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"THIS IS GENERALLY FOLLOWED BY A BLACKOUT": POWER, RESISTANCE, AND CARNIVALESQUE IN SKETCH

Anthony McCosham

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

May 2007

Committee:

Becca Cragin, Advisor

Simon Morgan-Russell

Montana Miller

ii

ABSTRACT

Becca Cragin, Advisor

This thesis offers a genre analysis of North American television . While aiming to offer a proper characterization of the genre as a whole, is specifically concerned with discussing and analyzing ways the genre negotiates power relationships, especially in its use of political and racial humor. Due to a paucity of scholarly work on sketch comedy, the paper’s initial focus is establishing a history of the development and conventions of television sketch comedy. Overall, the genre, with its mixture of parody and irreverent humor, is positioned as an example of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque that creates a heteroglossic discourse in which both

“official” and “unofficial” cultural messages interact. With this interplay of heteroglossia and the carnivalesque in mind, the remainder of the paper examines the genre’s use of political and racial humor and how power is resisted within these comedic topics. The section on political sketch comedy explores to what degree political statements are possible in a corporate owned media environment. Similar limitations are explored in the chapter on racial humor, where the success and controversy of African-American created sketch shows have demonstrated the delicate balance of dealing humorously with stereotypes in a format largely controlled by and aimed at whites. Ultimately, this thesis claims that despite continuing struggles with certain institutional limitations, resistant humor is possible in television sketch comedy through the liberating powers of the medium and an active audience’s quest for such humor. iii

For Sarah

Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis would not exist without the consistent and early support from my committee

chair, Dr. Becca Cragin. A good deal of the early research and writing on this thesis began as

assignments in her “TV as ” course in the fall of 2005. Her encouragement and

her patient, guiding hand during composition were huge factors in the paper’s ultimate

completion.

Gracious thanks are also due to my other committee members, Dr. Simon Morgan-

Russell and Dr. Montana Miller. Dr. Morgan-Russell’s flexibility and interest in serving on my

committee were greatly appreciated. His insights on comic theory and the work of Mikhail

Bakhtin also greatly improved the final form of this thesis. Dr. Miller’s enthusiasm to serve on

my committee was most welcome. Her down-to-the-wire review of the final manuscript, help in

filling out Human Subjects Review Board applications, and suggestions for YouTube sketch

videos were invaluable.

Thanks must also be to Dr. Charles Coletta and Mr. . Dr. Coletta was

instrumental in putting me in contact with sketch comedy veteran Mr. Conway. Mr. Conway

was wonderfully amiable in my conversation (and phone tag) with him and I greatly appreciate

his eagerness to discuss his craft. While the final focus of my project limited the incorporation

of his comments into the thesis, his insights certainly helped shape this, and perhaps future,

work.

As this thesis has its roots in work begun during my undergraduate career, I would be

remiss not to acknowledge the help of several professors who guided me on my undergraduate

thesis at Xavier University. My thesis advisor Dr. Edmund Cueva and committee members Dr.

Graley Herren and Fr. Fred Benda offered wonderful advice and insights during my early adventures in studying television sketch comedy. Dr. Shannon Byrne also contributed v thoughtful comments on my work as it progressed. Dr. George Plasketes of Auburn University is owed thanks for his work on and his willingness to speak and give feedback to a novice sketch comedy scholar.

Great thanks go to my parents for both their support of my academic endeavors and their subscription to during my developmental years. Too many sunny may have been spent watching of , but I things could have turned out worse. Thanks also to my brother, Adam, whose love of movie and television quotations have undoubtedly helped me remember some of the examples found on the following pages.

The final thanks must go to Miss Sarah Wasserman, who has handled remarkably the stress involved with researching and completing this thesis. I promise that our home will never be as messy as my efficiency during thesis time.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I. ANATOMY OF SKETCH COMEDY...... 7

Clinical History...... 7

Dissecting the Sketch ...... 19

Diagnosis Carnivalesque...... 25

CHAPTER II. “DON’T STOP THE CARNIVAL”:

THE POLITICS OF SKETCH COMEDY ...... 33

Flak Everywhere You Turn ...... 36

Satire as Struggle: Two Briefings, Two Iraq Wars, and a Second Inauguration...... 42

CHAPTER III. SKETCHING THE OTHER...... 51

The Other Center ...... 61

“Now 100% Black”: Race as a Stage ...... 68

“The Way You Do It Ain’t Like the Way I Do It”: Uncle Tom vs. the Urban

Black Male...... 73

“No Matter What Your Instrument, Keep Dancing”: Addressing the

Audience ...... 77

“I Talk Like Straight Gangsta, Bitch”: Polysemics of Racial Humor ..... 79

CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSIONS ...... 86

WORKS CITED ...... 93

1

INTRODUCTION

Seeking to help fill a sizeable gap at the intersections of comedy and television

scholarship, this thesis aims at describing and analyzing some of the main conventions and

themes found in television sketch comedy. This genre is relatively unstudied by academia,

however, with NBC’s premiere of Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and ’s

30 Rock, the fall 2006 television season saw the number of sketch comedy shows on network

television equaled by the number of shows about sketch comedy shows on network television.

While these two new series are not specifically the focus of this paper, they raise certain

questions about the appeal and cultural effect of shows like Mad TV and Saturday Night Live,

American network television’s sketch comedy standard bearers. In the past, it seems, academia

has not been as interested in the genre as recent television creators. Timothy Scheurer, writing

an entry on the in 1985’s TV Genres: A Handbook and Reference Guide, noted that

“Television criticism and scholarship has begun to improve only recently, and writing about the

variety show seems to not have improved at all” and called the sketch comedy friendly format

“the great neglected genre.”1 And so, sketch comedy and its parent genre the variety show have

continued to be a neglected form.2 While there have been pockets of interest around sketch

shows like The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (with its battles against political )

and (with its own controversies over race and representation), there is a paucity

of work taking a broader look at the genre.3

1 Timothy Scheurer, “The Variety Show,” in TV Genres: A Handbook and Reference Guide, ed. Brian Rose, (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985), 322. 2 Writing in 1992 in a Master’s thesis at the University of Nevada, , future sketch comedy writer Michael Upchurch (Mr. Show with Bob and David and Blue Collar TV) bemoans this same fact. His thesis examines a full history of sketch comedy across media and features a compelling section categorizing the wide variety of sketch types. Michael Upchurch, “The Poetics of Sketch Comedy,” (M. A. thesis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1993). 3 Given the level of topicality that is often found in these shows, be it in the parody of contemporary and television shows or the mockery of politicians and celebrities in the headlines, it is understandable and not necessarily surprising that the genre has been overlooked by television researchers. 2

In addition to Scheurer’s chapter, highlights include Neale and Frank Krutnik’s

book length study Popular and as well as Neale’s solo entry on sketch

comedy in The Television Genre Book. The work of David Marc, especially his indispensable

Comic Visions which lays out a comedy, is quite helpful. While Comic

Visions is invaluable (and is referred to often in the following pages), its broad focus limits its

insights on the particularities of sketch comedy. Another hindrance of several of these works (as

is often the case with television scholarship) is time. Much has happened in both television and

sketch comedy over the past twenty years, and these works do not reflect these developments.

Returning to network television’s more recent attempts to describe the sketch comedy

phenomenon, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and take different tracks and emphases

within their shows. In a brilliant act of synergy on the part of NBC, each of its three “sketch”

shows serves to promote the other. 30 Rock is the half-hour comedic sketch show; look to Studio

60 for the hour-long drama. It is impossible to watch either one without being reminded of

Saturday Night Live, whether it is Studio 60’s constant aping or 30 Rock’s similar creative team.

If the connection were not obvious enough, a none to subtle promo for an internet-only behind the scenes look at Saturday Night Live often follows Studio 60.

Of the two, it is 30 Rock (with creator Fey and producer Lorne Michaels holding the

power to self-mythologize Saturday Night Live) which has dealt less with the business of sketch

comedy. The less explicitly political of the two shows, 30 Rock has worked in more specific

political digs and critiques of corporate media ownership (embodied by ’s GE

executive) than Sorkin’s drama. Despite a tepid start, the show has evolved into an inventive that follows its eccentric characters in and—especially—out of their sketch comedy work environment. 3

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, on the other hand, seemed poised to be a deconstruction of the sketch genre, revealing its inner workings and creative process. While using the show- within-a-show as a chance to comment on the sorry state of television more generally, the drama has come up short when representing its titular sketch program. It seemed that creating the biting, satirical sketch show that the drama’s characters longed for was easier said than done.

Viewers of all stripes (professional critics and internet message board posters) especially

criticized the presentation of a Pirates of Penzance, “Modern Major General” parody. It was, many felt, not the “breakthrough” sketch the show’s characters made it out to be.

Still, within the show’s sanctimonious and condescending tone, valid observations have

been made. Episodes have dealt with issues of racial and gender representation in sketch

comedy as well as the perils of focus group testing. One instance in particular has special

relevance to this thesis. A line in the much derided, above-mentioned sketch proclaims to the

viewer that “...if you feel you’ve been cheated and our sordid content lets you down/ We’ll

hap’ly do the favor of an intellectual reach-around.” The hints at several of the themes of

this paper, especially how viewers may turn to sketch comedy shows for certain content and the

solace such shows provide.

In the absence of a long academic record on sketch comedy, this paper seeks to establish

a working history and set of conventions for the genre. Furthermore, it explores several

recurrent themes and issues raised by sketch comedy shows over the past 60 years. The analysis

of the genre is positioned within Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque. In light of this theoretical framework, the central discourses followed within the genre center around sites of power and, more important, resistance to power. The first chapter traces a brief generic history of television sketch comedy and analyzes this within the context of Bakhtin’s theoretical work on 4

carnivalesque. With this analysis in mind, the remaining two chapters focus on sketch comedy’s

discussion and representation of two key topics: politics and race.

Chapter 2, devoted to the political humor of sketch comedy, first examines the

institutional limitations of television sketch comedy. Rooted first in a Chomskian critique of the

television industry as well as discussing the implications of labeling sketch comedy as

carnivalesque, the argument moves to ways these restraints are subverted. The liberating power

of and the receptive powers of the audience are seen as holding the key to politically

incisive humor. Even with the potential dulling (censorship) and silencing (cancellation) of

possibly dissenting commentary, resistance both in terms of production and reception becomes

possible.

Chapter 3 focuses on a more contentious political issue, that of racial representation.

Itself a political issue, racial representation occurs even when the subject of race is not being

explicitly addressed. Narrowed to focus on the representation of African-Americans on sketch

comedy shows, the chapter contains three interconnected sections. The first examines the problematic black representation of Saturday Night Live, a show whose success allows it to stand in for other sketch shows aimed at a primarily white audience. Moving within this context as well as the broader context of African-American representation on network television, the next section charts the history of black sketch comedy from to . This leads to the chapter’s final section, close readings of selected racially themed sketches from

Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show. The show’s bitingly satirical deconstruction of racial stereotypes works to transform the politics of racial representation while also potentially reinforcing stereotypes, a familiar bind in attempts to address stereotypes (especially by African- 5

Americans). Unfortunately, Chappelle’s struggles with Comedy Central underscore the lack of agency televisual institutions allow African-American performers and producers.

The topic of this thesis employs two important qualifiers: North American and television.

Principally, both are used as a means to narrow the discussion and cater to the general access to

television sketch comedy produced and shown in North . The inclusion of stage sketch

comedy, while a potentially fruitful subject, would have been too unmanageable due to a lack of

available show recordings or transcripts and the sheer quantity of performing troupes and shows.

While a thorough analysis of this form of the genre is by no means impossible, it is ultimately

beyond the scope of this project. The same may apply to non-North American sketch comedy

(televisual and otherwise), but its exclusion is due largely to a general unfamiliarity with and

access to shows aired outside of . North American television sketch comedy, for

or worse, offers a limited pool of material that has been recorded and is (mostly)

accessible. Focusing only on North America also allows for a feasible analysis of cultural output

of one culture, modern North America. Nevertheless, some discussion of non-North American

and non-television sketch comedy will be included where necessary in order to establish the

history of the genre and include applicable insights from previously published sketch comedy

scholarship, and as a means of comparison and juxtaposition.

It should also be noted that Saturday Night Live looms large in this thesis. While the

same may be said of its status in the history of television sketch comedy, I hope the emphasis

does not detract from the observations made and conclusions drawn. Similarly, my focus on

issues of power and resistance (especially centered on political and racial humor) is not meant to

exhaust the wide breadth of issues raised by many sketch comedy shows. Parody and gender 6 representation are particularly ripe for study. Perhaps more than anything, this thesis is meant to call attention to the genre which helped sell a generation of viewers their first television sets.4

4 David Marc, Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture, (: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 87. 7

CHAPTER I: ANATOMY OF SKETCH COMEDY

An examination of the history of sketch comedy television demonstrates the importance

of the genre’s theatrical roots in influencing both the presentation and humor of sketch comedy

television shows. The gradual adoption of more televisual techniques allowed the genre a broader range of comedic tools and possibilities. The overall versatility of the sketch itself, the principle element of sketch comedy, is a further benefit to the genre, allowing it to present humor

more suited for brief presentation. Positioning sketch comedy within the framework of

Bakhtin’s carnivalesque reveals the genre’s conventions of topical parody, comedic ridicule,

eccentric recurring characters, and profane use of language and imagery (either present from the

genre’s earliest theatrical beginnings or developed over time). As carnivalesque, television

sketch comedy deals with issues (such as politics, race, and gender) in ways more direct than

other modes of television comedy. This directness and levity that results from carnivalesque can

work to both challenge and reinforce potentially oppressive dominant views.

Clinical History

Sketch comedy on television was initially embedded in variety shows, grouped with other

types of entertainment such as dancing and musical numbers. Over time, sketch comedy went on

to be featured in shows more centered around the comedic sketches themselves as opposed to

other varieties of entertainment. Generally, television sketch comedy can be split into two

phases. Timothy Scheurer, in his chapter “The Variety Show,” wisely acknowledges this

developmental split as one of influences. Whereas the classic comedy-variety show drew its

structure and approach from and shows, later variety shows—more

specifically what could be called sketch comedy shows—showed the influence of what Scheurer

calls a “National Lampoon mentality,” which emphasized a more biting critique and attack of 8 culture than the traditional variety show.1 This mentality, also influenced by improvisational theater such as Second City, would come to characterize the sketch comedy through the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Still, as sketch comedy shows developed and sketches themselves became the main showcase, they would often reveal their variety roots by featuring musical acts and stand up as guests.

In television’s infancy, the variety show was one of the medium’s most popular genres and the history of sketch comedy television is tied to the development of the variety show.

While most of the early variety shows included music, dancing, and comedy, each show offered different proportions of these ingredients.2 Predictably, those shows hosted by comedians consisted of more comedy and the comedic sketches they included mark the beginning of television sketch comedy. Comedy stars (many transitioning from radio to television) who developed successful variety shows included , , , Milton

Berle, and . For Scheurer, these hosts “created a type of comedy variety format in which the host’s personality mattered slightly (and I think it is important to say slightly) less than the characters they created.”3

Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, Sid Caesar’s highly successful variety shows which aired throughout the fifties, are perhaps the most well-regarded variety shows of this period. These shows are held in such esteem not only for how well the comedy has aged but also for the comedy stars (, Carl Riencer, et al.) who honed their talents under

Caesar’s variety banner. Featuring pioneering film parodies along with jabs at suburban life (the

1 Scheurer, “The Variety Show,” 322. 2 In light of the “variety” of entertainments featured in the Golden Age of variety shows, those shows focusing largely on comedic sketches (and of these, those that were most successful, influential, or innovative) will be covered in this history. For a more thorough analysis and history of the variety genre, see Scheurer and David Inman, Television Variety Shows: Histories and Episode Guides to 57 Programs, (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006). 3 Scheurer, “The Variety Show,” 312. 9

recurring “Hickenloopers”), intellectuals (“The Professor”), and cultural fads such as beat culture

(“Progress Hornsby”), “the show mixed spectacle with the sharp of satire and a…subtle

humor.”4

The many variety shows of Ernie Kovacs, with their filmed segments and

experimentation with the medium of television, are an early move away from the stage limitations of the variety show’s theatrical ancestry. Kovacs parodied other television genres and experimented with camera techniques that resulted in a surreal comedy experience. Like Your

Show of Shows and other variety programs, “Kovacs’s shows satirized current fads and foibles in

the arts, and like Skelton and Gleason, he created some wonderful characters.”5 Also, by employing the tools of television to parody its products, Kovacs revealed the manipulative—and comedic—power of the medium.

Despite the early popularity of the genre, the late fifties and early sixties saw a steep decline in primetime comedy-variety shows. While other forms of variety (particularly music- variety) battled on, comedy-variety was largely dead. “Spontaneity and uniqueness of occasion

and performance—precisely those qualities that were potentially most satisfying in a comedy-

variety show—came to be viewed as liabilities.”6 Situation soon became the dominant

comedic genre. Jackie Gleason’s epitomizes this shift, as these characters

started out as a recurring sketch on Gleason’s popular variety show and the success of the concept was parlayed into a now classic sitcom.

Scheurer sees these early variety television as not only adopting the structure of

vaudeville, with performances of comedy, music, and dancing, but appealing to similar values as

its stage predecessor. “Like vaudeville,” Scheurer holds, “[television variety shows] offered

4 Ibid., 310. 5 Ibid., 313. 6 Marc, Comic Visions, 88. 10

audiences grappling with change, of which the technology of television was an important part, a

form of entertainment that celebrated human qualities and reaffirmed traditional values.”7

Perhaps as America moved farther and farther from the turmoil of World War II and tried the domesticated lives fostered by the growing suburbs, its citizens preferred the comedic exploits of families whose images and lives (they hoped) mirrored their own.

The Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and Rowan and Martin’s

Laugh-In represent the final successful primetime comedy-variety shows of the sixties. As

Scheurer notes, this “late sixties troika of variety giants” would mark the apotheosis of the form.”8 The success of these variety shows points to the elements that would evolve into and become successful in the next generation of sketch shows. Steve Neale sees the production of

sketch and variety shows by women as an innovation in the genre,9 with

being among the first and most successful. Women centered sketch shows like The Tracey

Ullman Show, She TV, and The Jenny McCarthy Show as well as the increasing influence of

female writers and cast members on Saturday Night Live may have been longer in coming if not

for Burnett’s groundbreaking work. Within the context of a variety show as much centered on

music as comedy (fitting for the Brothers’ musical comedy act), the Smothers Brothers Comedy

Hour battled CBS censorship as its stars aimed to explicitly address the and

growing counter-cultural movements. And they did so quite successfully (in primetime, no less)

until the show was acrimoniously cancelled in its third season. Much like the similarly ill-fated

That Was the Week That Was before it (which had employed several Second City veterans), the

Smothers Brothers turned to improvisational comedy group the Committee for actors and

7 Scheurer, “The Variety Show,” 307. 8 Ibid., 315. 9 Steve Neale, “Sketch Comedy,” in The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, (: , 2001), 65. 11

writers.10 The sketch comedy shows of the genre’s second phase would also tap into this

comedic underground, with many series’ casts formed from the ranks of troupes like Second City and .

