By subverting comedy's rules and expectations, African American satire promotes social justice by connecting laughter with ethical beliefs in a revolutionary way. Danielle Fuentes Morgan ventures from Suzan-Lori Parks to Leslie Jones and Dave Chappelle to Get Out and Atlanta to examine the satirical treatment of race and racialization across today's African American culture. Morgan analyzes how African American artists highlight the ways that society racializes people and bolsters the powerful myth that we live in a ""post-racial"" nation. The latter in particular inspires artists to take aim at the idea racism no longer exists or the laughable notion of Americans ""not seeing"" racism or race. Their critique changes our understanding of the boundaries between staged performance and lived experience and create ways to better articulate Black selfhood.
Adventurous and perceptive, Laughing to Keep from Dying reveals how African American satirists unmask the illusions and anxieties surrounding race in the twenty-first century.
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Legitimizing Modernity: Indigenous Modernities, Foreign Incursions, and Their Backlashes Chapter 2. Imperialism, Globalization, and Development: Overlaps and Disjunctures Chapter 3. Afghan Television Production: A Distinctive Political Economy Chapter 4. Producers and Production: The Development Gaze and the Imperial Gaze Chapter 5. Reaching Vulnerable and Dangerous Populations: Women and the Pashtuns Chapter 6. Reception and Audiences: The Demands and Desires of Afghan People Conclusion: The Future of Media, the Future of Afghanistan Appendix A: Ethnic Groups Table Appendix B: Media Funding Sources and Recipients Table Appendix C: TV Stations and Affiliations Table Notes References Index
"This is the first richly observed ethnographic account of the landscape of media in post-US invasion Afghanistan. Osman’s self-reflexive voice in telling the story of the dynamic media field in Afghanistan is in and of itself of import. The limited scholarship that exists on media and democracy under occupation in the Global South tends to reproduce paternalistic narratives of development. In contrast, this critical work foregrounds the geopolitical context that leads to a television 'boom,' highlighting the important role of women and ethnic minority communities in Afghani media production and consumption. Television and Afghan Culture Wars is a must read for scholars and students of global media and American empire."--Paula Chakravartty, coeditor of Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime
