Dancing, not shuffling (updated)

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A new Cartoon Network series, Minoriteam, aims to be a sendup of racism. But it’s not clear whether it’s mocking stereotypes or just profiting off them. I’m going to assume the humor just doesn’t come across well in print:

‘By chutney, you’re right!’

Created by Adam de la Peña, Todd James and Peter Girardi — all alumni of the ribald Comedy Central puppet series “Crank Yankers” — “Minoriteam” is a provocative animated show that sends up bigotry. It makes its debut tomorrow night on Cartoon Network’s late-night “Adult Swim” block of animated shows…

Non-Stop is the alter ego of Dave Raj, an Indian, former professional skateboarder turned convenience store clerk who is incapable of being killed by firearms. After having been shot 235 times during various attempted robberies, his skin is saturated with lead, which serves as a bulletproof armor of sorts; when necessary, his skateboard morphs into a flying carpet. [Link]

If you’re keeping score at home, we have one half-naked, turbaned Indian convenience store clerk on a flying carpet, one Chinese laundry owner with a thick accent, one Mexican gardener who can’t speak English, one angry, promiscuous black man and one avaricious Jew. How subversive.

The team’s leader, Dr. Wang, is an Asian, wheelchair-bound mathematical genius with a freakishly large brain. He speaks with a heavy Chinese accent and is in the laundry business…

Landon K. Dutton, a black man awkwardly teaching women’s studies at Male University, turns into Fasto, the world’s fastest man. His extreme rage propels him to travel at breakneck speeds. When not fighting crime he spends his time “studying” the opposite sex; during one episode, it takes him only seconds to satisfy a roomful of Thai prostitutes.

Richard Escartin, a Mexican oil baron, trades his tailored suits and silk ties for a giant sombrero and a leaf blower when he becomes El Jefe, Minoriteam’s hardest working member. El Jefe’s blower is no ordinary garden tool. It can suck and blow with deadly force and rip holes through time and space. His kryptonite? Tequila. “I think a lot of people can relate to that,” Mr. de la Peña said.

Neil Horvitz may be a wimpy mail clerk in his early 20’s, but his alter ego, Jewcano, is a muscle-bound 62-year-old who sports an XXXL yarmulke and has all the power of the Jewish faith and a raging volcano. Watch him shoot molten lava from his wrists (move over, Spider-Man)…

Surely someone will be uncomfortable watching a Jewish superhero get aroused while chasing a giant glowing nickel, they said. “But who exactly will it offend?” Mr. de la Peña asked. “I have no idea…” [Link]

Um, Jews? Just a wild guess. You can pull off this kind of satire, it just requires some finesse. More often, a filmmaker will claim a work is against, say, violence while drenching the screen in stage blood. The disclaimer lets the filmmaker get mass-market trashy while inoculating the work against charges of exploitation. As Dave Chappelle said, ‘I want to make sure I’m dancing and not shuffling.’

Dave Raj by day

But I haven’t seen the series yet, so it’s entirely possible that it’s hilarious and they’ve walked the line. This bit sounds great:

The multiethnic crew battles a gang of villains including the sniveling Corporate Ladder (an anthropomorphized ladder with a cape and a pipe), Racist Frankenstein (a bigoted monster) and Standardized Test, whose head is shaped like a No. 2 pencil and whose body resembles a Scantron test. White Shadow, the bad guys’ bumbling leader, has a head that looks eerily like the pyramid found on the back of a dollar bill. He spews nonsensical corporate-speak, using words like “synergy” and phrases like “Let’s all get on the same page.” [Link]

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p style=”margin-right: 0px”>It is Adult Swim, so here’s hoping.

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p style=”margin-right: 0px”>Update: Wikipedia explains that most of the characters do have non-stereotypical angles after all. Bravo.

