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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Laughing at racism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Touchy subject time.
“A Practical Guide to Racism” is probably the most outrageous collection of horrible stereotypes and ethnic ugliness ever put between covers. It is also a spoof, a parody. A joke.
It’s the handiwork of Sam Means, a writer for “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and former contributor to “The Onion.” Means has created an author, C.H. Dalton, who writes with a pseudo-academic learned tilt, except that Dalton is spectacularly wrong about nearly everything that he writes.
“Guide” takes us through Means’ vast ignorance, not just about the groups one might expect to be grossly misrepresented (Jews, blacks, Hispanics, gays), but others somewhat less expected (whites, gypsies, the French, and Merpeople).
Means is doing to racists — of all types and all races - what Stephen Colbert is doing to certain cable TV blowhards with the character he has created on “The Colbert Report.” By playing it straight and going way over the top, he mocks them with a viciousness that regular spoofs can’t quite attain.
If you get on Dalton’s wavelength, the book is pretty funny. Of course, if you don’t get it, and you mistakenly take it at face value, it’s going to come across as pretty vile.
When explaining why he did the movie “The Producers,” with its big production number “Springtime for Hitler,” Mel Brooks once said something to the effect that he decided that the worst thing he could do to Hitler was to make people laugh at him.
Not all Holocaust survivors bought that notion when the movie first came out, and not all people are going to go along with Means mocking racism in this way.
What’s your take? Can laughing at racism help defeat it, or does re-printing stereotypes damage people no matter what the intent?
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