Freak'': Audience Reception of John Leguizamo's Culturally Intimate Humor

Article LOOKINGATTHELATIN‘‘FREAK’’: AUDIENCERECEPTIONOFJOHN LEGUIZAMO’SCULTURALLY INTIMATEHUMOR

Evan Cooper State University of New York, Farmingdale, NY

Abstract

In addition to his variegated acting roles, John Leguizamo has written and starred in four one-man Broadway plays to date. In these performances, Leguizamo engages in a great deal of Latino culturally intimate humor that targets the foibles and folkways of the New York City Latino culture he grew up in. In this paper, I perform content analyses of two of his one-man shows, Mambo Mouth and Freak, and then scrutinize the responses of 196 college students who watched the same performances. Latino respondents were more familiar with Leguizamo’s work and expressed significantly more appreciation for Leguizamo’s comedy than non-Latino respondents. They were also more likely to appreciate Leguizamo’s representations of Latino life. In contradiction to my hypothesis, a very substantial majority of both Latino and non- Latino viewers thought that Leguizamo portrayed Latinos in a negative fashion. While Latino respondents were not as likely as non-Latinos to use harsh descriptives, the inability of respondents to see past the dominant cultural stereotypes of Latinos is attributed to the fact that Leguizamo exudes a working-class perspective, the overall lack of Latino visibility in popular culture, and the inherently problematic nature of culturally intimate humor.

Keywords

John Leguizamo; ethnic humor; audience reception; Latino stereotypes

Latino Studies 2008, 6, (436–455) c 2008 Palgrave Macmillan 1476-3435/08 www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/ Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 437

Ethnic humor has long served as an important point of entre´e into the mass media for members of racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Despite its cultural significance, it has attracted relatively little attention from sociologists or from cultural studies theorists. As a partial corrective, this paper considers the work of John Leguizamo, specifically his one-man performances, and audience reception of his comedic vignettes about Latinos and Latino culture – what I hereby define as Latino ‘‘culturally intimate humor,’’ an ‘‘insider’’ ethnic humor wherein individuals from a minority culture target the intimate foibles of that culture. Symptomatic of their larger invisibility in the American mass media (Lichter et al., 1991; Mastro and Behm-Morawitz, 2005), there have been very few Latino comic performers or Latino comic forms that have managed to 1 achieve mainstream popularity. While there have been some recent successes, 1 The lack of most notably George Lopez’s eponymous ABC family situation comedy visibility is partly (2002–2007), Carlos Mencia’s comedy-sketch show, The Mind of Mencia, on compensated for by the existence of Comedy Central (2005–Present), and ABC’s very successful comedy/drama Spanish language Ugly Betty (2006–Present), there was very little Latino culturally intimate television and radio humor prior to Leguizamo that achieved commercial success. Freddie stations in most of the Prinze’s sitcom Chico and the Man (1974–1978) was predicated on the light country’s largest markets. cultural clash between the two main characters and rarely revealed any aspects of Latino barrio culture. Prinze’s standup routines did contain more culturally intimate humor, albeit in a genteel vein. Similarly, Cheech Marin’s ‘‘stoner movies’’ as part of the duo ‘‘Cheech and Chong’’ were commercially successful, but there was very little culturally intimate humor in them. While his later movies and comic routines feature more Mexican-American culturally intimate humor, they were much less commercially successful and also lacked the detail and depth of culturally intimate humor like Leguizamo’s. Culture Clash, a satirical variety show in the manner of the African-American In Living Color (1990–1994), aired in 1993 on the Fox Los Angeles affiliate, but the promise of nationwide distribution never materialized. As such, I contend that the successes of Leguizamo’s four one-man plays, notably Freak, on Broadway, all of which were filmed and subsequently shown on the pay cable channel HBO, make it the first significant exposure of Latino culturally intimate humor to a substantial non-Latino audience. While many observers claim that ethnic humor is capable of enlightening audiences and even demolishing stereotypes, the results of this study indicate otherwise. While Leguizamo’s humor was palatable to both Latino and non- Latinos and viewers they tended to view Leguizamo’s representations of Latinos through the lens of dominant cultural stereotypes, even as the majority of respondents also voiced criticisms of stereotyping in the mass media. In contrast to Leguizamo’s claim that his characters are ‘‘prototypes, not stereotypes, imbued with depth and dignity,’’ a majority of respondents used descriptives latino studies - 6:4 ------438

