White Laughter, Black Pain? On the Comic and Parodic Enactment of Racial-Colonial Stereotypes

This chapter examines the potential of comic and parodic enactments of racial and colonial stereotypes to critique and disarm such stereotypes. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, four explanatory models are proffered based on different concepts and mechanisms borrowed from psychoanalytic, aesthetic, and cultural theory such as over identification, psychic discordance, purging, and defamiliarisation. The chapter further addresses recurrent criticisms and trouble spots of such enactments. These include the audience’s failure to notice the intended irony, the phenomenon of enlightened racism, complications caused by the multiracial composition of audiences and cultural producers’ positionality, and the effects of contextual factors on the experience of a work’s acceptability. Throughout, brief references are made to comic and parodic stagings of racial stereotypes taken from diverse cultural genres—ranging from theatre and film, to stand-up comedy and political satire—and sociopolitical contexts.