It all started with the panel on race and journalism, one of a series of events in recognition of Black History Month. The Avery Haines incident came up, that story of the CTV anchor who made the infamous on-air comment that got her fired. For the panelist, the significance wasn’t just in the comment itself, but in what the comment represented about her professional environment. After all, she said, Avery must have felt pretty comfortable to make a crack about equal opportunity employment out loud in the first place. She wondered aloud whether her presence in the newsroom would have make Avery uncomfortable enough to have made a difference, whether Avery would have refrained from making the comment.

Then there was that lecture on critical race theory, and the notion that all the progress claimed on behalf of the fight against racism is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Consider for a moment the possibility that all of these skillfully crafted institutional changes are designed not only to control the process of change, but to manage the process in order to maintain the illusion that the change itself is real and significant. Intriguing argument, if you buy the idea that there might actually be that much coherence to the oppression.

And, finally, there was Mock Trial 2001. Was it funny? Sure, in parts it caught the nuances perfectly. Was it over the top? Definitely, no doubt the audience knew it was tongue-in-cheek, without having to be told. Does this make it acceptable? You decide.

There were overt stereotypes about homosexuality, playing, as stereotypes do, on the extremes of any defined community. This was funny because it was a) completely untrue and thus ironic, or b) likely true and thus self-mockery, depending on which skit we’re talking about. There were the judges recounting their definitive sexual experiences as young adolescents to mock the decision on child pornography. Interesting that the stories were about individuals over fourteen (the legal age for intercourse). Makes you wonder how funny it would have been if they had been joking about six year olds. These judges were funny because they were a commentary on the arbitrariness of the court system. And then there was the family of lawyers offering advice to the prospective law student whose uncle had a strangely thick accent. This was intended to be funny on its own terms, because sometimes it is amusing to imitate people with accents.

See, the thing is, Mock Trial is supposed to be offensive, it is designed to provoke. Can’t we just leave our judgmental political correctness hats at the door? Or so the argument goes. Fair enough. In fact, the audience seemed pretty content to leave theirs behind. Except for that guy in the back who kept urging the performers to ‘show me your tits." Apparently, he never stood in line for one of those hats in the first place.

This argument, taken to its logical conclusion, asks us to separate our values from our entertainment – in essence, it asks us to expect less from the humour in our life than we do from academia or work or personal relationships. This doesn’t seem fair to the flexibility and potential of humour. It has never been established that humour needs to reinforce blatant stereotypes in order to be funny.

All of this makes one wonder about the implications of what went on up there on stage. Clearly, the audience must have somehow conveyed the feeling that the performers should be comfortable with these roles, that it was acceptable to us. Funny how it all comes back to comfortable. Just because we laughed [easily or uneasily, as the case may be] doesn’t mean we are implicitly guilty of anything. What a stretch to say that we might just be a part of that illusion of change for homosexuals, children, racial minorities or anyone else. Or is it?

Courtesy of the Obiter Dicta
February 19, 2001