Racial Humor in Futurama

Last night's episode, with the "axe" joke which I just cannot stop laughing over, got me thinking, and there seems to be quite an abundance of racial humor in Futurama. What seems odd about this is that the Simpsons, which is hardly politically correct and seems to go out of its way to offend at times, has avoided racial humor to the level that it appears to be a conscious choice. However, off the top of my head, from the few Futurama episodes we've seen:

"Some of you are white. Some of you are black. You're brown. But I don't care of your skin is red or tan or Chinese; in my army, you're all going to have to learn to die together."

"I don't want to eavesdrop on what you're doing with the crab, the one eyed lady and the Chinese girl..."

"What up?" "Word."

"People from under the red sun walk like this..."

"That must be an archaic pronunciation, like when you say 'ask' instead of 'axe.'"

I'm sure some of these quotes are a little off, as I'm reciting them from memory, so if a few words are wrong, I apologize. And some of these are sort of indirectly racial, like the "What up?" "Word," exchange between Fry and the alien in Little Neptune, which seems to me to be a play on urban, inner-city black youth language.

While the Simpsons has, for example, Apu, I think the humor surrounding him is not so much racial as it is ethnic - the joke is not his race, but his nationality, the fact that he's a Hindu from India, just as they've made fun of the French, Australians, etc. The only counterexample from ten years of episodes that springs to mind is the throwaway line, "I've prepared a list of jokes about the differences between white people and black people. Have you ever noticed white people have names like Lenny, while black people have names like Carl?" that Homer gives in the recent Mr. Burns/Lock Ness Monster episode.

So my question is, why do you think they've (they meaning primarily Matt Groening, I suppose) purposefully avoided racial humor on the Simpsons, but it is relatively prevalant on Futurama. I do realize that they're different shows, but seeing as they share much of the same kind of humor (jokes about religion, nudity, homosexuality, drinking, suicide, politics) I find this difference interesting. Any thoughts, comments?

~Craig Russell

In article , [email] (CraigCMR80) wrote:

I was under the impression that it was "aks", a misspelling and mis-pronunciation of ask. I don't think it's really racil; a lot of children mispronounce words like that until they are nagged enough. (While decorating a christmas (sorry, xmas) tree, I found that my sister pronounces "ornament" as "ordament")

Ben [email] http://www.netins.net/showcase/benssite/

Spaghetti's a tough one, too. And antidisestablishmentarianism. My little brother always says "ism" "isn".

Ben wrote in message news:[email]...

of

Ben wrote:

Trust me, I live in Atlanta, GA and "axe" instead of "ask" is a very common African American colloquialism regardless of age. Sincerely, Little Girl

When I posted my original post, I didn't realize that wouldn't be clear. I was born and raised in North Carolina, where there was lots of racial diversity, and there it's just kind of common knowledge that "axe" is a black colloquialism, as you put it. However, I now live in Oregon, where the black population is next to none, and I bet few people here would understand that reference. Anyhow, my assumption was that the "axe" thing was a play on that colloquialism, that it had somehow become the correct pronunciation over years of lingual evolution.

My take was that it was a futher play on Xmas, the fact that it was pronounced with the *X*, then to comment on how in their present-time *asked* was now pronounced *axed*.

In article , [email] (CraigCMR80) wrote:

I think the confusion of /aks/ and /ask/ goes back to Old English and might have been taught to the slaves by rural whites who still talked that way in the 1700s and 1800s. Certainly there are many other traces of Old English in "redneck" speech, such as saying /hit/ instead of /it/ when "it" is the subject rather than the object of a verb.

As for your question, why is Futurama fearless about jokes that mention race, who knows, who cares. Different batch of people with different taste in gags i guess.

I do not think there is any real racial humor on Futurama, or at least very little that anyone would find upsetting.. Hard to really compare "The Simpsons" that has, errr, Carl as a black guy, and Abu, both bit roles.. vs Futurama that as a alot more diversity with in the main charters in the show.. so with that mix of people comes more joking between them and about each other... if they added a black guy, a Russian woman, a dwarf, a two headed albino and a Vampire to the the cast of "Friends" you would see ALOT more jokes about dwarf sex and Vampires burning up in the sun then you do now :)

That's not the same, because there is no such thing as dwarves.

