Posted by sek8 at October 15th, 2009

    Dave Chappelle and the Razor’s Edge of Comic Resistance
    by Shannon Kunath

Comedy has a large presence in our American popular culture. We experience it through media of all types, imbued with a diverse array of messages and purposes. Comedy also has powerful historic ties to resistance. The satiric voice has a long history, and the comedic voice as voice of rebellion appears across literary genres. What is it about comedy that makes it such a subtle yet powerful tool of resistance? And why is comic voice traditionally afforded greater lenience from censors when compared to direct political speech? In exploring these questions I focused on the historical perception of resisting comedic voices, psychological aspects of humor, and historical comic figures. Finally, what are the limitations of using comedy in this way? In an attempt to address this question I looked at the comedy of Dave Chappelle and his subsequent withdrawal from the public spotlight. Dave Chappelle is one of the most vibrant of recent comic voices. His struggles with whether his comedy was socially responsible add another level to the inquiry.

I. Theories of Comedy

There are many theories as to what makes something funny or humorous. Exploring some of these theories gives insight into the ways that comedy enhances, or sometimes represses, resistance. The most ancient theory of humor is the superiority theory of humor. Under this conception of humor, it is those that are better off that laugh at those who are worse off, uglier, or less intelligent. Classical thinkers including Aristotle, Plato, and Hobbes ascribed to this view of humor. This theory encompasses the high school bully, a snide comment behind a friend’s back, or playing the dozens. A “superiority” type joke is an aggressive claim to dominance. “Superiority” type humor also has a strong element of group affiliation. Superiority humor is more funny to the observer the more positively they feel about the “winning” party, or the more negatively they feel about the “butt” of the joke. This theory shows how humor can be used by a dominant party to keep subordinates in their place.

Another conception of humor, delineated by Freud, argues that humor is a result of masked aggression. His argument is essentially that when people are put into a situation where they experience discomfort or aggression but it is impossible to express those feelings they are discharged through laughter. Additionally, in order to discharge aggressive feelings people sometimes make jokes. This is related to the historic traditions of comedy among oppressed groups: where direct aggression would be sanctioned, comedy served to discharge suppressed aggression towards dominant groups.

Another theory, perhaps the most popular, is the incongruity theory of humor. Schopenhauer argued, “the cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.” This understanding of humor is all about dualities. Its chemistry is created by the impossible coexistence of the absurd and the banal.

None of these theories seem to be sufficient by themselves to describe the range of human humor. After all, comedy is complicated, and its roles are diverse. Sypher writes, “The ambivalence of comedy reappears in its social meanings, for comedy is both hatred and revel, rebellion and defense, attack and escape. It is revolutionary and conservative. Socially it is both sympathy and persecution.” Douglas describes the activity of joking as “rite and anti-rite” or “as public affirmation of shared cultural beliefs and as a reexamination of these beliefs.” She describes jokes as usually being “subversive; in other words jokes tear down, distort, misrepresent, and reorder usual patterns of expression… [yet] the experience of public joking, shared laughter, and celebration of agreement on what deserves ridicule and affirmation fosters communities and furthers a sense of mutual support for common belief and behavior.” Here again we see the dichotomy of purposes in humor, and the way that the comic voice can both challenge the beliefs of an audience while simultaneously resonating with the audience and unifying it.

Although none is universal, each theory adds to the understanding of how different uses of humor can be understood and juxtaposed. Most important for our inquiry is the dichotomy between what can be considered “hostile” (drawing from the superiority theory) and “conciliatory” humor (which acts as a social cohesive). Essentially, this distinction is important because only conciliatory humor is useful for resistance. Lefcourt explains the different effects of these two types of humor,
“[h]umor that encompasses perspective-taking and playfulness…provides protection from the effects of stressful experiences. As opposed to hostile humor, self-directed perspective-taking humor helps us remain embedded in our social groups, encouraging others to approach and remain with us. Where hostile humor may weld fellowship in an in-group that shares its animosity to other groups, its ultimate end is divisive so that the even in-group members themselves become suspicious of each other, fearing that they will become the next targets of ridicule.”

This comparison shows how comedy can be useful for rebellious voices. One of the most powerful aspects of comedy is that it can function as psychological glue. When people laugh together it means that they share something, that they agree about what is funny. This use of humor can build morale and agreement among a group.

Psychologists have also studied comedy’s effect on resilience. Resilience is a key characteristic of a successful resistor; without the ability to retain a sense of self-assurance in the face of adversity, any resistance would fail. Multiple tropes exist among historically persecuted cultures that essentially state that without humor they would not have survived the psychological pressures of living in a society that oppresses them. Humor is a natural strategy for oppressed groups because it provides an acceptable outlet for social aggression. “Not only does it allow for an indirect expression of aggression it also affords and opportunity to deflate and thus to change the damaging prejudices and pretenses of the of the majority society.”

Sordoni argued that “humor could be regarded as a coping strategy, that it reflects and ability to rise above challenges to one’s self-respect and is an alternative to becoming defensive before such threats.” In this way comedy can serve as protection for the psyche. Another way that humor can be protective is when someone jokes at her own expense. While outwardly joking about yourself may point out flaws that you are not comfortable with, making jokes sends the message that those flaws do not affect you, you have a strong enough ego to separate your inherent value from minor imperfections.

Additionally humor could be effective for resisting voices because it is persuasive. There are reasons to think that a message that contains humor would be more persuasive than the same message without humor. Gruner argues that there are at least four theoretical reasons why humor might make a message more persuasive. First, the use of humor might make the author more appealing to the audience, and the increase in good will might increase the source’s credibility and esteem in the eyes of the audience. Second, comedy might make the source’s message more interesting and therefore increase the amount of attention that the audience pays to the message, thereby making the message more effective. Third, the use of comedy might make the message more memorable, exposing an audience to a message paired with a humorous anecdote could increase the audiences’ recollection of the message. Finally, humor could plausibly act as a distraction from the message and impair counter-arguments against the message of the comic.

II. The Satiric Mode

Satire represents the traditional understanding of rebellious and socially critical humor. Satire is intended to be both funny and critical of its subject matter. “To ridicule the vices and follies of mankind is the business of satire… satire by its imaginative eloquence excites anger at human misdeeds and cruelties.” Satire has historically been used to voice societal complaints that could not be “utter[ed] loudly or consciously on account of existing hindrances.” The origins of the use of comedic voice in satire grow out of traditional censorship of opposing political speech. The use of such tools as irony, innuendo, burlesque, parody serve to disguise resisting messages and make satiric political speech palatable in “polite society.” The ideal image of the satirist, one that he seeks to project, is that of a public servant fighting the good fight against vice and folly wherever he meets it; he is honest, brave, protected by the rectitude of his motives; he attacks only the wicked and then seldom or never by name; he is, in short, a moral man appalled by the evil he sees around him, and he is forced by his conscience to write satire.

It is in this way that the satirist attempts to communicate with the high feelings of its audience. However, satire has its limitations. Swift wrote that “satyr [sic] is a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally discover every body’s Face but their own; which is the chief Reason for that kind of Reception it meets in the World, and that so very few are offended with it.” This sentiment adds another reason why satire is more tolerated than direct political speech. The satirist’s goal making the viewer sympathize and identify with the satirist might work too well: people rarely interpret satire as an attack on their own vices or at least do not publicly acknowledge such an effect.

III. The History of Resisting Comedic Voice: The Fool

Comedic voice has a long history in literature. The archetypal “Fool” appears in myriad plays and novels and serves as a unique tool for the artist to voice morals and highlight imperfections in the other characters. Shakespeare used the Fool’s traditional license “to have the innocent but sharp, shrewd observer speak the ‘truth’ which was universally recognized but politically taboo.” The power of the Fool to speak the truth, or simply against his superiors, derives from the ex ante social awareness of his position. Because he is already “the Fool” nothing he says can be taken seriously and is therefore not a threat to power. The Fool is also traditionally set apart, “ for he is the detached spectator who has been placed, or placed himself outside accepted codes.” “Being isolated, he serves as a ‘center of indifference,’ from which position the rest of us may, if we will, look through his eyes and appraise the meaning of our daily life.” This “apartness” can be a privilege, allowing and even encouraging the Fool to make jokes not allowed to other people.

In addition to purely comic statements, the Fool often speaks in a moralistic voice, one that Nelson characterizes as the “eerie linkage between fool and priest.” The Fool provides guidance through his own example of what not to do. “In this role of moralist-in-reverse the Fool acts as a control mechanism stressing what he violates by emphasizing what is beyond him.” While the priest takes a position of moral superiority and tells his congregation what to do and to follow his example, the Fool does the complete opposite, but both provide moral guidance. In some ways the Fool might even be more effective in his advice because his more subtle guidance is not couched in terms of advice at all. The moral message provided by the Fool is voiced in the mind of the observer in their reaction to the Fool’s words or actions and is therefore internal to the observer and is more organic than the priest’s external commands.
These attributes of the Fool’s comic voice provide insight into the legacy of leniency afforded to the comic voice as well as its often rebellious and subversive relation to authority. Klapp contends that the role of the Fool is common if not ubiquitous in world cultures,
“Every kind of society seems to find fool types useful in: sublimation of aggression, relief from routine and discipline, control by ridicule (less severe and disruptive than vilifications), affirming standards of propriety (paradoxically by flouting followed by comic punishment), and unification through what Henri Bergson and Kenneth Burke have called the communion of laughter.”

