Question 12, Postmodern Modes

The South Park episode “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” illustrates constructions of race by using an ontological approach to critique these constructions. There is a role reversal when it comes to the way this episode constructs race. By portraying the white guys that have used the n word as feeling persecuted and discriminated against it alludes to real life scenarios and constructions of race. By recreating certain real life events and images the episode is employing the aesthetic. For example, the Wheel of Fortune scene, the scene at the laugh factory, and the apology to Reverend Jackson to accept on behalf of all black people. Some critical aspects of this episode include the scene with the Deep South stereotypical “Red necks” as fighters against racial slurs. When the white characters that said the n-word take on the construction of a harassed group treated unfairly and tortured by the use of a hurtful word, the writers of he show heave done an ontological approach to critiquing the way our culture constructs race. Similarly the skit we watched from the Chappelle Show is also using these modes of postmodernism to make a critical statement about the construction of “whiteness”. An aesthetic characteristic is the skits inclusion of the show Dateline and the skits structure as an investigative story that is aired through Dateline. The skit is critical of the construction of “whiteness” when we find out the well-known white supremacist is actually black. Chappelle creates an ontological commentary on the construction of race, specifically “whiteness” and what it means to be constructed as white, when he takes on the persona as a black white supremacist with the intention of making a critical statement on our construction of racial separations and distinctions.