Yeah, making a racist, bad take joke was so worth it. It surely wouldn’t have made Shirley look out of touch that way, making a different joke that wasn’t as SUPER EDGY.
Cast member Yvette Nicole Brown mentioned that it did not seem the joke was understood by those criticizing it, as there was context that in her view made it different from blackface.
The joke was that it was a passing resemblance, Shirley makes an assumption, and everyone else moves on because it isn’t actually blackface. This is very different from the other shows like 30 rock and always sunny where the characters were in actual blackface while mocking blackface. I still think those shouldn’t have been removed since they were mocking blackface, but this is completely different.
The joke is that Chang’s character is in Drow makeup, and because Shirley is out of touch with games, she thinks that the Drow make up is blackface.
The depiction of the Drow makeup has chosen an “ambigious” shade of black/grey that made it seem to some viewers or people who want to see it that way , as blackface, in real life, not as a character in the show. This caused problems.
The suggestion, is that if they chose grey or some other ashy shade , and or gone more elaborate with the make up, like red contacts, or pointy ears, they could have done EXACT joke, but made it not “ambigious” and avoided the heat that the episode has actually gotten.
I would even say that having a LESS blackface looking make up would further accentuate Shirley’s out of touchness, making it funnier, as it would be more ridiculous that A) She would think that make up is blackface and B) Shirley thinks that’s what Chang thinks making himself look like a black person would entail, red eyes and pointy ears and a non human shade of darkness.
Furthermore, expanding on my other point which was not adressed in your post :
I guess I’m out of touch with the race politics jokes of 1890s, so the parody seems out of time for me.
Maybe if they threw in a tin pan alley, player piano or travelling curio joke, I’d have gotten it a bit better.
What the fuck are it’s always sunny et al doing making fun of this outdated shit in the first place? Did they get that mad at Spike Lee making Bamboozled and using blackface as an analogy of people acting up to stereotypes to get ahead in life , that they had to address it as a commentary on blackface, an “artform” from the 1890s as a target?
The suggestion, is that if they chose grey or some other ashy shade , and or gone more elaborate with the make up, like red contacts, or pointy ears, they could have done EXACT joke, but made it not “ambigious” and avoided the heat that the episode has actually gotten.
That is the kind of mindset that leads to banning any mockery of a thing because it contains anything close to the thing, because you don’t understand nuance.
What the fuck are it’s always sunny et al doing making fun of this outdated shit in the first place?
Yeah, making a racist, bad take joke was so worth it. It surely wouldn’t have made Shirley look out of touch that way, making a different joke that wasn’t as SUPER EDGY.
I’ll bet you don’t understand Tropic Thunder’s humor either.
I guess I’m out of touch with the race politics jokes of 1890s, so the parody seems out of time for me.
EDIT : Maybe if they threw in a tin pan alley, player piano or travelling curio joke, I’d have gotten it a bit better.
Well, the first problem is that you think the Drow makeup is blackface or that Shirley being out of touch is a bad thing. Shirley’s character was out of touch initially and she developed over time as part of her character arc. Yvette Nicole Brown knew it wasn’t blackface and that the joke went over some people’s heads.
The joke was that it was a passing resemblance, Shirley makes an assumption, and everyone else moves on because it isn’t actually blackface. This is very different from the other shows like 30 rock and always sunny where the characters were in actual blackface while mocking blackface. I still think those shouldn’t have been removed since they were mocking blackface, but this is completely different.
OK. Let’s break it all the way down explicitly.
The joke is that Chang’s character is in Drow makeup, and because Shirley is out of touch with games, she thinks that the Drow make up is blackface.
The depiction of the Drow makeup has chosen an “ambigious” shade of black/grey that made it seem to some viewers or people who want to see it that way , as blackface, in real life, not as a character in the show. This caused problems.
The suggestion, is that if they chose grey or some other ashy shade , and or gone more elaborate with the make up, like red contacts, or pointy ears, they could have done EXACT joke, but made it not “ambigious” and avoided the heat that the episode has actually gotten.
I would even say that having a LESS blackface looking make up would further accentuate Shirley’s out of touchness, making it funnier, as it would be more ridiculous that A) She would think that make up is blackface and B) Shirley thinks that’s what Chang thinks making himself look like a black person would entail, red eyes and pointy ears and a non human shade of darkness.
Furthermore, expanding on my other point which was not adressed in your post :
What the fuck are it’s always sunny et al doing making fun of this outdated shit in the first place? Did they get that mad at Spike Lee making Bamboozled and using blackface as an analogy of people acting up to stereotypes to get ahead in life , that they had to address it as a commentary on blackface, an “artform” from the 1890s as a target?
That is the kind of mindset that leads to banning any mockery of a thing because it contains anything close to the thing, because you don’t understand nuance.
Mocking terrible people by mocking things that terrible people do and it isn’t like it is in the distant past.