This is part two of a discussion about Tracy Morgan’s recent anti-gay remarks during a stand-up routine, and what I feel is really at the heart of the whole matter. Part 1 can be read here.
I think Morgan made those comments regardless of whether or not it’s how he feels in his heart about gay people. Yes, maybe on some level he kind of thinks that some people “want” to be gay if they are gay, and that he probably also on some level rolls his eyes at the discussion about kids being bullied and thinks “toughen up, we all go through it sometimes.” And those are problematic views, obviously. Yet, I don’t think he actually hates gay people or wants to discriminate against them, and I don’t think he would hate his child if the son were gay. I think it’s almost entirely a presentation of views and attitudes distorted (albeit only slightly) and magnified on stage as a reflection of what he perceives to be the views of his primary fanbase. It’s a reflection of things that Morgan might not even care about at all, and might not agree with in large part.
But he said it all anyway. Why? Because there is a pretty strongly anti-gay sentiment that runs through much of the black community in many places, and Morgan has a very large fanbase within those communities. His standup routines tend to reflect a lot of the sentiments and realities from those communities as well, and I think he maintains a certain level of stage persona that is sometimes more about reflecting those sentiments than it is about reflecting his own real inner personality and views. And when he is channeling some of his own feelings and views, I feel that we cannot ignore what might have shaped them.
Morgan said he was bullied as a kid. Morgan said that due to his father’s AIDS-related death, there was additional bullying and adversity due to prejudices and attitudes at the time. It seems likely that living in a community with a lot of anti-gay sentiment, where he himself was subjected to bullying, and where he even saw some of the abuses and indignities brought about due to anti-gay biases, Morgan carried a lot of that pain around inside him, partly as a reflection of his community growing up and partly as a personal frustration and anger on other levels due to facing that kind of prejudice and animosity. When carving out a stage persona that appealed to his audience, then, it probably wouldn’t be very surprising if he dug deep enough to find a lot of those elements. His stage persona and some of his more extreme statements and attitudes are probably far more about presenting an image that reflects (and to some extent satirizes) certain specific attitudes and behaviors he thinks he sees in his audience.
This is a very common tactic among comedians, of course, who will use their own ethnic or economic or religious or whatever group as an identity and then proceed to take on extreme versions of certain caricatures and stereotypes about their own group. Usually, they know that in reflecting those things back to their core audience, they will be embraced.
Lots of comedians (and other performers) have stage personas like that, and it doesn’t necessarily reflect their true personality. Sometimes those stage personas are harsher, meaner, and even more prejudiced than the performer is in real life, even though they often tap into some parts of themselves or their community — past or present — to create and maintain the persona. We know this as a society and we accept it, and it makes it easier to laugh along with comedians who mock this and that group or minority, even when the jokes might push the boundaries of good taste or just leap right over the boundaries and make a mad dash to the horizon on the other side.
But sometimes we don’t laugh, sometimes we instead feel shocked in a dark and painful way. The difference between a surprised “oh my gosh” followed by applause, and a surprised silence followed by condemnation, is the environment outside the comedy club door.
Sometimes we are over-sensitive about the context in which certain kinds of jokes happen, because there are a lot of nuances to the environment in which the comments are made, and sometimes we treat certain subjects with more sensitivity precisely because they need extreme sensitivity at a given moment in history before we can step back again and be less sensitive about it.
Think about gallows humor for a moment. Often times, we joke about death as a way of coping with it, and sometimes this humor can be very shocking and even in bad taste. But would a comedian tell such jokes at the funeral of the person who died? Of course not. Because we recognize that there are some times and places where it’s simply wrong, and even shock comedians would not go to a funeral to make offensive jokes about the deceased. This is an extreme example, but it’s an important distinction — we know that sometimes we have to be more sensitive about such matters than at other times, and we recognize that certain humor is condemnable if told in the wrong context, time, and place.
Imagine a white comedian on stage, in front of what he feels to be his fanbase, and he proceeds to tell jokes about black people. But it’s not just one joke, he jokes that he’s tired of integration, he jokes that black people should stop complaining about being abused and bullied by white people, he jokes that God didn’t make black people, he jokes that the president needs to stop passing civil rights laws and “man up” for white people, he jokes that if his daughter came home with a black boyfriend he’d stab her to death, and he jokes that he knows black people will be offended by his jokes but he doesn’t care because if they can stand being black then they can take a joke. Imagine this comes after a previous comedic performance in which he stated his view that God didn’t make black people and that he’s sick of black people. Imagine that several times, he uses some racial slurs.
Now imagine he said all of it during segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. Imagine he said black citizens should stop complaining about bullying, while in some states lynching was taking place. Imagine he said the president should stop caring about the rights of black citizens at a time when the nation was trying to protect the voting rights of black people.
Would that feel different to you than Chris Rock using the N-word in his jokes? Is there maybe a bit of a contextual difference, due to the speaker and the time and place? Can you imagine how it would feel, if you were a black man or woman watching that public figure on stage during that time period?
But it’s not just the public figure making such statements that’s the worst part. No, the worst part of all comes immediately afterward. The applause. When Mr. Morgan made those statements, he was on a stage under a light with a microphone, talking to a crowd. That crowd responded with cheers, they clapped, they ENDORSED. If you think it’s bad to be bashed publicly by a famous person, just imagine how it must feel when everybody starts to clap and support the bashing.
This is the context, the time and place and environment beyond the comedy club doors, and the bigger pain of social encouragement for the hate and bullying and repression.? Without understanding these nuances, and understanding why this is an example of a time when we have to be overly sensitive about such remarks toward a minority group, we can’t really understand the true significance of Morgan’s comments and the public outcry against them. Martin failed to appreciate these distinctions, I feel, and it leads us to the big issue, the most important element to the whole situation…
Continue to Part 3 of this blog discussion.
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