Laughing Through Truth :)

       I just finish reading the article Movin; On Up; Contemporary Television as a Site of Resistance  by Acham, and I felt that it was somewhat what I wished the second half of the coleman article would have been. The article discusses Blacks and television. I does goes a bit more in depth with a more narrow number of television shows that help lead the way for understanding African Americans in that media. I found that the study that Bill Cosby help funded called Enlightened Rasism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream, was how people we responding to the Cosby show. I felt that in the Coleman article tended to show Bill Cosby on a a more of a power hungry role. The article continues with the power of made for T.V. movies and the recognition that they would have received. For example, in Roots and the outcome of the miniseries. I liked how the author also mentioned the fact that the majority of television shows were on minor stations after a very brief time being on the mainstream stations such as ABC. Lastly, The article then starts to have a focus on the black comedian Chris Rock. 

I found that the section about Chris Rock to be very interesting because it went into detail about the show that Rock had on HBO. First, he talked about the racial tension within the African American Community. The section actually opens with a segment that he does that talks about the issue. I feel that the point of risk that Rock shows his show in front of a live audience was risky because sometime his audience does not approve of his jokes. For instance,there is a skit when it is headache medicine for an African American male and one of the jokes it about alack female away. When the female members of the audience heard this, they showed that they disapproved with their groans. 

I think that it is very funny to thing that the past two articles, the leaders against race are comedians. It is actually quite intelligent how these men, both Cosby and Rock, are able to get their intended point across to their audiences. However, it is even brave and intelligent of what these men say when discussing racism. For example, when Rock talks about how he looks up to both black and white comedians and how he was able to be upfront with a college dean about how she “approve” of an affirmative action that is restricting children of different races to have lower odds of gooding to college. To being topics on an even more recent level, even though this media source is not always discussing race, the programs that people get a lot of their political news and other current events from is the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. The fact that these two men and their fellow reporters are able to make comedy while bring up sometimes valuable interesting is genius. I am wondering though who is the next comedian to step up and fight against racism. 

Image from: http://bizbox.slate.com/blog/microphone-with-stand.jpg