Humor, Race, and Rhetoric: “A Liberating Sabotage of the Past's Hold on the Present”

Abstract

Humor that addresses race can easily backfire. This article engages in an analysis of The Boondocks, an adult cartoon, to investigate how humor about race and racism can function not only to generate laughter through satiric rejection of long-held racist stereotypes in the American context but also to encourage new perspectives. The analysis makes use of rhetorical concepts drawn from theorist Kenneth Burke to analyze the rhetorical and comedic functioning of the dialogue, the use of music, and the visual features of the show.

Notes

1We thank two extremely helpful RR reviewers, Richard Marback and Adela Licona. The quotation in the title comes from Glenda R. Carpio. Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery. New York: Oxford UP, 15.

2As an example, Vidmar and Rokeach (1974) examined audience interpretations of the humor in All in the Family. They found that while some viewers laughed at the overt racism in the comments of Archie Bunker, others laughed at his hippie son-in-law Michael, who portrayed a racially enlightened person.

3McGruder has also published his comic strips in a series of books including The Boondocks: Because I Know you Don't Read the Newspapers, Kansas City: Andrews McMeel (2000); A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury, New York: Three Rivers P (2003); Public Enemy #2: An All-New Boondocks Collection, New York: Three Rivers P (2005); and All the Rage: The Boondocks Past and Present, New York: Three Rivers P (2007).

4Readers interested in the media portrayal of Huey Newton and the Black Panthers will find the following works helpful: Pearson, Huey: Spirit of the Panther; Hilliard, Zimmerman, and Zimmerman, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America; and Jeffries, Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist. The Party is seen to have continued the militant and nationalistic efforts of Malcolm X. Huey Newton, who earned a PhD in Social History from the University of California at Santa Cruz, also continued the intellectual legacy of Malcolm X. He was convicted of manslaughter in 1967, but this was overturned two years later. He and the Black Panther Party later adopted a nonviolent creed and focused on providing food, housing, and basic social services to black Americans in need. He later faced another charge for murder, but this did not result in a conviction. In 1989, after a conviction and short jail sentence for the misuse of public funds, he was murdered in Oakland, apparently participating in a drug deal that went bad.

5All quotations from episodes of The Boondocks, season one and season two.

6Anime is a uniquely Japanese visual art form that began in the early twentieth century. In the United States, the form became popular in the 1960s when a Japanese comic book, Aru Machikado, was made into a television show, Astro Boy. Other anime television shows followed in the midsixties including Gigantor, Speed Racer, and Kimba the White Lion. The art form often includes children as main characters and heroes. The form also presents human emotion in a very visual manner and highlights the role of emotion in human interaction: “In anime the feelings of the characters play an important role in shaping their actions, much more so than in most American products, live or animated” (Poitras 55).