rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

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?

not arguing with you, i just don't get a conservative feel from it at all.

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.

p nunez otm. it's a sensibility that shares something in common with what i think of as "british humor": the idea that it's especially hilarious to see characters who believe that they are noble (but who are actually quite petty) struggle to retain their dignity in the face of constant humiliation.

not arguing with you, i just don't get a conservative feel from it at all.

― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Monday, May 14, 2012 4:21 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, if only because liz's liberalism is the butt of so many jokes.

LOL @ liz's sad bourgeois liberalism

I pick up on the conservative feel too, but I think the show is largely apolitical in that most of the political jokes make fun of the liberal and conservative characters' self-conceptions, and not the ideologies themselves.

i think the show does a good job of letting Jack get in some jabs against Liz and making her a a very flawed character and not Tina Fey's perfect Mary Sue alter ego, but also that it's pretty clear which one of them is a huge satirical punching bag for an entire political ideology

nick offerman is more seductive conservative hero than alec baldwin

Yeah, conservative in a father-knows-best (with Alec Baldwin as father) kind of way. Conservative sort of the way Jane Austen is conservative (ultimately respectful and appreciative of the order of things) etc.

not arguing with you, i just don't get a conservative feel from it at all.

me either. i think the show has a sort of fond sympathy for what it see as the futility and hypocrisy of liberalism, but also an angry streak directed against the arrogance, dishonesty and abuses of conservative wealth & power (jack's constant self-zings). overall, i see it as politically disengaged - a portrait of how things are, rather than an argument that they should be any different.

i've always found the '30 Rock is secretly conservative meme' to be a little sub-Zizek sophistry

at least as formulated in 2009 by slate. maybe the argument has picked up a little sophistication since then:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2009/05/i_want_to_gop_to_there.html

totally

i dont think its "secret"! and i dont think its "conservative" like mitt romney is conservative. i think liz is as much a punching bag as jack is, and i think it hits harder b/c her politics and character are much less cartoonish [and also because presumably the audience hews closer to liz than to jack].

i mean the show does kind of show a continued disregard for what might be uncharitably described as "identity politics" -- i think this is something that hurting is getting at when he wonders if its racist -- & to me thats a conservative position, even if its not about flat taxes or anything

it seems to me like the show's creative team just knows that being as stridently left as Alec Baldwin is as a public figure would be a total comedy killer and so they try to get laughs out of both sides of an issue whenever possible