It is possible for one to tell a joke that hints of racism without being a racist oneself. When The Onion published the article "Black Guy Asks Nation For Change" on March 19, 2008, for example, I doubt if anyone was up in arms to accuse the satiric newspaper of racial defamation. The same might be said of their declaration just eight months later, which exclaimed "Holy Shit We Elected A Black President."
Furthermore, that a sitting president (or even presidents past) might be the subject of harsh criticism by way of derogatory political humor is certainly not new. Yet there is something about the now over-a-year-old image of President Obama as The Joker from "The Dark Knight" that is not simply laughing at a president's appearance on "The View," a slipshod early handling of a massive oil spill, or an ostensibly socialist national health care program. For the Tea Partiers, it's all grist to the mill. An initial point of consideration is the fact that its creator, whose identity was some time ago revealed, has not himself been considered a racist. It is possible for one to tell a joke that hints...I digress.
Since early 2008, President Obama has set himself up and been exalted as an icon of change. Since his election in November of the same year, there have been countless attempts to destroy that very icon. For the Tea Party, change is anathema to the American way, to the spirit of the Founding Fathers, to the ideals that supposedly undergird our nation. There shall be no other "idol" than the quintessence of the early republic. All others should be unmade. The "real" America, according to the Tea Partiers, its itself under attack, and Obama is the false idol of progressive liberalism.
Many have "laughed" off the following portrayal of Obama as The Joker as a playful caricature, one that has come to signify the painted, scarred smile accompanying the discursive politics of the Tea Party Movement itself.
Yet the seriousness and severity with which it is used as a dark laugh of iconoclasm begs the question of dismissiveness in this claim. Part of why the image is so powerful is because the figure of The Joker carries with it much ideological (and pathological) weight: he is a specious and deceitful criminal mastermind, an embodiment of evil with a sense of humor, a man who smiles (uncontrollably) as he kills and, therefore, cannot be trusted or kept out of sight. What is more, the Obama/Joker image looks like a mugshot, perverting the notion of the wanted man inasmuch as the president is the most public, the least hidden of individuals.
Then, of course, there is the question of race. Countless on the left have denounced the image as fundamentally racist and bigoted. Countless others from the right have defended it as just a joke, as a playful depiction driven at making a point about Obama's politics. Indeed, as Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post notes, "Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he is black." The DNC has held it up as an epitomic example of the right's unwillingness to accept racial plurality in America, let alone social tolerance. The RNC (to be specific, the Tea Party) has used it in protests, in fund-raising campaigns. The journalistic enterprise has used it as a "comic" motif of a racial problem that is at once advertised and silenced.
To be sure, the iconography of "Darky" dates back to the mid-1800's, first appearing as the dark paint on white faces in minstrel shows and vaudeville performances, and later coming to typify racism in the moniker and image of "blackface." Today, it stands as a shadow on the popular discourse and humor about race (perhaps attaining its most blatant and satirically parodic commentary in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled"). The Obama/Joker depiction thus stands as an interesting, albeit disturbing, reversal. In this image, a black face is painted white. Yet the whiteness is corrupted, maculated, adulterated. Simply put, is the dark double of ostensive American tradition. As a playful attempt at iconoclasm, its seriousness is all too irksome. As an image, it seems to reify the modes of social and political power that underlie discussions of race. It vandalizes Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque by destroying one power in order to reclaim another one that is preexistent. It laughs to destroy, but not to regenerate. It mocks official seriousness with a perversely clowning seriousness of its own. Moreover, that it is written off as "just a joke" means that, as Kimberle Williams Crenshaw illustrates, the overt message does not account for the latent, literal claims. That is, the humor "does little to blunt [its] demeaning quality," a problem only to be exacerbated as long as such "jokes" remain "within a tradition of intragroup humor." Simply put, there is no such thing as mere words, mere images, mere jokes.
Do not mistake, I am all for critiques of power. I am also an obvious proponent of humor the mocks the official, troubles the waters of normal expectation, and appropriates coded discourses in order to re-codify. Presidents and politicians, political institutions and institutions of politics should always be held up for critique. I am almost sure I laughed at this image of Bush as The Joker (Nicholson, though, not Ledger) the first time I saw it.
However, I am also sure that the ends of humorous means should always be interrogated...especially when humor is used simply to be downright mean. The humor propounded by Bakhtin was certainly, at times, abject and crude; however, it was never without an appeal to the social and political consciousness of all people, not simply those it might be said to have served. After all, laughter is a collective enterprise, and the more it operates on a "when-we-do-it-it's-right, when-you-do-it-it's-wrong" mentality, the more it will divide and destroy instead of unite and create.
Photo Credits: FirasAlkhateeb; Drew Friedman, Vanity Fair.
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