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Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page i Laughing Mad Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page ii Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page iii Laughing Mad The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America Bambi Haggins Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page iv Material used Chapter 1 and 2 was originally published, in a much abbreviated form, as “Laughing Mad: The Black Comedian’s Place in Post–Civil Rights Era American Comedy,” in Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader, ed. Frank Krutnik (London, New York: Routledge, 2003). Excerpt from “It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop,” written by Lavonne Alford and Clayton Gavin, published by War of Art Music (BMI)/Walk Like a Warrior Music (BMI), per- formed by Dead Prez. Reprinted by permission of The Royalty Network Inc. Excerpt from “Harlem Literati” from The Big Sea by Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1940 by Langston Hughes. Copyright renewed 1968 by Arna Bontemps and George Houston Bass. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, LLC and (for publication in United Kingdom and British Commonwealth) Harold Ober Associated Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haggins, Bambi, 1961– Laughing mad : the Black comic persona in post-soul America / Bambi Haggins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–8135–3984–3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978–0–8135–3985–0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. African American comedians—Biography I. Title. PN2286.H34 2007 792.702′8092396073—dc22 [B] 2006015371 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2007 by Bambi Haggins All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, elec- tronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8099.The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Manufactured in the United States of America Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page v For my mother, Pearl Haggins In loving memory of my father, John R. Haggins Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page vi Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Enter Laughing 1 1 From Negro to Black: Coming of Comic Age in the Civil Rights Era 14 2 Murphy and Rock: From the “Black Guy” to the “Rock Star” 69 3 Post-Soul Comedy Goes to the Movies: Cinematic Adjustments and [Pop] Cultural Currency 99 4 Crossover Diva: Whoopi Goldberg and Persona Politics 132 5 Dave Chappelle: Provocateur in the Promised Land 178 Epilogue: Laughing Sad, Laughing Mad 237 Notes 245 Index 269 vii Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page viii Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page ix Acknowledgments It takes a village to finish a book, and Laughing Mad could not have been completed without the generosity and support of colleagues, friends, and fam- ily. I would like to thank the University of Michigan’s Department of Screen Arts and Cultures, Gaylyn Studlar, and the Rackham Summer Fellowship pro- gram for fiscally facilitating my westward trek to do archival research.The staffs of the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles allowed me to see hours of footage capturing the per- formances of comics discussed in this volume. I am beholden to Kristen Whissel, David Rider, Liz Weston,Ellen Scott, and Amy Kett, my earliest readers (listeners) for this project; and to Philip Hallman for his multifaceted personal and professional support (and for making sure that the Donald Hall Collection remained well stocked with black comedy). Many thanks to the Ugly Mug in Ypsilanti for providing a little writing haven (that reminds me of home) and my Black Comedy class at the University of Michigan in the winter of 2005 for keeping me honest and open to myriad interpretations of black comedy—at the lectern and in this volume.The “phraseology” and audio aid of Aaron Dresner and Jeff Navarre, respectively, and the sustenance (physical and emotional) pro- vided by Reina Leber and Michael Thomas Griffin were greatly appreciated. Thanks to Scott Olin and Anna Jonsson for attending to the detail work that I could not have managed on my own and to Connie Ejarque and Sue Kirby for providing far more than administrative aid.The advice, guidance, and support of Daniel Bernardi, Robin Means Coleman, Susan Douglas, Herman Gray, and Catherine Squires (my scholarly sister since the summer of 2005) were invalu- able at pivotal times in the drafting of the manuscript.The eleventh-hour labor and support of my de facto research assistants—Megan Biddinger, Takeshia Brooks, and Stephanie Wooten—and the tireless, ongoing efforts of Emily Chivers Yochim and Sarah B. Crymble were more vital than I can possibly express. As always, I am indebted to Teshome Gabriel and John Caldwell: there would be no Laughing Mad (nor scholarly career) had you not acted as my advis- ers, advocates, and most cherished mentors. Special thanks to the Joseph and Bolinda Kahr Scholarship Fund, which has undoubtedly saved this academic more times than I care to mention, and Kevin Hayes, my hip-hop sensei, who gave guidance and cred to a scholar who came late to the rap game. My deepest ix Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page x x Acknowledgments gratitude to Beretta Smith-Shomade, Jennifer Skulte Ouaiss,Whitney Haggins, Val Frederick, Bo Kahr, Kat Albrandt, Kristen Haggins, and Alena Wilson, my sisters/editors/audience/cheerleaders/confidantes. Finally, I thank my mother, Pearl, for the strength and fortitude to face and surmount obstacles, in work and in life, and my late father, John, for the belief that each of us, in our own way, can make a difference—and for his mild smile that assured me that there was always some goodness to be found in laughter. Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page xi Laughing Mad Haggins_FM_Pgs-i-xii.qxd 10/24/2006 9:58 AM Page xii Haggins_Intro_Pgs-1-13.qxd 10/24/2006 9:59 AM Page 1 Introduction Enter Laughing “My jaw was tight.” I can’t remember the first time I heard this phrase but I’m sure that it was my father who spoke it—whether in response to a slight on the job, an injustice in the world, or a blatantly bad call made by some person in a position of authority.When recounting the incident, which in a different man might have elicited either a stream of obscenities or other exclamations of anger and frustration, my father would say with a mild smile, “I wasn’t angry, but my jaw was tight.” Decades later, when I heard Richard Pryor say, in a sketch on his short-lived television series, that his jaw was tight—expressing his resentment that the then Los Angeles Rams had released their first and only black quarterback, James Harris—I was struck by the resonance of those words.Arguably, there have not been two more different black men on the planet than Richard Pryor and my father—one a comedy icon who profanely and profoundly gave voice to the black experience and lived life with operatic bravado, the other a strong, gentle working man, who was raised in the segregated South, served in World War II, a former sailor, whose idea of “hard” language was “hey, fella,” and who, along with his wife of forty-nine years, struggled to make sure that his six daughters attained a larger piece of the American Dream.Yet the phrase ties them together—and me to both of them.What does it mean when “your jaw is tight”—the physical reality of teeth clenched, unable or unwilling to speak, biding your time, holding your tongue, not saying the things that you yearn to say. And what do you mean when you say,“My jaw was tight,” and how does one respond to the African American legacy of enforced silences: with covert conversations, with sly stories embedded in trickster tales, with kitchen-table witticisms and wisdom. The antithesis of one’s jaw being tight has been performed in monologues on the Chitlin’ Circuit, on comedy club main stages, and on myriad screens, large and small: mouths open, laughing mad is a liberatory act. Rooted in a history where commentary and critique had to be coded for the folks (to borrow Zora Neale Hurston’s oft-repeated moniker for African American communities), black comedy is tied inextricably to the African 1 Haggins_Intro_Pgs-1-13.qxd 10/24/2006 9:59 AM Page 2 2 Laughing Mad American condition. As the annunciation of laughing mad, black comedy also supplied laughter for (white) mainstream audiences when constructed through the narrowing and diminishing lens of minstrel tropes. Nonetheless, the func- tion of humor and the therapeutic value of the accompanying laughter, inside safe, communal black spaces—whether Granny’s front porch or center stage at the Apollo—spoke to specific black experiences. As Langston Hughes notes in the autobiographical prose of The Big Sea, the laughter was, more often than not, the weapon used to fight the pain. Providing emotional paraphrasing of lyrical blues sung by “an old beggar with a guitar,” Hughes writes: You don’t know, You don’t know my mind— When You see me laughin’ I’m laughin’ to keep from cryin’1 Black comedy, in its literal and literary construction, has always overtly and covertly explored the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of African American communities.

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