Racial humor of a different era
It was only 1984. And it was racial humor. But this Saturday Night Live classic is so much more gentle than today’s humor, and I think it’s genuinely funny. Murphy is mocking white people here, for sure, but he’s also mocking black people, albeit in a more subtle way. He was an equal opportunity mocker:
Did you first see that video when it initially came out? (I did.) Or did you first see it at some later point, but before today? If so, has your opinion of its humor changed between your initial viewing and now?
I saw this on SNL when it was first aired, and I thought it brilliantly captured the paranoia of some in the black community. Something like this could never be aired today, sad to say.
I also think Chris Rock’s stand-up riff on why “black people hate niggas” would get his house burned down today. Funny beyond belief.
I saw this on the early SNL as well as Murphy’s recurring gig as Velvet Jones who ran a school for “Ho-s” (how do you spell the plural of a make-believe word so that it isn’t confused with a real word?) He was really funny because he poked his thumb in everyone’s eyes.
My opinion of humour hasn’t changed much at all…but then my kids regularly say “Dad! That’s racist.” Then I laugh at my kids….because I know they know better.
Many, many years ago when I was growing up in Pittsburgh, a white reporter from the Post-Gazette posed as a Black man and spent several weeks in the south.
His articles may still exist in their archives if they kept them for about 75 years; doubt they survived that long.
I saw it and still think it’s funny. Today, it is probably considered as a documentary by a large segment of the population. “Look at all the white privilege.”
I watched it for the first time and thought it was funny and even gentile. Back then, it was possible to have a conversation about race and culture. Today, it is a minefield that few want to venture into.
However, if I dare to “go there”, I honestly don’t think the real divisions in America are really about race, per se. They are about culture. The vast majority in America don’t really think much about race until they are confronted with a large cultural divide in mannerisms and dialect. And when that culure is one that exalts victimhood, it is bound to produce negative reactions, even if those reactions are stifled to avoid being thought a racist.
That was aired back when SNL was must watch tv. We sometimes watched on our own, other times we were at a party and everyone huddled around the tv at 11:30 to watch it live. It was funny then and is funny now. Back then everyone knew who Eddie was making fun of (hint: all of us).
I watched it for the first time and thought it was funny and even gentile. Back then, it was possible to have a conversation about race and culture. Today, it is a minefield that few want to venture into.
Disagree. There are always minefields. It’s just that the mines in one area expire and new ones are planted elsewhere. For about 20 years (1965-85), you couldn’t talk about family relations in black populations as a source of trouble without having your character attacked. And the red haze types pretended that there was no particular problem with street crime (it was all perceptual). OTOH, the student affairs apparat on most campuses has in our own time generated a lunacy that wasn’t present 35 years ago anywhere but kook centrals like Brown University.
One place where the minefield is a great deal larger is in the realm of homosexuality. In 1981, that was a boutique cause promoted by The Village Voice and the like. It wasn’t a priority for most liberals, whose ambitions didn’t extend beyond anti-discrimination law in some venues. It wasn’t fashionable among any segment of the population outside certain occupational guilds. Modal bourgeois liberal approach was don’t-ask.
Look at what Keenan Ivory Wayans and his crew was producing ca. 1991. Doubt you’d see it today.
Many people actually believe a version of the world presented here. The whole White Privilege thing is similar to this. So is the world believed in by the Meryl Streeps of the world, who think that studios pay male actors more than they have to because — well, it’s just a bro thing, its the way men treat each other when women aren’t around.
I’m not the least bit embarrassed to admit that I now find most black people to be both tiresome and racist — and not at all funny. Whenever possible, I avoid them. I can remember the Eddie Murphy bit from when it was broadcast, but that seems like a century ago. Today, the bit feels more layered, more bitter — and more funny.
“Many, many years ago when I was growing up in Pittsburgh, a white reporter from the Post-Gazette posed as a Black man and spent several weeks in the south.”
That may have been John Howard Griffin who wrote, “Black lIke Me.” That is the 50th anniversary edition. I read it when it came out.
That was aired back when SNL was must watch tv.
Hasn’t been must watch since about 1979.
I don’t think this could be broadcast anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM
This was unusual even in the time it was broadcast
I’m pretty sure I saw this when it was first broadcast because I saw almost every SNL show until at least after Eddie Murphy left the show as a regular.
If I recall correctly, this is how I felt about this particular bit: One or two good jokes, not carried out particularly well – just like so many of SNL’s bits.
On seeing this today, that feeling persists. However, I’m pretty sure that this bit was NOT mocking white people.
@Art Deco
Agree that SNL ceased to be must watch tv, but for me that was well after Eddie Murphy left so late 80’s I think. There were still moments worth viewing, but I stopped staying up to watch eventually. It is totally irrelevant today.
Never have watched SNL, so the bit was new to me. Murphy’s opening was almost certainly quoting from Griffin’s book (published 1961) or more likely the film (1964)*, so that was probably the main target of the lampoon: mocking superficial societal observations as if they are deep universal truths (aka the Margaret Mead School of Anthropology) by turning the view around and skewering the “black” view of “white America” in order to disparage Griffin’s view of “black America” by showing that one interpretation is as shallow and mostly wrong as the other.
As for the “white privilege” parodied here: my brother was a bank loan officer.
Yeah, no.
*Wikipedia also notes a “documentary book” published in 1997, after this skit aired.
I used to watch “In Living Color” years ago if I happened to be at the house and have the TV on, while it was being broadcast. Some may remember that Jim Carrey was “the white guy” on the show.
I don’t know that the Wayan’s brother’s ruthless sense of humor would travel too well today.
There are of course, among “people of color”, some pretty ruthless commentators on YouTube who’ve got a comic edge to what they do. And what they seem to be trying to do is to decouple “African American” from “ghetto”, while having to wage war against all comers in their effort to do so.
One example is Tommy Sotomayor whose relentless attacks on “hair hats” is an attempt to shake a subset of women out of their complacency, and to take a real pride in who and what they are: as opposed to an empty “pride” based on weaves, nail salon visits, and an empty and even brutal vainglory.
He can be seen being interviewed on the Rubin Report. Or the more adventurous may take a direct look at his YouTube videos …
This skit would be fiercely condemned for ridiculing and marginalizing
black community’s concerns and rationalizing segregation and institutional racism against black people if it was aired today. atheist socialist loves to claim how destructive and unproductive religions are to society, nothing could be more destructive than devoted following of political ideologies especially socialism
Wasn’t it Murphy who, on SNL, had a skit where he claimed to hate white folk?
“I hate white folk because they is white. W I T E white.” (Can’t find it on youtube now, but fine semi-reggae song “Kill the white people”, plus funny “I love white people” – he grew up with a white maid! …)
Blazing saddles also couldn’t be made today.
The 70s were a good time to make fun of racism, and make anti-black racism socially unacceptable. Too bad there was a growth of pro-black = anti-white racism, which was blamed for below-white average economic success.
The 70% of black kids NOT growing up with married mother & father means a lot more future non-success. The promiscuity is not because of racism, but the bad economic result for blacks is going to be blamed, mostly wrongly, on racism.
As long as black couples choose to copulate outside of marriage more than white folks, there will continue to be significant differences in economic outcomes. That’s the choice which freedom allows, but being irresponsible with freedom is still irresponsible.