such as ‘‘poor,’’ ‘‘ghetto,’’ ‘‘unemployed,’’ ‘‘stupid,’’ and ‘‘ignorant’’ when asked how Leguizamo depicts Latinos. I attribute this proclivity to the working-class milieu signified in Leguizamo’s humor, the attendant predisposition to view working-class characters as buffoonish, and the innately problematic nature of deploying stereotypes, even to satirize them, in comic forms. Following a discussion of audience reception research and ethnic humor, I provide a brief overview of two of Leguizamo’s one-man shows: Mambo Mouth and Freak. This is followed by a more in-depth content analysis of Leguizamo’s comic dissections of Latino culture. Lastly, I examine and interpret the findings from questionnaires distributed to several classes of college students after they viewed one of the performances. In addition to earlier sociological research like Gans (1962) that considered respondent attitudes towards mass media forms, the broad field of cultural studies has produced a significant body of work over the last 30 years dedicated to, as Corner (1996) puts it, ‘‘finding out what people like and why’’ (1996). Often employing an ethnographic approach, such audience reception studies provide a more nuanced appreciation of the impact of economic, social, and cultural contexts on viewer reception of a range of popular culture forms such as news programs, individual television shows, rock music, film genres as well as ‘‘phenomena’’ like Madonna (Corner, 1996; Hay et al., 1996; Michelle, 2007). Particular attention is typically devoted to the differences between the messages and meanings of mass media form and how audiences actually interpret them. Audience reception of mass media humor, however, has generally been neglected by cultural studies theorists. In both Michelle (2007) and Morley’s (2006) overviews of audience reception research, very few of the studies cited deal with mass media humor. Moreover, when studies consider comic forms, they are often limited to abstract theorizing and impressionistic accounts or they do not sufficiently deal with actual humor of comic form. Indeed, there is a paucity of audience reception research on audience reception of comic forms as comic forms. While Latin Looks (Rodriguez, 1997) and other works (Subervi-Ve´lez et al., 1994; Berg, 2002) document the ways in which Latinos are represented (and not represented) in the mass media, the question of how Latino representations, comic or otherwise, are received by Latino and non-Latino audiences has rarely been considered. If the field of cultural studies has typically overlooked comic forms, the effects of ethnic humor, encompassing ‘‘ethnic jokes’’ as well as mass media comic forms, on audiences’ perceptions of the groups in question have attracted attention from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. This type of research also considers the social functions of ethnic humor. Such views can be roughly divided into four groups. First, there are those who take a dim view of ethnic humor, given what they see as its tendency to perpetuate negative stereotypes. In this view, ethnic Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 439 humor, especially jokes and comic forms produced by the dominant culture, often portrays racial and ethnic minorities as buffoonish, deviant, and lacking in intelligence (Boskin, 1979). Such representations thereby lead audiences to see them as inferior. Second, some claim that humor enables subordinate groups to combat the discrimination they face, expose the ignorance and hypocrisies of the larger culture, and sustain a positive group identity (Arnez and Anthony, 1968; Fauset, 1968). Third, observers like John Lowe argue that ethnic humor enables ‘‘the in-group to recognize the out-group as human, and therefore as a replication of them’’ (1986, 455). Thus, ethnic humorists such as Richard Pryor are capable of ‘‘blowing up stereotypes’’ by demonstrating their ridiculousness, and the falsity of stereotypes in general (Davies, 1990). Reflecting Davies’ (1990, 8) assertion that, ‘‘the same joke may be easily interpreted and reinterpreted so that both parties to it think that the other loses,’’ the fourth view is that ethnic humor, especially if satirical in nature, is likely to be misconstrued by audiences. While All in the Family purported to satirize the bigotry of Archie Bunker, its working-class white male protagonist, Vidmar and Rokeach (1974) found that regular viewers were significantly more likely to admire Archie rather than his liberal son-in-law Mike. Likewise, both Gray (1995) and Schulman (1995) assert that the 1990s satirical sketch show In Living Color likely ended up affirming African-American stereotypes for many viewers simply by invoking those stereotypes. Other research has contemplated the attitudes of racial and ethnic minorities towards representations of themselves in comic forms. While ethnic comic forms have habitually been much more popular among the group represented, they have often provoked within group criticism, especially from anxious members of the middle class. Positing a dichotomy of public embarrassment and private enjoyment, Watkins (1994) contends that middle-class blacks were more likely than working-class and lower-class blacks to object to ethnic humor caricaturing blacks from the 1930s through the 1960s. As such, middle-class blacks were especially likely to be disapproving when such humor was widely available for public consumption by whites, even though they may have relished the humor in the comfort of their own homes. On the other hand, Ely (1991) maintains that a majority of middle-class blacks were nonplussed by Amos ‘n’ Andy because they regarded it as a show about lower-class blacks, though it was middle-class-dominated black newspapers and the NAACP that strenuously protested both the radio and television versions of the show. In Jhally and Lewis’ (1992) study of The Cosby Show, they found that black respondents took special pleasure from the positive images of blacks on The Cosby Show, while criticizing other black-oriented situation comedies, particularly those with working-class characters, for their demeaning portraits of blacks. Similar criticisms of black situation comedies were echoed by many of latino studies - 6:4 ------440

