Crossing the Line: Multiracial Comedians

Posted in Arts, Media Archive, United States on 2015-12-09 03:18Z by Steven

Crossing the Line: Multiracial Comedians

University of Michigan
Shapiro Undergraduate Library
919 South University Avenue
Screening Room 2160
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1185
2016-01-21, 16:00-17:00 CST (Local Time)

Karen E Downing, Host Contact

This full-length documentary (2007, 59 mins.) analyzes how mixed-race comedians mediate multiracial identities and humor. Crossing lines of racial, ethnic, and cultural acceptability by their very existence, multiracial comedians reveal that meanings of race vary across ethnic combination, gender, place, and time.

The film features the experiences, perspectives, and performances of American comedians of more than one racial ancestry. The timeliness of multiracial comedians’ roles as crossracial mediators is underscored as they provide insight into controversies over how comedians express race (i.e., Michael Richards’ use of the N-word, Rosie O’Donnell’s slurs), and other debated meanings of race in an increasingly diverse society. Exploring these questions exposes the very nature of where pain and laughter come from in a racially divided world.

This is one of a year-long series of events that explore what it means to be multiracial in a monoracially conceived world.

This film will be followed by discussion. For more information, click here.

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