I can't watch" black comedies "anymore. (Edit: Ethnicity, not humor)

[krazykidd]

TL;DR I can't watch black comedies anymore. Those comedies that use a lot of negative black stereotypes unironically to get a few laughs. I feel they encourage prejudice, and hinder the fight against racism.

OT: This was a half though that came into mind, while looking through my netflix movie list, so forgive me if this sounds like i'm rambling. I realised, that i can't watch black comedies anymore, not because the actors are black, but because of the content in said movies and what i feel like they are promoting. Now first off ,i'm a 25 year old black canadian male. As a child/teenager i loved these movies, i found them to be quite funny. You could usually spot one of these movies/shows from a mile away. They usually have a main cast of only black people, sometimes they would throw one or two white or asian character for diversity. As i grew older, and started to resent these types of movies. They are written in a way that, in my opinion, promotes prejudice and worst racism. The actors do and say things that reflects black stereotypes. Be it the way they act or talk , they use racial stereotypes unironically. Which, wouldn't be too bad if people didn't actually believe most , if not all black people behaved this way. I say unironically, because usually the movies are very serious, when they portray black people this way. Usually when they want to be ironic, they just have the main character be white ( sometimes asian) and act stereotypically black, which while funny at first, made me realise that people actually believe black people act this way, and when a white person does it, they are "acting" black.

Bassically this films/shows devolve into , forgive my language, nigga jokes. Very few of the films i have seen, actually make a social comentary about these stereotypes. They basically just say :" this is how black people act, and it is funny". Which is what really grinds my gears. The only exception i can find to this rule is the cartoon " The boondocks". I would suspect if anyone actually watched this they would understand. I'm sure there are more but i haven't seen them.

I just can't believe the number of times people would pick a stereotype that they saw on tv or at the movies and would ask me how come i don't act/talk/dress like that because they thought all black people do. This is made worst by the people who actually do embrace and behave like said stereotypes ( like talking in slang, listing to rap music at max volume, wearing baggy clothes and caps,etc...), but that's another topic. Basically, they are bombarded with black stereotypes and start to believe them.

Anyways my question is:

Do you like black comedies?
Do you think they enforce negative stereotypes?
Am i overreacting ?
What do you think?

Edit:

Edited title, i swear you guys are too smart for your own good.

 

[Queen Michael]

Could you name some of these comedies?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Do you like black comedies? Not particularly. I liked Big Mama and Death at a Funeral though.
Do you think they enforce negative stereotypes? They most certainly can, yes.
Am i overreacting? No, it's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
What do you think? I think you're going to attract a lot of controversy as to the exact definition of "black comedy" but I'm taking it as "movies with an all-black cast".

Love The Boondocks by the way. Tough that Aaron McGruder went on to work on Red Tails though, what a bad movie.

Could you name some of these comedies?

Everything Tyler Perry makes?

 

[krazykidd]

Could you name some of these comedies?

I'm talking about comedies with:

Eddy murphy
Chris Rock
Kevin hart
Ice cube
Tyler perry

Movies like:

Big mama's house
Madea's big happy family
Love and basketball
Diary of a mad black woman
Death at a funeral
Barbershop
Are we there yet?
Good hair
The nutter professor
Think like a man
The ride along
Soul plane
First sunday
Friday
Boyz n the hood
Lottery ticket
Baby boy
Half baked
Mac and devin go to high school
How high

And anything Tyler perry makes. Seriously i think Tyler perry took black people back 20 years with his shotty movies.

 

[Zontar]

Wait, THAT's what black comedy means? I thought black comedy was comedy that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Being a white person, I don't feel like I really have a right to say anything about these movies. I also feel like these movies aren't for me to begin with, which reinforces the other thought. All that aside though, I can't help but feel like the ones I have seen pander to the lowest common denominator.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wait, THAT's what black comedy means? I thought black comedy was comedy that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.

Apparently Wikipedia feels the same way. And the dictionary, and TvTropes, and Urban Dictionary... but OP clearly meant it in a different way.

 

[HardkorSB]

I don't like "black comedies" because most of them are just bad movies in general.
I honestly can't name even one that I would consider a good movie, not from the top of my head anyway.