Coleman’s (1998) respondents, though many of the respondents in both studies said they enjoyed the comedic elements of such shows. Given its revelatory qualities, culturally intimate humor has elicited great praise as well as strong condemnations from the group represented. Philip Roth was castigated by many within the Jewish community for his bestselling 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint. In the early 1970s, Richard Pryor was criticized by middle-class blacks for his revealing portraitures of poor and working-class black life (Terkel, 1977). Similarly, Leguizamo’s first two one-man shows, Mambo Mouth and Spic-O-Rama, elicited condemnations from Latinos in the early 1990s (Pacheco, 1991; Garza, 1993). Many questions remain when it comes to the audience reception of comic forms. Are there significant differences in reception between members of the outsider group represented in the comic form and non-outsider groups? Are Schulman (1995) and Omi (1989) right when they claim that invoking stereotypes, even to satirize them, is likely to end up affirming them in viewers’ minds? How are Leguizamo’s playful invocations of Latino stereotypes likely to be perceived? Will they be viewed negatively because they signify working- class? Are there significant differences in perception between Latino and non- Latino viewers of Leguizamo’s culturally intimate humor? As many readers may be unfamiliar with Leguizamo’s performances, the content analysis begins with a brief synopsis of both Mambo Mouth (1990) and Freak (1998). This is followed by a closer scrutiny of the major themes in Leguizamo’s work. Rather than word counts or other more quantitative approaches, I focus on Leguizamo’s aesthetic style, his representation of Latino cultural folkways, and, especially, the ways he engages male and female Latino stereotypes. For the audience reception analysis, six different groups of Latino and non-Latino undergraduate students at two East Coast universities in 2000 and 2001 were shown video recordings of either Mambo Mouth or Freak and then asked to fill out questionnaires. In order to acquire sufficient data, classes (Latino Studies, Race and Ethnicity) with a high percentage of Latinos were 2 2 Of the 47 Latino sought out. Given the nature of these courses, such students were probably respondents, 17 more sensitized to racial and ethnic stereotypes. Since these were not my classes, (36%) claimed I am not aware of how much time in the classes was devoted to such issues. Dominican heritage and 16 (34%) While college students are clearly not a representative mass audience, they are a claimed Puerto Rican prime demographic for comic forms like Mambo Mouth and Freak. heritage, while eight Four groups of respondents (67, 28, 14, and 7) watched Mambo Mouth, (17%) said their though the largest missed the first two vignettes (‘‘Agamemnon’’ and ‘‘Loco families were from South America. Louie’’). The two classes of 31 and 49 that viewed Freak watched the last 65 min. In the case of Freak, I do not think it will have a substantive effect, because the first 25 min did not contain subject material significantly different from the rest of the performance. However, the reception of Mambo Mouth by the class that missed the two opening vignettes may differ significantly from the Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 441 other three classes since the four vignettes they viewed arguably painted Latinos 3 in a less favorable manner. 3 Given the time I chose to use questionnaires for several reasons. Given my desire for constraints, I sufficiently large samples of both Latino and non-Latino viewers, it would have concluded that it was more important for been extremely difficult and time-consuming to conduct focus groups. While the group to see the focus groups are useful at elucidating and drawing out viewer feelings, many Crossover King studies rely on vague generalizations such as ‘‘many viewers thinky.’’ which sketch. makes it difficult to ascertain how many respondents actually shared a particular belief. As both Curran (1990) and Hoijer (1990) note, purported exemplars do not necessarily represent the views of the majority of viewers. Even more potentially troublesome is the tendency of one or two members of the group to exert a disproportionate influence on the views of others in a focus group (Liebes and Katz, 1990). Although it is true that watching mass media forms is often a social event, whereby one’s impressions of the form are influenced by others, I maintain that giving viewers questionnaires immediately after the viewing is the best way to understand how audiences perceive, and what they feel about, Leguizamo’s comedy. The questionnaires include both multiple choice and open-ended questions in order to maximize respondent participation, avoid an overly impressionistic account, and capture some of the richness found in research based on smaller ethnographic samples. Since they were completed over a 2-year period, there were several, mostly minor, changes to the questionnaire, which are enumerated where appropriate. The video version of Mambo Mouth begins with a brief shot of Leguizamo in the shadows speaking Spanish. He then quickly reappears on the stage as Agamemnon, the first of his six Latino characters. Clad in a brightly colored shirt and white suit, Agamemnon is the exceedingly egotistic host of a cable television public access program. Prone to boasting about his appeal to women, he instructs his male listeners to treat women with a shabby indifference in order to get the upper hand in romantic relationships. Justifying his callousness, he briefly shares his own history of romantic woes and subsequent resolution to never get his heart broken again. The next sketch features the adolescent Loco Louie, a hyperactive bundle of hormones who relates his recent loss of virginity to a friend. After a bit of swaggering, he intimates that he might have preferred to lose his virginity in a more romantic fashion, before he quickly cuts himself off. In the third segment, Leguizamo dons a tight-fitting dress, a female wig, and 4 high heels to play the transvestite hooker ‘‘Manny the Fanny.’’ Prowling the 4 Manny is not street, ‘‘she’’ sasses, threatens, and comes on to the various men on the street. clearly identified as a Manny runs into her brother’s wife and teases her about her appearance transvestite in the performance, or for until Manny realizes that she has been beaten up. Recoiling in distress, that matter as a Manny empathetically relates the revenge she exacted upon an unfaithful prostitute, but is former lover. Feminizing Agamemon’s philosophy, Manny tells her that she described as such on latino studies - 6:4 ------442 the back cover of needs to take her ‘‘frog by his little green dick and you make him do what you the book version wanna do.’’ of Mambo In the fourth sketch, Pepe is detained in prison because he is an illegal Mouth (1993). immigrant. At first he denies, to great comic effect, that he is a Latino. When his efforts to ingratiate himself with the Latino prison guard are also unsuccessful, he denounces the guard as a ‘‘coconut-brown on the outside, white on the inside,’’ and launches into an extended diatribe about the plight of illegal immigrants as well as American ignorance about their indispensable role in society, asserting, ‘‘I’m doing the shit jobs that Americans don’t want.’’ Devoid of nearly any humor, the fifth character sketch takes place in a police station. Taken in because he has just beaten up his girlfriend, a bloodied and handcuffed Angel Garcia, alternatively angry and contrite, beseeches family members and a girlfriend to come and bail him out. Failing in all these attempts, but defiant about ‘‘never needing anybody,’’ he is taken off to a jail cell. The final segment satirizes both Latino and Asian stereotypes. Formerly a ‘‘flamboyant’’ Latino, who was ‘‘loud and obnoxious’’ and ‘‘full of street mannerisms,’’ Leguizamo’s ‘‘Crossover King’’ has now achieved success in the corporate world by ‘‘becoming Japanese.’’ Punctuating his proclamations with a Japanese ‘‘hai,’’ the Crossover King informs the ‘‘Latino-sans’’ in his seminar audience that they too can ‘‘cross over’’ – a necessary strategy since ‘‘there is no room in the corporate upscale world for flamboyant, fun-loving spicy people.’’ After a slide show presentation highlighting various improprieties of dress and appearance by Latinos, especially women, Yakimoto’s attempts to finish the session are interrupted by his ‘‘Latin relapses.’’ Unable to control himself any longer, he rips off his tie and dances feverishly as the sketch ends. After a book edition appeared in 1997, Freak opened at New York’s Cort Theatre in February 1998. Unlike his two previous one-man shows, Leguizamo collaborated on the writing of Freak with David Bar Katz. Also, in contrast to the more extended character monologues of Mambo Mouth and Spic-o-Rama, Freak is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story. In a series of 11 loosely connected vignettes, Leguizamo continually transitions between various family members (and himself at various ages) and a wide assortment of other characters during the 91-min performance. Leguizamo begins by describing his birth in Latin America and his family’s subsequent move to Queens, New York. After brief impersonations of the different ethnic characters in his Jackson Heights neighborhood, Leguizamo elaborates upon his boyhood impressions of family picnic, particularly his grandmothers’ eccentricities. In the ensuing vignette, a young John breaks the antenna on his father’s prized television. In order to avoid punishment, he blames it on his younger brother, Poochie, who is subsequently beaten by his father. Bonding with his father while drinking on the fire escape, John is emboldened by the alcohol and what he thinks is a newfound closeness with his father, and confesses that he broke the antenna. Scrambling to the window Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 443 when he realizes his father’s anger over the antenna has not abated, he is dragged back to the fire escape by his father and beaten as the stage lights dim. In the next two segments, Leguizamo recounts his accidental discovery of the pleasures of masturbation and his adolescent friends’ misinformation sessions about sex. He relates the success of his father’s long-held plans to become a landlord and the brazen adultery that ensues. After his father completely abandons the family, John and Poochie are frequently left under the care of their Uncle Sandy who sneaks them into Broadway plays. At A Chorus Line, Leguizamo is inspired upon hearing a Latina character named Morales sing before being chased out by the security guards. Leguizamo transitions back to the collapse of his father’s tenement enterprise, and his subsequent return to the family fold. In the same segment, John accidentally discovers that his father is not, as he told the family, a headwaiter at a fancy French restaurant, but a dishwasher there. His unsuccessful attempts to lose his virginity with a ‘‘Nubian princess,’’ as well as his encounters with racist Irish and Italian youth, respectively, in two different working-class white ethnic enclaves are then delineated. In the ensuing sketch, Fausto, mindful of his son’s lack of sexual experience, takes John on his 16th birthday to a prostitute. In the second to last vignette, Leguizamo discusses the deterioration of his parent’s marriage due to his father’s gnawing discomfiture about his dishwasher job and his mother’s radicalization from attending college. When their resentments boil over, a physical fight ensues. John’s intervention effectively ends the fight, but the verbal sparring between John’s parents continues. Proclaiming her liberation, his mother defiantly puts on the anthemic 1970s disco song, ‘‘I Will Survive,’’ boisterously dancing and improvising her own lyrics. The denouement, however, is that his father kicks them all out. Concluding the performance, Leguizamo discusses his experiences at a California college and his subsequent return to New York city where he takes up acting. Mocking the stereotypical roles available to Latinos, Leguizamo gets the part of a junkie in a play called Junkie Christ. Backstage before a performance, Leguizamo’s father appears and, after some harsh exchanges, the two ultimately achieve a rapprochement of sorts. Ending the show, Leguizamo dedicates his performance to the Latino performers that preceded him and ‘‘dug right down to the bottom of their souls to turn nothing into something,’’ and ‘‘to you, Dad.’’ Like the Jewish novelist Philip Roth (1975) who claimed that his 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint required a Jewish family that was ‘‘fallible, oversized, anthropomorphic gods,’’ Leguizamo favors larger than life, ‘‘magnificent’’ Latin stereotypes. The humor in Leguizamo’s work frequently derives from a dichotomy common in ethnic humor: the comic foibles of those who are either ‘‘too ethnic’’ or ‘‘insufficiently ethnic.’’ The aforementioned ‘‘Crossover King’s’’ attacks on his fellow Latinos and their ‘‘traditional stereotypicality’’ (as the Crossover King puts it) are seen as overly compensatory, particularly since he latino studies - 6:4 ------444

reverts back to his ‘‘Latino self’’ by the end of the vignette. Leguizamo also pokes fun at himself for trying to sound like a white California surfer dude in college in Freak. Furthermore, he has talked in interviews about going through a period of self-hatred and wanting, at various times during his adolescence, to be Jewish, black, and white (Pacheco, 1991). Leguizamo, however, tends to devote more attention to male characters that are ‘‘too Latino,’’ typically those with an overabundance of pride and a predilection for proving oneself through sex. Leguizamo elicits humor, as well as pathos, in exposing the yellow underbelly of Latino male bravado as their bold assertions of independence from women are ineluctably undercut by their desperation. Despite their abusiveness, they still manage to elicit a degree of sympathy for their resilience and the remnants of passionate emotionalism that persist. Likewise, Leguizamo’s female characters are far more likely to be depicted as too Latino. An overly melodramatic disposition commingled with a sassy extravagance is habitually depicted as a particularly distinctive trait of Latino 5 5 In the book version women. After informing the infant John that he is the ‘‘center of the universe,’’ of Freak, Leguizamo his mother adds (her voice rising at the end, almost on the verge of crying), asserts, ‘‘When Latin ‘‘And you don’t want to marry a whore! Cause no woman’s good enough for my women get upset, only dogs can hear little Latin King.’’ Fighting with her husband Fausto, Leguizamo’s mother Lala them’’ (Leguizamo informs him (dramatically trilling her r’s), ‘‘I’m not about reproduction, and Bar Katz, 1997, I’m about me-production.’’ A few minutes later, she boldly tells him, ‘‘Don’t 111). confuse the end of your world with the beginning of mine.’’ When her sister-in- law pretends not to see her, Manny snaps, ‘‘What do I look like, a hologram? You must have flunked your manners at the Copacabana School of Etiquette, 6 6 Gladys, the mother Miss Tres Beaucoup Faux Pas!’’ in Spic-O-Rama is In many ways, the transvestite prostitute Manny represents an update of the similarly brazen, as is stereotypical ‘‘half-breed harlot’’ enumerated by Berg (1997). Like the half- his ex-wife in Sexaholix. breed harlot, Manny is seemingly controlled by her baser instincts. It is also troubling that she appears to like her work, instead of doing it out of economic need. For instance, several times during the segment she coos ‘‘I need a date so bad.’’ On the other hand, Manny is a considerably more complex character than the harlot. Most obviously, though Manny is ‘‘female-identified,’’ she is really a he. Imbued with an indomitable spirit, Manny shows little deference to bourgeois standards of behavior. Perhaps most importantly, Manny is not a tragic figure, as evinced by the retribution ‘‘she’’ enacts against her adulterous boyfriend. In Berg’s typology, the female buffoon ‘‘represents a way of neutralizing the overt sexual threat posed by the halfbreed harlot’’ (1997, 114). This stereotype is evoked most prominently in the Crossover King sketch from Mambo Mouth wherein Yakimoto ridicules the clothing, excessively large earrings, hair, and physical figure of unidentified Latino women in his slide show. While Leguizamo is clearly chiding assimilationist Latino anxieties about such Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 445

‘‘excessively Latino’’ women rather than deriding Latino women, it may still be seen as equating Latino females with an ostentatious unattractiveness. Given the overall lack of Latino representations in the American mass media, such representations beg the question of how audiences perceive Leguizamo’s work and the various Latino characters in his repertoire. In particular, are Leguizamo’s multi-dimensional ‘‘prototypes’’ likely to be appreciated as such? Or are viewers likely to see them through the lens of dominant Latino cultural stereotypes? Such questions are addressed in the next section. In composing the questionnaire, I was guided by four key concerns: (1) Is Leguizamo’s humor palatable to Latinos and non-Latinos? (2) What do audiences like best (and least) about his performances? (3) How do they view his representation of Latinos and Latino culture? (4) How do they perceive the social import of his performances?

Familiarity and appreciation

As expected Latinos (96%) were significantly more likely than whites (50%), if not African-Americans (85%) and Asian-Americans (90%), to have heard of Leguizamo (see Table 1). Likewise, 77% of Latinos had previously seen at least one of Leguizamo’s one-man performances versus 23% of whites. Latinos were also more likely than non-Latinos to enjoy Leguizamo’s performance: 87% of Latino viewers believed Leguizamo was extremely or very funny versus 57% of whites, 65% of African-Americans, and 60% of Asian-Americans (see Table 2). Racial differences in appreciation also emerged when students were asked whose humor they preferred: John Leguizamo or Jerry Seinfeld. Sixty-six percent of white respondents versus 93% of Latino respondents said they either preferred Leguizamo or liked them equally. Lastly, 86% of Latinos wanted to see him in a situation comedy or skit/variety show and 77% believed it would be successful.