Airing concurrently with these more traditional variety shows was Rowan and Martin’s

Laugh-In which in both content and form pushed the creative envelope. Like the Smothers

Brothers Comedy Hour, Laugh-In featured political and topical satire that would be staples of the

second generation of sketch comedy shows. For Neale, the shift in comedic ancestry that marks

the division between the two stages of television sketch comedy is accompanied by an

exploration and embracing of televisual techniques and conventions.11 The work of Ernie

Kovacs, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (with its non-linear editing and jump cut one-liners) and the UK’s ’s Flying Circus are seen as television sketch show innovators, working

to push the comedic bounds of the medium. Indeed, Laugh-In, on one 1969 episode, consciously

acknowledged their debt to the technical innovations Kovacs developed. Influenced by the

techniques of Kovacs, Laugh-In, and Monty Python, later sketch shows like SCTV, Kids in the

Hall, The Show, Chappelle’s Show, and further moved away from the theatricality of vaudeville and settled firmly into the realm of television entertainment by featuring filmed sketches not limited to the confines of a studio stage or audience.

Somewhat of an anomaly in the late sixties and early seventies is the continuation of The

Red Skelton Show. As most comedy-variety shows were cancelled, Skelton was able to weather

the storm of a network change (NBC to CBS in 1953 and back again in 1971) and stay on the air

in primetime for 20 years. Wesley Hyatt, the author of A Critical History of The Red Skelton

10 Smothered: The Censorship Troubles of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” dir. Maureen Muldaur, New Video Group, 93 min., 2002. 11 Neale, “Sketch Comedy,” 63. 12

Show, 1951-1971, has observed that the cancellation came during a period when CBS was

casting off shows popular with rural and elderly viewers in an attempt to target the younger

demographics advertisers craved.12 Hee-Haw, a country and western version of Laugh-In, was also sacrificed to the demographic gods, but the show’s move to (and success in) syndication speaks to the under targeted audience of more rural viewers. Similarly, Blue Collar TV, a sketch show aimed at a predominantly male, white, and rural demographic, would be jettisoned by the

WB, a year before its merger with UPN into the hip, youth oriented CW.

As Scheurer notes, “Throughout the production of variety shows decreased to a

point where… in the eighties the form [was] practically nonexistent.”13 While The Carol

Burnett Show continued on through much of the decade (finally folding in 1979), The Flip

Wilson Show stands as one of the only successful entries into the traditional comedy-variety

format. Operating from a theater-in-the-round, Flip Wilson often welcomed several musical and

celebrity guests to his show and incorporated them into the show’s sketches. Wilson had several

recurring characters and sketches, including the revival-like “The Church of What’s Happenin’

Now” and Geraldine (Wilson dressed as a woman with a blond wig). Wilson’s

primetime success showed the viability of a variety-sketch show hosted by an African-American

and paved the way for other African-American hosted and created shows, both successful (In

Living Color and Chappelle’s Show) and not (The Show).

The comedy-variety show which dominated the 70’s (and, for the most part, the rest of

the century) was NBC’s Saturday Night Live.14 With its cast culled from several improv

12 Wesley Hyatt, A Critical History of “,” 1951-1971, (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2004), 1. 13 Scheurer, “The Variety Show,” 316. 14 Famously, the show was originally titled NBC’s Saturday Night due to a conflict with ABC’s competing variety show Saturday Night Live with . Saturday Night Live’s “Not-Ready for Primetime Players” were named in response to Cosell’s “Ready for Primetime Players,” which included future Saturday Night Live cast members and Christopher Guest. When the ABC show folded, producer Lorne Michaels changed his show’s name to the originally intended Saturday Night Live. 13

and its brand of “sick” humor, the show represents the shift between those programs influenced

by the traditions of vaudeville and traditional variety and those with more directly in the

improvisational and satiric scenes of , , , and New York.

Scheurer points to a less than stellar early eighties appearance of Sid Caesar on Saturday Night

Live as exemplifying the change in comedic sensibilities. “The great ’s talents,” he

notes, “were either out of step with the style of humor currently popular among younger

audiences or hopelessly squandered in the context of set routines.”15 But a sign of these shifting approaches can be noted several years earlier than Caesar’s 1983 performance. There is Milton

Berle’s infamous appearance during Saturday Night Live’s fourth season (discussed in the show’s oral history Live From New York), where Berle essentially took over the production, treating it as though it were simply a return to his own variety days doing Star Theater.

Lorne Michaels, out of embarrassment, has supposedly prevented this episode from being aired

in reruns. Michaels, commenting on Berle’s Saturday Night Live power play, speaks to the transitional period represented by the comedy of Saturday Night Live: “I have great affection for old-time show business. But it had become corrupt. It wasn’t what it had been. The show was trying to get away from that.”16

Saturday Night Live certainly bares the influence of the improv-sketch troupe tradition of

the Compass and its progeny, but the segmented, theatrical structure and its incorporation of separate musical and comedic acts (especially in its early years) ties it to the vaudeville and comedy-variety traditions. Even the show’s inclusion of short comedic films, while non- theatrical, adds a level of variety to the show’s live sketches. For Scheurer, “By mixing the

irreverence of the Smothers Brothers with fine ensemble work reminiscent of Your Show of

15 Ibid., 317. 16 Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, Live From New York: An Uncensored History of “Saturday Night Live,” (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2003), 167. 14

Shows and Carol Burnett, the Saturday Night Live cast...produced an innovative, sometimes

daring, and always amusing program.”17 It is important to note that this innovative, daring, and amusing program was operating from the relative protection of a late-night time slot, an air-time which the talk shows had used effectively since the 50s and would, with few exceptions, prove to be the only safe haven for this newer brand of sketch comedy on network television.

Also airing late at night (eventually after Saturday Night Live) and featuring taped sketches, was SCTV, ’s foray into television. Less popular than Saturday Night

Live at the time, the success of the show’s stars and acknowledged fans have attested to its influence. Originally aired in Canada beginning in 1976 and syndicated to U. S. television,

SCTV featured filmed sketches under the premise of a fictional television station. This frame allowed the show to offer parodies of most any aspect of television, from its genres (such as science-fiction and game shows) to its economic structure (commercials and deceitful network executives). While their experimentation with the benefits of a truly televisual sketch show tie them to such forbearers as Ernie Kovacs and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, the show’s explicit patronage by Second City (and the cast members’ experience with this troupe) brought the satirical edge often found in post-Saturday Night Live sketch comedy shows. Shows such as

SCTV, which fully embrace the televisual medium, have a distinctive style and structure compared to their live counterparts. Depending on their production schedules, those sketch shows which are filmed typically offer less topical satire. They operate in broader strokes, responding in different ways than weekly live shows. One notable advantage is the ability to actually film film parodies, which would normally (as in the case of ) be presented live on stage.

17 Scheurer, “The Variety Show,” 317. 15

Despite the range of influences and emphases that are evident in sixties and seventies shows, one characteristic after this period is the trend to have sketch shows primarily devoted to and focused on the comedic sketches. While music would certainly continue to play an important part in many shows, gone are elaborate dance numbers and routines (except in the form of parody, as in the case of the short lived The Show). An interesting demonstration of this shift is the way that two older, true “variety” shows are represented and remembered: Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. In marketing for VHS and

DVD collections of the shows, producers New Video Group emphasized the comedy of the

series and the great comedic writers, with specific reference to Caesar’s work as a precursor to

Saturday Night Live. And from the clips offered (almost solely comedic sketches), the impression is given that Caesar’s variety shows were little more than a fifties era Saturday Night

Live. There is little to no mention of the integral role of traditional production numbers and

dance as chronicled by Ted Sennett in his program history, Your Show of Shows.18 In this

instance, the current popularity of sketch-only sketch comedy shows (as well as the eventual

success of many of the Caesar’s comedy writers) has shaped and dominated later representations

of Caesar’s work.

Despite the boom of the late seventies, the eighties featured few successful sketch

comedy shows. Saturday Night Live, suffering from the losses of its founding producer, cast,

and staff, crawled through most of the decade. SCTV would continue with syndicated and cable

TV success until 1984. Fridays, ABC’s sketch show fashioned after its late-night weekend rival,

had limited success in the first two years of the eighties, even posting better ratings than

Saturday Night Live during the 1980 season. Dennis Perrin, biographer of Saturday Night Live

18 Ted Sennett, “Your Show of Shows”, 16

and National Lampoon writer Michael O’Donoghue, has noted that the show was known for

being very political, even more so than Saturday Night Live. Fridays

bashed the religious right at a time when most shows and networks feared people like Jerry Falwell. [The show also] never let up on the Reagan administration, and perhaps boldest of all, the staff wrote and performed hard core material about US involvement in El Salvador, setting sketches in refugee camps, torture centers, and the like.19

Perhaps the show’s most lasting legacy may be the comedic minds who first met on the show.

Seinfeld’s and Michael Richards first collaborated on the Fridays set. Later, as a writer for Saturday Night Live during the 1984-85 season, David would meet Julia Louis-

Dreyfus and develop sketch ideas that would form the core for scripts.20 It is an

interesting footnote in television history that one of the nineties’ most successful and iconic

had creative roots in television sketch comedy.

The election of and the conservative turn in American politics may have

affected the development of sketch comedy shows during this time. Saturday Night Live writers

in the early eighties recognized an unfriendly climate for . Staff writer Barry

Blaustein noted that “Reagan’s election set the tone. There was a kind of impending doom

hanging over the country, and there was probably a move toward conservativism at the

network.”21 For instance, the show was forbidden from mentioning the hostage crisis. This

same environment may have been present at other networks, contributing to less interest in a

genre known for its satirical elements. Still, Saturday Night Live’s lackluster performance and

reception may have created a need for networks to distance themselves from the genre.

Interestingly, when Saturday Night Live began improving in quality and ratings (thanks in large

19 Red State Son, “Talking ‘Fridays’ with Tom Kramer,” available at http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2007/02/talking-fridays-with-tom-kramer.html; Internet; accessed 13 March 2007. 20 Shales and Miller, Live from New York, 285. 21 Ibid., 238. 17

part to the success of ), HBO launched Not Necessarily the News. Not Necessarily

the News was, like That Was the Week That Was, another British import that blended sketch

comedy with a parody of a news broadcast. Centered around screwball manipulations of news

footage, the show also excelled at deconstructing the logic of television commercials. The

success of Not Necessarily the News on cable TV hinted at the feasibility of original sketch comedy on cable, where , Chappelle’s Show, Mr. Show with Bob and David,

and would find a suitable, less restricted environment for their brands of

comedy.

The latter half of the decade saw not only a resurgence of Saturday Night Live, but of

sketch comedy in general. The influx of a comedy veteran cast in the 1984 season and the return

of Lorne Michaels in 1985 (and an all new cast in 1986) brought a certain degree of quality back

to Saturday Night Live. Michaels was also responsible for bringing the Canada based The Kids

in the Hall to television. The Show aired on Fox also in 1989, winning an Emmy

for Best Variety, Musical, or Comedy Series. The next year, In Living Color, another Fox sketch

show, received the Emmy, matching its critical support with its popular appeal.

These three new sketch comedy entries achieved success with rather different styles of presentation. Sharing much in common with Monty Python’s Flying Circus (both in terms of comic sensibility and structure), The Kids in the Hall was a mixture of filmed segments and sketches performed in front of an audience. A comedy team before their venture into television, their experience performing together brought an invaluable chemistry and a cadre of well- defined and hilarious characters. , as the name suggests, harkened back to traditional variety with its focus on one creator-star. Largely Ullman’s comedic impersonations, the show (despite its success) has become most famous for the comedic shorts 18

which introduced the world to . In Living Color was by far the most commercially

successful of the three, lasting until 1994 and helping launch the careers of , Damon

Wayons (a former Saturday Night Live featured player), and, later, . Heavily

influenced by the short-lived The Richard Pryor Show, In Living Color featured a predominantly

African-American cast and became controversial for its racial and crude humor.

Following the success of these shows, a new wave of sketch comedy shows appeared on the programming schedule. Premiering in 1992 was , which received

critical acclaim but was canceled after its first season (passed over by Fox in favor of a

competing sketch show, The Edge). Despite its lack of commercial success, the show went on to

win an Emmy and featured several actors who would develop their own sketch shows over the next ten years, including Mr. Show with Bob and David and The Show. 1994 and

1995 seasons saw the premiere of no less than five shows on network and cable TV: ,

Limboland, The State, The Newz, She TV, Mad TV, House of Buggin’ and The Dana Carvey

Show.22 But this mid-90s sketch boom would be short lived, as only two of the shows (Mad TV

and The State) would last beyond two seasons.

The second half of the nineties featured a slow resurgence of Saturday Night Live (which

had gone through one of its periodic cast overhauls) and the growing sustainability of Mad TV as

sketch comedy force. Whose Line is it Anyway?, yet another British import, achieved a limited

amount of success with its improvised sketch games and would last six years on ABC. The

beginning of the twenty-first century saw the ascendance of a new sketch comedy star in the

form of Dave Chappelle, whose Chappelle’s Show would last two full seasons and become the

best selling TV show on DVD. Chappelle’s use of sophomoric and racial humor was well suited

22 Rick Marin and Jeanne Gordon, “Hey, This is What Sid Caesar Did,” , 22 August 1994, 68 and Trip Gabriel, “Beyond Beavis and Butt-head: MTV’s Sketch-Comedy Group,” New York Times, Sec. 2, p. 33. 19

to his Comedy Central surroundings, as he was allowed much creative leeway. Another Comedy

Central product, The Daily Show with (which actually premiered in 1997 with host

Craig Kilborn) made a shift towards political satire which tied it with other previous news-spoof

sketch shows like That Was the Week That Was, Not Necessarily the News, and Saturday Night

Live’s “” segment. Part , with a celebrity guest rounding out the

show’s half hour, The Daily Show featured such Second City trained comedians as Steve Carrell

and whose short “news” segments had the feel of extended sketch parodies of

news reports.

Dissecting the Sketch

The previous history has revolved around a unifying notion: these shows, more so than

not, have featured comic sketches. A segment in the second show of The Kids in the Hall’s first

season wryly offers a guide to sketch comedy, which serves as a good starting point for a

discussion of the nature of the sketch. “Sketch comedy: What is it? What is required?” Dave

Foley lifelessly asks the camera as he sits attached to an IV drip. “The first thing that is needed

for a comedy sketch is a premise,” Foley offers. “How about a ‘What if’ premise? What if a man

awoke one morning to discover his chest had been colonized by ?” The sketch then cuts to

troupe member Scott Thompson awaking in bed, as a Bruce McCullough, dressed as a Spanish conquistador, plants a small flag in Thompson’s chest. “The premise has been established. the comedic possibilities are inherent,” Foley guides. “ is needed for this to progress is a conflict.” Enter Mark McKinney as a French cavalier, who stamps his own flag in Thompson’s chest. With the conflict over Thompson’s chest set in motion, Spain and France proceed to toss a cartoonish explosive to one another. “All that is required now for this to be a fully formed and well-rounded comedy sketch,” Foley intones, “is a resolution.” With this, Kevin McDonald 20 enters dressed as an austere Russian, who expels the colonial powers of France and Spain, only to claim Thompson’s chest for “Mother Russia.” At this, Thompson and McDonald each pose in feigned surprise for the camera. “Notice the mug to the audience,” Foley states matter-of-factly.

“This indicates that the punchline has been delivered. This is generally followed by a blackout.”

Rather dryly, The Kids in the Hall offer a structural breakdown of the most fundamental of sketch comedy tools, the blackout sketch. The sketch’s sarcastic tone indicates a boredom with this type of sketch, which can trace its heyday to the early years of variety shows. As Roger

Wilmut notes, “sketches are often conceived from the , and then written to lead up to it,”23 resulting in a in which the punchline is revealed. Influenced in part by Monty

Python, who gradually abandoned punchline sketches,24 many subsequent shows still feature a physical blackout, but devoid of the comic climax which cues it. The sketch also speaks to

Neale and Krutnik’s observation that all sketches “trace the effect, or effects, of a single cause,”25 in this case the colonization of a man’s chest.

While The Kids in the Hall so effectively break down a sketch, offering an editorial on a particularly tired approach to sketch comedy, there is more to the sketch than simple dramatic structure. Neale offers an excellent definition and sheds more light on the sketch itself:

As the term implies, sketches are short, usually single-scene structures. They generally comprise a setting, one or more characters, and an internal time frame within which the comic possibilities of a premise of one kind or another—a situation, a relationship, a conversation and its topics, a mode of language, speech or behavior, or some other organising principle—are either pursued to a point of climax and conclusion (sometimes called a ‘pay-off’), or else simply abandoned...The brevity of sketches derives from their origins in variety, in which acts of many kinds usually lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Most lasted ten minutes and radio and television sketches are usually even briefer than this).26

23 Roger Wilmut, From Fringe to Flying Circus: Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy, (London: Methuen, 1982), 198-99. 24 Ibid., 201. 25 Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popular Film and Television Comedy, (London: Routledge, 1990), 193. 26 Neale, “Sketch Comedy,” 62. 21

Just as television sketch shows as a whole have their stylistic and structural roots in vaudeville and satiric revues, the principal element of these shows, the sketch itself, has similar theatrical beginnings. As Neale observes, a sketch is principally defined by its relative briefness. This makes it an ideal format for less developed ideas, or, put more generously, ideas that may not work (or be feasible) in a longer format or medium. For instance, the content of some sketches, such as commercial or advertisement parodies, must be short so as to properly mimic the parodied medium. The shortness of a sketch allows full focus on the premise, be it political or topical lampoon or an absurdist interaction piece between characters. With the limited time, characters must be defined through a mixture of strong performance, writing, and stereotype, with the extent to which a sketch exploits or deconstructs these stereotypes revealing much about the themes of the sketch and sensibility of the show as a whole. Sometimes, as in the case of caricatures of famous individuals (a popular convention of later sketch comedy), there is less of a need for precise character development due to the person’s celebrity.

In some ways, a sketch is like a dramatization of a joke, which, under other circumstances (such as a stand-up comedy routine) would be told and explained rather than enacted. The length of a comedic sketch makes it an ideal transitional format. A joke may be ill suited to be adapted into a 30 minute sitcom, but is rather easily turned into a three minute sketch. Indeed, those performers who do not have a background in troupe comedy often have a history of stand-up performance. This is perhaps most evident in Chappelle’s Show, a typical episode of which would feature brief, largely improvised stand-up comedy style routines as bookends for each sketch. Acting as springboards for the show’s sketches, these stand-up bits and segues help contextualize the sketch and prepare the audience for the scene they are about to watch. The show’s structure can be seen as a sort of mix-media stand-up 22

comedy act, for it uses the same flow and logic of a stand-up routine, with each topic tenuously

connected to the previous. Where typically stand-up comedians would verbally describe and

enact an anecdote themselves (using a variety of voices and body language), Chappelle’s Show

allows its host to visually present the scene and its characters. While not all sketches or sketch

shows owe an obvious debt to stand up comedy, Chappelle’s Show demonstrates how the nature

of a sketch, with its basic premise and various gags, characters, and plot share much in common

with the presentational style of a stand-up joke or bit.

