film Q&As
sharon1997
BambiHaggins.pptxBambi HagginS
Introduction to Laughing Mad
Bambi HagginS
Bambi Haggins discussion of African American comedy gives context for The Original Kings of Comedy (2000). The way the audiences and the comedians, Steve Harvey, D. L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Bernie Mac, enjoy themselves could be considered laughing mad. There is an exuberance and joy in a space that is predominately Black.
Haggins cites the constraints that can inhibit African Americans and how often expressing anger or rage was not possible. This inability to honestly express one’s feelings led to jaws being tight.
Bambi HagginS
In safe, communal Black spaces, laughter has therapeutic value. Laughter and humor are/were weapons used to fight pain. “Black humor … has always overtly and covertly explored the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of African American communities.” (2)
Haggins situates Black comedians historically and explains that these men and women “occupied clearly delineated spaces for Black and white audiences.” For those individuals who crossed over, there was an expectation of “adherence to codes of conduct.” (2)
Bambi HagginS
Haggins posits that the careers of Bert Williams, Mantan Moreland, and Tim Moore “illustrate how Black comic personae, like the African American condition, were diffused and often distorted in mainstream popular consciousness.” (3)
She cites Dick Gregory as an activist-comedian. Gregory used his humor as “an unabashed tool for social change.” (4)
Black comedians face a series of challenges and crossing over complicates things further.
Bambi HagginS
Haggins examines the persona of recent Black comics. She argues that the “comic persona is the performance of the intersection of multiple ideologies and lived experiences.” (5)
“Historically, the black comic has retained the ability to get the audience laughing while slipping in sociocultural truths.” (6)
Bambi HagginS
Michael Eric Dyson observes that the “comic-as-cultural-critic-and-social-commentator does not merely celebrate or valorize the culture from which he or she emerges. Such comics enable us to understand our culture’s internal contradictions, stress its positive features and acknowledge its detrimental characteristics.” (6)
Bambi HagginS
Haggins takes Dyson’s observation a step further and posits “in order for the comedic discourse produced by the Black comic to be effectively edifying, it must be self-aware and self-reflexive – able to illicit thought along with laughter.”
She contends that the challenge comes when this Black comedic discourse is placed in mainstream settings such as Hollywood films or “primetime network (or netlet) television.” (7)
When most comics are examined, they are analyzed through a particular medium or genre/subgenre.
Bambi HagginS
Herman Gray contends that Black comedic discourses in the mainstream are narratives that “push [African Americans] towards an imaginary center.” (8)
Haggins suggests there are three discourses: assimilationist, where racism and social-political issues “are constructed as ‘individual problems,’ pluralist, ‘separate but equal’ “where Black characters live and work in hermetically sealed social milieus that are approximately equivalent to their white counterparts; multicultural or diversity, representations of the Black cultural experience that did not adjust for white viewers. (8)
Bambi HagginS
Beretta Smith-Shomade states that Black women are often marginalized in comedy, specifically television comedy. She asserts that the “greater proportion of Black women’s representation remained in supporting, mummified, and one-dimensional capacities.” (8-9) And notes the “unsettling tendency for the normative elements of dominant culture to seep into black comedy.” (9)
