Humoring the Other

Book excerpt: This book offers an inquiry into the ways in which entertainment discourse extends beyond entertainment and its initial humorous function due to its political and ideological underpinnings. Rather than considering entertainment discourse as “just for fun”, this book justifies the importance of taking it seriously. Humorous features in entertainment discourses can trivialize some stereotypical moments, and, in doing so, encourage viewers to downplay the seriousness of the events they are watching. In other words, these stereotypical images are camouflaged and mitigated by the inclusion of humorous elements and imaginative images, which can lead the audience to perceive them as natural scenes that do not deserve criticism. Embedding banalities within entertainment discourses remains an effective strategy that drives the audience to laugh, meaning that they fail to detect the embedded ideologies regarding different cultures and identities. This confirms the fact that “small talk” can often become “big talk”.