For David Marc, the sketch (particularly in the early days of variety) acted as a sort of

mini-sitcom. Early variety comedians like “Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, and Red Skelton, made use of the blackout sketch on their shows to move back and forth between stand-up and sitcom.”27 With the use of recurring characters and sketch themes, Marc claims, “each created,

in effect, an anthological collection of ongoing situation comedies.”28 He notes Skelton’s

tendency to turn whole episodes over to playlets involving his recurring characters, Caesar’s

domestic sketches with , and Gleason’s success with Ralph Kramden and The

Honeymooners (a sitcom spinoff) as support for his observation.29 Marc is accurate in observing

the “sitcom” nature of many sketches. Indeed, a common practice, particularly post-Saturday

Night Live, has been to turn those sketches based on a particularly outlandish “situation” into a

sitcom parody. A sketch on Saturday Night Live about an unwelcome party guest with a

bleeding cranial injury becomes the show “Massive Headwound Harry,” complete with

announcer and episode names. An In Living Color sketch about a family with buttocks on their

foreheads becomes a Cosby Show parody, titled “The Buttmans.”

27 Marc, Comic Visions, 23. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 23-24. 23

Furthermore, filmed shows such as SCTV and The Ben Stiller Show have a tendency of framing most of their sketches as some sort of media parody, often focusing on sitcoms. Even beyond those sketches with a more “domestic” setting, sketches can easily be defined (as Neale offers above) according to the situation or scene they portray—“A man returns to a pet store to complain about his deceased parrot,” “A barbequing suburban dad yells at his kids to get off the shed.” Despite the structural similarities, the sketch’s most obvious difference (and asset, in this comparison) is its length, in that it is not bound to stretching a gag into a thirty minute storyline.

Since the days of Sid Caesar’s “The Professor” and Red Skelton’s “Freddie the

Freeloader” there have been recurring characters featured on sketch shows. These recurring characters help offer a continuity between episodes as well as a means to draw in audience members who are fans of a particular character. While recurring characters offer a great chance for character development, too often they amount to little more than repeats of the same sketch, with too much emphasis on catchphrases and stock situations. Pressured by MTV to include a teen friendly returning character (complete with quotable catchphrase), The State offered Doug, a slacker who self-consciously utters his slogan and enacts his boredom. Chappelle’s Show (and, in turn, Chappelle) relied less on recurring characters than many sketch comedy shows, with

Chappelle’s most used , Tyrone Biggums, a determined and mischievous crack addict, appearing as the central character in only about four sketches over the show’s original 27 episodes (or approximately 90 sketches). Another popular recurring sketch was

“’s True Stories,” parodies of E! True Hollywood Stories documentaries featuring Chappelle’s caricature of musician and , only appeared on the show twice. 24

Saturday Night Live, with its habit of turning recurring sketch characters into feature

length films, has showcased the limitations of some of these characters and the benefits of short

comedic sketches. In this less than prestigious category of sketch comedy-to-film crossovers, for

every successful Wayne’s World, there is It’s Pat or . Not necessarily able to sustain a feature length plot, these characters and their films too often rely on the catchphrases and character traits already overplayed in the recurring television sketches.

Many sketch shows contain elements which make them both ideal and ill-suited for

syndication. The presence of non-serialized sketches, which allow for easy drop in viewing not only between episodes but also within shows, seems an appealing attribute. Still, with the turn over the past 30 years towards more topical sketch comedy, once timely and parodies quickly date a show. The current syndication schedule of sketch comedy shows plays out this dynamic. Whereas Comedy Central used to devote much of its airtime to Saturday Night Live in the early-nineties, the show is virtually non-existent on its schedule. As the episodes to which it owned the rights grew older, their potential appeal to younger and younger viewing audiences decreased. Nevertheless, syndicated sketch shows (including more recent Saturday Night Live episodes) make up the bulk of sketch programs on the air today. More recent reruns of Mad TV

(popular among the younger, 12-17 demographic30) have replaced Saturday Night Live as the

staple Comedy Central show. The current popularity of and his Blue

Collar Comedy Tour cohort have made Blue Collar TV a popular rerun, but it too may fade from

schedules as its humor ages. Finally, In Living Color is perhaps the oldest sketch show with a

sizable amount of airtime, due in large part to the current popularity of its stars.

Ultimately, the sketch offers an accessibility to the audience and a flexibility to its

creators that encourage creativity without devotion to plot and character development which

30 Ann Oldenburg, “That’s Kooky Talk: ‘Mad TV’ Hits 10th Year,” USA Today, 17 September 2004, Life, p. 15e. 25

must occur in other longer forms. The sheer possibilities of approaches to a sketch, whether it be

a parody or more akin to a sitcom, increases the potential diversity of content and humor.

Diagnosis Carnivalesque

The openness and malleability of a sketch and, consequently, the show that contains it,

allows for interpretation through a variety of theoretical frameworks. One particularly suitable

approach is that of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. In his short essay, “Carnival and

Carnivalesque,” Bakhtin traces the aspects of carnival which have survived and influenced

modern literary genres. Framed by Bakhtin as a mass ritualistic act, carnival is lived in by

participants, with no division between performer and spectator.31 Carnivalistic life is

characterized by a suspension of everyday laws and restrictions.32 This “pageant without

” allows for open familiarization between all people (no matter their social status), a

creation of new relationships between these individuals, a bringing together of seemingly

disparate people and symbols, and the use of the profane (both in language and imagery) as a

means to debase and parody the sacred and hallowed.33 Furthermore, carnival involves the

celebration of eccentricity, that which is a violation of the usual and generally accepted.

Carnival embraces this eccentricity, putting the highest earthly authorities to shame in a way that

would not be permissible in a more formal venue. Parody is also the cause of a free spirited

carnival laughter, as parody is “organically inherent” in carnival,34 seizing on the ambivalence of

the environment.

Carnival has survived through the influencing, or carnivalization, of literary genres. That

which reflects carnival, albeit in a thickly filtered way, can be considered carnivalistic or

31 Mikhail Bakhtin, “Carnival and Carnivalesque,” in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed. John Storey, (Athens: University of Press, 1998), 250. 32 Ibid., 251. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 254. 26

carnivalesque. Bakhtin saw early comedic and satiric forms (such as Attic Old Comedy and

Roman satire) as subjects of carnivalization. He also noted the carnivalistic aspects of

Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and, especially, Rabelais, to whom Bakhtin would devote much of his

studies on carnival. Much like these earlier forms and genres, television sketch comedy can be

characterized as carnivalesque. It receives its carnival atmosphere through the unique combination of its generic history and conventions, which in turn shape the genre’s content.

While Bakhtin’s theories have yet to be employed in an analysis of sketch comedy as a

whole, two authors have hinted at the applicability of carnivalesque to the genre. Dealing in the

American sketch comedy tradition, Virginia Wright Wexman’s “Returning From the Moon:

Jackie Gleason and the Carnivalesque” analyzes the various comedic personae of Gleason in

terms of Bakhtin’s theories. Focusing especially on Bakhtin’s claims about the exaggerated aspects of the carnival body, Wright Wexman places Gleason’s comedy within this framework based on the comedian’s “ability to use the exaggerated modes of comic performance to draw out a number of contradictory meanings inherent in his body image.”35 Wright Wexman’s

emphasis on the contrasts of grotesque and classical bodies in Gleason’s Ralph Kramden and

variety host persona, while not explicitly to a generic framework, has implications for

sketch comedy due to Kramden and The Honeymooners’ as sketches on Cavalcade of

Stars and . Gleason’s negotiation of body types and humor speaks to

the carnivalisitic atmosphere present even in the earliest examples of the genre and its ability to

house a presentation of themes and imagery found in the carnivalesque.

More thoroughly exploring the liberating power of sketch comedy is Sarina Pearson in

her “Pacific Camp: Satire, Silliness, (and Seriousness) on New Zealand Television.” She situates

35 Virginia Wright Wexman, “Returning from the Moon: Jackie Gleason and the Carnivalesque,” in Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader, ed. Joanne Morreale, (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse U. P., 2003), 58. 27

her analysis of the New Zealand sketch comedies Tali’s Angels and Milburn Place within the

theoretical framework of camp, claiming that the playful lack of boundaries suggested by camp

captures the way the Kiwi sketch comedies negotiate race and gender issues. She notes that

these shows “slipped between operations of , camp, kitsch, and parody, revealing not only

the playful and satirical nature of Pacific Island moving imagery, but also the complex nature of

cultural politics in diasporic Pacific Island Media.”36 Although she does not place her entire

analysis within the carnivalesque tradition, she does acknowledge Bakhtin’s studies on the social

power of comedy when tracing Milburn Place’s roots in fale aitu, a traditional Samoan form of

theater consisting of irreverent sketches and music. More specifically, she sees Milburn Place

operating “in a carnivalesque tradition.”37 Despite not fleshing out the full generic implications

of her observations (due to the limited focus of her essay), Pearson, through her discussion of camp and carnivalesque, shows the incisive power of sketch comedy as a potentially liberating force.

The history of television sketch comedy, as rooted in vaudeville and improv comedy

revues, helps establish the genre within the carnivalesque. Akin to Bahktin’s observation that

“carnival is pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators,”38

Compass co-founder David Shepherd hoped to “remove the glass curtain that’s formed

between the actors and audience”39 and attempted to generate “authentic, spontaneous contact

between actors and audiences.”40 The audience suggestions and participation of some theatrical

improv shows, while abandoned on television, are still associated with its sister genre. Some

36 Sarina Pearson, “Pacific Camp: Satire, Silliness (and Seriousness) on New Zealand Television,” Media Culture & Society 27 (4): 551. 37 Ibid., 561. 38 Bahktin, “Carnival,” 250. 39 Stephen E. Kercher, Revel With a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America, (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2006), 122. 40 Ibid, 123. 28

shows have retained an audience interaction, from fielding questions on The Carol Burnett Show

and to the faux audience members of Saturday Night Live and Mad TV.

The lively, participatory audiences of vaudeville also hint at the more communal experience of

carnival. As the performers of television sketch comedy have typically moved from the

vaudeville and revue stages, the theatrical aesthetic found in these venues is evident in their

performance and comedic styles once on television.

The subject matter of these earlier forms has had a profound influence on sketch comedy

television and has contributed to the carnivalistic nature of the genre. Comedy dealing with the

profane and eccentric (to use Bakhtin’s language) characterizes the humor of many sketch

comedy shows. The laughter of sketch comedy, much like carnival laughter, is often directed at

the powerful. This is evident in the caricatures of politicians and celebrities. These topical jokes

of more recent sketch shows are “speech of abuse and ridicule,” which Bahktin sees as a relic of

carnival.41 Associated with this speech of abuse and ridicule is an overall freedom of language.

As network content restrictions have been relaxed, more bawdy and profane content (which was

allowed somewhat freer expression in vaudeville and improv) has been incorporated into

television sketch comedy. Those sketches not devoted to direct ridicule often feature the exploits

of eccentric characters who, while potentially the targets of laughter, act as the protagonist of the

sketch and may become a recurring character throughout a particular show’s run.

As a site for this brand of humor, sketch comedy suggests a suspension of hierarchical

structures and societal prohibitions. With such an atmosphere sketch comedy is free to adopt an

air of irreverence (at the very least) and anarchy (at the extreme) to the comic proceedings. The

opening of Comedy Central’s Upright Citizens Brigade, a series based on the work of a New

York City based theatre, hyperbolically verbalizes this stance:

41 Bakhtin, “Carnival,” 257. 29

Narrator: From the dawn of civilization they have existed in order to undermine it.

UCB: Our only enemy is the status quo. Our only friend is chaos.

Narrator: They have no government and unlimited resources.

UCB: When something goes wrong, we are the cause.

Narrator: Every corner of this Earth is under their surveillance.

UCB: If you do it, we see it. Always. We believe the powerful should be made less powerful. We have heard the voice of society, begging us to destabilize it. Antione. Colby. Trotter. Adair. We are the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Each episode would focus on the activists (sometimes failed) attempts at undermining authority,

doing so in a joyfully irreverent way. The show’s opening statement of purpose suggests a comedic spirit that goes unspoken on many sketch shows. Most importantly, this carnival spirit and the resulting permissibility of handling serious topics through laughter allows sketch shows to deal with topics (such as race and politics) which may go unaddressed not only in everyday life and conversation but also in other forms of comedy.

The structure of a sketch comedy show adds to the carnivalistic qualities of the genre.

Fast cuts (e.g. Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In), a seamless flow (e. g., Kids in the Hall, The

State), and the continued presence of music and an irreverent host (e. g., Chappelle’s Show, Your

Show of Shows) add to the show’s status as a site of revelry. The versatility of the content and

structure of the sketch itself contributes to this as well. From the shortest blackout or one-liner to

the most elaborate parody, a sketch is able to encompass them all, allowing a malleable vessel

for carnival humor. With a sketch’s ability to forsake typical dramatic structure and convention

(via an unexpected ending or no ending at all, perhaps), it is a form specially suited (due in part

to its brevity) for experimentation. The physical combination of sketches and each one’s own 30

plot into the flow of a sketch show hints at the carnivalistic mesalliances, the unity of disparate ideas and symbols of carnival that Bakhtin discusses.42

The voices within sketch comedy are not always harmonious and certainly not always the

voices of the disempowered. More broadly speaking, the interplay between the disparate

narratives and ideologies within sketch comedy can be understood in terms of Bakhtin’s

heteroglossia and the relationship between centripetal and centrifugal forces in society.

Centripetal forces act as “official” forces of society and centrifugal act as the “unofficial.”43

While the centripetal work to impose an overall, homogenous order onto the world, the centrifugal forces work to disrupt this order. Although the latter, unofficial discourses are collectively known as heteroglossia, there is no inherent unity in these centrifugal forces other than their opposition to the establishing order. These same forces can be seen at play within the carnivalesque of sketch comedy, as each show has its own degree of presentation against the official order. This heteroglossia, be it political satire directed at ruling ideals or comedic critiques of , push out at varying degrees against elements of official culture’s centripetal pull towards an orderly center.

It is also worth stressing that sketch comedy is merely carnivalesque, not pure carnival.

It does not contain all of Bakhtin’s carnival categories, some of which have been lost through the carnivalization process and lack a direct connection to carnival. “Carnival elements in

[carnivalized] literature—already cut off from their direct source, carnival—change their appearance somewhat and are reconceptualized.”44 This can be seen in the way that the founders of the Compass were influenced by commedia dell’arte (to which the origins of the sketch form

42 Ibid., 251. 43 Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1990), 30. 44 Ibid. 31

can be traced45) and Brechtian theater, genres with noted carnivalesque elements. Ultimately,

sketch comedy, like much modern day carnivalistic genres, is a sort of copy of a copy. While

still resembling the original, its edges have softened and clear distinctions of carnival have

become blurred and unfocused.

Of course, this air of unpredictability and lawlessness associated with sketch comedy can

be (and is often) overstated by the show itself and its network’s marketing department. This

raises valid questions of whether the carnivalesque of sketch comedy (like its carnival

predecessor) has any effect or actually challenges any of the hierarchical structures it supposedly

upturns. Does it merely reinforce the powers that be? Peter Stallybrass and Allon White have

tackled these issues in their work From Carnival to Transgression, where they examine the concept of carnival as the “mode of understanding [and] cultural analytic” they claim it has become.46 Summarizing skepticism surrounding a transgressive carnival, the authors state:

Most politically thoughtful commentators wonder...whether the “licensed release” of carnival is not simply a form of social control of the low by the high and therefore serves the interests of that very official culture which it apparently opposes.47

Indeed, as will be shown later, the comparative liberties found in sketch comedy’s carnivalesque

have been used to reinforce and further entrench dominant ideologies and stereotypes (i. e.,

centripetal forces) in a much more blatant and explicit manner than other televisual forms,

comedic or otherwise. But sketch comedy has also been the showcase of some of television’s

most daring political and social satire (i. e., centrifugal forces). As Stallybrass and White

conclude, rather than drawing out the potentially endless arguments regarding the intrinsic

radical or conservative nature of carnival,

45 Neale and Frutnik, Popular Film, 182. 46 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, “From Carnival to Transgression,” in The Subcultures Reader, ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, (London: Routledge, 1997), 293. 47 Ibid., 296. 32

The most that can be said in the abstract is that for long periods carnival may be a stable and cyclical ritual with no noticeable politically transformative effects but that given the presence of sharpened political antagonism, it may often act as catalyst and site of actual and symbolic struggle.48

Such an estimation of carnival fits well with sketch comedy. It captures the shift from the

vaudevillian sketch comedy dominant in the fifties and sixties, often devoid of explicitly

“political” content (while still offering a site for satiric comedy), to the improv influenced

comedy popular in the last third of the twentieth century, when relaxed broadcast standards and

political climate allowed for more daring humor and discussion of politics. Stallybrass and

White’s statement also accounts for the way shows negotiate and handle political issues as well

as experience creative ebbs and flows.

Ultimately, the authors propose to treat carnival as “one instance of a generalized

economy of transgression,” not overestimating the liberating impact of carnival but still

recognizing it as a potentially oppositional act.49 While some of this ongoing debate over the political power of sketch comedy will be illustrated as it applies to the history and generic conventions of television sketch comedy, the carnivalesque aspects of the genre will be analyzed in terms of this “economy of transgression.” As carnivalesque, sketch comedy will be examined in the ways it has used its unique form to discuss potentially polarizing issues with a comedic style often characterized by a bold irreverence and bawdiness, in many cases acting as resistance to powerful figures and ideologies.

48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 300. 33

CHAPTER II: “DON’T STOP THE CARNIVAL”: THE POLITICS OF SKETCH COMEDY

On the December 13, 1986 episode of Saturday Night Live appeared a featuring actor as a right wing folksinger named . The Roberts character would later appear in the 1992 Bob Roberts. A subplot in the film involves the musician-cum-senatorial candidate performing on a program called Cutting Edge

Live, a thinly veiled reference to the sketch comedy show which had birthed Robbins’ satirical persona. Within the film, several liberal writers and performers of the show object to the inclusion of Roberts on the program. In response to the network’s corporate parent insisting on

Roberts’ appearance, the host for that week’s episode (played by John Cusack) proposes a monologue to be performed on air:

In the beginning, our great company provided appliances for the neighborhood. We heated your home, we refrigerated your food, improved the quality of your life. We prospered and you loved us. And we grew into a large multinational corporation. In fact, we own this very network. Our chief source of income, however, is the arms industry. Yes, we rely heavily on those fat government contracts to make these useless weapons of mass destruction. And even though we have been indicted and convicted for fraud several times, you don’t hear too much about our bad side because, well, we own our own news division. Chances are pretty slim you’ll hear reports of our environmental mishaps or the way we bust those unions. We even have a highly rated, Saturday night show that the public buys as entertainment with a leftist slant.1

Rooted in Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model, the monologue’s critique brings up valid points about the limitations of political humor on corporately owned television.

Indeed, the controversy surrounding political comedy on television sketch shows can be seen as operating within this model. But ultimately, accepting the limitations of its institutional structure and examining the comedy through the lens of satire results in a more hopeful assessment of satire and dissent on television sketch comedy than Robbins’ film suggests.

1 Bob Roberts, dir. Tim Robbins, 102 min., Films, 1992, DVD. 34

Since the remarks of Cusack’s unnamed “Cutting Edge Live Host” are the catalyst for this

discussion, it would be best to place them in an appropriate context. The general critique, with

its focus on the implications of corporate control of the mass media (in the film’s case an

allusion to the ownership of the National Broadcast Corporation by General Electric), echoes the

propaganda model of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. The pair’s model “traces the routes

by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and

allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public.”2

The original model includes five news filters which work together to limit what the media presents: media ownership by corporate oligopolies; as the main source of income for the mass media; reliance on insider sources; “flak,” or criticism, projected at the media by third parties; and the use of anticommunism as means to control what is debated.3 These elements work together as a means to arrive at the news and media content acceptable to the government and dominant private interests.4

Although the news media is the principal focus of Herman and Chomsky’s analyses,

these filters exercise their control over all forms of mass media, including entertainment media.

