Abstract

AbstractWhile many have critiqued the racist, sexist, and otherwise prejudiced nature of comedic rhetorics, few have considered how identity-based comedy, particularly racial comedy, functions productively, rather than merely oppressively. Studies of comedic rhetorics have primarily focused on Black and white comedians, but the increasing number and variety of popular comedians of color demands investigation into how comedians from different racial backgrounds use humor to rhetorically articulate the boundaries of their racial(ized) identities. This essay theorizes comedic rhetoric, particularly stereotypes in comedy, as a constitutive form of rhetoric that can articulate generative racial identities as they exist within the ambivalent spaces of in-group stereotypes. By pairing polysemy, Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony, and Tina Chen’s theory of impersonation to analyze the standup performances of Asian American comedian Ali Wong, this essay ultimately represents a necessary intervention into understanding racial comedy and stereotypes as potentially productive sites for examining racial identity.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2021-03-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0307
CompPile
Open Access
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References (78)

  1. 1. Ali Wong, Baby Cobra (Los Gatos, CA: Netflix, 2016).
  2. 2. Kelsey Klemme, “How Ali Wong Became the Current Queen of Comedy,” E! Online, November 9, 2019, https://www…
  3. 3. See Margaret D. Stetz, “’Who’s Hu?’ And Where Is the Asian American Women’s Comic Tradition in Fiction?,” …
  4. 4. U.S. American standup comedy finds its origins in vaudeville performances of the late 1800s, which consist…
  5. 5. See Ann Johnson, Esteban Del Rio, and Alicia Kemmitt, "Missing the Joke: A Reception Analysis of Satirical…
Show all 78 →
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  4. 7. Kent A. Ono and Vincent N. Pham, Asian Americans and the Media (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 66.
  5. 8. The ambivalence of stereotypes as “controlling images” is readily apparent in other stereotype pairs: the …
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  17. 19. However, it should be noted that polysemy does not mean that any interpretation is possible, likely, or e…
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  29. 31. Used here, ellipses refer to pauses, not gaps in quotations, to capture the tone and pacing of Wong’s com…
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