Futurama: "War is the H-Word"

Futurama is a funny cartoon created by the same man who made the Simpsons: Matt Groening. The basic premise of the show is about a young man named Frye who gets cryogenically frozen on the new year's eve of 2000 and wakes up 1000 years later. The world is now full of robots, mutants, and aliens, and he has to get used to the new world order. In this particular episode, "War is the H-Word", Frye and his friend Bender the robot join the army and have to fight in a war against a planet inhabited by Balls. The balls mainly just bounce around and look silly, which makes us laugh because sometimes people laugh at foreign things they don't understand. Whenever the Balls speak, the only verb they use is Bounce, and bounce means everything. This episode is used to poke fun at people who would rather laugh at things they don't understand that try to understand them.
Groening, Matt. "War is the H-Word." Futurama. Adult Swim. 26 Nov. 2000.
here is a link to the episode

Scrubs: "My Identity Crisis"

Scrubs is a very funny show on USA about a group of young doctors living, loving, and learning lessons from each other. The cast is a diverse group. The main characters are a man called J.D., his African American best friend Turk, his other best friend and sometimes girlfriend Elliot, and Turk's Dominican wife Carla. In this particular episode, "My Identity Crisis", Carla for the first time dreams in English, and begins to worry that she is losing her identity and is especially worried about this because she has a new baby daughter and she wants to pass her Dominican heritage on. But throughout the show, her friends help her to see that she is still "A proud Latin woman with an upside-down exclamation point". One of the main issues of the show is the constant clashing of her culture with her husband's, and their constant bantering is very funny because it's a reflection of a touchy subject like war, and touchy subject are often funny because they shock us.
Lawrence, Bill. "My Identity Crisis." Scrubs. USA. 15 Nov. 2007.
Here is a link to the episode

American Dad: Stan Of Arabia 1&2

Stan of Arabia is a two-part episode of Seth McFarland's American Dad. Seth McFarland is also the creator of hit series Family Guy, which he is more famous for. In this particular episode, the family on the show is relocated to Saudi Arabia, and is forced to blend in with the culture, which they have a hard time doing. The hilarity of the episode comes from how ridiculous the two cultures look right next to each other. The show's main issues are racism and sexism. The father treats the mother and all other women like garbage, and he never trusts foreigners, often laughing at them and fearing them; which makes me wonder if a lot of the time when we laugh at something it is because we are slightly afraid of it or intimidated by it. I believe that the aim of these two episodes is to point out and laugh at how hard it is for people to switch cultures, or even blend them.

McFarland, Seth. "Stan of Arabia." American Dad. Adult Swim. 6 Nov. 2005.

Here are both of the episodes:
Stan of Arabia #1
Stan of Arabia #2

Margaret Cho: Asian-Americans and racial issues

Margaret Cho's first stand-up was at 16 years old (after she dropped out of school) in a small club above the bookstore that her parents owned. Soon after, she won a contest and became the opening act for Jerry Seinfeld, prompting her to move to Los Angeles where she began gaining notoriety amongst college-age audiences. This notoriety boomed when Bob Hope put her on a prime time special, and ever since then Cho became a comedic celebrity. Her show "I'm the One that I Want" was originally an off-Broadway show she put on in 1999, but it was so well-received that it ended up becoming a filmed special as well as a best-selling book, all with great reviews. In this show she chronicles her work and life experiences- how she started doing stand-up and was able to start an ABC show project with the first all-Asian family, how she had to lose 30 lbs. in two weeks for the show and ended up in the hospital, how producers wanted her to have a consultant to ensure she seemed "more Asian," how she dealt with the show getting canceled and fell into a haze of "booze, pills, and self-loathing", and how all these things led her to gradually lose her own identity (Cho 1999). But most of all, "I'm the One That I Want" is about Cho rising as a person of her own with her own voice, her own jokes, and essentially to become the one that she wants.

In this particular short taken from the show, Cho tackles some of the issues of being an Asian-American through anecdotes about accents and language, her relationship with her mom, interracial marriage (or almost-marriage), racial relations, how it feels to be the only Asian amongst Whites, and what happens when someone is the only White amongst Asians. It is through these explorations that she gains insight not only into the ups and downs of life but also towards growing into oneself and being comfortable as you are. And so, Margaret Cho realizes that despite the fact that she does not embody what outside forces expect of a 31-year-old female Asian-American, it is probably because she doesn't embody those expectations or stereotypes that she learns to be happy with who she is.

