rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Um, why would it have to be either? I'm not alleging that 30 Rock is some kind of evil plot to make black people look bad, I'm just saying that underneath all the "racial commentary" I sometimes get a sense of actual subtly racist attitudes.

well the show is exec produced by Lorne Michaels, who doesn't have an especially great track record with black comedy/comedians on SNL, so it's not like the show is impervious to criticism. i just think of most of 30 Rock's race humor as more suggesting a dialogue or an awareness of those issues than simply playing them for laughs or being unaware of them entirely.

can you give a specific examples? awful lot of generalities here

the recent live episode, which featured a whole insane flashback to '50s TV with Jon Hamm in blackface, explained by Kenneth: "NBC felt it would be too alarming to the audience to have more than one black man appear on the show at a time, a policy they continue to use today!"

granted, four black male cast members were in this segment so it can be seen as a bit of patting-themselves-on-the-back move, but it was still a pretty brutally hilarious moment imo

Hurting 2 otm. Tho yeah you could say Tracy is a meta example of the role of black comedians in modern American media.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, May 14, 2012 12:05 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"you could say"? the character has been used exactly that way, explicity and implicity, a hundred times over the course of the show.

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 12:07 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

using racist humor ostensibly to critique racism isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card though, right? family guy couches its blatant racism & misogyny in mockery of the idiocy of its characters, american culture and the human race in general. nevertheless, it's use of satire often comes off more as a cheap excuse than a legitimate justification. it often seems to use the protective cover afforded by "satirical intent" to get away with "lol dumb lazy mexicans" jokes.

not saying that 30 rock doing anything similar, but it seems like a fair question to ask. personally, i see tracy's buffoonishness as more absurd than mocking, and the ways they've addressed race wr2 twofer's character are so many-edged as resist any easy reduction to "racism".

but this is The Thread In Which I Am Often Wrong, so...

I think most of the jokes around the Tracey Jordan character have to do with the fact that he is a crazy megalomaniac than with being black.

i dunno i just feel like i'm the only person in this convo who has seen more than a handful of episodes of the show and can recall many scenes in detail, pardon me if that makes me act a little overly confident in my side of the argument

xpost well ok at least AP is here now

missing a "more" in that sentence

middle easterners seem to figure on 30 rock mostly as "sheiks" from whose sexual slavery jenna has escaped

^ trolling

they did calibrate the hamm blackface to be suggestive rather than over-the-top like they did with the jenna blackface episode, which puts forth the idea that there is a tasteful amount of blackface, which I don't agree with. this really ties into a larger complaint about 30 rock that they've settled into a comfort zone.

fwiw, i had questions about the episode in which it was at least implied that twofer was too "white" to get away with using the n-word. the idea that goofy "whiteness" might be the product of education and class seemed more a straight-up punchline in that episode than something that was being critiqued.

which puts forth the idea that there is a tasteful amount of blackface

xp to my last: not that it wasn't funny. part of the joke was that twofer was trapped and damned by the unfair expectations and prejudices around him.

yeah i mean that episode to me is a classic example of the show demonstrating an awareness of the dialogue surrounding that kind of plot rather than just tossing it out there for the crudest possible joke

if anything it suggested that the writing staff of 30 Rock had already had the kind of conversations back then that most of ilx is still going "what? really? i had no idea" at.

i dunno i just feel like i'm the only person in this convo who has seen more than a handful of episodes of the show and can recall many scenes in detail, pardon me if that makes me act a little overly confident in my side of the argument

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 3:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Um, I've watched every episode through ep. 4 of season 5?

I think most of the jokes around the Tracey Jordan character have to do with the fact that he is a crazy megalomaniac than with being black.

Yeah. Some times they cross that line but not often. I think it was alot more iffy in this case during the first episode of the show.

they did calibrate the hamm blackface to be suggestive rather than over-the-top like they did with the jenna blackface episode, which puts forth the idea that there is a tasteful amount of blackface, which I don't agree with.

good lord. "calibrate?"

maybe because it was a live show and hamm played multiple roles? wtf

i just got that feeling because your initial thread revival was full of so many vague impressions of the characters in general with not much recollection of specific jokes/scenes. it seemed like an odd way to open the convo. (xpost)

actually, the one thing i really question abt 30 rock is the nasty streak of self-loathing that seems expressed in its treatment of the writers (especially frank and lutz). something odd about that. their ghastly, pathetic desperation is never particularly funny.