Table 1 Race * heard of Leguizamo Race Heard of Leguizamo Total Yes No Yes, but only vaguely African-American 22 (84.6%) 1 (3.8%) 3 (11.5%) 26 (100%) Asian-American 9 (90.0%) 1 (10.0%) 10 (100%) Caucasian 53 (50.0%) 31 (29.2%) 22 (20.8%) 106 (100%) Latin-American 44 (97.8%) 1 (2.2%) 45 (100%) Other 5 (83.3%) 1 (16.7%) 6 (100%) Black and Latino 1 (50.0%) 1 (50.0%) 2 (100%)

Total 134 (68.7%) 33 (16.9%) 28 (14.4%) 195 (100%) latino studies - 6:4 ------446

Table 2 Race * how funny was Leguizamo Race How funny was Leguizamo? Total Extremely Very Moderately Occasionally Rarely funny funny funny funny funny African-American 6 (23.1%) 11 (42.3%) 7 (26.9%) 2 (7.7%) 26 (100%) Asian-American 3 (30.0%) 3 (30.0%) 2 (20.0%) 2 (20.0%) 10 (100%) Caucasian 22 (21.0%) 38 (36.2%) 25 (23.8%) 13 (12.4%) 7 (6.7%) 105 (100%) Latin-American 21 (46.7%) 18 (40.0%) 4 (8.9%) 2 (4.4%) 45 (100%) Other 2 (33.3%) 2 (33.3%) 1 (16.7%) 1 (16.7%) 6 (100%) Black and Latino 2 (100%) 2 (100%)

Total 54 (27.8%) 74 (38.1%) 39 (20.1%) 19 (9.8%) 8 (4.1%) 194 (100%)

What resonates

Respondents were asked what they liked best, what was their favorite particular routine or segment, and what they liked least. Rather than describing a particular scene or bit of dialogue when asked their favorite routine, Mambo Mouth respondents chose one of the six discrete segments. When compiling answers to the open-ended questions, I counted all the things enumerated by the respondents as long as they were sufficiently different. Hence, there are more total responses than respondents. When respondents were asked what they liked best, 19 people, but only one Latino, left the question blank. Three said ‘‘none’’ or ‘‘nothing,’’ three were ‘‘unsure’’ and another person said ‘‘made me laugh a few times.’’ Conversely, seven people, including five Latinos, said ‘‘everything.’’ Respondents were most likely to cite Leguizamo’s acting talent and the wide variety of characters he was able to play. Those responses, or some variation thereof, appeared 35 times and eight came from Latino viewers. Three others mentioned the achievement of doing a one-man show. Seventeen people gave answers such as ‘‘humor,’’ ‘‘funny,’’ or ‘‘good storytelling with comedy.’’ More specifically, six people said they liked Leguizamo’s impersonations of females best and six more named his ‘‘vivid spirit and attitude,’’ and ‘‘energy.’’ Nine Latinos and one non-Latino said that what they liked best was Leguizamo’s ‘‘real depiction of being Latino,’’ ‘‘relating it to personal experiences,’’ or ‘‘links to street life and Spanish culture.’’ Seven of those comments came from Freak viewers. Leguizamo’s use of Spanish was cited twice (once by a Latino and once by an African-American). A significant number of respondents more broadly referred to Leguizamo’s ‘‘authenticity.’’ Eleven (including three Latinos) gave answers such as ‘‘honesty,’’ and ‘‘spoke truth about what’s happening in society,’’ while another 11 (including two Latinos) referred to Leguizamo’s capacity for ‘‘making reality funny’’ and providing a ‘‘deeper message with humor.’’ In addition, two Latinos and two non-Latinos Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 447 mentioned ‘‘jokes about his life’’ and ‘‘jokes on himself and family.’’ In a slightly different vein, four individuals (including two Latinos) liked the ending best, ‘‘when he realized he came from good people’’ and ‘‘the moral.’’ Four non- Latinos noted his ability to incorporate a message into his work, and two non- Latinos similarly referred to Leguizamo’s ability to put his point across ‘‘without going overboard’’ or ‘‘poked fun instead of complaining.’’ Twelve respondents (including two Latinos) referred to Leguizamo’s capacity for ‘‘mocking ethnicity in a classy way,’’ ‘‘making fun of stereotypes,’’ and ‘‘making fun of ideas people have about Latinos.’’ All but three of them were Mambo Mouth viewers. Five other non-Latino Mambo Mouth respondents (including three African-Americans) talked more generally about Leguizamo’s use of stereotypes with comments, such as ‘‘brings to life stereotypes people have about Latinos and glorifies diversity’’. However, only two viewers, and just one Latino, explicitly referred to the more politicized aspects of Leguizamo’s work; one Freak viewer cited the ‘‘real portrayal of prejudice shown to people of other cultures’’ and one Mambo Mouth respondent wrote ‘‘subversive political commentary regarding the conditions in US confronting Latino males.’’ There was also one Latino viewer who gave the answer ‘‘expressed racism in US’’ when asked what was the funniest routine. When Freak respondents were asked what particular routine they found the funniest, the most frequently cited answers revolved around Leguizamo’s teenaged confrontations with Irish and Italian adolescents. In addition to these 14 responses, two of the four respondents who judged Leguizamo’s dancing the funniest part specifically referred to his ‘‘riverdance’’ in the Irish bar. Twelve responses revolved around Leguizamo’s adolescent discovery of sexuality; seven answers referred to his masturbation scene and five to his visit to the prostitute at KFC. The segment with John and his girlfriend and her black Muslim father was mentioned 10 times and four people mentioned Leguizamo’s impressions of other races. Lastly, 10 respondents left the question blank, three non-Latinos said ‘‘none’’ or ‘‘none in particular,’’ and four individuals said ‘‘all’’ or ‘‘everything.’’ As I anticipated, Latinos were more likely than non-Latinos to cite Leguizamo’s riffs on his family life when asked what the funniest particular routine was. Hence, three Latinos and two African-Americans specified the scene where his mother tells off his father. Likewise, two of the four people who named the segments with Leguizamo’s uncle were Latino, as were two of the three people who cited scenes between a young John and his father. Still, I was surprised by the relatively small number of viewers who mentioned familial elements. The aforementioned lack of appreciation for Leguizamo’s more politicized comedy, especially among Latino respondents, was also apparent when Mambo Mouth viewers were asked to name their favorite routine. Only one of the 20 (5%) Latino respondents named Leguizamo’s ‘‘Illegal Immigrant’’ routine versus latino studies - 6:4 ------448

