One thing that immediately struck me in The White Boy Shuffle was the language. There's an odd contrast between these beautifully crafted sentences and sentences that use a crude street language, sometimes even in the same sentence. One example that comes to mind is when, at dinner his sisters ask if they are adopted, and he comments, "Then Christina, whom I lovingly rechristened with the Native American Fingers-in-Both Nostrils-Thumb-in-Mouth-and-Snot-All-Over-the-Fucking-Place, would pull on the heartstrings and tighten the filial ties." This sort of language is both immensely beautiful and oddly humorous at the same time, which is a testament to his skill as a writer.
Another way the voice strikes me is in the humor of the novel. The entire novel is a weird mix of depressing imagery, flat out funny passages, and dark humor. Through the Prologue and Chapter 1, I see darkly funny passages that I laugh at, and I immediately feel bad for laughing at them. They're the sort of laughs that are made when someone tells an especially racist or sexist joke, and for good reason; the book highlights Gunnar's ancestors, who while they end up in hilarious situations, act as almost a minstrel show, and Paul Beatty almost seems to be daring us to laugh at his characters.
That's not to say that these passages aren't funny, on the contrary, many of them are incredibly ironic and humorous, such as when Swen Kaufman goes and accidentally becomes a slave again, happily dancing and enjoying the space, although he ends up being one of the few men whipped on the plantation, but he continues doing ballet, only to suffer more lashings. On the one hand, it's funny that a free African-American at the time finds a "better" situation in becoming a slave, joyfully working in the fields, yet I feel horrible for laughing at this passage which makes a mockery out of the situation of African-Americans at the time. In the prologue, the narrator describes his planned mass suicide saying, "In glorious defiance of the survival instinct, Negroes stream into Hillside, California, like lemmings. Every day they wishfully look heavenward, peering into the California smog for a metallic gray atomic dot over our natural and processed heads. It will be the Emancipation Disintegration." I admit, I laughed at the Emancipation Disintegration line, which is clever on many levels: the jab at the Emancipation Proclamation, which really didn't free any slaves, how this comments on the situation for African-Americans at the time, the possible prod at segregation and integration, and the obvious pun. At the same time, it feels like a laugh with an asterisk; while it's a funny joke, a large part of me feels terrible laughing at a mass suicide.
At this point in the novel, do you feel the same way about the humor? Do you think I'm a terrible person for laughing at these jokes, or do you think I'm too critical for reading too much into what the author intended to be funny passages?
Thank goodness, I'm not the only one who feels terrible for laughing at his jokes! The same sense of morbid humor that you described hit me during chapter two when Gunnar was describing the adventures that he had with his Jewish friend. "David's father ... asked us whether he should feel guilty about playing the serial numbers branded onto his father's arm in the state lottery" (38). The author has such a twisted sense of humor that you cannot help but laugh at its absurdity.
ReplyDeleteWhile the topics on which he comments (slavery, racial stereotypes, the Holocaust, etc.) are incredibly dark, I think that he intends for the reader to laugh at his twisted remarks. Perhaps inducing laughter is his way of making such events stick in the reader's mind, as opposed to the history textbook approach of making the reader feel dejected at any mention of the darker moments in history. His dark humor makes the passages stick out more, and causes the reader to reflect on what they just read and why it should not be funny (as we are doing through this blog post).
Great post, Ted. His humor has a lot of variety, and you can see it changes over the course of the novel. At first, the remarks are more smart-ass, quick-witted. As the novel progresses, his humor becomes more varied and mature. He gives a lot of social commentary in his humor, allowing us to understand how he feels about his world. Gunnar uses humor as a form of communication.
ReplyDeleteI have also noticed that a lot of his humor is self-deprecating. At first, this made me think that Gunnar is just continuing his family line of embarrassing Uncle Toms. He tells his embarrassing stories to the kids in Santa Monica to make them laugh. As we go further in the novel, however, the self-deprecating humor seems to be less directed at other characters in the novel and more towards us the readers. Perhaps that is because in Santa Monica he was trying to fulfill his role as the funny, cool black guy. That is no longer his role in Hillside, so he is not trying to please others with self-deprecating humor. He keeps such remarks to himself that only we can see.
If we laugh, we laugh--it's a spontaneous reaction, and it reflects the cleverness and, crucially, the *surprise* that comes from encountering a funny line in unexpected places. But you're right that this novel makes us feel a little uncomfortable after we've laughed--what are we laughing at, exactly? Am *I* making fun of this young man's relatives, too? Does the fact that he's laughing at them give me permission? A number of good, thought-provoking black standup comics create similar situations (I'm thinking of Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Wanda Sykes, among others). And this is different, to me, than crude racist humor of the sort that never makes me even crack a smile (the kind Gunnar's dad laughs at when he's at work). There's an "insider" perspective, yes, but in most cases it's not as clear what the *object* of derision is. Pryor can seem to be making fun of himself, but he's simultaneously pointing out the absurdity of race and racism in American culture--the jokes are working on a number of levels.
ReplyDeleteWe encountered a similar dimension in Ellison, and in Beatty, too, the laughter will become increasingly discomfiting. He keeps cracking jokes right up to the end, but the context really changes--the book makes us wary of too readily chuckling along at the "funny, cool black guy."
I definitely thought of Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and Richard Pryor when watching Bamboozled. I kept questioning what I was laughing at when I laugh at their routines. I see both sides, on the one hand, they're comedians; their goal is to get us to laugh, and think about the issues at hand. On the other hand, I specifically remember an episode of The Office in which Michael has to attend a racial sensitivity meeting because he recited a couple of potent Chris Rock routines in front of the office. It's this grey area that I noticed more and more throughout Beatty's novel, and especially after watching Bamboozled.
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