- Project Summary:I want to examine comedy and its role in the lives of BIPOC individuals as a form of protest art and social critique. I will create a video essay specifically analyzing Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks and Dave Chappelle’s Chappelle Show as a medium for Black expression. I plan on using both of McGruder’s comic strips and clips from his tv show to portray the ways he uses comedy to both critique America and the Black community itself. I believe this is an important topic to research because The Boondocks and Chappelle’s Show was one of the first shows I saw as a child that featured characters that looked like me; however, I was too young to understand the social implications and satirical points that the shows were trying to evoke from its viewers. In my eyes comedy is one of the only places where people of color can be honest about their struggles with race. As if they can only address and profit off their life experiences if they are making people laugh or dance. Comedy is controversial in today’s time and the topics that McGruder and Chappelle were covering and how they addressed it would be heavily critiqued for its non-political correctness today. I want to know why comedy is a place where trauma can be turned into catharsis and why those shows were so popular at the time but cannot be found replicated in today’s political climate.
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