Because sketch comedy often deals with content and subject matter normally reserved for news

programming, it is still subjected to the various restraints of the propaganda model as enforced

by the structures of the corporate media. As the Bob Roberts quote suggests, sketch comedy programs can play a special role in the public image of their corporate parents. These shows, with their typically satirical and controversial content, add to the appearance of the liberal media

2 Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, ed. Meenakshi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 257. 3 Ibid., 257-258. While “anti-communism” has become somewhat outdated, “anti-Islamic extremism” seems poised (at least for the time being) to take its symbolic place as a control over political discussion and dissent. 4 Ibid., 256. 35

bias that Chomsky claims is the byproduct of a well functioning propaganda model.5 The

perceived critical edge of political statements on sketch comedy shows may work to “bound thought,” marking the ideological extreme which, Chomsky claims, one “can’t go beyond.”6 As

a site where politics and entertainment explicitly converge, the history of political humor on

American television sketch comedy demonstrates the propaganda model’s filtering process and

its general applicability to the entertainment media. Furthermore, the corporate censorship of

these shows sets the bounds of satiric discussion, allowing the elements of the propaganda model

to limit comedic political discourse, one which could potentially go beyond the traditional

bounds of the news media. Whereas the news media, according to Chomsky, says, “Thus far and

no further” in regard to what is acceptable political discourse,7 the limiting of comedy’s (often

ridiculously extreme) boundaries has potent ideological implications.

The potential constraints of media ownership on the content of television sketch comedy

foreground the political limitations of carnival mentioned in the previous chapter. Here, in the

historical and institutional circumstances of televisual sketch comedy carnivalesque, broadcasters

are quite literally “licensed” by the government. Furthermore, corporate owners of the

broadcasters favor material that will cause them a limited number of economic and political

ramifications. Stallybrass and White quote Terry Eagleton’s applicable dismissal of carnival:

“Carnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of hegemony, a

contained popular blow-off as disturbing and relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of

art.”8 Just as the news media is contained by political and economic decisions and carnival is

itself a sort of licensed containment of politically radical thought, the relative release of televised

5 Mark Achbar, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media: The Companion Book to the Award- Winning Film, (New York: Black Rose Books, 1994), 58. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Stallybrass and White, “From Carnival to Transgression,” 296. 36

sketch comedy are potentially limited by these same factors. For instance, Tony Hendra, author

of Going Too Far and former editor of National Lampoon, sees Saturday Night Live as television commodification of a freer, more spontaneous, and cutting edge “boomer humor,” a humor characterized by the work of National Lampoon and comedians like and Mort Sahl.

Speaking to this commodification, Hendra declares that “we watched SNL [sic] and had the illusion that we were watching dissent, irreverence, and nonconformity finally have its way with authority’s most powerful modern weapon.”9 Highly critical of Saturday Night Live’s play at the

counterculture, Hendra is equally doubtful of the merits of television as anything more than a means of stultifying the masses.

Flak Everywhere You Turn

Stephen E. Kercher, in his book, Revel With a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America,

offers a brief history of political satire on American television and the political and cultural

conditions in which it developed. “Television’s timidity during the early and mid-,”

Kercher notes, “is easily explained by the influence McCarthyism had on the American

broadcast industry and the extreme aversion networks, advertisers, and television industry groups

had for controversy of any kind.”10 The vaudeville roots of many early variety shows (the

principal showcases of sketch comedy during television’s infancy) led to censorship battles in

the late- and early-1950s. The television industry (like the before it) sought

to “avoid the threat of federal censorship” and consequently adopted the Television Code, which

took effect in March of 1952.11 The Code aimed to make television like a “polite guest,” one

that “should never say anything to make the evening unpleasant or the host uncomfortable.”12 In

9 Tony Hendra, Going Too Far, (New York: Double Day, 1987). 10 Kercher, Revel With a Cause, 346. 11 Thomas Patrick Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium, (New York: Columbia UP, 2003), 68. 12 Ibid. 37

effect, the limitations of the code “prevented television humor from broaching subjects in a

manner that might be construed as ‘insensitive’ or ‘irresponsible.’”13 Needless to say, this

extremely limited the scope of comedic expression, political and otherwise.

The religion of anti-communism, with McCarthy as Grand Inquisitor, alongside the self

imposed censorship of the Television Code, resulted in variety shows (such as Sid Caesar’s Your

Show of Shows and the work of Ernie Kovacs) whose attempts at satirical sketches were limited

to film parodies and the foibles of middle class life. While many of the sketches which resulted

from these institutional limitations were successful in their own right, the shows (and television

in general) were unable to reflect the groundswell of contemporary political satire that would

lead to the “satire boom” of the Kennedy-era. Network television’s eventual attempts to cash in

on the popularity of satire would show the limitations of the medium’s corporate structures and

exemplify the control of Herman and Chomsky’s filtering agents.

Two shows in particular, NBC’s version of That Was the Week That Was (TW3) in 1962

and CBS’s The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour from 1967-69, showcase the trepidation

political sketch comedy caused in the corporate ownership of the networks and the advertisers on which they relied for revenue. Each show also garnered its fair share of “flak,” from both regular viewers and network executives (with their own ties to the Johnson Administration).

Kercher and media scholar Aniko Bodroghkozy have each chronicled the respective struggles of these two shows. The trials that they describe each program undergoing can be summarized in terms of Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model.

TW3, a sketch comedy spoof of a weekly news show, aired its episode on November

11, 1963. The show had gained steam from the positive word of mouth associated with the

earlier British version, which had been canceled that month by the BBC, due to an upcoming

13 Kercher, Revel With a Cause, 346. 38

election.14 A main consideration in producing the American show was NBC’s attempt to appeal

to the “egghead” audience, upper and upper-middle class educated viewers who typically

avoided watching the “wasteland” of television.15 According to Kercher, the show premiered

well, but was undermined by poor leadership and casting changes midway through its first season. The show would never recover commercially or critically. “What appears clear,” notes

Kercher, “is that the concerns of advertisers—the people still responsible for underwriting TW3

financially—carried considerable weight with [Leland Hayword, the show’s producer].”16 Alas, the actions of advertising filters worked to undermine a show that reached 10-20 million viewers a week “with a brand of topical, hip satire that was unavailable outside the small nightclubs and improv cafes populating , Chicago, and .”17 This filter worked

hand and hand with another, the corporate network, whose president was Robert Kitner, a man

with close ties to the Democratic Party and the Johnson Administration. NBC’s fatal decision to

move the show from Friday to Tuesday night (following a preemption for the 1964 political conventions) ensured the show would not continue what success it had achieved.18

Likewise, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour would succumb to an assault levied against it by the filters of corporate ownership, a necessity for advertising revenue, and “flak” from high and low (which would occasionally come under the aegis of anti-communism).

Bodroghkozy observes that sketches from the show’s first season “revealed an ideological balancing act as the show struggled for generational consensus” by having semiotically open sketches, those that could be seen to both criticize and support current public protests, for

14 Ibid., 358. 15 Ibid., 365. 16 Ibid., 381. 17 Ibid., 379. 18 Ibid., 385. 39

instance.19 The network sided with the show while it was a ratings success, but as sketches and

segments of the show took on a more unambiguous slant, ratings slipped, and “flak” increased,

the network began to drop its support. Although counter-culture and youth oriented advertisers

like Volkswagen continued their support, CBS faced complaints from other advertisers and

affiliates who threatened to not carry the show in primetime.20 Halfway through the show’s third

season in April 1969, CBS cancelled the show citing a failure to submit show scripts in time for

preview by the Program Practices Department and affiliates.21

Both shows, revealing their roots in variety and revue comedy yet embracing the

technical possibilities of television, featured controversial juxtapositions of songs and political

imagery. In one episode of TW3, resident folk singer Nancy Ames sang “Good Old

Summertime” against a backdrop of photographs of violent civil rights clashes between Southern

blacks and whites. The show caused a good deal of “flak,” for, according to Kercher, the

segment “received heavy adverse comment” and caused several Southern NBC affiliates to drop

TW3.22 Four years later, The Smothers Brothers would be unable to air a similar multimedia

political statement when footage of the rioting at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago

played behind a performance of “Don’t Stop the Carnival.” Upset by violence

in the convention footage and the song’s critical references to Democratic Party leaders and

Chicago’s Mayor Daley, CBS censored the performance and the 5 minute spot in the show

(which the Smothers refused to fill) was eventually sold to The Republican Party for a Nixon/

Agnew campaign ad.23 The carnival of free political protest as suggested by the segment’s

19 Aniko Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion, (Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 2001), 124-125. 20 Ibid., 146 21 Ibid., 153. 22 Kercher, Revel With a Cause, 374. 23 Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube, 143-145. 40

juxtaposition, like the carnivalesque of sketch comedy’s political humor, was threatened by the

repressive powers that ran the country and the broadcast networks.

One major creative effect associated with the controversy surrounding these two attempts

at political sketch comedy was the demon of self-censorship. On TW3, for instance, NBC’s

Continuity Acceptance Department regularly stressed its “right of approval” of all material and

the strict no improvisation or deviation policy.24 One show insider revealed to TV Guide that

due to network interference, writers were “watering down the material” before censors had a

chance to do so.25 The perils of self-censorship echo how, as Herman and Chomsky observe in

the propaganda model, “most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-

thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of

ownership, organization, market, and political power.”26 The adaptation to the propaganda

model necessitated by broadcast television has the potential to negatively affect the future of

sketch comedy television in two distinct ways: by familiarizing current television sketch

comedy writers with what is acceptable for broadcast, causing them to censor themselves; and by

instilling in future writers of sketch comedy the naturalness of self-censorship and adaptation to the model (through the well publicized negative consequences and cancellation associated with unacceptable writing). The risk then would be that these writers, desiring to keep (or obtain) their jobs, are forced to conform to the model. Of course, there is another potential category of writer (and performer): one who challenges the conditions of the model and risks (and is most certainly assured of) being fired or outright cancelled. As will be discussed later, there is fortunately not a lack of such writers, producers, and performers.

24 Kercher, Revel With a Cause, 384. 25 Ibid. 26 Achbar, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 62. 41

David Marc has observed that political and topical humor, both in the form of stand up

and sketch comedy, has been relegated mostly to late night.27 Since the May 1950 premiere of

Broadway Open House on NBC at 11:30 Saturday night, this segment of time “has been reserved

for presentational comedy. It has even become a relatively safe zone for artistic freedom (or at

least TV’s equivalent of ‘blue’ material).”28 This move to late night from primetime, based

largely on the content of much of the comedy, is most certainly a corporate decision. Network

television’s last commercially viable, primetime sketch comedy show with a dose of political

humor was In Living Color during the early nineties. Of course, this came during the early days

of Fox, when the network was establishing its reputation for crude material. By 1995 Fox would

abandon attempts at another successful primetime sketch show and enter the late night sketch

show market with Mad TV. The 1996 failure of The Dana Carvey Show in primetime was

inevitable from the show’s first scene, in which Carvey, as , offered to feed children

and puppies with his surgically added lactating breasts. A sketch later in the show, featuring

Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan eating the beating heart of an illegal immigrant,

added further strikes against the show. Lampooning the variety tradition (as well as

acknowledging its advertising filter) the show’s title reflected the name of each week’s sponsor

and featured an opening dance number about the product. Dubbed The Taco Bell Dana Carvey

Show (later titles would include The Mug Root Beer Dana Carvey Show), the first episode’s

opening song and dance admitted that Carvey’s acceptance of such sponsorship made him a

“corporate whore.” This self-aware, highly carnivalistic show would only last 6 episodes.

27 David Marc, “Television Comedy,” in What’s So Funny?: Humor in American Culture, ed. Nancy A. Walker, (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, Inc, 1998), 264; An exception here is, of course, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, which survived in primetime after the demise of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour thanks in part to, as Bodroghkozy notes, its middle aged tuxedoed hosts and the rapid fire delivery of political—along with non- political—content that would “blunt the political implications of much of its humor,” Groove Tube, 150. 28 Marc, “Television Comedy,” 264. 42

Sketch comedy has also moved to the expanding openness of cable television which has

allowed shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Chappelle’s Show the creative

freedom to be critically and commercially successful at employing political satire. The increased

market segmentation (and the fewer viewers needed for a show to be profitable) allows these

cable shows to survive with a relative degree of creative freedom.

Satire as Struggle: Two Briefings, Two Iraq Wars, and a Second Inauguration

While the effectiveness of the propaganda model on television sketch comedy seems to

be clear, there is room for resistance and this lies in the subversive power of satire itself.

Although the propaganda model may work to set the bounds of the comic discussion (as it

theoretically does with all media discussion), the satiric product of sketch comedy (no matter

how limited or flawed) gains its own additional power when broadcast. Dustin Griffin

characterizes political satire as operating thusly: “By conducting open-ended speculative

inquiry, by provoking and challenging comfortable and received ideas, by unsettling our

convictions and occasionally shattering our illusions, by asking questions and raising doubts but

not providing answers, satire ultimately has political consequences.”29 While Dustin Griffin

ultimately denies that satire has had much effect on the world of practical politics,30 he does concede that satire can bolster dissident factions, it can “keep up the spirit of its own side.”31

Principally, satire works not necessarily to persuade, but to show kinks in the armor of dominant thought.

Also, as political events occur, individuals may change, affecting their receptivity to past and present satire. Furthermore, the structure of a sketch comedy show, composed of several

(typically) independent segments with less reliance on a cohesive narrative structure than the

29 Dustin Griffin, Satire: A Critical Reintroduction, (Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1993), 160. 30 Griffin, Satire, 152. 31 Griffin, Satire, 155. 43

sitcom or a feature film, allows for more chances of political attack. For instance, a viewer

immediately dissatisfied with Mr. Robbins’ satirical Bob Roberts will likely remain dissatisfied throughout the remainder of the film. A viewer dissatisfied with a satirical sketch during a sketch comedy show may only have to wait several minutes for the next satirical sketch, which

(depending on the show) could be written by a different writer, contain completely different

performers, and be aimed at different targets.

In this way, Bodroghkozy wisely incorporates Stuart Hall’s “Notes on Deconstructing the

Popular” in her analysis of the effects of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour’s fight for

political expression. Hall writes: “Popular culture is one of the sites where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged. It is also the stake to be won or lost in that struggle.”32 The viewer negotiates a meaning from the work, despite or in light of the

constraints of the institutional production.

A comparison of two politically themed sketches originally aired on Saturday Night Live

and In Living Color showcase the semiotic openness of political sketch comedy as well as

possible degrees of political statement. Both sketches, each set during a U. S. military Gulf War

press conference, appeared just weeks apart in February of 1991. The Saturday Night Live

“Desert Storm Press Briefing,” which aired as the cold opening of the February 9th show, starts with Dick Cheney (played by ) beginning the press conference by handing the briefing over to Lt. Col. William Pierson (played by ).33 Pierson prefaces the

question period by informing the gathered reporters that he can not divulge information that may

be helpful to the enemy. “What date are we going to start the ground attack?” is the first

32 Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular,’” in The People’s History and Social Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 239. 33 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “Desert Storm Press Briefing,” Saturday Night Live Transcripts [home page online]; available from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/90/90lgulfwarbriefing.phtml; Internet; accessed 12 February 2007. 44

questioned volleyed by reporters and it typifies their queries, all of which are focused on information and figures that could indeed aid Iraqi forces. Despite reminders by Cheney that such questions cannot be answered, they continue. One reporter even asks, “Sir, what would be the one piece of information that would be most dangerous for the Iraqis to know?” Citing an inability to answer such questions, Nealon breaks character and concludes the sketch by announcing, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

While Saturday Night Live’s “Desert Storm Press Briefing” certainly shows the lack of

content in the briefings, the sketch portrays the attending media reporters, whose inane questions not only ignore the Pentagon’s responses but pose legitimate security threats to U. S. forces, as the main source of this absurdity. Here, Dick Cheney and the military are the voices of sensibility and the media are the ones to be laughed at. Although certainly humorous, the ideological implications of the Saturday Night Live sketch become more apparent when compared to the differing comedic focus of In Living Color’s “War in the Gulf Briefing.”

In Living Color’s take on the topic puts the blame for uninformative briefings squarely on the shoulders of the government. Whereas the former sketch presents the various ways the media can ask unanswerable questions, “War in the Gulf Briefing” shows the ways the military refuses to answer valid questions. First, (played by ) and, later,

Admiral Keating (played by Jim Carrey) offer a variety of obfuscating responses as a way to decline comment on reporters’ questions. Their responses grow more and more ridiculous, culminating in the following exchange between Powell and reporters:

Female Reporter #1: I have a two part question: What would it take to end the war and will the U. S. accept a post-war Iraq with Saddam Hussein still in power?

Powell: I think I can answer that in two ways. Number one: That’s for me to know and you to find out. Number two: Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies, Your nose is big enough for a girl twice your size. 45

Female Reporter #2: Would you ever use nuclear weapons?

Powell: I’m not going to tell. Your feet smell. Ask me again, you can go to hell.

Keating [stepping forward]: That’s about all the questions we have time not to answer today. The attaches will be handing out printed copies of all the information we didn’t give you. There will be another briefing tomorrow and we will be prepared to not answer any more questions you have then.

Male Reporter #1: What time?

Powell and Keating: We’d rather not say.34

Where Saturday Night Live reporters asked foolish and inappropriate questions, the reporters of

In Living Color ask valid questions regarding troop movements and prisoners of war. Powell and Keating seem to revel in the ways of “not” revealing information, in the number of ways to reject requests for knowledge about the military’s activities. Consequently, these military representatives appear devious and untrustworthy. For this sketch, the focus is on the lack of information given, the lack of transparency offered by the military. As Saturday Night Live seems to mock the media for asking questions it has been told it will not receive answers to, In

Living Color criticizes the military for needlessly not giving answers. While the Saturday Night

Live version can be read as an indictment of the nature of Gulf War briefings, a closer look

suggests contempt for the news media. Although both sketches mock these Pentagon briefings,

In Living Color’s sketch is more effectively satirical, criticizing the powerful and how they exercise their power.

But if these two “Briefings” sketches show the potential equivocation of Saturday Night

Live, two other more recent Saturday Night Live sketches offer more direct satiric attack of

political figures and policies. These two sketches, aired nearly back-to-back in the same episode

and offering particularly cutting swipes at Bush administration officials (including the president

34 “War in the Gulf Briefing,” In Living Color, FOX, February 24, 1991, 30 min., recorded videocassette. 46

himself), show a political critique rooted in policy as well as comedy. At first, the cold opening,

“The Bush Twins,” seems to aim its sights at easy tabloid targets, Jenna and Barbara Bush.

Chatting as they prepare for bed after their father’s second inauguration, George W.’s twin

daughters’ conversation turns political:

Barbara Bush: Jenna, do you think Daddy’s a good president?

Jenna Bush: [gasps] Oh, my God, Barbara! How can you even ask that?!

Barbara Bush: I don’t know. I see all those people holding up signs that say, “Worst President Ever” and “Dumbest President Ever,” and “Biggest Liar Ever,” and...it makes you wonder.35

Later, employing their “secret twin language,” the twins continue to discuss their dad’s success

as president:

Barbara Bush: Do-ba you-ba think-ba Dad’s-ba a-ba good-ba candidate?

