this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
658 points (99.8% liked)
Funny
8415 readers
623 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.