19 of 75 (25%) non-Latino respondents. Similarly, only two of the 20 (10%) 7 7 It should be noted Latinos cited his ‘‘Crossover King’’ routine versus 21 of 75 non-Latinos (28%). that 49 of the 75 Instead, Latinos were more likely to appreciate the routines that featured non-Latinos were in ‘‘magnificent Latino stereotypes.’’ Six of 17 (35%) Latinos (including the two the class that did not see the who named both Agamemnon and Loco Louie) chose the Agamemnon sketch, ‘‘Agamemnon’’ and compared to only three of 16 (19%) whites. Moreover, all three Latino ‘‘Loco Louie’’ respondents in the large class named Manny the Fanny, as did four of the 17 sketches. (24%) Latinos in the three smaller classes that saw all the routines.8 8 Because it was an When respondents were asked what they liked least about Leguizamo’s open-ended question, in a few cases, it was performance, a slight majority (51%) either left the question blank (30%) difficult to deduce or said ‘‘nothing’’/‘‘liked everything’’ (21%). While there were a number of whether Mambo aesthetic criticisms, there were fewer than expected. Eight people made Mouth viewers comments such as ‘‘skits a bit dragged out’’ or ‘‘got boring in certain parts.’’ selected Angel Garcia or the Illegal Alien Four respondents gave answers such as ‘‘didn’t find his humor really funny’’ or routine as their ‘‘style of humor.’’ Two people complained it was ‘‘hard to follow at times,’’ and favorite. Given the two said ‘‘he spoke too quickly.’’ Five respondents, including one Latino, lack of enthusiasm objected to either the use of Spanish or ‘‘thick accent.’’ Also, a number of Mambo for the former and the respondents named particular sketches – ‘‘Manny the Fanny’’ (six times), fact that it is largely Mouth devoid of humor, ‘‘The Crossover Artist’’ (six times), and ‘‘Angel Garcia’’ (four times). Lastly, there I interpreted were several general comments: ‘‘negative film,’’ ‘‘some digs kind of harsh,’’ and statements such as ‘‘negative remarks about many groups in America – makes me think.’’ ‘‘the one where is he Eleven Freak respondents cited the language in Leguizamo’s performance. trying to get out of jail’’ or ‘‘prisoner Three more respondents took exception to the sexual content, and three broadly one’’ as votes for the claimed it was offensive. One of the latter three added, ‘‘especially references to Illegal Alien routine. homosexuals.’’ Of these 17 comments, only one came from a Latino. Three non- Latino Mambo Mouth viewers also remarked upon his sexism (‘‘so much humor at expense of women’’). Eight viewers gave answers such as ‘‘too serious’’ or ‘‘made to face sadness of life he had.’’ Another objected to the ‘‘whining diatribe at the end of the jail skit.’’ None of these responses came from Latino viewers, but five of the six remarks about Leguizamo’s use of stereotypes were from Latino viewers. One said ‘‘a little too stereotypical’’ and another, ‘‘Some negative stereotypes, but all done for fun in comedy.’’ ‘‘Putting down Latinos’’ or ‘‘degrading his own race’’ received four mentions, though the only one from a Latino respondent offered the qualifier, ‘‘kinda puts down Latinos.’’ Another non-Latino respondent similarly remarked, ‘‘Latinos discriminating against each other.’’ Two non-Latino respondents also gave the similarly vague responses, ‘‘racial overtones’’ and ‘‘racial comments, though just a joke.’’

How Leguizamo portrays Latinos

Both groups of Freak respondents, as well as the two largest Mambo Mouth groups, were asked ‘‘How does Leguizamo characterize Latinos in general?’’ All Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 449 four groups of Mambo Mouth respondents were also asked how they thought 9 Leguizamo portrayed Latino males and females, respectively. 9 The question of When asked, ‘‘How does Leguizamo characterize Latinos in general,’’ 47 how Leguizamo people, including 11 Latinos, left the question blank. Six respondents thought portrays Latinos was completely omitted Leguizamo depicted Latinos as ‘‘people adjusting to a different culture’’ or for the two smallest ‘‘foreigners trying to be accepted for who they are’’ and another three Latino Mambo Mouth respondents gave the somewhat vague answer ‘‘very cultural.’’ Eight of these nine classes, leaving only responses came from Mambo Mouth viewers. Nine people (two Latinos and all the ‘‘males’’ and ‘‘females’’ question. but one a Freak viewer) thought Leguizamo portrayed Latinos as struggling or hardworking: ‘‘people who struggle for goals’’ or ‘‘hard-working with limited opportunities.’’ Only one Latino used the word ‘‘proud’’ in their answer and the sole person to use ‘‘striver’’ or a similar term was African-American. There were three descriptions of Latinos as fun-loving by non-Latinos and one Latino respondent thought Leguizamo characterized them as ‘‘funny and unique.’’ One non-Latino respondent wrote ‘‘thriving race’’ and a Latino respondent wrote ‘‘feisty, assertive, and proud – no concern what others think.’’ Three Mambo Mouth non-Latino respondents thought Leguizamo depicted them as ‘‘flamboyant’’ or ‘‘spicy’’ and three non-Latino Mambo Mouth respondents mentioned their love for dancing. Correspondingly, two non- Latinos used the term ‘‘music-loving.’’ The descriptive ‘‘loud’’ appeared twice (one Latino) and ‘‘big attitudes’’ once in respondent answers. The vast majority of respondents, however, viewed Leguizamo’s representations of Latinos in a far less positive light and generally disproved my hypothesis that Latinos would be significantly more likely than non-Latinos to see his comic interpretation of Latin life in a favorable light. Eight non-Latino Mambo Mouth viewers thought Latinos were portrayed ‘‘negatively’’ or ‘‘not in a positive way’’ and the following answers each appeared once: ‘‘almost as if they shouldn’t want to be Latino,’’ ‘‘group that needs help,’’ and ‘‘low self-esteem.’’ Likewise, descriptives such as ‘‘like they aren’t that great a race,’’ ‘‘bottom of social structure,’’ and ‘‘subordinate to whites and Japanese’’ appeared 15 times. Three of the 15 responses came from Latino viewers and 10 from Mambo Mouth viewers. In a barely more positive vein, another non-Latino said, ‘‘Low-class people who no longer want to be that way.’’ Phrases such as ‘‘poor’’ and ‘‘low-wage earners’’ appeared a total of 19 times (15 non-Latinos and four Latinos). Two additional people used the terms ‘‘trash’’ and ‘‘low-lifes,’’ respectively. Probably the most surprising fact was that 10 people (including three Latinos and seven Freak viewers) thought Latinos were represented as ‘‘lazy’’ or people ‘‘without goals or resourcefulness.’’ More ambivalent was the reply, ‘‘sometimes poor and lazy, other times proud and hardworking.’’ Lastly, five people thought Latinos were portrayed as ‘‘uneducated’’ or ‘‘ignorant’’ and another three similarly gave responses such as ‘‘stupid’’ or ‘‘unintelligent.’’ Leguizamo devotes one scene in Freak to his father’s overindulgence in alcohol, but there are no depictions of Latinos using drugs in either Freak or latino studies - 6:4 ------450