On Tue, 21 Dec 1999 22:13:44 GMT, "Derek Ward, Kaiju no Hakase" wrote:

Oh please... Only 3 things happend here.. one you thought I ment a
troll like thing from fantasy books and wanted to point that out.. but
you did not mention the Vampires?
Two.. You just wanted to be funny and point something out
or three.. you do not like the term dwarf to talk about "little
people"   errrr, sorry about that.. if the dictionary lists dwarf as
the term for a small person.. I can use it for newsgroup posts :)   I
try to be a "PC" as the next guy / girl but I'm not going to go as far
as calling dwarfs "little people" or what ever it is that they want to
be called this week...  he he..   Maybe this might change if I KNEW
any dwarfs but I do not.. plus I really doubt I will run into enough
of them to kick my ass for not calling them bythe right name..   Oh
well hope you were just being funny..      ... I was, even it was a
lame attempt on my part..      Hum wonder how many it would take to
take me down?    (with out any weapons of course)

I didn't realize "Axe" was racial. If it is, those white folks in the Midwest might be offended. When I watched David Letterman in the 80s, he always would say "Or as we say in Indiana, AXED".

Scoats

"Derek Ward, Kaiju no Hakase" wrote:

Excerpts from netnews.alt.tv.futurama: 21-Dec-99 Re: Racial Humor in Futurama by [email]

I do say. I hate it when blunt-teeth poke fun of my undeathnicity. I mean, for ignorant beings that can't fly, you really are a rude bunch of cows.

I heard them all before.

Hey, Archduke Chocula, don't you have a cereal promo to do?

Whatcha call a bunch of vampires with steaks through their hearts?

How many vampires does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Yah yah yah, a vampire, a ghoul and a french guy walk into a grave yard.

Nothing pisses me off more when the young kids of the neighborhood, come and throw corn at my mansion during the day.

Always gettin made fun of cuz I can only pick up mangy goth chix.

I'd be forced to write a pretty angry letter to the Fox network if they started making fun of me on the networx

They already did. It was called Kindred: The Embraced, and Aaron Spelling produced it.

DJ MaNiAk

"The only reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live."

<< if they added a black guy, a Russian woman, a dwarf, a two headed albino and a Vampire to the the cast of "Friends" you would see ALOT more jokes about dwarf sex and Vampires burning up in the sun then you do now :) >>

Kill two birds with one stone: Gary Coleman, well, he's not a dwarf but. . eh.

Sincerely,
Robert Muldoon
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This is racial?

This is racial?

Again, this is racial? People of all races and colors use "What up?" and "Word". These words are colloquial in nature. And which *race* of people walk under a red sun?

That was a futher play on the pun of saying Xmas instead of Christmas.

White people have been *borrowing* idiomatic words from black culture then assimilating them for years. Nowadays you're more likely to hear those words come from white mouths than as black, unless you're living in a rural area that doesn't get cable or satellite tv. I'm sorry, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.

Dean Humphries wrote:

uh, what?

Its quite funny in its context. I don't think it should offend anyone or progress to anything bad, like the original post suggests.

I'm afraid I've been misunderstood. Reread my original post; nowhere do I say that it's bad that they've taken this trend. I'm not accusing them of using RACIST humor, I'm simply suggesting that they are incorporating RACE into their humor, which is something that the Simpsons did not usually do. Don't take this as an attack on Futurama, because it's not; Futurama is one of my favorite shows, and I think all of the jokes are funny as well as being appropriate (I was going to say in good taste, but that's in the eye of the beholder, I guess.)

So anyway, everything I've said is an observation, not a condemnation.

Craig

Remember, when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME.

Hey, that's a neat one!

For that and more sharp, clever writing, read the novel version of Silence of the Lambs (or its prequel, Red Dragon) by Thomas Harris, which is, I must admit, where I got that gem.

In article , "Trapezoid-- Ya!" wrote:

Ugh.

CraigCMR80 wrote:

The Simpsons make racial jokes, remember Homer's great one..."Black guys have names like Karl and white guys have names like Lenny."

I did remember that one; that's why I mentioned it in my original post as one of the very few Simpsons racial jokes I could think of. And my original point was that this kind of joke occurs more often in Futurama than the Simpsons, and I was trying to ask why that occured, but somehow I think people had trouble understanding the question.

Part of it is that affirmative action seems to have influenced the Futurama cast, made up of one black guy, one asian girl, one old person, one white female, one white male, one alien, and one robot. Most characters on The Simpsons are yellow.

There were more racial jokes on The Simpsons...

Black guys drive a car like this, white guys drive a car like this. It's true, it's true, we're so lame!

They put him with the big white guy who thinks he's the little black guy...

I'm a white male aged 18-34, everybody listens to my suggestions, no matter how dumb they are!

I'm sorry, we don't have any scholarships available for your daughter, unless she's from a minority group.

It's great to be back at the Apollo Theatre. Welcome to Krusty Komedy Klassics...whuh, KKK? That's not good!

After that it's smooth sailing for the Jews, right? Uh, sort of.

-Eric S. ([email] or [email] or [email])

	"I've been wasting my life.  I'm going to do what I always dreamed of.
	 I'm going to write that sitcom about the sassy robot!"
	  -Matt Groening creates Futurama?