Issa Rae explains how humor disarms people and makes conversations about racism, sexism, and misogyny possible. She sees it as a coping tool rooted in culture that can actually prompt change, and argues for more distribution platforms owned by people of color.
Chapters
Like, if people. If you tell someone outright like, you're a racist and you're a terrible person, they'll be like, go get defensive. But if you're like, you know, you say it in a funny way, then people are like, oh, my God, I totally am racist. That's so funny that you brought that up, you know, and it's just. It's more manageable that way. And I think humor just opens up the conversation. What role, role for you does humor play in your storytelling? It's everything to me. You know, even if it's dramatic, like, there's always drama and humor. I feel like in black culture especially, you know, we constantly laugh through the pain, we make fun of the pain, we make fun through the suffering. And that's always just been a highlight of creating. Like, I'm always like, what's funny about this situation? And how can I mine it in a way that feels authentic and, again, feels relatable. In your work, what has humor allowed you to do that you don't think you would have been able to do otherwise? A lot of the subject matters that we cover just in terms of racism and sexism and, you know, misogyny, all these different things. Like, if people. If you tell someone outright like, you're a racist, you're a terrible person, they'll be like, go get defensive. But if you're like, you know, you say it in a funny way, then people are like, oh, my God, I totally am racist. That's so funny that you brought that up, you know, and it's just. It's more manageable that way. And I think humor just opens up the conversation. I think people's defenses are down, and they're just more open to consider and to think about things a different way. And I feel like humor in my work specifically just opens the flag gates for real conversation. There's a lot of people that are talking and not necessarily doing on any of these issues. Do people have the right to talk about diversity issues if they're not willing to step up and try and do something to help change them? Like, the conversation is always welcome, but I feel like what is helping is that people are taking action, like the Ryan Murphy's, the Ava duvernays behind the scenes to change things. And I was talking so much mess about it on my little film blog that somebody was like, you talk a lot of mess. Why don't you just make something yourself? And I was like, oh, I can do that. That's crazy. I can just do that and then go back to talking mess because I did my part. What do you see for the future? Like, what's your ideal next for your content? Diverse content. The future of entertainment. For me, there are not many distribution platforms of color, and that's where a lot of the power is in terms of determining what images you are seeing and having the capital to be able to even fund that. So that's kind of where I'm looking.