When How High came out, people were creaming themselves over it, quoting lines etc.
I watched it and hated it, especially the "characters". The dean who was the bad guy was the only person I could relate to.
Did I chuckle a few times? Sure, but I chuckled at Transformers 2 here and there, I even let out a "heh" once or twice during Meet the Spartans and that was the worst thing I've seen in my life. If you keep throwing shit at a wall, eventually some of it is going to stick.

To me, it almost seems as if only 2-3 people are writing all these comedies. Either that or they just rip each other off.
The humor, although the movies are mostly R rated, is very childish ("haha, big fat ***** is having sex with a skinny short guy" or "haha, Asians have small dicks"), like a 12-year old wrote it.

What pisses me off is that there aren't really any "real" black movies. I've never seen a good cop action drama or a sci-fi movie written and performed mostly by black people. All I see are dumb comedies. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always dumb comedies (well, there were "12 Years a Slave" and "Fruitvale Station" recently so I guess that's a step up). Maybe it's because they always turn a profit (seriously, there's a big market for these types of movies and the filmmakers exploit that to no end).

 

[Coakle]

Wow, that is quite the list.

Do you like black comedies?
Not to the extent where I get excited when I a new one is announced. I haven't seen a lot of them. I've avoided the Tyler Perry movies because of their reputation. I also don't find movies about Stoners or the "Teen Movie" that funny.

I've enjoyed some of the older black comedies. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) is a good time. The Boondocks is very well done. Barbershop was kinda weird.

Some other movies that I dunno if they count as Black Comedy for reasons I can't articulate. Does "Blazing Saddles" count? It has social commentary on race, the main character is black and is part of a black community. Most older Eddie Murphy movies are classics. I also I liked the first two Rush Hour movies. It was a while ago but I think Head of State is still funny. If anything it should have improved. Who knows?


Do you think they enforce negative stereotypes?
Yeah, most of them probably do.

Am i overreacting?
Naw, if a comedy bothers you and you can't laugh at the jokes then it makes sense to turn it off.

What do you think?

What do you mean by this?

Is it how I try to reconcile my morals with the ugly side of some of the media I enjoy. Y'know, the times where I'll laugh at a movie, but find my enjoyment crippled in retrospect.

OR

What I think about giving up on a genre?

OR

Was that referring to the three questions above it?

 

[shogunblade]

I don't like "black comedies" because most of them are just bad movies in general.
I honestly can't name even one that I would consider a good movie, not from the top of my head anyway.

What pisses me off is that there aren't really any "real" black movies. I've never seen a good cop action drama or a sci-fi movie written and performed mostly by black people. All I see are dumb comedies. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always dumb comedies (well, there were "12 Years a Slave" and "Fruitvale Station" recently so I guess that's a step up). Maybe it's because they always turn a profit (seriously, there's a big market for these types of movies and the filmmakers exploit that to no end).

For the Sci-Fi thing: You have to think about the audiences who would watch a movie with a black cast, though. How many people lost their shit over the Human Torch being black, being played by Michael B. Jordan (Who was great in Chronicle, in my opinion), when they probably wanted another white guy? This will be a mold breaker, and then maybe black Sci-Fi might be more prevalent, but for right now, it's still as taboo as anybody attempting to make a Gay Cowboy movie.

As for the 12YAS/Fruitvale Station: Black entertainment exists in either Drama or Comedy, those two are just especially important drama films, one of which might end up winning an academy award, but they aren't revolutionary. Amistad, Beloved, Glory and The Color Purple before it are just really moving films, though I recognize that Black director Steve McQueen at the director's chair of 12YAS makes it bigger, and going for modern films with black rights issues, the oeuvres of Spike Lee (Early Spike Lee) and John Singleton make up a lot of that as well.

Not to shit on you, just saying that with the exception of 12 Years a Slave's milestone director, those types of film have been made before, albeit with white directors. In all honesty, I really want to see 12 Years myself.

 

[BQE]

Apparently Wikipedia feels the same way. And the dictionary, and TvTropes, and Urban Dictionary... but OP clearly meant it in a different way.

Wait, THAT's what black comedy means? I thought black comedy was comedy that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.

A black comedy (dark comedy) is a comic work that employs black humor, which, in its most basic definition, is humor that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter. Black humor corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor.

The term black humor (from the French humour noir) was coined by the surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935,to designate a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often relying on topics such as death.