"Margaret Cho- Asian-American," October 24, 2007, Youtube video, accessed March 29, 2009, < v="kc6mLwOa2Ig&feature="related">










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Blazing Saddles

Blazing Saddles is one of Mel Brooks many films that poke fun at not only the entertainment industry, but society as a whole as well. Released in 1974, it is a parody of the classic "Western" film that had been popularized by the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, to name a few. It stars Cleavon Little, a black railroad worker who was sentenced to hang after he struck his white boss in the head with a shovel. In the mean time, a little town called Rock Ridge was raided by the railroad company to attempt to drive them out of the town. The raid killed the sheriff of Rock Ridge, which forced the incredibly incompetent and oversexed Governor of the unnamed state to appoint a new sheriff for Rock Ridge. The Attorney General, who is in the pockets of the railroad company, decided that the best way to get everyone in Rock Ridge to abandon it so they could finish the railroad, decided to appoint Cleavon Little's character as the sheriff of Rock Ridge, which is all white and very racist. The rest of the movie shows the relationship that Cleavon Little and the people of Rock Ridge develop so that they may keep their town and livelihood. The "N"-word is used often throughout this movie, as well as other racist terms. Ultimately, this movie is an attempt to show how rediculous stereotypes about different races are, and pokes fun at the way that we percieve each other.



Brooks, Mel, dir. Blazing Saddles. 1974. Warner Brothers. YouTube. 6 Feb. 2008. 24 Feb. 2009.

Saturday Night Live: Word Association

Saturday Night Live, today in its 34th season, is a live, 90 minute sketch comedy show that appears every weekend on NBC. Created in 1975 by Lorne Michaels, the show is centered around a standard cast that appears every weekend and a guest host, who is a well-known celebrity, either in the entertainment or political sphere. This particular clip is from the 9th episode of the 1st season, which Richard Pryor hosted. The first black host for the show, Richard Pryor is seen in this particular sketch, sitting at a table with Chevy Chase, being interviewed for a job. The last part of the interview is a word association exercise, in which Chevy Chase starts off using very simple, non offensive terms. The exercise gets out of hand very quickly, with Chevy Chase using progressively offensive terms for blacks, while Richard Pryor fires back with progressively offensive terms for whites. Upon Chevy Chase's use of the "N" word, Richard Pryor calls him a "dead honky," which leads to Chevy Chase hiring Richard Pryor for $15,000 a year, the highest paid janitor in America, all after the initial offers of $5,000 and $7,500 per year garnered responses of "your mama" and "your grandmama," respectively.



Chase, Chevy, and Richard Pryor, perf. Saturday Night Live. NBC. 13 Dec. 1975. Hulu. 17 Feb. 2009.

South Park: The Snuke

The creators of this show South Park are Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They are most well-known for this show, but they have also written and directed a couple of movies, such as Baseketball and Orgasmo. The video in this posting is an episode from the show, called The Snuke. It seems to some watchers that I have spoken to that the creators of South Park put a lot of time and thought into each episode, so that each one has a certain message for the audience, often with moral values and ideas. The main theme of this episode is intolerance of other people's cultures, although it also contains politics and (as always) bathroom humor. The episode seems to suggest how ludicrous it is to judge someone just based on their ethnic background. The audience for this show is pretty broad, although it is mainly for adolescents and young adults. Here is a link to the video.
Tu.tv. 29 Oct. 2007. Tu.TV: HISPAVITA. 8 Feb. 2009

Dave Chappelle: For What It's Worth

Dave Chappelle. For What It's Worth. Dir. Stan Lathan. The Fillmore Auditorium. Sony Pictures, 2004. DVD.

This DVD is a recording of Chappelle’s stand-up performance at the Fillmore auditorium in San Francisco. Themes of the one hour act include race, gentrification, law enforcement, celebrity crime, stereotyping and fame. In particular, his discussion of the specific character of the city of San Francisco raises issues of racial difference and community discord, noting the racial differences between San Francisco and nearby Oakland. Chappelle’s stand-up comedy frequently deals with issues of racial difference and racism. An actor in film as well, Chappelle had his own sketch comedy show on the Comedy Central network which dealt with many of the same issues. The comedian has also written and spoken publicly about the pressures of fame and the influence of money and power on the creative arts. He performs to a multiracial, multi-ethnic audience.