Jenna Bush: [exasperated] Ba-yes. I-ba think-ba he’s-ba really -ba good.

Barbara Bush: But what-ba about-ba the-ba weapons-ba of-ba mass-ba destruction? They-ba weren’t-ba there!

Jenna Bush: But, Barbara. You heard-ba Dad’s-ba speech. We're spreading-ba freedom! Saddam Hussein-ba was-ba a-ba bad-ba, bad-ba man!

Barbara Bush: I-ba know! But the-ba war-ba in-ba Iraq-ba is-ba a-ba big-ba shi- ba storm! What about-ba Social-ba Security? I read-ba it-ba isn’t-ba really-ba going-ba bankrupt!

Jenna Bush: But-ba...allowing-ba people-ba to..invest-ba...their-ba.. retirement- ba money-ba.. in-ba the private-ba...sector-ba.. isn’t-ba smart-ba because-ba, um.. Dang, I don’t know!36

The sketch not only broaches the idea of Bush being a bad president, it also criticizes his reasons

for going to war with Iraq (weapons of mass destruction) and the ensuing difficulty of

maintaining order in the collapsed country. Additionally, it raises doubts about one of his most

35 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “The Bush Twins,” Saturday Night Live Transcripts [home page online]; available from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04jbush.phtml; Internet; accessed 12 February 2007. 36 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “The Bush Twins.” 47 ambitious domestic policies, the overhauling of the Social Security system, which Jenna

(portrayed as a dimwit) is unable to justify. Despite appearing to be an empty tabloid-esque sketch, “The Bush Twins” humorously expresses valid criticisms of the Bush administration.

Following host Paul Giamatti’s monologue, these criticisms continue in “Rice

Confirmation Hearing,” the second sketch of the show. Set in the Senate Confirmation Hearing of Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice, the sketch portrays Rice breezing her way toward confirmation until Senator Barbara Boxer begins her questioning.

Sen. Barbara Boxer: Mr. Chairman, if I may. Dr. Rice, I have a few points that I’d like to make.

Sen. Richard Luger: Really? May I remind you that none of this matters, since we’re gonna confirm this lady, anyway! And, may I also remind you that I have tickets to The Lion King, Sen. Boxer!

Sen. Barbara Boxer: Okay, I understand, Senator. Dr. Rice, please. Will you take a look at this map. [holds up color map] It shows the State Department’s list of every country in which Al Qaeda operated in prior to 9/11 - Iraq is simply not there. [holds up document] Um...this is a document where you claim that Saddam Hussein was planning to launch a nuclear attack in the U.S. in the form of a, quote - your quote – “mushroom cloud.” I will be, uh, placing this into the record, as well as a number of such statements you’ve made, which have not been consistent with the facts.

Condoleezza Rice: [taken aback] Senator, I take offense to your accusations, and I would be very willing to talk to you about this in a more...appropriate forum - you know, when there aren’t so many senators and TV cameras around. Perhaps, sometime after I get the job. [smiles]

Sen. Barbara Boxer: [continuing] Let me show you something. [holds up a paper with a huge “0” on it] This is the number zero, on a piece of paper, which represents how many weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. Uh...right here is a graph that I made. [holds up graph with short yellow bar and tall blue bar] The yellow bar represents the truth, uh...the blue bar represents what you say. The blue equals lies. As you can see, the blue bar is crazy higher than the yellow.

Condoleezza Rice: Once again, Senator, I am going to get confirmed --

48

Sen. Barbara Boxer: Okay, wait, wait, uh...[holds up a cartoon drawing of Condoleezza Rice] This is a big head caricature of you, and you’re lying and playing tennis. [pulls over a plaster-of-paris homemade volcano] Uh...this is a plaster-of-paris volcano that I made, to represent the rising tension in the Middle East. [...... ] Uh...uh...the baking soda represents our current situation in Iraq - this vinegar is your lies. [pours vinegar into the mouth of the volcano] Uh, when I combine them, look what happens - an eruption of lies! [the volcano starts to smoke] An eruption of lies from your lie volcano! Dr. Condo-lies-a lies-a-lot! You - let me get this here. [holds up paper dolls ] You have fold the people... [holds up a dinner plate]...by feeding them...[holds up a packet of bologna]...a bunch of bologna!

Condoleezza Rice: [smiling] I'm sorry. I wasn’t listening. Just trying to make a decision on these business cards. [holds up business cards] You know the ones that say “Secretary of State?”

Sen. Richard Luger: Th-that bologna thing really did sum up your argument, I think, Sen. Carrot Top. (Italics in original)37

At the heart of the sketch is the deception which Boxer feels has accompanied Rice and the Bush administration’s portrayal of the Iraq War, from its inception to its current failures. Boxer relentlessly — and hilariously— presents effective and simple demonstrations of the

Administration’s lies, again covering the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and the escalating trouble in the Middle East.

Despite each sketch’s and appeal to actual issues, the satirical bite is undermined by

their appearance following the 2004 Presidential election. While it is relatively daring to attack the policies of a president that just won reelection (and possessed a theoretical “mandate” from the people), it might have been more courageous to do so when salient criticism might have actually produced results. Still, as noted by Griffin above, the satirical attack can serve to bolster the sentiments of those not in power, those who opposed Bush in the previous election.

37 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “Rice Confirmation Hearing,” Saturday Night Live Transcripts [home page online]; available from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04jrice.phtml; Internet; accessed 15 February 2007. 49

Television’s troubled relationship with political sketch comedy produces two results

which add to the potential power of the satire. First, the industry’s struggle to control and dictate

content (with its traditional result in cancellation) focuses the public’s attention on the perceived power of sketch comedy satire. Stallybrass and White have noted a similar situation with the suppression of carnival. Attempts to eliminate carnivals quickly politicized the events, turning them into rituals of resistance due to the intervention of higher powers.38 Secondly, as the

industry may defang the satire that has survived (because of the relative dearth of it) it may

require less work to make a worthwhile political statement. Here is also where Hall’s struggle

for power takes place. Where once a sketch obviously on the nature of political freedom was

necessary (a la The Smothers Brothers), a presidential pratfall would suffice (a la Saturday Night

Live). This is regrettable, but only temporary. As the conditions for satire become more open, more cutting and outrageous observations can be made. For instance, John Matviko, in his essay

“Television Satire and the Presidency: The Case of Saturday Night Live,” holds up Chevy

Chase’s befuddled impressions as satirical largely because mockery of the president was so new to television. 39 Yet, later in his analysis of later Saturday Night Live presidential

parodies, he criticizes Phil Hartman and ’s Clinton impressions for a focus on

realistic impersonations rather than issues. This seems inconsistent as later presidential

portrayals can be seen to have had a great degree of satirical bite. Take, for instance, the 1993 sketch “Clinton at McDonald’s,” which portrays the president as a glutton who, thanks to his personable demeanor, is able to gobble up citizens’ meals. As Matviko fails to acknowledge (he does not mention the McDonald’s sketch), the sketch (and others like it) features a much more

38 Stallybrass and White, “From Carnival to Transgression,” 297. 39 John Matviko, “Television Satire and the Presidency: The Case of Saturday Night Live” in Hollywood’s : The American Presidency in Film and History, ed. Peter C. Rollins and John C. O’Connor (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003). 50

nuanced satirical take on the presidency than earlier attempts, suggesting a maturation of the

show’s political edge. Finally, it is also important not to underestimate the thrill of making the powerful look ridiculous, in whatever form it is done.

Perhaps it is appropriate to return to Tim Robbins and his Bob Roberts character. Despite his cinematic spoofing of Saturday Night Live, Robbins returned to the show which spawned the character in support of his political mockumentary. The episode’s monologue featured the actor going off script and railing about G. E.’s ownership of NBC and its ties to corporate abuse and

the military industrial complex.40 As Robbins launches into his “conspiracy theories” of G. E.

involvement in Central America and “the shadow government,” the monologue is interrupted by

a distressed Lorne Michaels waking up in bed, revealing the monologue to be but a bad dream.

Robbins returns to the screen and finishes with a safe, cookie cutter monologue announcing the

later performance of Sinead O’Connor.41 While Robbins liberalism is somewhat mocked in the sketch, his Chomskian analysis has been let loose, and traditional hierarchical structures and

ways of understanding government have been broached, albeit briefly.

40 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “Tim Robbin’s Monologue,” Saturday Night Live Transcripts [home page online]; available from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/92/92bmono.phtml; Internet; accessed 10 December 2006. 41 Somewhat ironically, in a bit of unplanned defiance, this episode also featured Sinead O’Connor’s infamous Pope John Paul II picture-rip. Revealing much about the show and its relationship to unapproved political statements, subsequent reruns of the episode did not feature the incident. 51

CHAPTER III: SKETCHING THE OTHER

With the competing voices of political satire and corporate control, the broadcasting of political humor on sketch comedy shows illustrates the push and pull of Bakhtin’s centripetal and centrifugal forces. As the corporate environment of attempts to pull the televisual toward an “official” center, the wide array of satire on sketch comedy represents the pushing out of heteroglossia, or the “unofficial” aspects of culture. The Pentagon war briefing sketches of Saturday Night Live and In Living Color illustrate how this interplay occurs not only on a structural level, but within the content of the sketches.

In addition to politics, the presentation of race on sketch comedy enacts this struggle between dominant and less powerful ideals. Historically, racial representation on television has preferred more centripetal and dominant understandings of race, notions which have often reinforced the values and views of dominant groups in society. In the “Author’s Note” to the first edition of his book Comic Visions, David Marc observes that

the , which offered white audiences a set of Afro-American stereotypes that helped justify state policies of racial subjugation and separation, was the most popular form of theater in nineteenth-century America. The turn-of- the-century vaudeville stage resounded with stereotypical—and sometimes vicious—jokes about Italian passions, Irish drinking, Jewish business practices, German problems with the English language, and so on. Television, via the movies and radio, has inherited this mantle. In a sense, any discussion of television history...is an examination of how these popular stereotypes have been exploited in the late twentieth century.1

With a lineage that stretches directly to vaudeville and the stereotypical ethnic humor found therein, television sketch comedy is guilty of using (and abusing) stereotypes with an explicitness and blatancy not found in situation comedy. Working within this generic history and adapting it to the conventions of television, sketch comedy shows have also employed many of the conventions of other genres in the medium. This includes the use of stereotypes. African-

1 Marc, Comic Visions, xiii. 52

Americans have been arguably the most consistently subjugated minority (both physically and

ideologically) in American history. Television has often worked to reinforce this subjugation.

Shaped by the conventions of the medium and the dominant values of society, many sketch

shows have targeted a white audience, marginalizing and under-representing African-Americans.

Saturday Night Live, due to its creative history, longevity, and popular appeal best represents a

sketch show created by and targeted at the dominant race and class of American society. Hinting at the genre’s emancipatory, carnivalistic qualities, African-Americans have used sketch shows as a means to represent themselves—with varying degrees of success and creative control.

Those which have triumphed seize upon the liberating powers of carnivalesque to symbolically overturn hierarchical structures. Within this context, African-American comedians such as Flip

Wilson, Richard Pryor, and Dave Chappelle have been able to temporarily upend racist institutions and means of representation. Still, the ambiguities of representation and comedy (as well as creative and institutional faults of the sketch shows themselves) have consistently served to limit the possible resistance of these African-American created works.

As Marc’s forward suggests, racial othering is nothing new to broadcast television.

Herman Gray devotes his book Watching Race to tracing the representation of African-

Americans on television and analyzing the construction of “blackness.” Over the years such

construction has often used stereotypes which characterize African-Americans as racial others.

Like Marc’s comments, Gray’s analysis of black representation shows how representations have

favored white views of black culture. His chapter “The Politics of Representation in Network

Television” focuses particularly on the changing modes of representing African-Americans on

television shows. Starting from the 1950s, he traces the changing tropes and stereotypes used in

creating black characters. In this time period, “blacks appeared primarily as maids, cooks, 53

‘mammies,’ and other servants, or as con-artists and deadbeats.”2 While the offered

“more benign and less explicitly stereotypical images of African-Americans,” they were

presented in such a way that their blackness was contained or not acknowledged.”3 Much of the black representation of the 1970s was in response to 60s social movements and criticism of media representation. Although networks attempted to create shows to capture authentic urban black communities, Gray notes that these shows, such as and What’s Happening!!, still reflected what their white middle-class producers assumed the poor black experience to be.

Moving through the 1980s, Gray recognizes the historical importance of , labeling its place in the history of African-American representation as “The Cosby Moment.”

He especially applauds the show’s African-American creative team and its attempts to move beyond the ghetto stereotypes of some 70s and 80s sitcoms. Still, Gray regrets the show’s apolitical nature and emphasis on the virtue of middle-class family life. Despite offering positive representation, Gray sees the show as being out of touch with the majority of African-American experience. Gray emphasizes a shift in the early towards representing the African-

American community more fully, focusing on the wide diversity within it.

Following his chronology of televisual depictions of blackness, Gray claims that images

of African-Americans are rooted in three discursive practices: assimilationist, pluralist, and

multiculturalist. While these categories roughly correlate to time periods over the past sixty years, the discourses interact with one another and can appear in any time period. The

assimilationist position constructs racism as an individual problem, dependent on the particular

personality of an individual. The historical circumstances of continued social inequality are

ignored and made to seem irrelevant in this mode of representation. The pluralist discourse is

2 Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for “Blackness” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1995), 74. 3 Ibid., 76. 54

guided by a separate-but-equal mentality that figures blackness as a uniform concept (with no

distinctions or separate identities within the race) that can easily be placed within the middle-

class universe. The multiculturalist approach recognizes the cultural differences within the

African-American community and negotiates and addresses these differences within the context of a particular series. The workings of his three part categorization can be seen to privilege those shows which champion a heteroglossia, offering different understandings of race which counter dominant positions that, due to their ubiquitousness, are consistently presented as “official” or natural. Gray wisely notes that a consistent feature of television shows (at least until the early

90s) is the privileging of white middle-class viewers and subject positions. For Gray, the conventions of television construct and “privilege white middle-class audiences as the ideal

viewers and subjects of television stories.”4 Despite the level of African-American presence on a show, it is ultimately aimed at and appealing to the sensibilities of a white (typically middle- class) viewer.

Spanning three and perhaps the most popular and widely broadcast American

sketch show, Saturday Night Live can be seen as privileging white-middle class audiences in the

manner Gray describes. As such, it can be seen as exemplifying the ideals of the dominant class

and, therefore, running the risk of exploiting the stereotypes to which Marc and Gray refer. For

the most part, the series acts as a suitable representative of the general attitude toward racial

others in many of the shows (both sketch and otherwise) that preceded it. In addition to Saturday

Night Live’s history as a “boys club,”5 the show is infamous for the whiteness of its creative

team. This comes not from the complete absence of African-American writers and actors, but

from their limited presence and lack of substantial representation. Indeed, the paucity of black

4 Ibid., 71. 5 Shales and Miller, Live From New York, 154. 55 comedians on the show smacks of tokenism. This began with the show’s inception and has continued in varying degrees throughout its run. The first five years of Saturday Night Live featured the talents of writer-actor , who coworkers acknowledge was under- utilized during his time at Studio 8H. A series of comments from Live From New York, one by fellow original cast member and the other by Morris himself, sheds light on the creative atmosphere in those early years:

Garrett was treated horribly, horribly—by the writers, by some of the performers, and Lorne [Michaels]. They just dismissed him. I used to have conversations on the set with Garrett about, “Why do you put up with this?” And he said, “I can’t pass up the money. I’m going to make the money and get out and go on and do something else.” I found it amazing that he let it go on for as long as it did, but it took its toll, it clearly took its toll on Garrett.6

Whether an exaggeration on Curtin’s part or an accurate assessment of Saturday Night Live’s attitude toward the actor, this sentiment is echoed by Morris. Referring to the treatment of the show’s female cast members and writers, Morris states, “Either it’s that they were all niggers with me or I was a woman with them—because I got the same raw deal.”7 It is perhaps worth noting that one of the most celebrated and popular Saturday Night Live sketches dealing with race during the show’s early years, “Racist Word Association” (starring and

Richard Pryor), was not written by a Saturday Night Live staff writer. Rather, the sketch, in which a series of job interview word associations escalates into an exchange of racial epithets culminating in the use of the word “nigger,” was written by Pryor’s co-writer . The boundary pushing sketch concluded with the fearful interviewer (Chase) giving in to an enraged

6 Ibid., 187. 7 Ibid., 155. 56

Pryor’s salary demands and offered a fantastical role reversal where the use of a racial slur uncharacteristically works to empower an African-American.8

The years following Lorne Michaels’ exit from the program served as the launching pad for the career of comedian Eddie Murphy.9 Despite Murphy’s on camera predominance during this period, there seems to have been a lack of diversity backstage in the writers’ room. A popular character for Murphy was an adult version of the Little Rascal Buckwheat. While certainly an absurd character, Murphy’s grown-up version still contained the elements of the pickaninny stereotype, complete with bushy hair and childish lisp. Another notable character was Mr. Robinson of “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood,” a parody of PBS’s Mr. Rogers’

Neighborhood. The recurring sketch received its humor from the disconnect between Mr.

Robinson’s dangerous inner city neighborhood and ’ idyllic community. Potentially highlighting class differences between the races, the sketches can also be seen as reinforcing white notions of black urban squalor and violence. One particular shining moment of racial humor on Saturday Night Live was the “Black Like Eddie” sketch aired in December of 1984.

Wanting to experience life as a white man, Murphy is given a white “makeover,” making him appear as a white man. Adopting a “white” voice and demeanor, Murphy visits a convenience store and bank, only to receive free money and gifts from the white managers. Comically commenting on the institutional racism present in American society, the sketch also demonstrates the performance of race as Murphy enacts particular behaviors typically associated with white men.

8 Paying tribute to Pryor following his death in 2005, Saturday Night Live aired a clip of the sketch, focusing on the controversial use of “nigger” and robbing the scene of any context. 9 Ironically, the biggest star to come from Saturday Night Live was Murphy, and the biggest from In Living Color was Jim Carrey. 57

One of the show’s most diverse periods (at least in terms of African-American

representation) came in the early nineties. African-American actor-comedians ,

Ellen Cleghorne, and were featured players on the program, with each eventually

becoming full cast members. Rock had an especially frustrating time on the show, and his initial

comments about his time there shed light on the history of representation on the show:

I got hired because In Living Color was on. SNL hadn’t had a black guy in eight years or something. In Living Color was hot, so they had to hire a black guy. Trust me, there was no black guy for eight years, man. Let’s put it this way: It didn’t hurt. I’m trying to help you with the backdrop of the time. No black guy for eight years, and Eddie Murphy was under . So there was never really a black guy—a star anyway. was on like six months or whatever and then he got fired.10

Meadows and Rock, each discussing the difficulty of getting sketches on the air, reveal at which demographic the show was (and was not) targeted. “Chris and I would have maybe one sketch a

week or every other week or whatever,” Meadows notes. He continues:

I mean we never had shows like Dana [Carvey] or Mike [Meyers]. I’ve never been in more than four sketches in a show, in the nine years I was there. I’ve never had a show like , or for that matter. Even when Jimmy was a featured player he had more sketches than I would.11

Rock more explicitly connects the casting decisions to race:

With Tim Meadows being on the show, you know somewhere in your mind that if there’s two nonwhite, pretty good sketches, they probably won’t both get on. And they’ll never go back-to-back…you’re never going to see this sketch with a bunch of black people, and this other sketch with a bunch of black people, back-to-back. One might go near the top of the show and the other would be at the end of the show.12

10 Shales and Miller, Live From New York, 403. Rock’s math is somewhat fuzzy, but his assertion still has merit. Until Rock and Meadows’ hiring in 1990, there had not been a black man in the cast since Murphy’s last season in 1984. Danitra Vance, an African-American woman, was a cast member during the 1985-86 season. During her time on the show, Vance was consistently cast in stereotypical and marginal roles. One self-aware sketch, “I Play the Maid,” from when hosted the show in April 1986, featured Vance singing a song (to the tune of ’s “I Write the Songs”) which comments on the stereotypical casting of black women. Future In Living Color star Damon Wayans was fired half way through this season following an adlib during a sketch. 11 Ibid., 404. 12 Ibid., 405. 58

Meadows and Rock’s comments on the racial dynamics of the show speak to the atmosphere at that time and (given Morris’ travails) throughout much of its run.

