Art Blakey, Jimmy Heath, and Betty Carter and one even had a Stevie Wonder cameo.
The effects of Cosby Show’s (1984-92) crossover appeal were multifold. It was the number one sitcom of the 80’s, ranking #1 in Nielsen ratings for five straight years, only previously accomplished by All in The Family and afterward by American Idol. The Cosby Show “single handedly revived” the waning sitcom genre of the early 80’s not to mention NBC’s fortunes (citation). In addition Cosby’s success paved the way for other comics to have sitcoms based on their stand up material, like Roseanne Barr, Jerry Seinfeld, and Ray Romano. He also opened the door for a variety of black television shows fromIn Living Color to Martin.
However, there was one more effect often ignored and rarely discussed. The Cosby show led the media to redefine whiteness. While Cosby depicted upper class blackness, black hip hop music became what Chuck D of Public Enemy fame called the “black CNN” telling what was really happening in the poor black neighborhoods and by 1988, the television show Yo! MTV Raps “made African-American, Chicano and Latino urban style instantly accessible to millions of youths. With its claims to street authenticity, its teen rebellion, its extension of urban stereotype, and its individualist “get mine” credo, gangsta rap fir hand in glove with a multiculti out demographic weaned on racism and Reaganism, the first generation in a half century to face downward mobility” (Chang, 320)
White America was caught between two definitions of black, Cosby’s “squishy soft approach to family life” and Hip Hop’s depiction of racist oppression. The white equivalent of the Cosby era in terms of privilege seemed to be Family Ties (1982-89). During the Cosby’s dominance of ratings in the 80’s and the rising popularity of hip hop’s black angst, it was only a matter of time before white America would be primed for their own backlash to the Cosby Show’s goody-two-shoes morals and the idealized black family. If sitcoms were like the children’s magazine Highlights, Goofus was about to become a better role model than Gallant.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Network debuted nationally in 1987 and whether intentional or not, its first two shows in the lineup were rooted in this brewing backlash - Married With Children and the Simpsons (which originally appeared as a short on the Tracey Ulman Show). As Republican, right wing, and socially conservative Murdoch’s Fox network is known to be today, many forget very counter-cultural, liberal, and even lewd programming it aired in its early years like the sensational news show Current Affair.
In order to become a major network like NBC, CBS, and ABC, having alternative programming made sense to attract viewers tired of the typical programming of those big three. Married with Children, whose creators originally called it “Not the Cosby Show” was exactly that - everything the Cosby show wasn’t. It was a dark comedy with brilliant actors (Ed O’Neil, Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate), featuring a miserable working class shoe salesman, who didn’t get along with his stay at home anti-housewife, a sexpot ditzy blonde heavy metal stylized daughter, and a mousey brother whose only girlfriend was a blow up doll.
Besides the fresh anti morality message, what anchored its eventual success was that it was about a dysfunctional white family. Not only was the show unapologetically unprincipled compared to Cosby, the ultimate in sitcom morality, it was about a blue collar, lewd white family in contrast to Cosby’s wealthy relatively straight laced black family. Similarly, the Simpsons with its cutting edge anti-morality as a cartoon targeted both adults and kids. Never before had a father been shown to routinely choke his misbehaving son out of frustration as Homer often does Bart. As brilliant as the rest of Tracey Ulman’s variety show was, only the Simpsons tapped into this Cosby backlash, a celebration of the dysfunctional white family, a good reason why it has lasted decades past Ulman’s show cancellation.
These trendy new roles of mediocrity, bitterness, and shallowness redefined whiteness in media the same way the Cosby show’s roles featuring overachievement, family values, and that “soft squishy approach on issues” redefined blackness. The corny morality, comfortable wealth, and healthy relationships that defined white sitcoms of the past now seemed to apply to the future of many black family sitcoms, especially the hits of the 90’s like Family Matters and Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Nevertheless, MWC did not generate a significant following until in early 1989 when ABC’s Nightline featured a segment about a Detroit mother complaining to Fox’s sponsors for the lewdness of a MWC episode. Ironically, the negative press brought more attention to Fox’s MWC, which led to more ratings (top 50 in Nielsen), higher paying sponsors, and gave Fox more credibility as a fourth major network. Fox Execs kept a closer eye on the show’s content which remained edgy enough to keep its core audience while attracting newer audiences for its still cutting edge realistic lewdness. This growing change in viewing preference of struggling working class white families no doubt helped the sitcom ABC’s Roseanne knock Cosby show off its top spot in ratings at the end of television season in 1990.