However, the Fool’s apartness is not sacred, the Fool can become a victim of retribution if he angers the powerful even if he does not to intend to insult. The protection provided by comedic voice is only as strong as the perceived absurdity and benign nature of the Fool’s comments.
Mintz argues that the lenience afforded to contemporary comics grows out of the tradition of license historically granted to “Fools.” Like the Fool, the comedian is traditionally defective in some way, “but his natural weaknesses generate pity, and more important, exemption from the expectation of normal behavior.” He continues,
“Though the time-honored function of the standup comedian has been to provide a butt for our humor, this function is perhaps less interesting, even less important, than his role as our comic spokesperson, as a mediator, an “articulator” of our culture, and as our contemporary anthropologist.” (emphasis in original).

It is helpful to examine the way that comedians establish their role as the contemporary anthropologist for the audience. The comedian is not independent of the audience, before the group can laugh together, the comedian must build a rapport with the audience. Pollio explains, “group cohesiveness is critically important in determining who laughs at what, when, and under what conditions. Friends apparently support one another, while strangers can and often do inhibit laughter.” Therefore the comedian must create a safe space for laughter. Mintz describes this preliminary function of “working the room,”
The comedian begins by performing two important functions. He or she established the nature of the audience by asking questions of a few people close by or by making statements about the audience followed by a call for agreement or acknowledgement (this is not merely for show). The comedian must establish for the audience that the group is homogeneous, a community, if the laughter is going to come easily. “Working the room,” as comedians term it, loosens the audience and allows for laughter as an expression of shared values rather than as a personal predilection (since people are justifiably nervous about laughing alone and what that might reveal).

Mintz argues that comedy, specifically stand-up comedy can serve as social and cultural mediation. He argues that “humor is a vitally important social and cultural phenomenon, [and] that the student of a culture and society cannot find a more revealing index to its values, attitudes, dispositions, and concerns.” It is in this capacity, as social mediator that we find popular comedians of today.

IV. An Example of Comic Resistance: Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle began performing stand up comedy at the young age of 14. Chappelle’s comic persona is informed by his experiences growing up in both predominantly white and predominately black neighborhoods. “Chappelle enjoys a sort of dual credibility – his comic persona is inflected by both the Afrocentrism of the black hip-hop intelligentsia and the skater/slacker/stoner ethos of suburban life. This dual cred allows him to speak for and to Gen X and Gen Y subcultures in both black and white communities.” In establishing his position as contemporary anthropologist Chappelle channels these personas in order to relate to a mass audience. In 2003, Chappelle got his own sketch comedy show, Chappelle’s Show, on which he lampooned America’s racial atmosphere. Many people hailed Chappelle as the heir to Richard Pryor’s comedy. Like Pryor before him, Chappelle found that mainstream acceptance in the white community puts the black comedian in a position of role model, or race model, and that the pressure to “represent” black people in an appropriate way was a very heavy burden. Before Pryor, black comedians popular among whites hid their resentment of the social order. “Despite their assertiveness and frequent skewering of America’s inequitable racial arrangements, their comedy routines were couched in a non-ethnic mainstream voice or presented with a polite, tranquil veneer that belied any notion of deep-seated unrest or hidden fury.”

One of the patterns of resistance that emerges in the comedy of Dave Chappelle is the questioning of racial identity. Chappelle deftly manipulates ideas about racial identity to highlight their inconsistency. In this way the message emerges that not only are our general notions of racial stereotypes fatally flawed but that our vary understanding of racial categories are questionable.

One controversial sketch entitled “The Black White Supremacist” is a good example of Chappelle’s irreverence for and confrontation with prevailing conceptions of racial identity. The sketch is introduced in a way similar to a 60 Minutes-esque news magazine. It is prefaced with a warning:
For viewers sensitive to issues of race, be advised that the following piece contains gratuitous use of the “N” word. And by the “N” word, I mean N*****. There I said it.

