For this week’s blog post, I wanted to focus on this quote from Simon Critchley in his book On Humor:
“In ethnic humour, the ethos of a place is expressed by laughing at people who are not like us, and usually believed to be either excessively stupid or peculiarly canny… Either way, the belief is that ‘they’ are inferior to ‘us’ or at least somehow disadvantaged because ‘they’ are not like ‘us’.” [1]
I think that this is absolutely evident in shows like South Park who try to be as extreme in their stereotypes as possible. Here are two clips below to further my point:
However, South Park is one of those shows that tries to be as offensive as possible, holding back nothing in their jokes and character depictions. Both clips try to make these characters stand out as abnormal or out of touch with the main characters of South Park, giving a sense of inferiority to the. However, to see if Critchley’s assertion above is true, I want to focus on Ken Jeong and some of the characters he’s played in his career; specifically his role in The Hangover as Mr Chow. Here is a compilation of Mr. Chow to give you an idea of his character.
From the video above, Mr. Chow is a lunatic with a thick asian accent who incorporates a range of asian stereotypes within his character. However, while South Park is meant to be offensive, Ken Jeong believes his characters are more meta than that. In an interview about his role as Mr. Chow, Jeong states this:
“It’s my job to poke fun at the stupid roles that are put in front of us. We get ridiculous lines that we’re auditioning for all the time. “Asian Guy #2,” “Asian Assassin #3.” It’s demeaning. Chow, to me, was my response to that, to make fun of it.” [2]
Chow is bigger than just ethnic humor: he is an avenue to attack the ridiculous stereotypes that asian characters face in film by being a caricature of that stereotype. Therefore, Critchley’s assertion may not always be true as there are more layers to ethnic humor than laughing at someone who is made to seem different than us.
[1] Simon Critchley, On humor, 69.
[2] https://globalgrind.com/1975630/ken-jeong-mr-chow-showing-small-penis-hangover-3-movies-interview/
Interesting point, although I think the meta subversion only works precisely because the comedy stems from deliberate offensiveness (they’re not being counteracted, they’ve been made more excessive), which is why the stereotypes can be ridiculed. As a counterexample, I can think of the infamous Mickey Rooney character in Breakfast at Tiffany, whose entire purpose seems to be ‘making fun’ of overblown Asian characteristics yet seemingly to no genuine comedic purpose: is this funny, or is it just embarrassing?
I really like your point about the ‘meta’ aspect of this type of humour. It is interesting how by using it, comedies are capable of drawing attention to some complex social and political issues perhaps as effectively as certain dramatic films. However, one can argue that sometimes the “meta” humour might be too subtle to make this kind of statement.
These are great examples! You make a great point about the meta interpretations of these caricatures, though, as you imply, I think the offensiveness vs subversiveness is largely up to individual audience responses. The “mechanicity” that reduces a race to one or a few excessive traits seems largely negotiated in circulation rather than the formal elements themselves, for on their own they could be taken as mere repetition of these stereotypes (Laguna 119). The film opens the possibility of meta interpretation but does not guarantee it which can be both the power and pitfall of racial humor.
I think South Park also uses its reputation of using characters that are hyper-stereotypical to critique achieve quasi-meta criticisms of popular culture. For, example the changing of the character ‘Token’ to ‘Tolkien’ and then proceeding to spend an episode insisting that this was always the case and Stan- the character in question and therefore the audience was racist for assuming otherwise.
These examples are really good & thought-provoking. I feel like overexaggerated impressions of racial stereotypes like the one that Jeong does as “Mr Chow” are commonly seen, especially in stand-up comedy. In a sense, they are very emancipatory and can be seen as a form of resistance.