Thursday, November 20, 2008

Diversity in TV

I was recently watching an episode of Scrubs and only now realized how many racist jokes were made in it. The episode's plot is Turk and JD resuscitated a cameraman on their lunch break and were local heroes. Turk was interviewed about what it was like to be a black surgeon.

I found the full episode and edited it down to just the parts dealing with diversity in the hospital and how Turks recent fame has turned into a good thing for the hospital, which he is not very happy about. The point of this is that, like in The Office, is it insulting and offensive to laugh at the jokes made or are we at a point in time where it is ok to laugh about racism. I originally found this episode funny but after re-watching it and having learned a lot on the subject, i kept thinking to myself, Is it wrong to laugh? What do you think?


The scene where a lot of posters are being put up I found hilarious as well as the scene where JD took Turk to the billboard. The most important scene, however, is the one where Turk is explaining why he is upset over recent events.

The funniest thing in this episode, in my opinion, is when Turk was on the cover of his college brochure, twice.

1 comment:

Dana said...

We can only tell if it's wrong to laugh if we can figure out why we are laughing.

There are three main theories to why we laugh:

1.) The incongruity theory suggests that humor­ arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together.

2.) The relief theory is that laugher is a g­esture of shared relief at the passing of danger

3.)The superiority theory comes into play when we laugh at jokes that focus on someone else's mistakes, stupidity or misfortune. We feel superior to this person, experience a certain detachment from the situation and so are able to laugh at it. (citation: howstuffworks.com)

I think the type of comedy in these clips are based off of the superiority theory. Then there are two possibilities as to why we laugh.

We could be laughing because we feel superior to the victims of racial ignorance or we could be laughing because we know racial ignorance is wrong and therefore we feel superior to the people who are committing the faux pas. In the first case, I believe the laughter to be wrong, but in the second case it is acceptable.

For me personally, the funniest moment was when Turk went to high five Buckland and Buckland winced and covered himself, thinking that Turk was going to hit him.

Dana "Sunshine"