The sketch begins with images that evoke the very rural Deep South, with the serious voice of a journalist giving background in voice over. The voice asks us, “A black white supremacist; how could this have happened?” Chappelle portrays Clayton Bigsby, a blind African American author of white supremacist literature. We learn from an interview with the head of the school for the blind that because Bigsby was the only black boy in the school they thought that it would be easier for him if they told him, and all of the other children, that he was white.

This set up is easily understood within the incongruity theory – the incongruity being the “impossibility” of a white supremacist who happens to be black, with the completely plausible explanation proffered by the show for that very reality. Within this implausible set up, Chappelle uses the persona to spew derogatory statements about almost every racial group. On the surface level there is a fairly generous amount of superiority humor. But because Bigsby is black, the complete performance begs the question of what is valid hate, is it excused by the race of the racist, or does that make it worse? And what is more important to racial identity: societal perceptions, or internal allegiances? At the end of the sketch Bigsby finds out that he is black, but, ironically, it doesn’t change his ideas and alliances, the documentary ends by saying that he has since divorced his wife, “because she was a n****r-lover.”

I would not be surprised if any readers experiencing a description of this sketch for the first time are not a little shocked, as I was the first time that I saw the sketch. But this initial shock has something to do with the comic incisiveness of the sketch, its outrageous over-usage of taboo words that usually do not appear on television almost demands some sort counterbalancing moral or message. The “shock value” of it somehow alerts the viewer that there may be serious questions that are informed by the sketch’s paradoxes. One of the key questions involves the performance of racial identity. As Bambi Haggins analyzes,
In this sketch the question becomes, “Who is the Other, anyway?” The reception of this particular performance of whiteness, although absurd, represents a certain type of “authentic” voice, that of the unbridled, white supremacist – who happens to be black. … Whiteness is not invisible here; thus, the Clayton Bigsby sketch can be seen as comic discourse that pushes the viewer to acknowledge that “everyone in this social order has been constructed in our political imagination as a ‘racialized subject’”

The origins of this sketch lend insight into the complexity of the issues addressed. The concept was drawn from the experiences of Chappelle’s grandfather, but in reverse. Chappelle describes his grandfather as, “a proper dude.” He was fair-skinned, and “he could’ve been white.”
Like Bigsby, his grandfather was blind from birth; unlike Bigsby (who is played by Chappelle), he was cognizant of his race, even as he was put in the position to “pass” to avoid trouble during school.

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., his grandfather, riding the bus in his D.C. neighborhood, became aware of a “ruckus” caused by a white person being on the bus-“Grandpa thought the white person was foolish until he realized that he was the white fellow in question.” His grandfather emerged from the situation safely when “he got real on ‘em and showed that he was a ‘soul brother.’”

In this situation Chappelle’s grandfather literally had to perform his blackness, proving that he was black not by the way that he looked, but solely with cultural performance. In reverse, Bigsby performs whiteness so well that his associate white supremacist says that they don’t tell Bigsby that he is black because “he is too important to the movement.” This portrayal also pushes the issue of what is the crucial aspect of race. In the sketch, the Bigsby is not rejected by his white associate; begging the question of whether his friend really cares about race at all, his leader and friend is black, but he is deeply concerned with the performance of whiteness. He hates black people, and yet has a close black associate. It seems that the most important thing responsible for the group affiliation is just the ideas about what it is to be white, some amorphous set of cultural values. But as the sketch shows, those values are not really attached to race at all. This is the puzzle that viewers are forced to deal with when they watch the sketch. Dave Chappelle’s particular genius allows him to present the very questions dealt with in racial theory classes in colleges around the country, but channel those questions into a highly commercial media for a mass audience.

Another sketch, “The Racial Draft,” although a little lighter, deals with many of the same issues of what is constructive of racial identity. The premise of the sketch is that delegations from every race have a draft in which they “settle once and for all” the races of celebrities of mixed-racial backgrounds. The main issue dealt with in the sketch is questioning society’s assumption that racial identities are inherent as opposed to constructed or performed. For example, when it comes time for the white delegation’s pick they choose Colin Powell. The judges and audience contest this fact because they say that Colin Powell is 100% black. However this pick is a clear reference to the idea that Colin Powell is white in a way, that he has become white through his performance of whiteness and perceived distance from what it is to be black. The irony in this sketch is that there is something serious to it, for one, why should the races of interracial people matter? Why as a society do we strive to categorize people in some sort of rigid classification system? This question is made even more poignant now that Obama is president-elect. What bragging rights does his presidency provide for black people? Why should there be any relevance at all to black people in general if the president is black? And yet it does have profound significance. Chappelle’s comedy strives to highlight the inherent inconsistencies in our societal attitudes towards racial identity.