Mambo Mouth. He does, however, satirize white beliefs about the proclivity of Latinos to take drugs when he recounts ‘‘Junkie Christ’s’’ director exhortations that Leguizamo act ‘‘more pathetic’’ and ‘‘more Latino’’ when his character is shooting up drugs. Nonetheless, six Freak respondents (three Latinos and three non-Latinos) said Leguizamo depicted Latinos as ‘‘drug dealers’’ or ‘‘druggies.’’ Conversely, there was only one description of Latinos as ‘‘drinkers.’’ Additionally, two non-Latino Mambo Mouth viewers thought they were portrayed as ‘‘criminals,’’ one said ‘‘animals,’’ and one said ‘‘prostitutes.’’ Despite the answers in the previous paragraphs, it is worth noting that there were some differences between Latinos and non-Latinos. Only two of the 23 (9%) respondents who gave ‘‘negative’’ and ‘‘low society’’ answers were Latino (while Latinos were 24% of the total number of respondents). And of the eight ‘‘uneducated’’/‘‘stupid’’ answers, only one was from a Latino who offered the following explanation for his/her assertion, ‘‘stupid, but I think he does this not to hurt anybody, but just in fun.’’ Differences between Latino and non-Latinos also surfaced when Mambo Mouth respondents were asked how Leguizamo describes Latino males and Latino females, respectively. In response to the former, non-Latinos were likely to string together a number of negative descriptives such as ‘‘testosterone driven, women beating, greasy scumbags,’’ whereas responses from Latinos were considerably less negative in tone and much more likely to use less derogatory terms like ‘‘players’’ and ‘‘love sex.’’ Similarly, when asked how Leguizamo portrays Latino women, answers such as ‘‘prostitutes,’’ and ‘‘trashy,’’ as well as references to weight and appearance, particularly their propensity for wearing tight clothing (‘‘vain, fat, always wearing big earrings’’) predominated among non-Latino viewers. In contrast, Latino respondents generally refrained from the use of descriptives like ‘‘whore’’ and ‘‘prostitute’’ and were much more likely to use descriptives such as ‘‘classless,’’ ‘‘subservient,’’ or ‘‘loud.’’ On the other hand, only one of the seven respondents who thought Latin women were portrayed as ‘‘independent,’’ ‘‘strong-willed’’ or ‘‘tough, witty’’ was Latino.

Personal reactions to Leguizamo and perception of effects

When asked the multiple choice question of how offended they were by Leguizamo’s performance, only six (and just one Latino) of 194 respondents were ‘‘very offended’’ or ‘‘extremely offended’’ by Leguizamo’s ‘‘use of foul language or 10 10 After the first class sexual content.’’ Likewise, only two of the 111 respondents were greatly or of 49 students, the extremely offended by the ‘‘Crossover Artist’’ sketch in Mambo Mouth. question was changed The four largest classes of respondents were asked the open-ended question of to include the option of extremely whether or not Leguizamo perpetuates stereotypes, the class of 13 was asked the offended. question, ‘‘Does Leguizamo perpetuate or refute stereotypes,’’ and the class of seven respondents was asked a multiple choice question with the options of ‘‘perpetuates,’’ ‘‘makes fun of,’’ ‘‘refutes,’’ and ‘‘none of the above.’’ As expected, Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 451 a majority (54%) of Leguizamo respondents said ‘‘yes’’ when asked the simple open-ended question and number increases to 63% if answers like ‘‘somewhat’’ are included. In contrast, though the numbers are extremely limited, five of seven (71%) respondents said ‘‘makes fun of stereotypes’’ when given the multiple choice question. In contrast to my expectations, Latino respondents (44%) were less likely than non-Latino respondents (58%) to say ‘‘yes’’ when asked the simple open-ended question. Lastly, a higher class position was positively correlated with a greater tendency among Latinos to believe that Leguizamo’s humor perpetuated stereotypes. Twelve of 22 (55%) self-identified middle-class and higher Latinos answered ‘‘yes’’ when asked whether Leguizamo’s comedy perpetuates stereotypes, versus only four of 14 (29%) self-identified lower middle-class Latinos. In many ways, the responses are what I would expect from viewers of a culturally intimate comic form. Overwhelmingly, Latino respondents enjoyed Leguizamo’s work and a significant number cited his ‘‘realistic’’ portraitures of Latino life and mockery of Latino stereotypes when asked what they liked best. Also, confirming my hypothesis, self-identified middle-class Latinos were more likely to believe that Leguizamo’s humor perpetuated stereotypes. I was, however, surprised by the lack of overt fondness among Latino respondents for the satirical aspects of Leguizamo’s humor. Even more significantly, my belief that Latinos would be significantly more likely than non-Latinos to see mass media representations, albeit comic, of their group in a favorable light was disproved. While I expected a significant minority of Latino and non- Latino respondents, especially Mambo Mouth viewers, to believe that Leguizamo depicted Latinos negatively, I did not think that the vast majority would see little, if anything, positive in Leguizamo’s representations of Latino culture. Although a few respondents used the descriptives ‘‘spicy’’ and ‘‘flamboyant’’ when asked how Leguizamo portrays Latinos, there was virtually no use of terms like ‘‘overemotional’’ and ‘‘dramatic.’’ Conversely, though the responses ‘‘sexaholix’’ and ‘‘macho men’’ were understandable when Mambo Mouth respondents were asked how Leguizamo depicts Latin men given the nature of the Agamemnon and Loco Louie sketches, the preponderance of descriptives like ‘‘macho pigs’’ and ‘‘violent’’ is telling, as the only male character in Mambo Mouth that is violent towards women is Angel Garcia. And even in that vignette, Garcia’s act of violence against his girlfriend is very briefly alluded to. The preponderance of ‘‘poor,’’ ‘‘lower-class,’’ and ‘‘ghetto’’ responses when Leguizamo respondents were asked how he portrays Latinos reveals a similar sort of selective perception. The ‘‘street’’ characters in Mambo Mouth exude decidedly non-middle-class attitudes and behaviors and Leguizamo talks about his family’s fluctuating economic fortunes and their moves from one bad neighborhood to another in Freak. Still, Freak respondents did not see the one latino studies - 6:4 ------452