Breton coined the term for his book Anthology of Black Humor (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor, and included excerpts from 45 other writers. Breton included both examples in which the wit arises from a victim, with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim, whose suffering is trivialized, and leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as is the case with Sade. Black humor is related to that of the grotesque genre.

These gentlemen are correct, that is nowhere close to the actual understood definition of black comedy. I think the word you are implying in your phrasing is Black People Comedy. I'm not sure if this particular omission was due to an oversight or an intentional attempt to avoid offense.

If I had to purely speculate then I might guess that you aren't well-oriented when it comes to African American culture. Some of these movies, Tyler Perry's particularly, come from a heritage based around these types of experiences and phenomena involving black and typically southern cultures. What some people might deem stereotypes are typically based on trends codified due to circumstance, such as the origin of soul food which was a result of the disadvantage that came with slavery and those recently liberated being forced to deal with a difficult time.

Much of these films reflect these phenomena in a positive and humorous light, reminding people of culture that may be becoming lost to today's trends and ideas.

Just some thoughts.

 

[shogunblade]

Anyways my question is:

Do you like black comedies?
Do you think they enforce negative stereotypes?
Am i overreacting ?
What do you think?

I'm not a big fan of black comedies, but to be honest, I don't much care for white comedies either. Comedy as a whole isn't very funny, to use genitalia as a punch-line doesn't work for me, and everything is too culturally relevant, so I end up cringing at how dated most of those jokes will be, so I really don't enjoy them as much as I could.

Do I think they enforce negative stereotypes?
I think it depends on the movie. With the exception of one joke, I didn't find Death at a Funeral very negative, really. If you made the cast white, it wouldn't be all that different (I still wouldn't find it very funny). Movies like the Friday films I think do, but nobody in those films are anything but cartoon characters (I remember the Hispanic characters in the sequel being nothing more than "What you saying to me now, Holmes?" types, and it was bad then).

Am I overreacting? What do you think?
I don't think so. I don't know what else to add.

As for your list of movies, I can provide counters to most of those actors that I liked:
Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence (One black actor I do not enjoy at all) did Life, and that movie made the color of their skin integral to the plot. It's actually a very funny, very good movie.
Chris Rock did a movie a few years back called I Think I love My Wife which was very good. It's very low key and sort of goes off rails near the end, but it's a well made comedy/drama.

Movies like:

Love and basketball
Good hair
Boyz n the hood
Baby boy

I must say out right that with the exception of Boyz n The Hood, I haven't seen any of these, but aren't most of these dramas, excluding Good Hair, which is a documentary by Chris Rock?

As for most of those films, they are all bad comedies, but Are We There Yet?, even if you made that with a white cast, it would still suck, and that's a family movie, you kind of have to write those off as inherently bad in most cases.

I don't disagree with you at all on anything you said. The Boondocks is the one example that makes me laugh, but that's because Aaron Macgruder is a satirist, and a damn good one. It makes me wish he would write movies, just to be the counter of all the negative jokes you do not like so much.

 

[Queen Michael]

Could you name some of these comedies?

I'm talking about comedies with:

Eddy murphy
Chris Rock
Kevin hart
Ice cube
Tyler perry

Movies like:

Big mama's house
Madea's big happy family
Love and basketball
Diary of a mad black woman
Death at a funeral
Barbershop
Are we there yet?
Good hair
The nutter professor
Think like a man
The ride along
Soul plane
First sunday
Friday
Boyz n the hood
Lottery ticket
Baby boy
Half baked
Mac and devin go to high school
How high

And anything Tyler perry makes. Seriously i think Tyler perry took black people back 20 years with his shotty movies.

We don't get a lot of those here in Sweden. Most people here have never heard of Tyler Perry.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Could you name some of these comedies?

I'm talking about comedies with:

Eddy murphy

If that means you can no longer watch Beverly Hills Cop 1 & 2, then you have my sympathy.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Do you like black comedies? Not particularly. I liked Big Mama and Death at a Funeral though.

Watch the original Death At a Funeral. It's a MUCH better film. (Directed by Frank Oz!)

 

[FPLOON]

Apparently Wikipedia feels the same way. And the dictionary, and TvTropes, and Urban Dictionary... but OP clearly meant it in a different way.

Wait, THAT's what black comedy means? I thought black comedy was comedy that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.