The superheroes are:

  • Non-Stop, an Indian convenience store owner who is immune to all forms of live ammunition (ironically mis-identified in widely-distributed publicity as Middle Eastern). In his non-stereotypical real life he is an ex-professional skateboarder.
  • El Jefe, a Mexican that fights crime with a leaf blower and does not speak English. In his non-stereotypical real life he is the CEO of his own oil company…
  • Fasto, an African-American man who is known as “the fastest man that ever was.” In his non-stereotypical real life, he is a bookish Professor of Women’s Studies.
  • Jewcano, a man with the powers of the Jewish faith and a volcano. In his non-stereotypical real life, he dates statuesque black women and loves soul food. [Link]

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p style=”margin-right: 0px”>Poor Dr. Wang gets screwed:

  • Dr. Wang, Chinese Human Calculator is the leader of the Minoriteam. He also owns and operates a laundromat. He has no known non-stereotypical real life. [Link]

<

p style=”margin-right: 0px”>Note how the Indian character was mislabeled as Middle Eastern. As mainstream humor about blacks and Latinos gets smarter and more nuanced, humor about desis and Asians generally hasn’t kept pace.

<

p style=”margin-right: 0px”>Watch the pilot (thanks, Ravin). It gives new meaning to the phrase ‘the power of stereotypes.’

28 thoughts on “Dancing, not shuffling (updated)”

  4. The pilot has been available for some time on the various bittorrent sites… I think they first aired it around the first week of November. If anyone is interested I might upload it to youTube or some such place.

  7. Everybody knows that minority men can’t get women 😉

    I kid, I keeed! It’s reflective of the superhero genre in general, which is as much of a sausagefest as, well, blogging is.

  8. which is as much of a sausagefest as, well, blogging is.

    Well, strictly in ratios, there are more girls blogging than there are minoriteam members. Ahem. Cough. Cough.

    I have to say, I like the idea of professional skateboarder. That’s just so random.

  9. See the update. Sorry to ruin your day.

    Just checked the update – it’s still a step forward from the absolute oppressive taboo on such humor for the past 30 years. So they acknowledge that there’s a non-stereotype version too. Wow.

  10. Conspicuously absent from the Minoriteam are….women. I assume they have some future subplot addressing that.

    absolutely … no reason why sophomoric asswipe toons shouldnt be an EA aspiration … in the same way that the right to smoke was a hard won victory

  11. we have one half-naked, turbaned Indian convenience store clerk on a flying carpet, one Chinese laundry owner with a thick accent

    ok……being bored out of my gourd, and looking for anything out of the ordinary and fun to watch, soemthing baout this just hits my curiosity button smack dab in the kisser. i can ignore the stereotypes..(beisdes the obvious), it just sounds too wierd and kinda cool to pass up. and besides, the naimation reminds me of the cartoons i used to watch as a kid….and i admit, i kinda like crank yakners. i almost wish i had cable now. almost. hhmm…..

  12. I have to say, I like the idea of professional skateboarder. That’s just so random.

    Why are there no South Asian proffesional skateboarders? Is it really that far fetched? I’m no professional but I used to skate. I feel like anytime I went to a skatepark I always see wannabe bad ass desi boys skating- I know i wasn’t the only desi in the crowd at the x-games…it’s just a matter of time before the desi skateboarding team will be created.

  14. How cool… give me a break. Or show me one of dem South Park Scientology episodes. 🙂

  15. I love that Dave Chapelle said that. It is a fine line between dancing and shuffling. And I’m afraid that white audiences (horrible generalization, sorry) will see this cartoon and miss the sarcasm, just as many Chapelle fans were delighted at being able to laugh at a black crackhead.

    Not to hijack this thread, but I finally saw that movie “Crash.” I expected to dislike it on film-crit grounds, but there were some funny zingers on the trailers and talk-show clips I’d seen…so I thought my inner snob would battle it out with my more easily-amused side. Not so…I hated it. HATED IT. And I’m absolutely baffled that thoughtful people of my acquaintance actually thought it had something intersting to say. A more reductive, ham-handed, self-congratulatory peice of shit I haven’t seen in ages.