scene where Leguizamo talks about how small his family’s first apartment was and the actual material conditions of the characters’ lives in Freak and Mambo Mouth are rarely addressed. Perhaps the most extreme examples of selective perception were the respondents who answered ‘‘unemployed’’ and ‘‘lazy,’’ when asked how Leguizamo portrays Latinos. The employment status of the characters is never referred to in Mambo Mouth and the characters generally brim over with energy. In Freak, Leguizamo’s father is clearly depicted as a striver, notably in his devotion to realizing his dream of becoming a landlord and willingness to work as a dishwasher when he has no other job prospects. Likewise, Leguizamo talks about his parents working numerous jobs when they first came to America, though this part was missed by the Freak respondents. Indeed, Leguizamo’s real-life characterization of his parents as ‘‘immigrant drive on crack’’ (Pacheco, 1991), his delineation of his own career ambitions in Freak, and the other characters’ spiritedness stand in stark contrast to those respondents who thought Leguizamo represented Latinos as ‘‘stupid, lazy low- lifes.’’ Thus, the one person who said ‘‘doesn’t give most positive view, but does shed light on dynamic culture’’ was a lonely minority. While, as noted previously, Latinos were not as likely as non-Latinos to use harsh descriptives, the inability of respondents to see past the dominant cultural stereotypes of Latinos may be attributed to the following factors. First, culturally intimate comic representations do not exist in a vacuum. If representations of Latinos are less negative than used to be, Latino males are still more likely than other males to be portrayed as unintelligent and inarticulate and Latinas are more likely than women of other races to be depicted as lazy and lacking a work ethic (Mastro and Behm-Morawitz, 2005). Clearly, the historical preponderance of negative images of Latinos along with the predisposition to see working-class characters as innately inferior contributed to the preponderance of negative descriptives when viewers were asked how Leguizamo depicts Latinos. Secondly, culturally intimate humor like Leguizamo’s is innately problematic given its reliance on ‘‘magnificent stereotypes’’ like Agamemnon and Manny the Fanny. As such, the findings clearly reflect the concerns of Husband (1988), Omi (1989), and Schulman (1995); simply invoking a stereotype, even if it is quite obviously to mock it, often only further instills the stereotypes in people’s minds. Third, the fact that it is a comic form also makes the use of stereotypes more palatable. As long as viewers think that a comedy form is innocuous, they do not have to take it seriously, especially if they perceive it as making fun of stereotypes. Indeed, some viewers may feel flattered when they perceive that a comic form is satirizing stereotypes as it confirms their knowledge of such stereotypes and awareness of their falsity. The belief that it is, or should be, ‘‘all in fun,’’ also helps explain why relatively few respondents believed Audience Reception of John Leguizamo’s Culturally Intimate Humor ------Evan Cooper 453 that Leguizamo characterized Latinos as victims of discrimination. If the humorist makes fun of stereotypes, it implies to the audience that they do not have to take them that seriously. As one Latino respondent put it when asked whether Leguizamo perpetuates stereotypes, ‘‘Yes, that’s what the joke is about. As (a) Latino, (I/we) know where he’s coming from. It’s just a joke.’’ In a 1951 piece entitled ‘‘Jokes Negroes Tell on Themselves,’’ Langston Hughes asserted, ‘‘Certain aspects of the humor of minority groups are often so inbred that they are not palatable for outside consumption’’ (p. 25). Given the findings elucidated above, it would appear that Hughes’ claim is still relevant. As noted above, it is generally not a question of completely distorted interpretations, but the limited capacity of respondents to see working-class Latinos as anything but negative or foolish in a culturally intimate comic form. Of course, different types of ethnic humor can be problematic in other ways and viewers are also likely to be turned off by shows or humorists that ‘‘get up on the soapbox,’’ as one viewer criticized Leguizamo of doing. Despite their problematic aspects, culturally intimate humor like Leguizamo’s may serve positive functions. First, affecting and comically inventive culturally intimate humor is capable of providing aesthetic gratification, particularly to members of the outsider group represented. Second, it offers pleasures of recognition to the outsider group represented. As evinced by the significant number of Latino respondents who cited Leguizamo’s representation of Latino life when asked what they liked best, Leguizamo’s ‘‘prototypes,’’ however exaggerated they may be, may often resonate more than one-dimensional, noble representatives of the culture. Culturally intimate humor also gives individuals from minority groups that may be unaware of their culture’s ‘‘private humor’’ a way to connect to their cultural identity. Moreover, their success may legitimate a wider range of dramatic and comic characters in the future. While this study has hopefully provided some illumination about the significance of culturally intimate humor, more work is certainly needed on the reception of a variety of mass media comic forms, as well as a more nuanced appreciation for the complexities of comic images. I conclude by positing that more substantive attention to ethnic humor and its reception would improve our understanding of both the mass media and minority groups in America. More work on Latino mass media forms and Latino audiences is especially needed. Hopefully, this paper is a step in that direction.

About the author

Evan Cooper is Assistant Professor of Sociology at SUNY-Farmingdale. He received his dissertation in sociology from SUNY-Albany. His research focuses on representations of minority groups in the mass media, particular in comic works. His most recent article about audience reception of Richard Pryor’s latino studies - 6:4 ------454

comedy, Is It Something He Said, was published in 2007 by The Communica- tion Review.

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Latino Studies (2008) 6, 436–455. doi:10.1057/lst.2008.40