Black Jeopardy! is a parody of the American television quiz show Jeopardy!, featuring a competition between three contestants, who compete on a wide variety of topics, from history to current events. The parody has taken the form of a recurring sketch on the well-known American variety show Saturday Night Live and it aired four times, from March 2014 to October 2016. The four skits featured Louis C.K., Elizabeth Banks, Drake and Tom Hanks respectively as “the third contestant”, the one who doesn’t fit the stereotype of a lower class black person. As Black Jeopardy! highlights the divide between White and Black culture in the USA, my paper aims at investigating to what extent the four skits focus on black stereotypes regarding race, language, and socioeconomics among many others. On the other hand, the jokes about black and white culture will be analyzed from different perspective, in an attempt to uncover if the historically positioned hegemonic roles of black and white cultures are reversed effectively.
Messing with Blackness in SNL's Black Jeopardy!
Paola Attolino
2019
Abstract
Black Jeopardy! is a parody of the American television quiz show Jeopardy!, featuring a competition between three contestants, who compete on a wide variety of topics, from history to current events. The parody has taken the form of a recurring sketch on the well-known American variety show Saturday Night Live and it aired four times, from March 2014 to October 2016. The four skits featured Louis C.K., Elizabeth Banks, Drake and Tom Hanks respectively as “the third contestant”, the one who doesn’t fit the stereotype of a lower class black person. As Black Jeopardy! highlights the divide between White and Black culture in the USA, my paper aims at investigating to what extent the four skits focus on black stereotypes regarding race, language, and socioeconomics among many others. On the other hand, the jokes about black and white culture will be analyzed from different perspective, in an attempt to uncover if the historically positioned hegemonic roles of black and white cultures are reversed effectively.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
