"Who Dat Say Who Dat?" Racial Masquerade, Humor, and the Rise of American Animation by Nicholas Sammond in "Funny Pictures".
Question of whether something can be racist and still funny and if good people can be racist?
Page 136, "Interlocutor" the white character who asks the questions of the minstrel characters in a comedy routine.
"End Men" the minstrel characters who never make sense, conclude with nonsense.
Animation borrows from minstrel shows and makes use of stereotypes as shorthand.
Page 141, "Turkey in the straw" formerly known as "Old Zip Coon".
Page 142, "Pickaninny", the minstrel trickster (such as Felix or Bugs).
Page 144, "confusion between personal and institutional racism" , ie, individual people may not find something racist they they were involved in making, but that doesn't make it not racist.
Page 147, "a trickster character, chased by an enraged attacker, suddenly turns and savages that attacker by shooting him or blowing him up. Rather than being reduced to a bloody mess, the attacker is literally blown into racist black caricature, expressing his abject humiliation at the hands of the animate minstrel trickster.".
Page 148-9, Marx versus Freud on comedy.
Page 149, "The white hand of the animator crated in the animate minstrel a compulsion to rebel against the conditions of its making and destined it to fail in that rebellion. And if that makes for laughter, that laughter is nervous; it is tinged with regret and shame, with guilty pleasure. And it begs the question of who is laughing and how".
Question of whether something can be racist and still funny and if good people can be racist?
Page 136, "Interlocutor" the white character who asks the questions of the minstrel characters in a comedy routine.
"End Men" the minstrel characters who never make sense, conclude with nonsense.
Animation borrows from minstrel shows and makes use of stereotypes as shorthand.
Page 141, "Turkey in the straw" formerly known as "Old Zip Coon".
Page 142, "Pickaninny", the minstrel trickster (such as Felix or Bugs).
Page 144, "confusion between personal and institutional racism" , ie, individual people may not find something racist they they were involved in making, but that doesn't make it not racist.
Page 147, "a trickster character, chased by an enraged attacker, suddenly turns and savages that attacker by shooting him or blowing him up. Rather than being reduced to a bloody mess, the attacker is literally blown into racist black caricature, expressing his abject humiliation at the hands of the animate minstrel trickster.".
Page 148-9, Marx versus Freud on comedy.
Page 149, "The white hand of the animator crated in the animate minstrel a compulsion to rebel against the conditions of its making and destined it to fail in that rebellion. And if that makes for laughter, that laughter is nervous; it is tinged with regret and shame, with guilty pleasure. And it begs the question of who is laughing and how".
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