Earlier I talked about sketch comedy and the world of Saturday Night Live. However, the other day, I was looking through the selection of stand up comedy on Netflix and noticed something interesting with the way comedians sort of market themselves.
It seems that whatever race the comedian is, they kind of tend to make the title and content of their shows fit certain stereotypes. For example, Louis CK is a white male and his stand up tends to appeal mostly to white males. A similar thing occurs with people of color in the stand up comedy world, like Kevin Hart. In watching some of these shows of people of color, such as Katt Williams or Reggie Watts, they tend to live up to the stereotypes of "loud, ghetto" black people. They have titles like "Why ___ So Crazy?" or "Pimpin' Pimpin.'"They talk in very stereotypical ways and usually make jokes about black people, specifically black women. The audience eats this up, however.
I feel like these stereotypes are not representative of the African American population, so why is this comedy so popular? Why does it seem as if stand up comedy is segregated? Is white stand up too isolating for other races in terms of content?
Comedy is something I am very interested in, as I said earlier. I plan to do one or two more posts on this topic, but I just wanted to get my basic thoughts out while I noticed this pattern. Let me know what you think in the comments!
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