this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Yeah, as always with these things, it depends on which party is being made fun of. Like In Tropic Thunder, RDJ's black face doesn't make fun of black people, but of Hollywood actors who do ridiculous things for the sake of method acting, so it doesn't become a racist joke.
Exactly, the joke they are making is simply not racist in nature. At the same time, the idea that using blackface to make a joke about entrenched Hollywood racism trivializes the harm of using blackface isn't unreasonable. It's a layered issue, people can land in different places. Ultimately though, the controversy over Tropic Thunder, then and now, being so minimal does indicate that for most viewers, the joke justified itself.
Borat is explicitly racist, on purpose. It’s just that he is mocking the racists, not the race he is portraying.
A lot of people miss the jokes that are making bigots look like morons so we can laugh at them and think it means the show was being bigoted.