    Makes me worry that people really aren’t ready for this sort of humor.

  17. And I’m afraid that white audiences (horrible generalization, sorry) will see this cartoon and miss the sarcasm,

    ok… first I disagree with the “white audience” thing… that’s wrong on many levels and i see you agree with that… but let’s look at the target audience as GGK pointed out… what could this set out to fulfil
    1. empowerment: my ass. i cant see any upliftment, not that i need any, by rolling with the pigs
    2. entertainment: yea. it’s sarcasm or satire , but to the beholders the sarcasm lies in that dr. wang may be the superwhiz brain who is the big boss but he still speekee like chinky-minky and laundly-man. And i saw the first 10 secs of the youtube crap before it cloged up and what’s that deal on the ‘white shadow’ – first it’s offensive, second it caters to the sense of hurt and entitlement of the losers who lost out to EO/EA/INR policies and the jury’s out on that
    3. educainment: uhh.. let’s send in captain planet to bail this out
    ok… so i wont be stepping out to buy a tv to watch this…

  19. i think its a send-up and it looks like its heart is in the right place. you know how you had those friends who got it and you “let” them joke around with you about racism?

  20. There is a line in the episode about “using the power of what they think you are to stop what they really are” or something like that. Like I said, I don’t think anybody is actually going to think that all Chinese men are in buff guys in wheelchairs with gargantuan heads any more than they’re going to think that I’m actually bulletproof and ride a magic carpet (at least I hope not).

  21. Ennis,

    IMO, it’s the least subtle stuff that goes over the best, like Chapelle’s black crackhead character. Like, “hey, they’re saying it, acknowledging it…so it must be true and it’s ok for me to make that assumption.” Like the many many times in ‘Crash’ that one character or another casually tossed out some line about Black men fucking up so much and that’s why they’re in jail.

    As if harsher sentencing, institutionalized racism, lack of connections, of affleuence, of name-dropping backgrounds, etc. didn’t contribute a single thing…

    eh..I dunno. I’m not against this cartoon, per se. Just rethinking my sense of what people believe and think, shuddering in shock that so many people thought Crash was a good movie that contributed something to a discussion on race. Feeling rather alarmed/alarmist.

    don’t think anybody is actually going to think that all Chinese men are in buff guys in wheelchairs with gargantuan heads any more than they’re going to think that I’m actually bulletproof and ride a magic carpet (at least I hope not).

    yeah..well, I was in the “I hope not” camp, which meant to me “of course they wouldn’t.” Now I’m in the “I hope not” camp, which means “I’m keeping my fingers crossed and watch what I say.” We’re both secure in believing that no one’s going to think you’re bulletproof. But much like the Apu in the Simpson’s universe (and that’s a cartoon that always gets it right) I wonder if people think that, to Indian convenience store owners getting shot is not big deal since they’re used to it.

  22. just like chappelle re-invigorated the most tired black vs. white routine from 90s comicview episodes, here comes adult swim to re-invigorate this dead genre of comedy again after you’d think not even a cell of life was left to resurrect

  24. i watched it when it came out back in november. here is my take on it. i guess i was super excited about Boondocks showing and then Minoriteam. Neither really impressed me much, but I like the idea. Just like I like/d the idea of Dave Chappelle’s skits.

    i have yet to see crash (in my netflix queue), and i have a lot of hate towards it already. probably not the best view to have regarding a film that is supposed to teach or role model tolerance. i think the fact that the movie takes place in la and the lack of asian roles really irks me. but, will hold my tongue until i see it.

  25. Why are there no South Asian proffesional skateboarders? Is it really that far fetched?

    There is a hyper-rad French skateboarder that is South Asian and quite famous in the scene there. Can’t remember the name though.

  26. There is a hyper-rad French skateboarder that is South Asian and quite famous in the scene there. Can’t remember the name though.

    The guy I was thinking of is Soy Panday. Not sure if/how much desi he is though. Hopefully a descendant of our boy Mangal.