By: Regina N. Barnett
After a nearly three year drought, Aaron McGruder blessed the masses with a fresh season of The Boondocks. While hilarity ensued – “Dick Riding Obama” is what’s hot in them streets! – one has to look past the comedy and question the severity of numerous issues McGruder raises about yet another postracial “moment” in American history – the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. “Ehh.”
The show opens with an introduction by German filmmaker Werner Herzog (who makes a cameo appearance). Herzog visits Woodcrest in hopes of documenting the campaign of Barack Obama. He gathers the “usual suspects” – Huey, Riley, Granddad, Tom and Sara DuBois, and Thugnificent – to discuss the impact of Obama’s presidential campaign on race relations and America. What is most peculiar about the framing of this episode is Herzog’s covering of an American historical moment.
The show opens with an introduction by German filmmaker Werner Herzog (who makes a cameo appearance). Herzog visits Woodcrest in hopes of documenting the campaign of Barack Obama. He gathers the “usual suspects” – Huey, Riley, Granddad, Tom and Sara DuBois, and Thugnificent – to discuss the impact of Obama’s presidential campaign on race relations and America. What is most peculiar about the framing of this episode is Herzog’s covering of an American historical moment.
While it is no question that Obama is a global icon, I find it fascinating that McGruder selected a controversial German filmmaker to help construct the episode’s intent. Herzog’s presence in the show embodies the underlying social-political charges against Obama to be a communist, an outsider, and a threat to American democracy and life. Even more intrusive in our attempts to deconstruct this opening installment is the idea of foreign spectatorship and its (often presumptuous) racial associations based upon social trends and media imagery. Herzog’s questioning speaks on two levels – the cynicism of a foreign spectator towards not only American racial politics but black American politics andthe aloofness of the African American community in their associations with Obama strictly based on his skin color. This is made (painfully) obvious with Thugnificent’s inability to name the three branches of government while being interviewed by Bill Maher. In similar fashion to his interview with Herzog, Thugnificent discusses his social awakening and fervent support of Obama because of his blackness. While Herzog subtly points to his aloofness, Maher blatantly speaks to his political detachment and, pulling from his own intellect and white privilege, snobbishly remarks “if you are what black leadership is, I’m glad I’m a white man.”
It’s Barry, Bitch: Respectability, Responsibility, and Manhood
President Obama’s electoral campaign and his struggle with black masculinity are well documented in both social and academic circles. What is intriguing and, to an extent, refreshing, is McGruder’s willingness to push the envelope about Obama’s reputation and representation in America. McGruder satirizes Obama to embody the numerous intersections of black manhood and Americanism – the buck, the uncle tom, the token politician for a major party, the problem solver, and the pop culture icon. McGruder removes Obama from the bubble of respectability and fetishizing that he occupies within the black public spectrum. Sarah DuBois, the white wife of Tom DuBois, speaks about Obama from a strictly sexual lens, reducing him to a sexualized black body. Tom, who could be Obama’s foil, is threatened by Sarah’s attraction to Obama and desperately attempts to trump him to keep his wife in lust of his masculinity.
It’s Barry, Bitch: Respectability, Responsibility, and Manhood
President Obama’s electoral campaign and his struggle with black masculinity are well documented in both social and academic circles. What is intriguing and, to an extent, refreshing, is McGruder’s willingness to push the envelope about Obama’s reputation and representation in America. McGruder satirizes Obama to embody the numerous intersections of black manhood and Americanism – the buck, the uncle tom, the token politician for a major party, the problem solver, and the pop culture icon. McGruder removes Obama from the bubble of respectability and fetishizing that he occupies within the black public spectrum. Sarah DuBois, the white wife of Tom DuBois, speaks about Obama from a strictly sexual lens, reducing him to a sexualized black body. Tom, who could be Obama’s foil, is threatened by Sarah’s attraction to Obama and desperately attempts to trump him to keep his wife in lust of his masculinity.
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