The breadth of Saturday Night Live’s problematic racial representation can be seen in two similarly themed sketches. Aired 10 years apart, both are centered on the awkward interactions between black and white employees surrounding the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Despite the similarity in subject matter, the representation of blackness and race in each could not be more different. The distinction in representation is linked to the object of laughter in each sketch. In the first, aired in January of 1995, the white office workers, discussing their plans for the MLK holiday, are the butts of the joke. The sketch begins with Jeff and Chris (played by Jeff

Daniels and Chris Elliot, respectively) discussing their plans for the holiday, which they hope to spend relaxing and having fun. Their tone changes when their black coworker, Tim (Tim

Meadows), enters, inquiring into their holiday plans:

Jeff: Uh.. oh, I don't know.. I thought I'd just, you know, go over to the library and read some of his collective [sic] writings.

Chris: Yeah.. yeah, I'll probably see you there.

Tim: Hey, you guys are gonna kill yourselves when you hear what I'm doing. They're holding a marathon reading of all Dr. King's speeches at my church! [the guys are “impressed”] Unfortunately, they're sold out.

When Tim reveals that he has just acquired two tickets, Jeff and Chris feel obligated to take them. Their sense of obligation increases when Tim surprises them with Martin Luther King presents. Unprepared, Jeff gives Tim his laptop, and Chris his wallet, filled with cash. Felicia, a black woman, soon enters and commiserates with Tim over the treatment of African-Americans.

Chris offers her a laptop in an attempt to cheer her up. But as the white workers leave, the sketch’s final turn reveals that Tim and Felicia are not as devoted to the holiday as they let on:

Tim: It's okay, they're gone. 59

Felicia: Oh, great! So, what did you get?

Tim: I got a wallet and a laptop computer!

Felicia: Wow!

Tim: Plus, I got rid of all those Kwaanza books everybody gave me!

Felicia: You know what I got? Nothing. Let's just go to Atlantic City and get drunk!

Tim: Great!

[fade out]13

Again, the comedic focus of this sketch is on the embarrassment of the white workers. By

implying that the black and white coworkers do not know each other very well, the sketch pokes

fun at notions of misguided white guilt and points to the lack of honest communication across

racial lines. Although the black coworkers are revealed as tricksters at sketch’s end, they are no

more dubious than their Caucasian colleagues. Most importantly, the sketch shows that despite

the issues of representation surrounding Saturday Night Live, it could still offer enlightened

satire about race.

Whereas the 1995 Martin Luther King sketch offers a comedic statement on race

relations, the Martin Luther King Day sketch from January 2005 deals in stereotypes of lazy,

entitled African-American workers. In this sketch, two black paramedics, Wilmore and Kendall

(played by and Finesse Mitchell, respectively), refuse to work on account of

the Martin Luther King holiday, despite, upon questioning from their white supervisor (Ricky,

played by Topher Grace), knowing little to nothing about black history. In addition to mistaking

Martin Luther King for police brutality victim , the men do not know of the

13 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “Martin Luther King Day,” Saturday Night Live Transcripts [home page online]; available from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94jmlk.phtml; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.

60

accomplishments of Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, and Frederic Douglas. Not only are the

men lazy and ignorant, but their laziness and ignorance cause resentment among fellow

employees and (due to their status as ambulance drivers) endanger lives. The sketch concludes

on a dreadful note with their boss requesting that they attend to an emergency:

Ricky: Okay, uh...look...you guys, there's no one else here. I hate to do this to you on...Martin Luther King Day - a day which you...seem to know nothing about. But the catwalk collapsed at a fashion show, and some models have been injured.

Kendall: [interested] Uh, wait a minute. Male or female?

Ricky: Uh.. female. They're plus-sized models.

[Wilmore and Kendall hurriedly rush off to save the day]14

The sketch perpetuates stereotypes of black laziness and entitlement, offering no substantive

comment on race relations akin to the 1995 sketch. It is the stilted characterization of the black workers (as well as the final, stereotypical punch line) which is supposed to move the audience to laughter, nothing more. Perhaps more typical of Saturday Night Live’s black representation— yet just as revealing—is the casting of African-Americans as service workers or manual laborers.

For instance, in one SNL Digital Short from the February 25, 2007 episode, nearly the entire cast appears in a sketch centered around a corporate boardroom. While other cast members are white collar executives and random eccentric characters, Thompson plays a water deliveryman mistakenly asked for advice from the board president. Previous Thompson roles earlier in the season include a furniture hauler helping Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld move out of his office and as a janitor accused of moving TV personality Nancy Grace’s desk chair.

The point of this history and juxtaposition is not to conclude that Saturday Night Live is or is not racist. Rather, it is to note the lack of diversity found in television sketch comedy as a

14 Saturday Night Live Transcripts, “Martin Luther King Day,” Saturday Night Live Transcripts [home page online]; available from http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04imlk.phtml; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.

61

means to contextualize the unique position of sketch shows created by and starring African-

Americans. The above anecdotes and quotations work to confirm Gray’s assertion that most

television is aimed at white middle-class audiences. As Saturday Night Live, a show which has helped define television sketch comedy over the past three decades, apparently neither seeks

African-American viewers nor attempts to represent them in a substantial way, the potential benefits of African-American produced sketch comedy become more clear.

The Other Center Stage

It is in this problematic racial context that sketch and variety shows hosted and created by

African-Americans have developed. Offering potentially alternative perspectives to the white

dominated racial discourse, these shows were not without their own problems and controversies

of representation. In a 30 year period, beginning with the unforeseen success of The Flip Wilson

Show and ending with the equally unexpected triumphs of Chappelle’s Show, several African-

American sketch shows have been given opportunities (often in primetime) to address and

represent African-Americans. Gray positions In Living Color within a multiculturalist discourse

and the other sketch shows produced by and starring African-Americans can each be placed in

one of his three paradigms. Each show’s use of racial humor received criticism in its own time,

causing a recycling of debates that suggests a double-bind for African-American comedians

discussing race. The comedians must walk a balance between reinforcing and deconstructing

stereotypes, and the conventions of television, particularly the white dominance in both

production and viewership, call into question the ability of an African-American comic to

successfully discuss these issues. Through a mixture of the show’s comedic output and the star’s

off-screen decisions, Chappelle’s Show, one of the latest African-American sketch shows,15

15 The Underground, a sketch show from Damon Wayans, premiered in September 2006 on Showtime to abysmal reviews. 62

helps to positively affect the chances of communicating a deconstructionist view of racism and

bigotry. Ultimately, though, Chappelle’s experiences with Comedy Central and his exit from the

program say much about the difficulties still surrounding African-American creative control on

television.

As mentioned above, is most notable as the first successful variety

show to be hosted by an African-American. Other earlier and contemporary attempts at a black

hosted variety show, such as The Show, The Show, and The New

Bill Cosby Show, each barely lasted a season.16 In contrast to these more contained

representations, Donald Bogle argues (in his book Primetime ) that Wilson’s sketch show marked the return of “old-style broad ethnic humor.”17 Indeed, a good deal of the humor

centered on a type of ethnic humor, with blackness not only being acknowledged but acting as a

source of pride and identity for Wilson and some of his comedic guests. A popular style of

sketch that appeared on several episodes (typically those featuring white and black guest comics)

centered around Wilson and the African-American comic as characters who outwit a nebbish

white man. The March 15, 1973 episode, featuring guests Richard Pryor and ,

included two such sketches.18 The first involved Pryor and Wilson as partners in a new taxi

service, the fleet of which consists of one rickshaw. Unwilling to pull their first customer

(Knotts) across town to the YMCA, Pryor quits, leaving Wilson to do the work. Trying to find a

way out of the jam, Wilson convinces Knotts to pull the rickshaw himself, while Wilson lounges in the seat. Later in the show, Pryor and Wilson play a director and working on a

16 Gray, Watching Race, 76. 17 Donald Bogle, Primetime Blues: on Network Television, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 180. 18 Inman, Television Variety Shows, 206. Another example comes from the Decemeber 12, 1972 episode with Tim Conway and Slappy White. The show featured, as Inman puts it, a “sketch about a city slicker [Conway] outwitted by two country boys [Wilson and White]” by scamming him out of his money in an improvised bar game. 63

new gangster movie script. A clueless room service attendant (Knotts) overhears the two

running lines and mistakes them for actual gangsters. Wilson and Pryor realize Knotts’ fear, and

play along. Eventually, all is revealed and the three work together on finishing the movie script.

Humorous comic conceits, the sketches (particularly the “Rickshaw Taxi Service”) take on an

added dynamic with the racial division between the characters. Wilson seems to play into the

(stereotypical) notion of the black trickster or con-man. While the trickster character (and the sketches) can be empowering for African-American viewers, it can also work to reinforce ideas of sneaky and lazy blacks held by whites.

Of course, these examples do show the relative diversity in the show’s guests, which

ranged from to to . Such an eclectic mix suggested a unity

across racial lines and certainly aided in snaring a wide and diverse audience. Still, this racially

varied audience proved problematic for some at the time it was produced. There is especially the

risk, as Gray observes, of ultimately favoring white middle class viewers.19 Due to this factor

and aura of utopian unity surrounding the show’s guests, The Flip Wilson Show would probably

fall within Gray’s assimilationist discourse, though with elements of the pluralist approach.

Foreshadowing the type of criticism later aimed at In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show,

cultural critics, according to Bogle, questioned the appropriateness of Wilson’s racial humor and

characters. Some critics felt that “Wilson’s characters were repackaged stereotypes that

belonged to another era.”20 Others noted that characters such as Geraldine or Reverend LeRoy

(of the Church of What’s Happening Now) were only funny when performed in a black

community.21 Still, Bogle wisely concludes, however questionable the cross-dressing character

19 The ratings drop for The Flip Wilson Show upon airing opposite The Waltons suggests which viewers the show was not able to maintain. Inman, Television Variety Shows, 201. 20 Bogle, Primetime Blues, 180-81. 21 Bogle, Primetime Blues, 181. 64

may be, the caustic persona of Geraldine allowed Wilson to be far more outspoken with white

characters than would traditionally be allowed.

Frequent The Flip Wilson Show guest Richard Pryor starred in a notable sketch show in

the fall of 1977 on NBC. Seemingly an attempt to capitalize on the recent success of Saturday

Night Live as well as Pryor’s growing celebrity, The Richard Pryor Show was unable to adapt

Pryor’s explicit style to the show’s primetime time slot. The show suffered from heavy network censorship, which helped shape (and ultimately affect) one opening sketch featuring a body-suit clad Pryor, complete with a smooth area where his penis should be. Upon Pryor claiming that he did not have to give up anything in adapting his humor to network television, the camera pulls back revealing Pryor’s neutered pelvis. The sketch was originally censored by NBC and became fodder for comments on the following episodes. Inman notes that the “sketches were fueled with racial indignation, especially one set at the trial of a black man in a Mississippi courtroom of the

1920s.”22 Other racially charged sketches included a press conference with Pryor as the first

black president23 and a heavy metal parody featuring the band Black Death, whose frontman

(Pryor) poisons and shoots his entire young white audience by the end of the first song. The

“Black Death” sketch may suggest Pryor’s opinion of pandering to Gray’s white middle-class audience. Although the show only featured four episodes, its influence can be seen on In Living

Color and Chappelle’s Show, two shows that would take racial humor to an extreme. In Living

Color producer has even noted that “ forerunner to the show [was]

The Richard Pryor Show more so than Saturday Night Live.”24

22 Inman, Television Variety Shows, 356. 23 Chappelle would focus on a similar topic in his “Black Bush” sketch, which theorized what would happen if the president were black. 24 Nelson George, In Living Color: The Authorized Companion to the Fox TV Series, (New York: Warner Books, 2001), 13. 65

In Living Color has been, by far, the most successful African-American sketch show

produced by a major network. Unlike The Flip Wilson Show, In Living Color seemed to be

aimed primarily at black audiences. For instance, whereas The Flip Wilson Show offered a wide

variety of comedic and musical guests, In Living Color featured an ensemble of mostly black actors and embraced the culture by featuring a theme song by rapper and ending many shows with up-and-coming rap and hip hop acts. Also differentiating it from The

Flip Wilson Show was the bawdy humor and explicit addressing of racism and stereotyping.

Gray positions the show as an example of African-American representation with an

emphasis on “multiculturalism and diversity.” Excited by the series’ ability to explore this notion of multiculturalism and diversity within blackness, Gray ultimately pinpoints a key problem in the representation of race through comedy:

Part of In Living Color’s rich potential has always been its transgressive and irreverent stance, but a cultural politics based on irreverence and transgression is tricky. What the show signifies in its representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality is necessarily contingent and indeterminate.25

Highlighting the ambiguities and openness of interpretation often found in satire, Gray astutely

calls attention to (here and throughout his work) the ambivalence in In Living Color’s race

representation, particularly in terms of its treatment of the poor, women, homosexuals, and

certain black identities. The show’s “transgressive and irreverent stance,” descriptors which

suggest the carnivalesque, often works to (as Gray notes above) build up one group while

denigrating a less powerful one. Norma Miriam Schulman epitomizes the reaction to In Living

Color’s ambivalence with the conclusion of her article “Laughing Across the Color Barrier: In

Living Color.” For Schulman, the show

sends mixed messages to both black and white viewers. Using laughter to exorcise the demons of racism, it appears at the same time to have internalized

25 Gray, Watching Race, 146. 66

something of the very despicable images that oppressors of the black community have harbored for centuries, however blatantly it parodies their absurdity and illogic. The result is dark comedy with a truly disquieting twist.26

For Gray and Schulman, what ultimately challenges the counter-hegemonic status of In Living

Color (and, by extension, many of the African-American sketch shows) is the level of ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in their form. Such an assessment could also be leveled at Chappelle’s

Show, which also addressed racism with decidedly mixed and controversial results.

Between January 2003 and April 2004, the cable channel Comedy Central aired 27

episodes of Chappelle’s Show. Starring Dave Chappelle, who co-wrote and executive produced

all the episodes with longtime collaborator and friend , each episode featured filmed sketches, stand-up comedy, and musical guests. A typical episode would open with a sketch and be followed by the introduction of Chappelle. Brief, largely improvised stand-up comedy style routines would bookend each sketch. Finally, an episode would often conclude

with a performance by a rapper or hip hop artist. Due to its presence on cable television, the

show was granted a great degree of levity, allowing the show to feature material impossible to

produce on network television.

Often mentioned with Chappelle’s Show is the $50 million contract Chappelle and

Comedy Central signed for the third and fourth seasons. Chappelle was expected to deliver a

third season of the show by February 2005, but was unable to meet the deadline. After several

more delays and amidst reports of exhaustion and drug addiction, Chappelle walked away from

his contract and the series was finally cancelled in mid-2005. Chappelle maintains he left the show due to the exhausting schedule, and this exhaustion is visible (and mentioned) several

times throughout the show’s two seasons. Speaking to Time in May 2005, Chappelle also

26 Norma Miriam Schulman, “Laughing Across the Color Barrier: In Living Color” in Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 444. 67

revealed that he was concerned about the reception of some of the show’s racial humor. One

sketch in particular, involving pixies that embody racial stereotypes, worried him when a white

spectator laughed particularly hard. “When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable,” Chappelle

said of the situation. “As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I

gotta take fucking time out after this. Because my head almost exploded.”27 Here, Chappelle

speaks to the bind of representing stereotypes, especially for African-Americans. Chappelle,

reaching the point of mental anguish and exhaustion, removed himself from the situation.

The circumstances surrounding his departure from the show, especially the level of

exhaustion, highlight Chappelle’s intense level of involvement in the series. In addition to co-

writing nearly every sketch, Chappelle appeared in almost all of the sketches, oftentimes playing

the main character. Although Chappelle’s Show reused certain performers for supporting

characters, there was no real regularity involved in their use and Chappelle was the only truly

constant cast member. In contrast, most sketch shows have a reappearing cast a la Saturday

Night Live’s “Not Ready for Primetime Players.” In early-2006, Comedy Central aired the four

episodes which Chappelle completed before his walk out. These shows were hosted by Charlie

Murphy and Darnell Thomas, two comedians who appeared most often in the show and were

featured prominently in the show’s “Lost Episodes” (as they were dubbed by Comedy Central).

In Chappelle’s absence, Murphy and Thomas performed the interstitial introductions to sketches.28

Like Saturday Night Live and many sketch comedy shows, Chappelle’s Show thrived on

topicality, featuring numerous media parodies and celebrity impersonations. Chappelle’s Show’s consistent focus on the intricacies of race and racism in American culture connects the show to

27 Christopher John Farley, “Dave Speaks,” Time, 23 May 2005, 73. 28 Due to the lack of Chappelle’s input in the editing of these episodes and their sketches, they will not be discussed in this chapter. 68 the traditions of African-American sketch comedy shows. The final and longest sketch of the premiere episode, a Frontline parody featuring a blind white supremacist who does not know he is black, demonstrates the sensibility with which the show tackled these delicate topics. Yet other sketches in this episode, such as a commercial spoof for a “Home Stenographer” and an absurd

“training video” for a Kinko’s-esque copy store, speak to the comedic broadness often found on the show. Furthermore, while the show also often relied on scatological and obscene humor, its sketches dealt with race and black culture with a wit and boldness not seen since the golden days of In Living Color. A close reading of several racially themed sketches reveals this approach.

“Now 100% Black”: Race as a Stage

As mentioned above, the “Clayton Bigsby: White Supremacist” Frontline parody was the premiere episode’s final sketch. The next season, “The Racial Draft” was the final sketch of the first episode. While potentially coincidental, their parallel placement suggests a correspondence between the two sketches. Obviously connected based on their racial themes, it is their suggestion of the performance of racial identity which truly unites them and brings them into dialogue with one another.

Chappelle introduces the “Clayton Bigsby: Blind White Supremacist” sketch as

“probably the wildest thing I’ve ever done in my career. And I showed it to a black friend and he looked at me like I had set people back with a comedy sketch—Sorry. Just roll it.” When the sketch does roll, the audience is presented with a disclaimer: “For viewers sensitive to issues of race, be advised that the following piece contains gratuitous use of the ‘N’ word.” This is followed by the second panel of the disclaimer: “By ‘N’ word, I mean Nigger. There, I said it.”

