“Argh! I hate this PC culture! Why can’t I be racist and have people think I'm funny anymore?”
Admittedly, I’ve never heard anyone say that sentence verbatim. But, and I’m sorry to make a sweeping generalization here, I can’t help but feel that that’s what a lot of people who say that are secretly thinking.
Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I feel like the latest trend of carefully combing through movies, TV, and music videos in search of something offensive goes too far. For instance, I didn’t agree that Coldplay’s “Hymn for the Weekend” music video was cultural appropriation, because at least to me it seemed very respectful. I also don’t have an issue with Macklemore’s “White Privilege II” (I mean, first we get mad at him for not saying anything about police brutality, then we get mad at him for saying something about police brutality?). For the most part, I feel like our country is moving in a positive direction, one that is more tolerant of otherness.
Let’s look at this in terms of our nation’s history.
Generally speaking, we’ve always moved forward in a more tolerant direction. For instance, at the end of the Civil War, white people realized that maybe it wasn’t so cool to own slaves, and that maybe black people were worth that extra two-fifths of a person. Maybe they should even vote (although maybe we should wait another hundred years, give or take, to really enforce that voting amendment). In 1920, white men realized that maybe women weren’t too busy between menstruation and birthing to cast a ballot. In 2015, the Supreme Court finally made it official that the risks involved in letting gay people marry were zero-to-none.
Anyway, the pattern here is that, over time, the government has accepted more and more different types of Americans as being equal. When these people are equal, they gain the power to speak out about things that they consider wrong, because their opinions are finally respected. In 2016, blackface is something that most intelligent people would never do. Of course, it does pop up now and again, seemingly always at a Southern college’s frat party, but then again that doesn’t contradict anything I said in the previous sentence. But during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, people did it all the time. Big stars like Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Al Jolson, and even Laurence Olivier did it. I can’t help but wonder how people reacted back then when someone said, “Hey, wasn’t that Al Jolson fella being a bit insensitive with that blackface? I thought it was problematic.” Someone probably responded, “Stop being so sensitive Sal, next you’ll be saying the government should be enforcing the 15th amendment!”
The fact is someone had to be the first to say it was offensive, and I guarantee that back then, society, which is often resistant to change, thought that someone was just being a baby.
Why are you being offensive?
Society is constantly shifting in what it likes and doesn’t like. Just ask Iggy Azalea. But part of an entertainer’s job, especially a comedian’s job, is to keep up with what society does and doesn’t like, after all, entertainers are trying to appeal to an audience. That’s why I can’t help but roll my eyes when comedians say that the world is getting “too PC.” I agree with Sarah Silverman, who countered those comedians in an interview with Vanity Fairby saying, “To a degree, everyone’s going to be offended by something, so you can’t just decide on your material based on not offending anyone. But, I do think it’s important, as a comedian, as a human, to change with the times. I think it’s a sign of being old if you’re put off by that.”
I think Silverman’s first sentence is important. A large part of comedy is about being offensive, but our best comedians are offensive in original and creative ways, and therein lies the difference. Making “offensive” jokes about touchy topics that are thought-provoking is innovative. Making jokes based on stereotypes about people who already suffer enough from systematic discrimination is punching down, and that’s lazy.
Speaking for myself here, I’m tired of the jokes about black women having “funny” names. I’m tired of the jokes about gay people being flamboyant. I’m tired of the jokes about women being stupid, and about black people being poor, and Asians being smart, and about Latino people’s long, (again) “funny” names. I could go on and on. The aforementioned groups of people have so much more to offer than that. That’s what this “PC culture” is trying to show.
That’s why a show like Fresh Off the Boat is so successful. Despite some saying its not faithful to the memoir it is based on, the show has been widely hailed by critics as a positive and realistic representation of Asian-American families. Though the show does occasionally poke fun at Asian stereotypes, it far from relies on them, and proves how successful a show about people of color can be without relying on the ugly jokes once propagated by the successful, non-diverse majority. And this show would not have been possible without a culture that demanded to see more diversity on screen, and it would not have happened if ABC’s president had said, “stop being so sensitive.”
Back before there were any Asian people any power positions in Hollywood, it was “okay” to perform in “yellow-face” and make offensive Asian jokes. What made it okay was the fact that no one had given an Asian the chance to rise through the ranks and say “maybe let’s not do that” without the feeling that he would lose his job. But as times change, Hollywood has listened to more Asians, and society has come to realize that “yellow-face” is one of those “maybe let’s not do that” things.
I read an interesting article that said that our country was once had a “guilt” culture, but it’s now becoming a “shame” culture. The difference in this author’s eyes was that in a guilt culture, people felt bad on their own for doing things that are considered bad; but now, people are shamed into feeling they are bad by the overwhelming voices of others. I think this is an intriguing concept, but I’d argue that we’ve always been a shame culture, it’s just that the type of people who are being shamed is shifting.
It’s fair to say women were “shamed” by not being allowed to vote until 1920. It’s fair to say that black people were “shamed” when they were denied the government loans to buy houses that white people were given in the 40’s, creating the white suburbs and black ghettos. It’s fair to say gay people were “shamed” by having their way of life be considered a crime in some states until 2003. Except, this shaming is more than an angry BuzzFeed article, or an unimpressed comedy club audience, or a millennial who’s now yelling at you. This shaming came from the government and actually has a lasting affect on generations of lives. Now, that shaming is steadily shifting over to the people who’ve been propagating the shaming for our country’s entire history.
So I apologize for not feeling sorry for you now that people aren’t laughing at your dumb jokes anymore. Maybe they’re just not funny.