Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: With the debate over diversity in Hollywood growing louder, the conversation will shift toward the world of comedy with the announcement of the Diversity in Comedy Festival by Hollywood’s Second City comedy club.
The goal of the October event is to offer a stage for people of color, LGBT performers and other groups that may feel marginalized in the industry.
2 comments:
It is great to see that a leading comedy like Second City is taking the initiative to address the lack of diversity in show business. However, there has always been a stigma where the search for diversity stops at level of of “having a diverse group of people,” while the level of diversity in content almost remains the same. It is not enough to just have diverse people in the industry. It is more crucial to produce content that highlights their true experiences without exoticizing them. In reality, most of the popular content in comedy is still targeted towards entertaining more privileged members of the society.
In the past few years, TV shows like Fresh Off the Boat, Black-ish, and many others that portray families which can be classified as “diverse” have become immensely popular. And the industry has been patting on its own back about how this progress. Indeed, this is a step forward, but sometimes I still feel that the humor is targeted towards the white audience. For example, as a Chinese person, I never really enjoyed Fresh Off the Boat. (I am speaking as someone who came from another country and took years to understand and appreciate entertainment and comedy in the English-speaking/American context) To be honest, I don’t see anything realistic about that show. There is no “Chinese humor” in that show. I do recognize that the entirely Chinese cast is revolutionary, and the script addresses many aspects of the Chinese immigrant family life. However, the humor, the jokes — there is nothing Chinese about it. I have never encountered a Chinese family or Chinese-American family who speaks like that. The show is full of American pop culture references, but in real life most Chinese immigrant parents only watch Chinese TV shows and rarely get into American shows and celebrities. Indeed, there are many second-generation Chinese immigrants teens who enjoy this show, but their taste is so shaped by American media that I think their appreciation of the show cannot truly mean that the show is reflective of Chinese humor and wit.
Comedy is all about the nuances of language, but in shows like Fresh Off the Boat, where characters coming from a different language background, those fun nuances are purely fabricated and enforced upon the characters for the entertainment of others -- mainly native English speakers. Indeed, having diverse members in the industry is the first step towards having diverse content, but we still have a LONG long way to go.
--Joyce Wang (xinyiw)
As an American-born Chinese, I feel as though this event would be a great opportunity to address the lack of representation of Asians in Hollywood. I am not usually outspoken about Asian representation, but when critics post nonstop complaints about Zendaya receiving a role not intended for a black person but stay silent when actresses like Emma Stone portraying a part-Asian female, I can't help but feel the true lack of equality in Hollywood. Despite the recent debate sparked by lack of representation in Hollywood, I still feel as though it has not reached far enough, as this post was quick to label its African-American headliners but failed to mention any of the other acts (perhaps because those acts did not add enough to the diversity the event is promoting). Of course, a lot of this is my own speculation, but I do genuinely hope that this event turns into a true turning point for Hollywood to promote all kinds of diversity.
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