While airing alternative white sitcoms, Fox, again known today as very white, conservative, and Republican, in the early 90’s also targeted new black audiences by airing cutting edge black focused comedy shows: In Living Color (1990), Roc (1991), Martin (1992), and Living Single (1993) which launched the careers of Queen Latifa (Living Single), Martin Lawrence (Martin), Jamie Foxx (ILC), David Alan Grier (ILC), the Wayans brothers (ILC), and Jim Carrey (ILC), one of the only white actors featured on Living Color. Again, for a network that became famous for X-files, numerous Aaron Spelling creations, and conservative whiteness in news, many forget how dependant Fox was on edgy black programming, often resulting in a love/hate relationship between the network censors and controversial multi-cultural material, all the while attracting more viewers.
With the rise and fall of Vanilla Ice during the hip hop’s early 90’s mass appeal to the white main stream, Jim Carrey’s caricatures in many ways were role models for how white people could acceptably relate to relate to black music, dance, and comedy. The fact that Carrey found his niche and paid his dues within Keenan Ivory Wayan’s primarily black comedy troupe, gave him credibility with black viewers, and white viewers respect for creating his niche, a niche that led to his breakthrough crossover Hollywood movie Ace Ventura. With the rising visibility of multiculturalism, black awareness, and hip hop in the 80’s and early 90’s, everything from Spike Lee movies to Sister Soulja, Jim Carrey was the beacon of hope for how a white person could successfully maneuver and be accepted within an increasingly black expressive popular culture, as a joke, and a caricature.
Jim Carrey is not a dancer or a singer. He is in comedy, the main genre in our system where black and white can only be discussed candidly as jokes like his white defining dancing. Besides, after the fall of Vanilla Ice, the only place left for white people until Eminem and boy bands was to make jokes about themselves with their noses pressed against the window from the outside confused on how to get inside the increasingly blackness of American pop culture. So ultimately, Jim Carrey set the standard for Napoleon Dynamite and Judson Laipply. We’re not talking about great white hopes like Eminem and Justin Timberlake. We’re talking practical hopes for every day white people. I cannot tell you how many times people compare my trombone dancing performance with Jim Carrey’s antics because we’re both white. Jim Carrey wishes he had my moves.
Looking back, the last time the media non-comically depicted a white person as a trend setting popular dancer without hijacking black hip hop culture was Kevin Bacon in Footloose in 1984, the same year the Cosby show came out interestingly enough. Its funny how back in the 40’s and earlier, most white entertainers in media were seen as able dancers. James Cagney, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelley all could do the popular social solo and partner dances of the times about as well as anyone of color including the innovative Nicholas Brothers. Yet these were times of greater institutional racism and oppression of people of color. There seems to be a pattern here. When black and white were economically separate during the early years of television/movie media (20’s – 70’s), media regularly depicted white people as good dancers. As black people have gained more equal status in society, media increasingly depicts white people as corny wannabe dancers, which we will see in later chapters (6-10) subtly signifies bigger issues between races about sexuality, expression and creativity.
Now some might say what about Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing and all movies about ballroom dance the past 20 years? They don’t count. Despite whatever modern themes they have, these movies feature retro styled dancing reminiscent of earlier, simpler times before hip-hop, when racism was not as much of a commercially confronted issue, in addition to the fact that most of these movies lack main protagonists of color.
Movies featuring white people in hip hop such as Julia Styles in Save the Last Dance, Channing Tatum in Step Up, or the white “bad guy” dance troupe in You Got Served also do not count because those movies unrealistically idealize and sugarcoat how white people relate to black people while participating in hip hop culture. Additionally, these movies feature overhyped acrobatics over simpler soulful moves anyone can perform. White and black people in these movies hide behind athletics to hide their funk or lack thereof. They miss the point of the universal two-step discussed later in Part III of this book, and the white characters have this cliché angry chip on their shoulder, a forced faux emotion as they try to make their hip hop moves seem that much more black.
And that’s just it. It is cool to be, dress, talk or dance black when you want to rebel against authority because media romanticizes rebellion as fashionable, young, and noble. But a white rebel in search of a cause buys or steals, depending on your perspective, someone else’s cause from the outside in, their clothes, their sounds - audio/visual symbols of entitlement - to express someone else’ story even before their body makes one movement, one touch, or initiation.
Angst is a commodity. White privilege seems to have every comfort available compared to oppressed people except this angst. This is why so many white-friendlier hip hop movies feature white people coming from poor neighborhoods because poor in our American media subconsciously is synonymous with black, soul, oppression, angst, inspiration, and cause. Yet after watching a movie, and back in reality, these white rebels are reminded that any amount of alternate experience does not give them a black experience. Therefore they need to claim a different angst. As a white person, it can’t be angst or urgency from being institutionally held back by “the man”, because they are “the man”. It has to be about class, sexuality, or some kind of non-racial abuse, or frustration.
