Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Hostname: page-component-559fc8cf4f-6f8dk Total loading time: 0.457 Render date: 2021-03-03T13:21:08.648Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true, "metricsAbstractViews": false, "figures": false, "newCiteModal": false, "newCitedByModal": true }
EnglishFrançais
Language in Society Language in Society

Article contents

Did you call in Mexican? The racial politics of Jay Leno immigrant jokes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

OTTO SANTA ANA
OTTO SANTA ANA
Affiliation:
César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano StudiesUniversity of California, Los Angeles5169 N. Maywood AvenueLos Angeles, , CA 90041-1211otto@ucla.edu
Corresponding
E-mail address:
otto@ucla.edu
Get access
Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyzes a set of anti-immigrant jokes with which Jay Leno entertained his national television audience in 2006, when the U.S. public was focused on unprecedented demonstrations urging justice for immigrants. Leno adroitly mocks immigrants and their cause to give his audience emotional release by distancing them from immigrants. It is argued that political comedy can be an insidious discursive practice that reduces its audience’s critical judgment as it signifies social boundaries. It should be carefully scrutinized because, with a few laughs, Leno can steer sentiment about public policy and instantiate divisiveness for an audience of 6 million who, in the words of Leno’s official website, “are drifting off to dreamland.” (Humor, political comedy, late-night television, immigrant rights marches)*

Type
Research Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 23 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below.
If you should have access and can't see this content please contact technical support.