V. Dave Chappelle on the Razor’s Edge of Comic Resistance

The variety of ways that people can experience and understand humor is crucial to the comedian’s evaluation of the social message of their work. Chappelle strove to access the incongruity theory by emphasizing the absurdity of some racial stereotypes by portraying them literally. However, Chappelle realized that there is a line that can be crossed when people no longer laugh for that reason but for reasons based in the superiority theory of humor, i.e. that they would be laughing at the stereotypes because they consider them to be true and that that makes them superior to those groups. When he appeared on Oprah, his first interview after leaving his show, Chappelle described the moment that made him question whether his work was socially responsible. Chappelle explained,

“There’s this one sketch that we did that was about this pixie that would appear whenever racist things happened…The premise of the sketch was that every race had this, like, pixie, this racial complex. And – but the pixie was in black face. Now black face is a very difficult image. But the reason I chose black face at the time was this was going to be the visual personification of the “N” word. … It was a good spirited intention behind it. But what I didn’t consider is how many people watching the show and how - the way people use television is subjective. … So then when I’m on set and we’re finally taping the sketch, somebody on the set that was white laughed in such a way – I know the difference of people laughing with me and people laughing at me. And it was the first time that I had ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with.”

This experience led Chappelle to question whether in fact his work was crossing the line between fighting racism and reinforcing it. There is empirical support for Chappelle’s intuition that someone was laughing “too hard.” One study asked subjects to rate a satirical piece’s funniness, and also to rate the author’s intelligence. The study found that there was a negative correlation between these variables: the subjects that found the piece the funniest also rated the author’s intelligence the lowest. This finding would tend to support a proposition that just because an audience finds a satirical piece to be funny does not mean that they necessarily understand the underlying criticisms. In fact, studies by researchers estimate that between sixty and seventy percent of test subjects did not perceive the satirical message when presented with satirical cartoons. However, in a complementary study, when the subjects were told the thesis of the satire before they were exposed to it, the correlation between funniness and intelligence was positive. Gruner concludes that “perception of the satire’s thesis causes a positive relationship between humor appreciation and perceived speaker intelligence, whereas the opposite kind of relationship occurs when the satire is perceived as mere humor.” It appears therefore that there is a very real danger that satire can plausibly do more harm than good when presented to a mass audience.

The effect of the pressure on Chappelle echoed the experiences of Pryor before him. Paul Schraeder, who directed Pryor in Blue Collar, described Pryor, “Richard’s an enigma in that he’s totally tortured by inherent contradictions in his personality … the more successful he is in the white world, the more resentful he becomes, the more afraid that he is not black enough.”

Rusty Cundieff, director on Chappelle’s Show, explains his perception of what happened to Chappelle,
What I kind of feel happened; from my observational standpoint – Dave is a brilliant comic who goes all the way to the edge and he’s brave enough to really bare his soul in his stand-up. A lot of shit that he talks about is stuff that other people deal with, y’know, the racism, reverse racism, black people being embarrassed of other black people, self-hatred, that kind of shit; and most people don’t want to talk about it and/or deal with it. … And the other thing is he was doing satire and one thing I know about satire is – not everybody gets it. … He’s doing this cutting-edge stuff. He’s putting it all out there and he doesn’t know if people are laughing because they get it or because ‘hey, this is a really fun coon n*****.’

At this point it becomes clearer what the dangers involved in using satire as a tool for resistance can be. It is always possible in comedy for an audience not “getting it” but with safer subject matter misunderstandings are not dangerous. One of the aspects that make Chappelle’s comedy so insightful is the fearless way in which he confronts racial epithets and racial stereotypes. This approach is powerful, as many race theorists have argued, because the re-appropriation of words that are traditionally used to be hurtful can take some of the power out of those words. Similarly, when Chappelle openly states or demonstrates racial stereotypes it takes some of the power out of them by demonstrating their absurdity. However, the danger in using obscenities is obvious, especially given the impossibility making sure that only people who are sympathetic see the comedy. Younger viewers, and viewers that “don’t get it” might have a very different, potentially harmful take away.

VI. Conclusion

Comedy and resistance have a long and complicated history. Comedy is a powerful tool for resistance because it can bond people over shared ideas, add persuasiveness to arguments, increase resilience, and protect the psyche. However there are limits and dangers of using comedy as resistance. Chappelle’s experience shows how comedy can straddle the line between sending a complex satirical message and promoting the very evils has been conceived to combat.