Following this warning, which self-consciously attacks the taboo associated with the word, the sketch is established as a parodic episode of the PBS documentary series Frontline. A middle- 69

aged white reporter gives a brief of Bigsby, who over the last 15 years has been the

leading voice of the American white supremacist movement. Yet few have ever seen the racist

leader.

The narrator travels to Bigsby’s farm in the Deep South, and is shocked at what he

discovers. Clayton Bigsby (played by Chappelle), the influential white supremacist, is a blind

black man who thinks he is white. “How could this have happened,” the narrator asks himself,

“A black white supremacist?” It is revealed that, while growing up in a blind hospital, Bigsby

and the other children were told that he was white to avoid any racial conflicts.

On the way to a book signing, his first trip off his property in many years, Bigsby is

threatened by a group of , who call him a “Nigger.” However, Bigsby, thinking there is

a black man around, joins in their threats. Stupefied, the rednecks stand by as Bigsby’s friend

loads him into their truck and drives off. “The confusion did not end there,” the narrator tells us.

Fleeing from the convenience store, Bigsby’s truck pulls up to a Mustang full of white teenagers

blaring .

Bigsby: Hey, why don’t you jungle bunnies turn that music down. Negroes make me sick. Woogie boogie nigger. Woogie boogie.

Driver: Did he just call us “Nigger?” Awesome! [Teens celebrate and congratulate themselves]

Here occurs an intersection of racial performance. None of the characters is performing the race

his physical characteristics would suggest. While Bigsby is playing at whiteness by thinking he

is Caucasian and hating African-Americans, the teenagers are playing at blackness by listening to

“black” music and wearing “black” clothing. Later, at the book signing, Bigsby, who dresses up

in costume (albeit KKK regalia) performs on stage. The stage and his costume literally tie him

to performance, in this case, the performance of his race. By the end of the sketch, after his 70

unmasking at the book signing, we learn that Bigsby eventually accepts his blackness, that he

ultimately accepts his skin color. But his reason for divorcing his wife, “because she was a

nigger lover,” indicates that he is still performing his extreme brand of racist “whiteness.”

For its part, “The Racial Draft” broadens the message of racial performance to apply to

all races, not just Caucasians and African-Americans. Returning from the commercial break

preceding “The Racial Draft,” Chappelle brags, “Welcome back to Chappelle’s Show, America’s

#1 source for offensive comedy,” foreshadowing the presentation of a potentially risqué piece.

Following his greeting, Chappelle meanders through his introduction and arrives at his point:

You know what’s cool about being an American? We’re all mixed up. I’m talking about genetically. We all got a little something in us, right? And some people it’s more than others and that’s when we get to arguing. For instance, my wife is Asian and I’m black and we argue—about which half of is hitting the ball so good...We have got to stop arguing about who is what. We need to settle this once and for all! We need to have a draft! That’s right, I said it.

Before he pushes the discussion to absurdity by triumphantly proclaiming the need for a draft,

Chappelle mentions a central theme that hovers throughout his sketches of racial performance.

“We have got to stop arguing about who is what,” he says. Chappelle, through several of his

sketches, seems to be getting at racial tolerance by pointing out that our racial differences are based largely on social constructs that we perform. The following sketch becomes a method of showing how these constructs are enacted and reinforced.

When the sketch begins, the camera is fixed on the ceiling of a regal auditorium. An

ESPN-style graphic flies in, pronouncing, “Racial Draft,” as a fanfare of and horns

sound. The camera makes a dramatic tilt down, revealing three suited men with headsets (played

by Chappelle and two white actors) sitting at a commentators table in the balcony of the

auditorium. The commentators welcome us to the proceedings and explain the rules. Each race 71

(Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asians, and Jews) “drafts” a person of mixed ethnicity to be a part of

their race. “What happens here,” Dave cheerfully intones, “will state the racial standing for these

Americans once and for all.”

Billy, one of the two white commentators, notes that “some of the biggest names in sports

and entertainment are on the line tonight. And I’m excited to see who’s going to be drafted by

which race. Seated behind me on this stage there are the various representatives.” As Billy

narrates, the camera gives brief shots of the representatives, each dressed in stereotypical attire:

the Jewish representative dressed as a Hasidic rabbi; the Black delegate in sunglasses and a

flashy red suit; the Asian in matching blue shirt, pants, slippers, and cap; the Latino woman

wearing a shawl and a large rose. Again, all of this, rather tellingly, is done on a stage. This,

combined with the televisual theatrics, implies that race is something to be watched and analyzed

like a performance.

But the racial stereotypes are not accepted entirely uncritically, as in this exchange

between Chappelle and Billy.

Billy: Believe it or not, the blacks have actually won the first pick.

Dave: Wow, that’s the first lottery a black person’s won in a long time, Billy.

Billy: Yes, and they’ll probably still complain.

[All three laugh]

Dave: Man, fuck you.29

That some of these stereotypes are criticized suggests that the caricatured representatives themselves are not the comedic point of the sketch. Following this brief spat, attention is moved

to the stage where the Black delegate drafts Tiger Woods. Woods celebrates and approaches the

29 The relative freedom of Comedy Central allowed this line, but censored the expletive. The DVD release, as the cover triumphantly announced, was uncensored. As a transcription of the DVD, the quotation reflects this. 72

podium as a caption reads, “Now 100% Black.” He concludes his remarks with the statement,

“So long, fried rice, Hello, fried chicken.” Offering his commentary on the Blacks’ pick, Dave

observes, “You got to think about it: He’s been discriminated against in his time, he’s had death threats, and he dates a white woman. Sounds like a black guy to me. Tiger’s making his statement now, and if you ask me, he’s looking blacker already.” What is important in Dave’s comments is his emphasis on perception: Woods’ life “sounds like a black guy,” and Woods is

“looking blacker all ready.” It points to the subjectivity of the draft, and judgments of race that are based on external, perceivable characteristics. These outer characteristics are displayed by a person (through clothing and actions) and are, therefore, a sort of performance.

The next pick of Lenny Kravitz, made by the Jews, is received with little controversy,

and much comment on his black actress mother and Jewish lawyer father. “Couldn’t make that

up,” Rob, the third commentator, remarks. While this draft follows the established rules of

picking celebrities that are racially mixed, the remaining three picks (from the Latinos, Whites,

and Asians) challenge these genetic criteria. The Latinos perform a preventative draft of Elian

Gonzalez before the Whites have a chance to adopt him again. This recognizes the possibility

that no genetic tie to a race could still result in being considered a member of it.

The Whites carry this logic out by drafting Colin Powell, whom Billy notes is “not white.

He’s not even an eighth white.” The Blacks, rather than reject this draft, allow it on the

condition that the Whites also take Condoleezza Rice, another draftee who is in no way black.

“Condoleezza Rice: Given Away by Blacks,” reads the onscreen caption. The Asian delegation

take all of this a step further by drafting the members of the Wu-Tang Clan, an all black rap

group that has a fascination with Chinese culture and Kung Fu films. While the draft begins with

a focus on claiming people of mixed ethnicity, it soon turns into representatives claiming people 73 of entirely different races, further stressing the performance involved in racial identity. The sketch’s later draftees, with no genetic tie to the race they have been drafted into, perfectly embody the performance of race.

Both “Clayton Bigsby” and “The Racial Draft” derive much of their comedy from the blatancy with which the stereotypes are portrayed and expressed. In this sense, the stereotypes are used for their initial shock value. Ultimately, the stereotypes are ancillary to the theme of racial performance. The stereotypical humor used in this sketch does not so much prove the veracity of a particular prejudice as help comment on the performance of all ethnicity. They are not simply presenting the stereotypes and letting them run wild, they are presenting the stereotypes within a context where one’s racial identity is in question, that it is not fixed or definite. These stereotypical portrayals are used within a context and become a tool of it. As physical race is cast aside in favor of performance, the sketches exhibit an air of the carnivalesque as traditional structures and means of categorization are blurred and subverted.

“The Way You Do It Ain’t Like the Way I Do It”: Uncle Tom vs. the Urban Black Man

Second season Chappelle’s Show sketches “The Show” and “When

Keeping it Real Goes Wrong” deal with the dichotomy between two problematic black stereotypes: the Uncle Tom and Urban Black Man. As depicted in the show, the dichotomy continues the exploration of racial performance. With these two sketches in particular, the thematic focus is on the performance of male blackness.

The content of “The Wayne Brady Show” has its roots in a joke made by veteran comedian Paul Mooney in an earlier second season episode. Mooney, who appeared in the first season segment “Ask a Black Dude,” returned for the show’s second season in a segment called

“Negrodamus.” A clumsily named black Nostradamus, he uses his prophetic powers to answer 74 questions from visitors from across the globe. Gathered in a shadowy room filled with an ethereal mist, Negrodamus’ pilgrims take turns asking him life’s “important” questions, which often have to do with celebrities. Negrodamus’ second appearance of the season was characterized by responses that discussed race and celebrities. What will ’s new show be called? “‘Good morning, Black America,’” according to Negrodamus. “It will be shown at noon throughout the country.” This was soon followed by the question: “Why do white people love Wayne Brady [African-American star of Who’s Line is it Anyway? and The

Wayne Brady Show] so much?” Negrodamus’ response: “White people love Wayne Brady because he makes [newsman] Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X.”

“The Wayne Brady Show” is centered around this joke. Of all the Chappelle’s Show episodes, the sketch appears in the only one that has what could be termed a continuous plot. In a scene hinting at the episode’s metatheatrics, the show opens with Dave leaving the program over a contract dispute with Comedy Central. Deeming Chappelle replaceable, Comedy Central executives fill Dave’s position with Wayne Brady, the episode “The Wayne Brady

Show” (complete with graphics and announcer). Watching from home, Dave decides to take his show back by sneaking into the studio. He confronts Brady and rejects his offer to host the show together.

Dave: We can’t be together, man. You do different things than I do. The way you do it ain’t like the way I do it. You got your thing and I got my thing. I’m trying to do my thing. Come on Wayne, you know what I’m talking about.

Wayne: No, actually, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s my thing, Dave?

At this point, it is implied that Dave is referring to the difference suggested by Mooney’s earlier joke: that Dave appeals to blacks and Wayne to whites; that Dave’s style and, by extension, Dave himself, is blacker; Brady is the Uncle Tom to Chappelle’s Urban Black Man. But then Dave 75

reveals, “Oh, like, remember that time we was hanging out? Remember that, a few months

back?” The action then cuts to a sketch, with Brady driving Chappelle in an SUV. The two have

apparently bonded over being black actors and are grabbing dinner.

Things take a turn for the bizarre when Brady pulls over near a crowd of people, reveals a

machine gun, and kills a man. Brady calmly drives away while Chappelle is overwhelmed by

the drive-by shooting he was just involved in. Here, the sketch reveals itself to be a parody on

the -Ethan Hawke film, Training Day, where Washington plays a corrupt cop

assigned with rookie Hawke. Brady exposes more of his darker side when Chappelle requests a

stop at an ATM. Instead of an ATM, Brady pulls up to several prostitutes near a street corner.

Chappelle is shocked to find out that Brady is also a pimp, and has come to collect money from

the women.

The connection between Brady’s harsh appearance and Mooney’s earlier appraisal of

Brady is made explicit in the final scenes of the sketch. Coming down from a PCP trip and

overwhelmed by the events of the night, Chappelle hallucinates a talking head of Mooney (as

Negrodamus) making his Brady-Gumbel pronouncement. Chappelle passes out, and is roused

when he and Brady are pulled over by a white cop. The cop turns out to be a huge Brady fan,

and Brady channels his song-and-dance man persona, singing a few bars of “I Say a Little Prayer

for You.” Cutting the song off abruptly, Brady snaps the cop’s neck, and flees the scene with

Chappelle. Realizing his advantage over Chappelle, Brady challenges, “I ‘make Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X,’ huh, mother fucker?” Brady lets Chappelle out of his car, but shoots

Chappelle in the leg before driving off.

Much of the humor in this sketch is clearly derived from the disconnect between Brady’s friendly, wholesome television persona and the murderous pimp he portrays on the show. But as 76

framed by Mooney’s joke, which essentially questioned Brady’s blackness and insinuated he was

an Uncle Tom, the sketch becomes about what it means to be black and how one must act to be

considered such. According to Mooney, although Brady is physically black, his personality and

actions (his performance) make him seem white. However, Brady’s actions with Chappelle

suggest that he is more in line with the tough Urban Black Man stereotype. The sketch works to

undermine such simplistic categorizations, revealing the ease with which identities can be

adopted, performed, and cast off.

The Uncle Tom vs. Urban Black Man dichotomy is made explicit in a segment of the

recurring sketch “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong,” which is narrated by the baritone John

Facenda and modeled after his work narrating NFL highlight films. This installment features a

young corporate Vice President named Vernon Franklin, played by Chappelle. Vernon was

valedictorian of his high school class and the first member of his family to go to college. Hired on at Viacorp,30 he became the youngest Vice President in the history of the corporation, “ending

the cycle of violence and drug addiction that had plagued his family for generations.” But,

unfortunately, at the close of a staff meeting, his boss, Frank Murphy, makes an awkward

comment: “You did a great job, buddy. You the man. Give me some skin.” Facenda narrates

that, “Vernon got along with all of the people he worked with, which in his heart of hearts made

him feel like an Uncle Tom. Though he could have ignored the simple comment his mentor made, Vernon decided to ‘Keep it Real.’” Vernon erupts, yelling about his street “cred” and ’s attempts to make him an Uncle Tom or Sambo. “Want a little soft shoe?” Vernon asks,

“Should I juggle some watermelons for you?” Alarmed by Vernon’s actions, a Frank states, “This isn’t the Vernon I know.” Vernon continues threatening people in the board room,

30 The name suggests Comedy Central’s corporate parent, . Given Chappelle’s acrimonious departure within a cloud of racial controversy, the sketch is rather prescient. 77 even pushing Frank. The boardroom scene soon ends and cuts to a shot of Vernon cleaning a car windshield, and it is revealed that Vernon now works at a gas station. “Once a heart warming story of perseverance,” the narrator observes, “today a sparkling example of ‘When Keeping it

Real Goes Wrong.’”

Whereas “The Racial Draft” and “Clayton Bigsby” discuss the relationship between several races, the above sketches localize their discussion of performance within the black race.

Within this race they showcase a recurrent conflict between the stereotypical roles of Uncle Tom and the Urban Black Man. The self-aware handling of these stereotypes deconstructs their meanings and how they are created, calling into question their validity.

“No Matter What Your Instrument, Keep Dancing”: Addressing the Audience

Opening the premiere episode of his show, Chappelle bragged, “I finally got show. I’m serious when I say, ‘This is my show.’ I can show you all whatever I want.”

Although the extent of Chappelle’s freedom is debatable, it is necessary to take notice of how his pre- and post-sketch routines frame the particular sketch. This is especially important because the show does not remain silent on what it is doing with stereotypical ethnic jokes and humor. In addition to defending himself against charges of racism, there is also the opportunity for

Chappelle to play up controversy and, consequently, play up audience anticipation surrounding a sketch.

And so, not only can Chappelle say whatever he wants (as noted above), he can say it however he wants. The combination of stand-up and sketch comedy allows Chappelle to address his critics both verbally (as a stand-up comedian) and visually (as a sketch comedy writer and actor). He is given a dual form to defend himself, one more explicit than the other. Chappelle’s stand-up-host role is his opportunity to directly address criticisms and misunderstandings of the 78

show. He is able to express his meaning by talking directly to the audiences in the studio and at home. He opens the third episode of the second season,

You know, folks, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks here at Chappelle’s Show. A lot of flak I’ve been getting for the racially charged sketches. It happens. But I think I’m being misunderstood. So, I just wanted to take a moment to explain myself, ok? I’m not advocating in any way shape or form any type of racial hatred, I’m just making fun of each other’s cultures. Just fun. The problem is, when you do stereotypical kinds of jokes, there’s no room for subtlety.

Attempting to explain some of these cultural differences, Chappelle devotes the following sketch to correcting the notion that white people cannot dance. It is not that white people cannot dance,

Chappelle holds, but that they prefer dancing to electric guitar. While he initially tried to explain himself verbally, the sketch offers him a chance to explain himself visually.

Accompanied by rock musician , Chappelle travels to an office and a posh

restaurant. He has John play guitar and in both situations the white people present inexplicably

begin dancing. As a control, he goes to a black barber shop. The black patrons do not respond

to the guitar, but he then reveals a drummer (from underneath a black tarp) who is able to inspire

the black people present to dance. Not satisfied by the lack of dancing by the Latino customers,

he reveals (again from under a tarp) a pianist with an electric piano. Chappelle accentuates this

by yelling nonsense into a megaphone.

His fieldwork done and standing on the streets of New York with Mayer, Chappelle asks his audience,

So, what have we learned gang? We learned that White people can dance if you play what they like: electric guitar. Of course, we the Blacks can’t resist drums. And Latin’s love congas and electric pianos with Spanish gibberish over it, I guess. So the next time someone says that someone from another race can’t dance, you tell them—

79

Before he can conclude, police officers interrupt the taping, requesting a filming permit.

Fortunately, one is white and the other a suburban black man, so they begin to dance as Mayer plays his guitar.

Chappelle is cut short before he can give any real meaning to his findings. The sketch

ends with a musical coda including clips from the previous sketch proclaiming, “People of Earth,

no matter what your instrument, keep dancing.” While he has certainly demonstrated the

performance of race, with each ethnicity acting how it was expected to in a social situation, it

problematically allowed him to establish his own stereotypes about races based on musical

instrument preference. Despite this reliance on newly formed stereotypes, it echoes the preamble

to “The Racial Draft,” which urged viewers “to stop arguing over who is what.” Alternately, the

creation of such an absurd stereotype points to the senselessness in adherence to all stereotypes.

Returning from the sketch, Chappelle addresses the audience: “Folks, I hate to hit this

point so hard, but remember whenever we do these racial commentaries it’s always about the

subtleties. We’re all a part of the same human family. Our differences are just cultural. That’s

it.” Although Chappelle lacks an extended explanation of how our differences are just cultural,

it certainly helps temper any feelings that the preceding sketch was racist. Unable to fully

explain his meaning in the show, Chappelle has communicated his intent in other forums (like

his 2006 Inside the Actor’s Studio appearance), stressing the significance of understanding the

importance of cultural differences between races. At the same time, by defending himself, it

endorses Chappelle’s (and his show’s) image as controversial and rebellious.

“I Talk Like Straight Up Gangsta, Bitch”: Polysemics of Racial Humor

Introducing “Reparations” and foreshadowing its presentation of stereotypes, Chappelle

is cautionary about distributing money as repayments for slavery. If black people ever get 80

reparations, Chappelle pleads, “We black people have got to get together and come up with a

plan for the money. This is a consumer based economy. You can’t just give black people all this money and turn them loose on the streets. That could be a potential disaster.”

It is important to note that the sketch is told through the parodic lens of a news story, and

this adds to the many meanings the sketch can hold. The target of the jokes and stereotypes

vacillates between the narrow-mindedness of the white newscasters and the fiscally irresponsible

black citizens. The first news report of the segment shows a newscaster observing African-

Americans lined up outside of a liquor store, waiting to spend their newly received reparations checks on liquor. But a joke shared by the reporter and news anchor comments on the institutional racism that has kept African-Americans subjugated. “Why aren’t there any banks in the ghetto?” asks Chuck Taylor, the anchorman. “That’s because banks hate black people,” the female field reporter replies, “But I think that’s about to change.”