References

Attardo, Salvatore (1994). Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Baum, Matthew A. (2003). Soft news and political knowledge: Evidence of absence or absence of evidence. Political Communication 20:73–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, Judy, & Morris, Jonathan S. (2006). The Daily Show effect: Candidate evaluations, and American youth. American Politics Research 34:341–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayles, Martha (2005). The great pretenders. In Serious popcorn, a blog. (www.artsjournal.com, accessed 14 September 2006).Google Scholar
Billig, Michael (2001). Humour and hatred: The racist jokes of the Ku Klux Klan. Discourse & Society 12:267–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Bogel, Fredric V. (2001). The difference satire makes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Crowe, Russell (2006). Jay. Interview 36:210–13.Google Scholar
Dormon, James H. (1988). Shaping the popular image of post-Reconstruction American Blacks: The ‘coon song’ phenomenon of the Gilded Age. American Quarterly 40:450–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores, José E. (2006). Jay Leno immigrant jokes during the 2006 protest marches. Ms., UCLA Chicana and Chicano Studies.Google Scholar
Ford, Thomas E. (1997). Effects of stereotypical television portrayals of African-Americans on person perception. Social Psychology Quarterly 60:266–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ford, Thomas E; Wentzel, Erin R.; & Lorion, Joli (2001). Effects of exposure to sexist humor on perceptions of normative tolerance of sexism. European Journal of Social Psychology 31:677–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund (1963 [1905]). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund (1928). Humour. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 9:1–6.Google Scholar
Gervais, Matthew, & Wilson, David Sloan (2005). The evolution and functions of laughter and humor: A synthetic approach. Quarterly Review of Biology 80:395–430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gross, Larry (1989). Out of the mainstream: Sexual minorities and the mass media. In Seiter, Ellen et al. . (eds.), Remote control: Television, audience, and cultural power, 130–49. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane H. (1993). ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’ Anglo Spanish in the U.S. Southwest. Critique of Anthropology 13:145–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Jane H (1998). Language, race and White public space. American Anthropologist 100:680–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Marra, Meredith (2002). Humour as a discursive boundary marker in social interaction. In Duszuk, Anna (ed.), Us and others: Social identity across languages, discourses and cultures, 377–400. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jay Leno owes Blacks an apology. (15 January 1997). Sentinel 62(41):A-1, Los Angeles, CA. (http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=490558021&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD, retrieved 8 May 2008).Google Scholar
Koestler, Arthur (1964). The act of creation. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kronholz, June, & Lyons, John (28 April 2006). Population shift: As families shrink in Mexico, the U.S. may feel impact; Some see slower migration of low-skilled workers. Wall Street Journal, A-1.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, John (1986). Theories of ethnic humor: How to enter, laughing. American Quarterly 38:439–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marizco, Michael, & McClain, Carla (2 April 2005). Minutemen turnout a fraction of prediction. Arizona Daily Star, A1.Google Scholar
Mintz, Lawrence E. (1985). Standup comedy as social and cultural mediation. American Quarterly 37:71–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morales, Armando (1971). The collective preconscious and racism. Social Casework 1971:285–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morreall, John (1987). Traditional theories of laughter and humor. In Morreall, John (ed.), The Philosophy of laughter and humor, 9–117. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Morreall, John (2004). Verbal humor without switching scripts and without non-bona fide communication. Humor 17:393–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niven, David; Lichter, Robert S.; & Amundson, Daniel (2003). The political content of late night comedy. Harvard International Journal of Press Politics 8:118–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Omi, Michael (1989). In living color: Race and American culture. In Angus, Ian & Jhally, Sut (eds.), Cultural politics in contemporary America, 111–22. New York & London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Park, Ji Hoon; Gabbadon, Nadine G.; & Cherin, Ariel R. (2006). Naturalizing racial differences through comedy Asian, Black, and White views on racial stereotypes in Rush Hour 2. Journal of Communication 56:157–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, Russell (2005a). Strange bedfellows: The politics of late-night television comedy, Dissertation, University of Iowa.Google Scholar
Peterson, Russell (2005b). Strange bedfellows: The politics of late-night television comedy. Poroi 4(3), an on-line journal. (http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/peterson050901.html, retrieved 8 May 2008).Google Scholar
Potter, W. James, & Warren, Ron (1998). Humor as camouflage of televised violence. Journal of Communication 48:40–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramírez Berg, Charles (2002). Latino images in film: Stereotypes, subversion, and resistance. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Raskin, Victor (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humor. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, Roberto (9 May 2006). How media contributes/hinders Mexican/Latino indigenous identity in the US. Column of the Americas 2008–1994, (http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/Site/ColumnoftheAmericas/ColumnoftheAmericas.html, retrieved 23 October 2008).Google Scholar
Saenz, Michael K. (1992). Television viewing as a cultural practice. Journal of Communication Inquiry 16(2):37–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto; & Treviño, Sandra L.; with Bailey, Michael; Bodossian, Kristen; & de Necochea, Antonio (2007). A May to remember: Adversarial images of immigrants in U.S. newspapers during the 2006 policy debate. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 4(1):207–32.Google Scholar
Schaefer, Richard J., & Avery, Robert K. (1993). Audience conceptualizations of Late Night with David Letterman. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 37:253–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schutz, Charles E. (1977). Political humor: from Aristophanes to Sam Ervin. London: Associated University Press.Google Scholar
Simmons Market Research Bureau (1999). Choices III. New York: Simmons Market Research Bureau.Google Scholar
Speier, Hans (1998). Wit and politics: An essay on laughter and power. American Journal of Sociology 103:1352–1401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (1994). Power in movement: Collective action, social movements and politics. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Valelly, Richard M. (11 August 2006). Political scientists’ renewed interest in the workings of power. Chronicle of Higher Education, B6–7.Google Scholar
Vongs, Pueng (25 April 2003). Asian Americans irate over animal portrayals. Pacific News Service: News for the New America. (http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=19d0fb84938629fb83121582b0897edd#Asian, retrieved 6 May 2008).Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond (2002 [1974]). The technology and the society. In Askew, Kelly & Wilk, Richard R. (eds.) The anthropology of media: A reader, 27–40. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wolf, Michael J. (30 September 2004). The lure of late-night television: What are Leno, Letterman and O’Brien saying that the network news anchors can’t. Wall Street Journal, D-10.Google Scholar
Young, Dannagal Goldthwaite (2004). Late-night comedy in election 2000: Its influence on candidate trait ratings and the moderating effects of political knowledge and partisanship. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 48(1):1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Stacy L., & Bippus, Amy M. (2001). Does it make a difference if they hurt you in a funny way? Communication Quarterly 49(1):35–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Full text views reflects PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views.

Total number of HTML views: 28
Total number of PDF views: 298 *
View data table for this chart

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 3rd March 2021. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

29 Cited by

Send article to Kindle

To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Did you call in Mexican? The racial politics of Jay Leno immigrant jokes
Available formats
×

Send article to Dropbox

To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

Did you call in Mexican? The racial politics of Jay Leno immigrant jokes
Available formats
×

Send article to Google Drive

To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

Did you call in Mexican? The racial politics of Jay Leno immigrant jokes
Available formats
×
×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *