| LJ roundup. January 28, 2006
The Comedy of Race I went with my cadre of friends to see Bill Burr at the Stress Factory.
Comedy club nights are fun, but always in the back of my mind exists
the knowledge that the topic of race will most probably come up. It
did, some of it was not funny to me, so I did not laugh. Afterward,
my friends commented that a group of people near the front were "dead",
not laughing most of the time, and focused on one man, who happened to
be Black. My weak and drunk explanation at the time took the form of an
analogy: a Physics major might not find a joke based on incorrect ideas
about physics to be funny, not would a person of color find a joke
based on incorrect ideas about race. In retrospect, I forgot
to add that spreading misconceptions of physics does no real harm to
anyone, while propagating faulty ideas about race does. Actually, I'd
like to scrap the entire analogy, as it is flawed. The argument really
should center on a joke centered around a hurtful topic with a legacy,
as well as propagating and continuing the harmful effects, and the
personal right to not find it funny. Comedy is culturally
based, and material is situated in a half-banal/ironic
half-serious/"common sense" position, which puts it in a tenuous place
between art and serious discourse. It is also in the context of a show,
which is not a forum for serious discussion, nor would heckling be a
constructive activity. The question then, would be whether selectively
not-laughing as a conscientious objector is the proper course of
action, if avoiding comedy acts altogether is, or something else
entirely. It does strike me as curious that the opening comic
had a lengthy segment centered around Jesus and Christianity, in which
a large portion of the audience did not laugh, but no mention was made
of that. Received a fantastic comment from Contemptlations (let me know if it's okay to reproduce it here) that made it clear how fuzzy this can be.
January 25, 2006
The Chronicles of Balkanization: The WB, the UPN, and the CWThe new CW network will merge WB and UPN into a single network as a CBS-Warner venture. The CNN article pussyfoots around each network's "strengths", rolling off a list of popular WB shows, and focusing on UPN's Everybody Hates Chris. It is no secret that UPN caters to a particular demographic, as it was often derided as a "dumping ground" for shows with primarily Black casts and "Black content" (or worse, "Urban" content). This further contributed to the "conventional wisdom" of the 1990s, a hullaballo about the Balkanization of television, as FOX initiated "different" content from the Big Three, only to be superceded by the WB, and post-Dawson, UPN. With our flying cars and robot maids in the 21st century, we hail "multicultural" shows such as Lost and Grey's Anatomy, and the Five are down to Four. The Balkanization is over, as history repeats when CW forges a strong foothold among the white demographic (via WB) and jettisons its fledgling content. In response to a comment that refocused on business survivability, I responded: Agreed. I was bemused in the 90s to hear about Balkanization like it
was some kind of morality thing -- the Big Three as whites-only
monoculture, and Fox taking advantage of this fact. Pure business
strategy all the way when it comes to leveraging segregated viewing
habits. I believe we need channels committed to an audience for the
audience, and not as a business strategy. That's why it was extremely
sad to see BET dump Tavis Smiley on its path to what it has devolved.
Well, we have TV-One. Hope it lasts. |
