Some Sweeping Observations of Humor Progression in African-American Lit

I figure I've been doing a lot of fun, in-depth textual analysis on this old blog, so I feel the need to meet my sweeping comparison quota of a huge theme. As you can probably tell by my post, this topic would be the role of humor in the books we've read so far. In fact, I'll be tackling this very same issue in my research paper, so I'd like to outline my conception of comedy in each novel we've been through in this class. In doing this, one sees trends of how each author's use of humor discusses what it means to write an African-American novel.

Native Son is a bold, calculated, dreary, observant, powerful analysis of the predetermined paths white supremacy enforces upon black people in every aspect of life. In its pointed protest however, Wright's progenitor of protest fiction is rendered basically humorless. This exposure of soul-crushing racism, impossible racial dilemmas, and inevitable failure really has no room for it, as Wright's own stance on what a novel written by a black person should be involves pointing straight at the blatant injustice that African-Americans face from white society every single day. As a consequence, the novel is an experimental exercise to highlight the things black people are simply forced out of, and leaves some character nuance beyond simple archetypes and individual thought (especially for Bigger Thomas) in the dust.

As a near direct response to the exceedingly dry, shocking template of protest in Native Son, Invisible Man is concerned with what it means to be black, but also focuses on the diversity of black existence, in that not every black person must be funneled into the white-supremacy meat-grinder of oppression like Bigger Thomas. Ellison bestows his characters with plenty of comedic moments and very different backgrounds to exemplify his goal of diversification, and in doing that says that there is a way to use irony and humor to deflect racist forces and eventually overcome them. Laughter is also a symbol of power in the novel, which is occasionally sinister in the case of the Brotherhood, but goes along with the use of humor as an element of agency. Indeed, the comedic profile of Invisible Man with its bizarre scenarios and Narrator's treatment of them creates a more optimistic outlook than Wright's, without forgetting the overlying plight of invisibility and racism as he experiences it.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, unlike the previous two novels, does not outwardly pursue an idea of black existence and elaborate upon it in its pages. Wright had the predestiny that white power structures enforce on the African-American community, Ellison had the undue transference of racial identities on to black people, while Hurston in essence writes an entertaining homage to her background and the characters that inhabited it. The melding of formal English and dialectic turns-of-phrase, along with the vibrant members of the black community she depicts, allude to humor and comedy as a language in itself. One criticism of her novel, besides the absence of racial themes and injustice, is the possible minstrelsy of her more comedy-driven characters, as if they're being held up for a white audience to laugh at the expense of. To me at least, the book is meant to be entertaining, and these black characters that show up in Janie's journey are used to further expose the overlooked sense of humor the black communities have.

In this class, a conversation of humor would not be complete without mention of White Boy Shuffle. As I touched on in my previous post, the book is an extremely intricate satire of modern black life, and though it is absolutely hilarious, it still asks huge questions of the audience, in how funny can this content be with such hopeless depiction of black life. The book is ostensibly about comedy from the African-American perspective, and how exaggerating the landscape has readers walking the line between laughter and sadness of the characters' realities. I'm still bummed out from Beatty's ending to the novel, where after all the comedy of Gunnar's narrative is lost in complete surrender to racism.

So how do y'all like my generalizations? I'm kind of using this post to organize my thoughts before undertaking the comparison of humor in the literary criticism world as well. Hopefully some of my ideas come across in some quick summary like this.

P.S. Seriously though, there's an almost linear progression to how much each book is about comedic material. From 0 to like 99% in just 4 books.

The White Boy Shuffle's Seriously Good Satire

I am really loving this book. Still early obviously, but the writing is always razor sharp, the characters are all getting their spotlights, and the story is moving along in a properly bizarre fashion. Well I say properly because of the intensely satirical nature of The White Boy Shuffle. Good satire always exaggerates the characters, situations, and environments to make readers/viewers laugh as much as they think. However, where other forms of satire occasionally drop the social critique for some pure gags or silly tangents, as far as I've seen Beatty's has remained dedicated, and hyper-aware on all levels of his novel.

Let's start with everybody's favorite "funny, cool black guy" Gunnar Kaufman (28). Our narrator is a precocious pre-teen with a lineage he despises for the conflicting racial baggage they've bestowed on him. His "weak-kneed DNA" is, as he puts it, loaded with "Uncle Toms" and "faithful boogedy-boogedy retainers", which give him shame as he comes to term with his own racial identity. Gunnar's voice is sort of like a far more mature South Park character, constantly poking fun at everything around him while showing readers his biting criticism towards society's racism in particular areas of life. Some ridiculous circumstances Beatty bestows include Gunnar's aforementioned ridiculously racially submissive family tree (with hilariously pointed European names such as Euripides and Wolfgang), and Gunnar's status as a "white-friendly" black kid who has characteristically "non-black" interests. Beatty plays with this archetype, having Gunnar be a surfer, fried-chicken hater, and WWII enthusiast, while simultaneously self-aware of his breaking of African-American stereotypes. Obviously, Beatty isn't saying that any black person with these interests or qualities are inherently an abhorrence to the race, he's just pointing out how ironic they are and insecure they make Gunnar in relation to his ancestors. However, this is one of the many cases where we laugh wondering if we should or not, considering how touchy the notion of someone being "not black enough" can be, which is deliberate on Beatty's part. And it makes for good satire!

Plus, the racial situations that Gunnar and others are put through are likewise purposefully exaggerated or straight up insane, often to create that uncomfortably-close-revealing-hilarious satire so critical to Beatty's story. The first impression we even get of the narrator has him leading a massive group suicide in the name of racial justice as "the ultimate sit-in". Sure, it's ridiculous, but isn't the fact that racism just never dies equally so? And isn't this last resort symbolic of how hard African-Americans have tried for social equality for years, and yet "nothing works"? (2) Then there's Gunnar's hypocritical "multicultural school", which in its efforts for diversity only succeeds in singling out minority students and giving misconceptions about race. My early education consisted of two types of multiculturalism: classroom multiculturalism, which reduced race, sexual orientation, and gender to inconsequence, and schoolyard multiculturalism, where the kids who knew the most Polack, queer, and farmer's daughter jokes ruled." (28). Those who went through the forced multiculturalism in school harken back to those days when Ms. Cegeny mentions being "colorblind" and seemingly deliberately brushes off all notions of race for students. Again, an enhanced critique of racist ignorance through exaggerated satire. One of the most memorable is Chapter 3's cop interaction, where the LAPD "dressed to oppress" show up to Gunnar's home and give him the most assumptive and racist interview one could expect (47). It's so over-the-top, with Gunnar and the cops speaking in a sort of mutual understanding of how ridiculous the cops' racism is. They admit to beating the shit out of innocent people to prevent crime, assume Gunnar is part of gang, and mention in passing that they'll be seeing the young Kaufman in jail someday all in the span of a page. This staggeringly honest portrayal of the clearly racist police in the Los Angeles area satirizes how obvious their racial bias is in real life. All the while, Brenda Kaufman lets her son handle it himself as if an interview with the LAPD is a rite of passage for a black kid coming of age.

Ultimately, I think Beatty's brand of satire is gonna get harder to laugh at as we go on, considering how close to full out social criticism he seems to be getting already. In Gunnar's stint in the ghetto there have already been some caricatured black characters that are possibly in the vein of minstrelsy we have discussed in class. I'm interested to hear your own thoughts on the socially-minded humor in the book and how it might progress.