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.
I agree with your prediction that as we progress through this novel it will get harder to laugh at. In the first few chapters, I felt discomfort and tension with every satirical remarks, because underlying witty exchanges like the discussion of colorblindness with the doctor are serious issues that make me feel wrong to laugh at, especially when similar issues are still very much relevant today, how the new racism is denying the existence of racism.
ReplyDeleteThe way Beatty writes is really engaging because of all the imaginative and exaggerated descriptions he uses. I think this is an important aspect of the satirical nature of the novel along with the ridiculous situations Gunnar experiences, as you elaborate on in this post. But as humorous as they are, the descriptions are also off-putting because they describe disturbing incidents in an amusing manner. Since much of the novel has been about Gunnar's childhood so far, I wonder if the events in his adult life will be described with a different attitude to reflect how he may feel differently about childhood and adulthood.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, the satire has a large role on how readers understand the issues that Beatty writes about. If told in another manner, more serious, and straightforward, I believe readers would be less driven to finish the novel. With his story telling, the novel is enticing and less of a "heavy" read. People will learn and consider the issues the author mentions by nature of reading something they want to read and stumbling on something that makes them question racial issues.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Aja. Through the tone of Gunnar's narration, he uses humor, but also subtly prods you to think more about what he is "joking" about. When he walks into his last basketball game with the minstrel costume, he talks about it pretty casually, a reader may not even fully catch what is going on. I think that as time passes, Gunnar is only going to become more and more cynical, leading to the attitude he showed during the prologue of the book. He will become more and more aware of his identity and how people perceive him and treat him. I am worried about the shift of sarcasm to completely giving up for sure. It will be very interesting to see how college plays a role in this.
ReplyDeleteIt is similar in a lot of ways to "The absolutely true diary of a part-time indian" by Sherman Alexie. It is incredibly witty and we grow to love Gunnar as a character. The humor is directed towards our younger generation and like you said the satire is in my opinion almost too much to handle. You also called the ending as well. The satire at the end became a lot darker and harder to laugh at.
ReplyDeleteAfter finishing the novel, I think you were right that the satire does get harder and harder to laugh at, but it continues to play a really significant role in the novel. We can see that he gets more and more cynical over time, and then in the end his drastic decision to commit suicide makes all the jokes he dropped throughout the novel take on a new meaning. when I finished the novel, it almost seemed like I should reread the whole thing to get the real meaning under the humor, and made me wonder if I should even be laughing at all.
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