Stereotyping. Radcial comedy, Who are we really laughing at?

As I was watching Russell Peters comedy show on YouTube, and for those who don’t know Russell Peter, he is a Canadian comedian and came from a Indian family. In his comedy shows he often making fun on a certain radical group and the most common ones are the Asians. It is funny how, as a Chinese person, I find it funny as I was watching it plus the things that he says in his show are all true. A few well-known stereotyping taglines such as “Asians can’t drive”, “blonds are dumb”, “Indian always owns the diary store”. These might not be applied to each individuals but it has been carried out from the society norms. This, which is, leads us to the idea of “Burden of Representation”. 

Burden of Representation which by means if a particular group has been relatively absent from media images previously, when such a character does appear they may be read as representing the whole group, and the characteristics that are given to the individual character are seen to be the characteristics of that group. Such characters have also been described as ‘politically overburdened’. In this case, which is true that the media often portray radical issues in a negative way for example in one of Russell Peter’s show where he was making fun of the Arab people. As he was saying that when we hear the word Arab, we often associated them as terrorist or something that is not positive, and these representations are often portrayed through the media. Media have the power to persuaded audiences’ mind and media always wanted sensational news so that they could sell more money. Instead of showing the good side of the Arabic’s society, which it will sell much towards the public, the media seems, tend to focus of the negative side of the society. Because as we watching television or surfing on the internet, we do not wanting to read something that is normal and not exciting, they wanted to read something that is different, something that is not often happen around them. Therefor, the media has the power to limit your vision from seeing all the side of a story and when a character does appear, people often read it as the representation of the rest of the group.

I remembered that during the class where Sue has mentioned that, with radical jokes you need to be apart of that group to be able to understand what it means and why it’s funny, otherwise you would’ve felt like a outsider and not able to understand what and why it‘s funny.

So, are radical jokes are funny? Are you laughing at the jokes? Or are you laughing at yourself. 

Here are some videos on Russell Peters on Chinese