The news show’s Wall Street report, which follows the liquor store report, features the

analyst announcing that “These people are spending money like hotcakes.” His summary of trading continues the stereotypes, now focusing on how blacks are irresponsible with their money: Sprint announce $2 million in delinquent phone bills paid; Diamonds and gold are “way up” and at their most expensive prices ever; as oil prices plummet, fried chicken goes for $600 a bucket; “Watermelon is surprisingly flat, defying many analysts,” he observes; Cadillac sold $3 million trucks in a day. It is hard not to read this laundry list of black stereotypes as incredibly racist, and it very well may be, but some meaning is shed on the sketch through a sarcastic remark by the reporter: “It’s incredible, Chuck, these people seem to be breaking their necks to get this money right back to us.” By speculating on how black people would spend their money if given it through reparations, Chappelle (and co-writer Brennan) may be using these 81

stereotypes as a satire of current purchasing and consumer practices. This meaning is hinted at

when the announcer reveals, “Folks, I am happy to report that the recession is now officially over

and we have nobody to thank but all these black people, with their taste for fancy clothes,

expensive cars, and of course, gaudy jewelry.” If African-Americans did not spend their money

on expensive, unnecessary items, the sketch seems to be saying, perhaps their economic situation

would be better. The Wall Street analyst finishes his report and returns the focus to anchor

Taylor. Before signing off, Taylor remarks that the crime rate has fallen to 0%. “Did the

Mexicans get money today, too?” he quips. He apologizes, but then recants, arguing the

Mexicans do not watch the news anyway. The racist comment by Taylor reiterates the racist

framework in which the reparations stories are being reported, paralleling the institutional

limitations still hindering many African-Americans in American society.

This balance between white insensitivity and black stereotypes continues when the sketch

returns with anchorman Chuck Taylor discussing how America has been affected by the reparations. In sports, the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks could only play a one-on-

one game between two white guys because all the black players left after receiving their

reparations checks. Also, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world, having been

overtaken by Tron, a New York resident that got a “lucky streak” in a dice game. Asked what he

will do with the money, Tron soberly begins “I’m going to reinvest my money into the

community—psych!” Investing in the community certainly seems like the kind of thing

Chappelle had in mind when encouraging people to get together and plan for the money, yet

Tron is having none of it.

Next we meet the friendly weatherman, Big Al, a take off of NBC’s Today Show

weatherman, . Big Al announces that he has resigned and reveals that he has a deep 82

speaking voice. “I talk like straight up gangsta, bitch,” he announces before he dances and performs beat box. While enacting a sort of aggressive blackness, Big Al’s revelation speaks to the containment of blackness. Big Al with a deep voice is seemingly more threatening than the chipper voice with which Al usually speaks.

As progressive and enlightened as the subtext beneath much of Chappelle’s racial humor

may appear to some, it still runs the risk of reinforcing the stereotypes it portrays, calling to mind

the double bind faced by other African-American sketch shows and their dealings with race. No

matter how many times Chappelle may stress that the racial and stereotypical humor is meant

harmlessly, viewers may still read these images as an affirmation of racist views. Perhaps no

other sketch on Chappelle’s Show walks this line between social satire and stereotypical racism

as much as the sketch “Reparations.”31 The sheer number of African-American stereotypes portrayed in this sketch is reason alone for it to be deemed racist. However, through some of the methods discussed thus far, a subtle undermining of stereotypes can be seen throughout the sketch. Yet even the presence of these characteristics does not rescue the sketch from the stigma of racist representation. In addition to consistent attacks at the institutional racism of white

society, the sketch also seems to include criticisms of certain aspects of African-American

culture. As author Michael Eric Dyson noted in the May 2005 Time article about Chappelle,

[He] illumines the idiocy, the sheer lunacy, of racial bigotry while also fearlessly pointing the finger at black folks’ loopy justifications of questionable black behavior. He great at taking particular events, episodes and escapades and using them to show America the unvarnished truth about itself.32

31 A close second may be “The Mad Real World,” a parody of MTV’s “The Real World” featuring one white man living in all black housemates. The sketch revolves around the number of ways the cordial white housemate is harassed and victimized by the black characters. 32 As cited in Farley, “Dave Speaks,” 72. 83

This notion of criticizing questionable black behavior is especially difficult to negotiate, as the

critique is not only open to misinterpretation, but also to appropriation as a justification for racist

views.

“Reparations” seems to take a much more confrontational position than the other sketches

discussed thus far. Throughout, the sketch acknowledges the historical and institutional roots of

racism and stereotypes. Still, it also suggests that some stereotypes, especially those related to

personal behavior, are related to problematic popular behavior. Most important, it suggests that

the continuation of this behavior has certain negative effects which contribute to the

marginalization of African-Americans. But all the blame is not placed solely on the African-

American community. These stereotypes are seen enacted within an oppressive and hostile racist

framework.

A common technique in the racially charged sketches of Chappelle’s Show is the

deconstruction of racial stereotypes by demonstrating the performance of racial identity. More specifically, “Clayton Bigsby: White Supremacist” and “The Racial Draft,” demonstrate how particular actions and characteristics signify one’s membership in a particular race. Several other sketches (“The Wayne Brady Show,” “Negrodamus,” and “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong”) narrow the focus and portray the performance of race for black men within the problematic binary of Uncle Tom and Urban Black Male stereotypes. Additionally, the message or theme of a sketch does not come solely from a simple presentation of the sketch. Due to the show’s reliance on stand-up, meaning is derived as much from what Chappelle says before and after the sketch as the sketch itself. This enables meaning, especially potentially racist meaning as in

“The White People Dancing” sketch, to be either tempered and dulled, or fetishized and made

more controversial. Furthermore, this notion can be applied to any of the sketches analyzed, as 84

each person has the ability to bring his or her own meaning to a text. Ultimately, the polysemic

nature of Chappelle’s Show’s racial sketches points to the ambiguities and politics of

representation which have haunted African-American sketch shows since Flip Wilson. This is

shown in how a particularly incendiary sketch (“Reparations”) can be read a number of

potentially valid ways—sometimes endorsing racist stereotypes, sometimes transcending or

criticizing them. Chappelle’s Show, perhaps more so than In Living Color, works within the

Gray’s multiculturalist discourse, “representing questions of diversity within blackness more directly, explicitly, and frequently, and as central features of the program.”33 By addressing stereotyping of non-African-American races and race relations in general, Chappelle’s Show moves beyond simply dealing with notions of blackness, but negotiates popular understandings of race in general.

Using humor with so many racial stereotypes (as seen in “Reparations”), ambiguities are

bound to occur. With these ambiguities in mind, walking away from the show is perhaps the

best thing Chappelle could have done to help convey the intended meaning of his sketches.

Rather than continuing the show with mixed feelings or a need to fulfill his contractual

obligation, Chappelle ended his show’s run. In an industry noted for the lack of control given to

minority performers, his refusal to perform exercised the ultimate control. His concerns over

reinforcing stereotypes rather than mocking them and the resulting publicity of leaving the show

serve to retroactively code his two seasons worth of work. By acknowledging that his work was

intended to deconstruct and not encourage stereotypes, he helps shape the lens through which

future audiences will view the episodes. The added detail of the profitable salary he turned down

and the “Lost Episodes” aired without his consent also act to highlight the corporate environment

in which the show was initially created.

33 Gray, Watching Race, 91. 85

Running through much of African-American media representation is the need to find the balance between positive and authentic portrayals of blackness. At what point does representing an “authentic” experience serve to naturalize or reinforce negative stereotypes surrounding that experience? In the case of sketch comedy, which uses stereotypes to establish character as well as a target for satire, this balance is all the more difficult to reach. As a site of carnivalesque, sketch shows may represent a more unofficial or resistant discourse. But this does not prevent them from offering more centripetal viewpoints, creating ambivalence in theme (as Gray and

Schulman note about In Living Color, for instance). Complicating matters further, those

African-American shows which achieve success do so in large part because they capture a certain number of the white middle-class viewers that advertisers so desperately crave. As the controversial representations found within The Flip Wilson Show, In Living Color and

Chappelle’s Show demonstrate, performing stereotypical humor, no matter what its intent, becomes clouded as it is consumed by wider and wider audiences. The success and insightfulness of In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show illustrate the benefits of giving African-

Americans the creative power to represent themselves. But the case of Chappelle’s Show, with its creator who exercised the ultimate creative control by walking away when his artistic intentions were compromised, demonstrates that agency is still possible in spite of the institutional structures which block the way. Still, it says much about the state of African-

American creative control in television when the most control offered is the ability to not create. 86

CONCLUSION

On May 13, 2006, a science-fiction themed sketch opened that night’s episode of

Saturday Night Live. In the sketch, an authoritative narrator tells of the existence of parallel worlds, ones which exist on different planes of existence than our own. “In these earths,” the narrator recounts, “history has taken different paths.” Mentioning a world cohabitated by man and dinosaurs and a world where the Russians were the first to the moon, the narrator moves to the sketch’s main point. As the narrator offers us a chance to visit one of these mysterious worlds, the screen shows the Seal of the President of the . When the Seal dissolves, it reveals not troupe member as George W. Bush, but former Vice President (and former Saturday Night Live guest host) Al Gore.

It seems that on this parallel world, Al Gore was overwhelmingly elected president in

2000. Throughout his address Gore mentions pressing issues that have been dealt with during his time in office. His utopian account highlights problems that have had drastically different outcomes on our world. Global warming has been reversed, causing an unexpected glacier attack on the United States. Cars now run on trash, driving down the price of gas and hurting oil company profits. “I am therefore proposing a federal bail-out to our oil companies,” Gore declares, “because hey, if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us.” Dismissing the notion of wasting the eleven billion dollar budget surplus, Gore reiterates the effectiveness of the “lock-box” (a fiscal policy for which Gore was mocked by Saturday

Night Live during the 2000 campaign). Most jarringly, Gore tells of how America is “so loved by everyone in the world that American tourists can’t even go over to Europe anymore without getting hugged.” In Gore’s alternate America, there is no polarizing Iraq War. In fact, the war’s commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, is busy as commissioner of baseball and Iran and 87

Afghanistan have become popular tourist destinations. The fantastical sketch, like good science-

fiction, offers a searing insight into our own world. By offering an idealized, trouble free vision

of America, the sketch—written by Gore’s daughter, Kristen—showcases the flaws of the

current administration and state of affairs.

The following day, a video of the sketch appeared on several political websites, and,

according to CBS News, was eventually linked to by 77,500 bloggers.1 The sketch’s popularity

on the internet was simply the latest in a continuing trend of fans posting clips from their favorite

comedy shows. Popular shows featured on either fan sites or video sharing services like

YouTube include the Comedy Central The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert

Report. According to Alex Pareene, editor of the political website Wonkette (speaking in a

Village Voice article on Saturday Night Live), these sketch comedy hybrids have a noticeably

larger web presence than one of the last bastions of more traditional sketch comedy. “GE/NBC’s

gotta be willing to put up with a little more copyright violation to get a better Web presence,”

Pareene notes. “I get sent at least one Daily Show and Colbert clip every day that some random

guy uploaded to YouTube, but I never hear about it if SNL had something I could use in a post.”2

The issue is not simply that networks do not want their content online, but that they want it online on their own terms, either on their own sites or through a video purchasing site such as

Apple’s iTunes Music Store.3 Purchased material is not as easily embedded into web pages in

the same manner as popular video sharing sites and could easily violate copyrights.

1 CBS News, “Bloggers Jam Video Game Convention,” available at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/16/blogophile/main1620795.shtml; Internet; 13 March 2007. 2 Quoted in Rachel Sklar, “That ‘70s Show,” Village Voice 54, no. 2 (1995), in Lexis-Nexis; accessed 13 March 2007. 3 Selected sketches from Saturday Night Live as well as full episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and are currently available via the iTunes store. 88

Eric Friesen, a Canadian blogger and Saturday Night Live fan as noteworthy by Village Voice reporter Rachel Sklar, has followed this debate on his blog Backward Five.

Friesen’s comments not only offer a case study of a viewer posting sketches with his own comments, but his blog offers analysis and consideration of the issues surrounding the controversies over posting of copyrighted content to video sites. In a post titled “Learning to live with YouTube,” Friesen quotes from and summarizes a Washington Post article chronicling old media’s ambivalent relationship with new media’s video posting sites. The article quotes Rick

Cotton, a vice president at NBC Universal, as admitting that “This medium [of internet video] is at the cutting edge. I think our creative executives feel that The Office and Saturday Night Live benefit from the significant attention we’ve gotten online.” Anticipating the popularity of a

Saturday Night Live sketch featuring as a folk-protest singer,4 Friesen posted a

YouTube clip of it to his blog. While his prediction was correct, he notes in an update that the clip had been removed from YouTube.5 As Friesen’s later post, “iTunes saved The Office?”, reveals, the potential income from selling TV show episodes and sketches is perhaps too much to pass up. Friesen quotes from an article by entertainment columnist Verne Gay that claims

NBC’s The Office and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip may have been saved from cancellation due to the revenue generated from episode sales on iTunes.6

The phenomenon of television sketch comedy on the internet suggests a potential future for political statements on television sketch comedy as well as highlights the issues and constraints which have held back the genre in the past. Sketches are no longer limited to the original airing and occasional reruns of old. Active viewers across the country have captured

4 This bit was originally featured on a 1995 episode of Laurie’s BBC sketch show, A Bit of Fry and Laurie. 5 Backward Five, “Learning to live with YouTube,” available at http://backwardfive.com/2006/10/30/learning-to- live-with-youtube/; Internet; accessed 13 March 2007. 6 Backward Five, “iTunes saved The Office?,” available at http://backwardfive.com/2006/11/02/itunes-saved-the- office/; Internet; accessed 13 March 2007. 89

sketches and disseminated them across the internet. Here, the resistance found on sketch comedy

is continued by these video posters. Additionally, long cancelled sketch shows such as Fridays,

The Richard Pryor Show, The Edge, Exit 57, and The Dana Carvey Show have had sketches posted on the web, effectively extending their lives beyond their limited network broadcasts.

Whole seasons of shows are also available through pirated DVDs and downloading servers known as torrents. This is especially notable because those shows which may best represent the carnivalistic qualities of the genre, such as The Dana Carvey Show, do not last the longest on television screens. Yet these posters’ own resistant act, an appropriation of power, is itself met

with a firm resistance via the intricacies of corporate interest and copyright laws (as mentioned

above).

The internet use of these clips points to issues raised throughout this thesis. The stifling

of unofficially posted web content recalls the criticism of carnival as merely officially sanctioned

rebellion. Furthermore, it recalls the debate over whether a sketch show can make viable

political statements within the context of corporate ownership. This thesis, in focusing on

television sketch comedy’s development and its handling of political content and racial

representation, has sought to examine its generic conventions and explore ways the genre has

both reinforced and resisted dominant power structures.

The subject matter and presentation of sketch comedy tie it to the carnivalesque. The

heavy use of parody, irreverent and bawdy humor, and eccentric characterization (aspects

inherited from the antecedent forms of vaudeville and improv comedy) suggests attributes of

Bakhtin’s carnivalized genres. This status allows the genre great leeway in subject matter,

dealing with issues not typically addressed explicitly on television comedy. Sketch comedy’s

basic unit, the sketch, enables this as its brevity allows for a preciseness of content and a 90

devotion to the comic conceit not found in other forms of television comedy. As the genre has

developed, it has become more and more carnivalistic, containing more potentially resistant

material. A Bakhtian heteroglossia, where unofficial discourse interacts with more official stances, demonstrates the way sketch comedy balances resistant and traditional themes.

In addition to further connecting the genre to carnivalesque, the development of a more

politically oriented sketch show during the 60s tested to what degree political humor could survive on TV. The cases of That Was the Week That Was and The Smothers Brothers Comedy

Hour highlight the number of filters associated with producing content for television. Since this

period, late-night and cable have been shown to be areas where more open content is allowed.

Political content aside, another important factor to note is the network’s economic bottom line.

Keeping in mind the early success of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Rowan and

Martin’s Laugh-In, if a show is successful with audiences and advertisers, networks are perhaps

more likely to ignore flak directed at the show for its irreverent content.

Despite the persuasiveness of Chomskian critiques of media and popular criticism on the

limitations of carnival, political satire on sketch comedy is able to find a way to its audience.

The more creative control sketch comedy producers are given, the greater potential for resistant statements. But, as satire is often in response to some perceived injustice, moments of network interference may encourage creative subversions. And in particularly repressive circumstances, material that some would consider benign or trifling may have a relatively powerful effect.

Again, it is important to stress the appeal of cutting down the powerful or self-righteous, no matter how rudimentarily it may be done.

The interaction of Bakhtin’s centripetal and centrifugal forces are especially evident in

sketch comedy representations of race. As has been shown, even series which typically subvert 91

traditional ideals such as Saturday Night Live can fall into stereotypical representations, especially of African-Americans. The most effective means of representing African-Americans via sketch comedy is most certainly giving black comedians creative control over their shows.

But as the experiences of The Flip Wilson Show, The Richard Pryor Show, In Living Color, and,

most recently, Chappelle’s Show have demonstrated, this control is limited and typically

contingent on the economic (not necessarily artistic) success of the show. The most consistently incisive comments on race and blackness have come from these shows, especially In Living

Color and Chappelle’s Show, where the presentation on a new network and cable, respectively,

granted unprecedented freedom. Few topics but race can showcase sketch comedy’s ability to

resist dominant power structure, to participate in a carnivalesque upending of hierarchical

structures. Still, it seems, this is undermined by the difficult balance between endorsing and

criticizing stereotypes, a recurrent bind in these African American sketch shows.

Indeed, such a question of reception returns things back to the viewer, whether internet

savvy or bound by poor antenna reception. Does the viewer have his or her prejudices

reinforced? Does the viewer find a resistant discourse within the political humor of a popular

sketch show? The internet offers potential insight on this front. Based on how users post and comment on these sketches, meaning can be revealed. The internet dissemination of sketch comedy allows viewers the chance not only to comment on and send material to other potential viewers. A certain amount of internet popularity could influence content of current and future

sketch shows. For instance, if such sketches gain a certain degree of web buzz and popularity, a show may produce similar sketches hoping to duplicate this success. A recent musical SNL

Digital Short, “,” has inspired a great deal of buzz and literal duplications. An early nineties R & B parody, the sketch features a singing duo celebrating their Christmas gifts to 92 their girlfriends: a box with a hole into which they insert their penises, which are revealed when the lid is opened. On YouTube, users have posted video reviews of the sketch as well as their own versions (oftentimes simply recording the song word for word). In the post “snl dick in a box my review,” user “swanperez” gives her video review as she watches the sketch and her toddler and infant scurry behind her.7 An especially inspired post retitled the song “My Box in a

Box,” complete with the female singer belting the chorus, “I put my box in a box for you.”8 In these acts of posting, the line between audience and producer becomes blurred, suggesting

Bakhtin’s “pageant without footlights,” a hallmark of carnival.9 As internet users attempt to appropriate sketches either to express personal or political taste, they continue the potentially resistant discourse originally waged in the production and within the content of the sketches themselves.

7 YouTube, “snl dick in a box my review,” available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-cGsD2MavA; Internet; accessed 23 March 2007. 8 YouTube, “My box in a box,” available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xElIik0Ys0; Internet; accessed 23 March 2007. 9 Bakhtin, “Carnival and Carnivalesque,” 251. 93

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