2) Tracy Morgan -- I mean there's just a pretty fine line to walk with a character like this and I think maybe it crosses into minstrelsy sometimes, especially in the context of no other black performers on TGS

also it's hilarious that we're talking about prolly the only network show with four black series regulars and the fact that only one of them is a star on the show-within-a-show is supposed to be a biting critique

re: first episode, playing in traffic in your underwear screaming 'i am a jedi' speaks more to tracy morgan's experience specifically than saying something about the black condition in america. (I dunno if tracy really did this, but he's a huge star wars fan)

congrats, "Lutz is never funny" is officially the most rong thing anyone's said in this convo

their ghastly, pathetic desperation is never particularly funny.

RONG

xp

Well I'm pretty sure that in the Liz/Tracey "equality" episode (which, incidentally I thought was a pretty lame subplot -- haha liz can't change the water cooler by herself what an insight), it's spelled out that Twofer has his job solely because of some diversity position on the staff. I didn't really see why the show would go there.

Tracy

that liz tracey equality episode was pretty stupid i thought. seems a little easier to talk about specific moments & subplots than the show as a whole -- i think its done stuff thats really cutting and smart and stuff thats, if not racist, not very well thought out

yeah i don't know why a show would have a plot point about Affirmative Action, it must mean it's a racist show, to talk about such a thing

congrats, "Lutz is never funny" is officially the most rong thing anyone's said in this convo

i always try to bring my A game

i could see twofer being outed as an AA recipient being a problem if twofer was invented as some kind of black role model like urkel was, but this isn't the case.

30 Rock is probably the best-written thing on network television and I love it. Not saying it's not good on the whole.

i just think of 30 Rock on race as one of its strengths, not one of its weaknesses, even if there are a few jokes that have been sketchy or not worth the payoff

yeah i don't know why a show would have a plot point about Affirmative Action, it must mean it's a racist show, to talk about such a thing

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 3:58 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No dude don't be obtuse. I mean it seems a little off to have one black person on the show who isn't either the comedian or his entourage, one black person with a "professional" job and then have it "revealed" that he got where he is because of affirmative action.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3xj3lUQEH1r89jlvo2_500.png

yeah i don't know why a show would have a plot point about Affirmative Action, it must mean it's a racist show, to talk about such a thing

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 3:58 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, i dunno, i dont think that whole episode was *racist* but i am kind of baffled as to why it had that plot point. like what point was it trying to make? seemed like pretty well-worn (& stupid) territory.

twofer was always an insufferable snob, and the show frequently made humor from subjecting him to costanza-esque abuses, like getting grammar-pwned by tracy in the first episode, finding his ancestor fought for the confederates, etc... in fact, if they did turn him into the respectable black straight man of the type that tim meadows would usually play on SNL, that would be way way worse in terms of comedic condescension.

^^ gets it

also, comedy writer isn't exactly white collar aspirational professional position, like say head of fringe division. if agent broyles was revealed to be an AA beneficiary, THEN you'd have something.

was the AA episode different from the liz/tracy 'equality' ep?

might have been

Tracy: Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets. That's a metaphor.

at least this thread is actually being used to discuss something that's not 100% clearly racist for once, i guess

that's from the pilot btw

I think the AA thing is more a LOL @ Conservatives than anything, given the context of the show. But I'd need to rewatch that particular ep to make a more informed opinion.

heh, ive always thought that 30 rocks default political position was a kind of moderately conservative LOL @ liz's sad bourgeois liberalism. not gonna try to defend that necc but 30 rock always struck me as a conservative show -- not in a bad way necc.

that liz tracey equality episode was pretty stupid i thought. seems a little easier to talk about specific moments & subplots than the show as a whole -- i think its done stuff thats really cutting and smart and stuff thats, if not racist, not very well thought out

― max, Monday, May 14, 2012 2:57 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^This. I think any comedy writing around race is going to have some failiures, and where these jokes fail, they're gonna stray into that territory where they can be perceived as racist. And I think it's fair game to call out those failiures. I think it makes sense to draw attention to specific instances, because, generally speaking, I would not accuse 30 Rock of being a racist show.

but 30 rock always struck me as a conservative show -- not in a bad way necc.

― max, Monday, May 14, 2012 4:18 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, I feel exactly the same way.

... really?