A black comedy (dark comedy) is a comic work that employs black humor, which, in its most basic definition, is humor that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter. Black humor corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor.

The term black humor (from the French humour noir) was coined by the surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935,to designate a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often relying on topics such as death.

Breton coined the term for his book Anthology of Black Humor (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor, and included excerpts from 45 other writers. Breton included both examples in which the wit arises from a victim, with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim, whose suffering is trivialized, and leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as is the case with Sade. Black humor is related to that of the grotesque genre.

These gentlemen are correct, that is nowhere close to the actual understood definition of black comedy. I think the word you are implying in your phrasing is Black People Comedy. I'm not sure if this particular omission was due to an oversight or an intentional attempt to avoid offense.

You see, that's where I prefer calling certain movies "dark comedies" instead of "black comedies" because of how the term "black comedy" seems to lean more towards what the OP uses when describing movies with a mostly-to-all-black cast... If a movie has a dark sense of humor, then it's a "dark comedy"... It makes more sense to call it that than a "black comedy" at this point...

OT: Well, as a black man, I always never liked Tyler Perry movies even when he's not even in it... I even prefer Kevin Hart to his stand-up the same way I prefer Ice Cube to his music and nothing else...

With that said, I rarely prefer your understanding of "black comedies" outside of The Boondocks, Do The Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, Half Baked (mostly due to Dave Chappelle), Don't Be A Menace, and most of Eddie Murphy's early movies before The Nutty Professor remake... My mom still enjoys certain "black comedies" like The Best Man Holiday and a few Tyler Perry movies he ONLY produced, not directed and/or makes an appearance in... Other than that, I just do NOT care for them in the slightest and would much rather watch multiple Workaholics/Boondocks episodes than those kind of movies...

 

[blackrave]

[initial reaction]
If you can't enjoy "Blackadder goes Forth" than you should feel sorry for yourself, sir!

[after reading OP]
OOOOOOH, so that is what you meant.
Really? Is this what people mean by "black comedy" now?
I mostly call them "crappy comedies", "waste of time and energy", "no, not again!" or simply "WHY?"
But I guess terminology differs on the other side of Atlantic pond.

 

[lacktheknack]

Eh. It's just another way that Hollywood has failed to appeal to me for years. I rarely go to the movies, and I never watch any comedy anymore.

I don't think it's insidious. Racist, yeah probably, but malicious? Meh. I've never been one to viciously condemn people for not thinking something through, especially if everyone else does it.

 

[wulf3n]

This is made worst by the people who actually do embrace and behave like said stereotypes ( like talking in slang, listing to rap music at max volume, wearing baggy clothes and caps,etc...), but that's another topic.

I think that's the real issue here, as it becomes a chicken or the egg scenario. You argue that these movies promote the belief in these stereotypes, but isn't it just as likely these movies are feeding off those who like and adopt the stereotypes.

The majority of people recognize that movies are in general a fantasy, and there are bigger things to worry about from those that do than believing a comedic stereotype.

What's more likely to feed into these perceptions by the masses, is like you said seeing real life examples that have a greater potential for reinforcing negative stereotypes.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

Anyways my question is:

Do you like black comedies?
Do you think they enforce negative stereotypes?
Am i overreacting ?
What do you think?

I'm not a big fan of black comedies, but to be honest, I don't much care for white comedies either. Comedy as a whole isn't very funny, to use genitalia as a punch-line doesn't work for me, and everything is too culturally relevant, so I end up cringing at how dated most of those jokes will be, so I really don't enjoy them as much as I could.

Do I think they enforce negative stereotypes?
I think it depends on the movie. With the exception of one joke, I didn't find Death at a Funeral very negative, really. If you made the cast white, it wouldn't be all that different (I still wouldn't find it very funny). Movies like the Friday films I think do, but nobody in those films are anything but cartoon characters (I remember the Hispanic characters in the sequel being nothing more than "What you saying to me now, Holmes?" types, and it was bad then).

the cast of Death at a Funeral IS white, or was? it is a british comedy film written and directed by Frank Oz (yes THAT one) which was remade by him for american audiences. almost word for word and scene for scene, with a few black jokes thrown in the mix, as well as the climax of the movie being funnier. so if they sound like actual people in the film, it is because they were meant to sound like actual people. the original is a great film, i highly recommend you give it a watch if you liked the remake.