For my blog post this week I have chosen to deviate away from my normal format. In this piece, I will be diving into an analytical point of view of Wanda Sykes’ comedy special, Not Normal.
In Wanda’s comedy special she delivers a countless amount of politically structured jokes or comments. However, the political structure is not the ‘political’ jokes she makes about our current president, etc. Instead, her politically structured comments come from the societal lifestyle influence or the influence that the world around her has had on her life. An example of this comes at a time mark of 41:11 until around 45:12, Wanda describes to the audience how she had to learn how to “play” from her white family. She noted that “black people don’t play, because when we did, we always heard ‘you better stop playing!’ from our parents.” Looking at the idea of not playing as a child from a statistical perspective, you could infer that black parents tried to limit their children’s outside “playtime” due to increasing numbers of children dying in the streets. In August of 2019 7-year-old, Xavier Usanga was shot and killed from crossfire outside of his home. Xavier was one of the 13 children killed from crossfire or gun violence while they were out playing, or walking to school (Holpuch, 2019). These are just recent incidents of children dying while just trying to be a child. Therefore, through levels of conditioning, parents may not intentionally realize they are trying to save their children by telling them to not play outside.
Another section of the special that Wanda discusses a strong political idea starts from 36:00 until 37:13. In this section, Wanda brings attention to the concept that “white men have a great publicist; black people need a white mans’ publicist. A white guy shoots up a theater. The news looks back in his life and makes you feel sympathetic” (36:00-37:13). Wanda makes a great point here because evidence can be found of this behavior from essentially any situation where a white man is being persecuted for something. For example, in an original reporting from April 21, 1999, the Columbine shooters were being discussed in a report of the incident. The important part of this is that the authors of the article noted that, “But some neighbors described Harris and Klebold as quiet boys - one said Klebold was a gifted and talented student who also took part in a fantasy baseball league” (Guardian, 1999). I can understand that the authors’ intention of this quote was most likely to give the context of psychological problems. However, it does not justify what they did, and honestly, their childhood shouldn’t matter at that point, they became murders. To put into perspective the difference in treatment by the media, I looked at a shootout, that happened on January 6, 2020, in Chicago. Three men were standing outside their homes when a car pulled up and two shooters jumped out and opened fire. Long story short, one shooter was identified in the article as 17-year-old, Michael E. Portis. Nowhere in the article did the author attempt to induce sympathy by discussing his childhood, like they did in the Columbine article. Therefore, Wanda’s point was right, white men get a different form of treatment from news channels and society, as compared to a person of color; this is just an example of an extreme scenario.
Take this blog as you will, but I tried my best to prove Wanda’s comments and jokes through the use of statistics and sociological information.
Websites Used:
Article about the shootout in Chicago: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/1/5/21050892/east-side-shooting-homicide-wounded-gun-violence-avenue-m-elvis-garcia-michael-portis
Article about the Columbine Shooting: https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/21/usgunviolence.usa
Article about Xavier Usanga: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/st-louis-black-children-killed-guns-2019-why
Wanda Sykes Comedy Special:
I did not end up choosing this stand-up for our assignment and I haven't had the chance to watch it on my own time, though I do love Wanda Sykes in the movies I have seen her in, so I am very glad you decided to write about this in your blog! Because I did not watch this stand-up, I'm not sure if Sykes makes this connection herself, but I find it so interesting that you tied Sykes's anecdote about "playing" being for white people to the consequences of "playing" in the street for black people. For white families, it is often completely normal to push your kids out the door to go play outside until dinner time. However, as a white person myself, I think it is safe to infer that we often don't think about why this doesn't stand true for black families, as well. In my other course with Dr. H, we just finished reading "The Hate U Give", which (if you have not read the book/seen the movie) is precisely about black children being the victims of shootings in the street. This issue is still prominent in modern times and will continue to be unless we open and popularize the conversation about these issues.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I very much enjoyed our pre-class chat this morning, and I hope to talk more about the things we have in common sometime. :)