Or maybe better yet, as white youth, they can find angst in the privileged bitterness for having sedentary lifestyles, no discipline, and a history of ancestors who “overachieved” by oppressing others. So they can “underachieve” in rebellion like a Bart Simpson, or act “street” like “black” people. Or out of cultural frustration for finding identity, to feel anything, they try to push that envelope of gore, violence, and sexuality because they are privileged to have no appreciation, no structure, no rules, and for some no parental guidance because their parents are obsessed with money and have their own issues about the system.
The media tapped this youthful climate of the early 90’s when two cartoons, Beavis and Butthead (1993) and Ren and Stimpy (1991), helped further shape the musical, racial, and aesthetic identity of black and white in America’s modern generations. Nickelodeon’s Ren and Stimpy was the MWC version of cartoons, controversial for its “indecent humor” featuring imagery, violence, language and sex references, which are standard in today cartoons like the Oblongs, South Park, and Family Guy. Similarly, MTV’s Beavis and Butthead’s once again captured and glorified a lazy, classic rock loving, instantly gratifying, voyeuristic, and irresponsible slacker white privileged culture. They also rid the coattails of the proven white hard rock friendly pairs of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Movie (1989) and the SNL skits of Wayne’s World (1990). Nevertheless Beavis and Butthead pushed the envelope and then some. Its “comedy is derived from their utter lack of conventional values such as work ethic…Their teachers are at a loss of what to do with them, although occasionally the two skip school…They are extremely obnoxious, misogynistic, and rude to almost every other character in the show and even to each other. They do not seem to realize this, however and seem to function on an instinctual level. They survive their often hazardous misadventures without serious consequences, though other around them don’t fare as well.”
Besides black and white in media, right and left wing politics are also profitably played off each other. Mainstream news points out the seriousness of polarized America while Comedy news points at its humor. Neither really identifies the cause or solutions to this polarization, because that would take away their show’s material. Each show tries to be as self-righteous as possible, pointing judging fingers at the “other” network, show, host, political leader with its own set of numbers, fact checking, etc. However, no matter how righteous a news host claims to be, notice they will never righteously question or challenge the corporate sponsors of their show.
There is no safer or more fashionable venue for self-righteous advocates of justice and politicians than comedy. After all it’s easier to say something offensive and then say it was part of a joke. Whenever criticized for serious assertions, comedians have the trump wild card excuse of being “a licensed fool”. Like in the Middle Ages when the king granted jesters their power, so do corporations today grant power to “fake news” comedians like John Stewart of the Daily Show. Stewart gained a lot of “credibility” criticizing eight years of the Right wing, Republican Bush administration and shared many “moments of Zen” about its hypocrisy at the end of each of his shows.
When he appeared on the CNN debate show Crossfire (10/14/04), Stewart firmly established himself as the premier pop icon calling for truth in media. On the episode as a guest of the show, he criticized hosts Paul Begala, a liberal, and Tucker Carlson, a conservative, for “hurting America” because of their “partisan hackery” and that their claim to “hold politician’s feet to the fire” was “disingenuous”. (Just a side note: I believe many people say Tucker Carlton instead of Carlson because they associate his square geekiness with the Fresh Prince of Bel Air character “Carlton” who was famous for his funny “white” dancing.) When Carlson fired back that Stewart does not ask his political guests hard questions, Steward responded, “The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls. What is wrong with you?...The news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity… If your idea of confronting me is not asking hard hitting enough news questions, we’re in bad shape fellas.”
The episode received high ratings, and Internet clips of the interview received millions of hits after it aired leading CNN a couple of months later to let go of Carlson and cancel Crossfire. CNN President Jonathan Klein explained he wanted to move CNN away from “’head-butting debate shows’, which have become the staple of much of all-news television in the prime-time hours, especially at the top-rated Fox News Channel. Klein added, ‘I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise’” (NYT 1/6/05).
The next year multi Emmy award winning Stewart won the Orwell Award For Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, which is both fitting and ironic because Stewart’s criticism of news media was really Viacom double speak to get higher ratings for its Daily Show and Colbert Report better. On one hand, Stewart’s criticism implies that his “fake news” does a better job at informing the public while he openly says its okay if he falls short because he’s an entertainer.
Stewart plays his media appointed court jester’s trump card making him just as “disingenuous” as the shows he criticizes. While CNN answers to Time Warner-AOL, Fox to Newscorp, and MSNBC to Comcast, John Stewart, the Daily Show, and Comedy Central answer to Viacom. Stewart was allowed to attack CNN’s Crossfire, because Viacom signs his checks, not Time Warner, Comcast, or News Corp. Notice how Stewart criticizes news programs like CNN’s (Time Warner-AOL’s) Crossfire or CNBC’s (Comcast’s) Mad Money but not any shows on Viacom stations. I mean arguably the stereotypical, vapid, hypersexual, vulgar, lowest common denominator entertainment on MTV, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Spike, or Nickelodeon culturally hurts America as much as the news programs Stewart criticizes.
But that’s right, fittingly none of Viacom’s channels have “real” news programs unless you count MTV news because BET no longer has news since Viacom bought it. So while MSNBC and for the most part CNN profit from the politically polarized left, and Fox the polarized right, Comedy Central profits from another opposite group - those cynical of this polarization, many of whom do not have the discipline to watch PBS. According to the Pew Research center, many youth get their primary source of news from the Daily Show. This is the case, I believe, because instead of thinking too hard seriously, they would rather double think and be entertained. First, because of Stewart criticism of “real news” they think they are getting unbiased impartial information and journalism and yet they also think that Stewart is just entertaining them because he openly admits he has no responsibility to inform them. If you think about it, Viacom’s Stewart is just really using brilliant Orwellian media psychology and advertising.
Meanwhile, both political spectrums of guests appear on Stewart’s show hoping to reach this “non-mainstream” audience. Even though Conservatives regard Stewart as part of “the liberal media elite”, they come on the show because Stewart “always gives them a chance to answer”, doesn’t “use them to validate broad positions”, and “provides a platform to reach an audience that usually tunes them out” (Gershman 8/10/09). However the majority of the show, what bookends all the interviews, is comedy aimed at this audience primarily made up of white friendly liberal youth, an audience most receptive and vulnerable to the comic Uncle Timfoolery of the media’s Comedy Central golden boys, Stewart and Colbert.
And like the news channels that play on the insecurities of their audience, the Daily Show is no different. Most notably and obvious was a skit on December 8, 2008 about diagnosing a gentleman with the disease of being a liberal. Yes that’s right, the Daily Show talking about liberal being a disease, and so soon after Obama’s election. Hmmm… But again, there is no pretense that this is a real show here about real issues or journalism. Just safe good old fashioned harmless informative parody edited more if not at least as much as the real news. Taped interviews of actors playing real doctors, interviewers, experts etc interviewing real people are edited and spliced so the focus is on the comic panning of the actors in reaction to what the interviewees, people from real life, say, making the skit more entertaining. Oh yeah and informative, right? Or no? It’s just comedy, right? Wait I’m confusing myself.
Anyway, this segment featured an Indian comedic actor playing a doctor (reminiscent of CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta) interviewing an average, upper-middle class, slightly balding, un-athletic-looking late20’s/early 30’s white male who was really ashamed and repentant of his “white” heritage. We see him making a youtube video for Columbus Day. Dressed in 15th century European wardrobe, he records himself apologizing to Native Americans and minorities for white colonialism and enslavement of their people. Even though barely two seconds of this video is shown, this selfless self-aware act was intriguing because it was so extreme for mainstream news to cover. As a viewer I was definitely interested where this was going thinking that perhaps the book you are reading was a sign of a larger movement taking hold.
In the skit, the faux doctor comically nodded in receptive puzzlement and then proceeded to read off a list of possible health related symptoms to the man to see if had any that could explain his condition. When the doctor read off the humorously random symptom of low sperm count, the white guy said, “well, actually yes”. He then goes on to explain that he got a vasectomy so that “he would not bring any more consumers in the world for the system to profit from”. After some footage of a doctor’s office, the fake doctor gives the white man, a real person, a pamphlet about his disease entitled “So you are a liberal”.
As expected, there was no way the Daily Show was going to constructively discuss white male dominated society or the media of which it is a part. No instead this skit, as do most of their skits, subliminally plays on the fears of the show’s white, liberal, democrat fan base, which had just voted for a black man for president a month earlier. The show turned the noble act of confronting modern effects of historical white imperialism into a pathetic self-hating sacrifice of sexual potency in the name of white guilt. In other words, the comic media message of Viacom’s Daily Show was making white guilt (and sterility/impotency) synonymous with liberal. As a result, the left can take the joke and laugh, especially white males, but feel that much more insecure relating to other groups including both right wing conservatives and left minorities.
Therefore, instead of confronting how different groups relate to the three types of entitlement (material, sensual, and ideological), The Daily Show like the rest of mainstream liberal and conservative media continues to polarize both black/white and left/right. While providing an awkwardly cathartic laugh to its left liberal base, its main message seems to say it is better to laugh at than to fight white supremacy as a white male if you want to keep your balls. Let the minorities comment, joke, and candidly speak out on their struggles with their different stereotypes. Let the white men continue to be embarrassed to bring up their own issues, dance awkwardly, and keep their sperm. That’s the true definition of today’s liberal white person. Funny enough, it also describes most conservative white people too. Time for a moment of Zen…
|
