[quote name="Davey Jay" post="1131152" date="20th August 2015, 10:41 AM BST"
less is more
[/quote]
I've looked into this and it turns out you're wrong. In actual fact, more is more.
(quoting aint easy)
Writing a racist Page 2
Quote: Chappers @ 25th August 2015, 7:38 PM BSTApparently in Goodness Gracious Me tonight they're doing a spoof called Brownton Abbey.
If a white actor took the piss out of something like Roots but making the characters white they'd never get away with it.
Too right man! How come you never see a white middle class person who talks like a black rapper? It sounds like the sort of thing you should see in comedy ALL THE BLOODY TIME yet it's illegal due to so-called political correctness which has not so much gone mad as already been mad to begin with!
They won't take the piss out of slavery but they'll take the piss out of Downton Abbey which is if anything more sacred! I'm not having it and I'm writing to my MP or I would if she wasn't a woman.
Quote: El Tea @ 27th August 2015, 5:31 PM BST[quote name="Davey Jay" post="1131152" date="20th August 2015, 10:41 AM BST"
less is more
I've looked into this and it turns out you're wrong. In actual fact, more is more.
(quoting aint easy)
[/quote]
it appears replying aint easy for you either
I've never attempted to write about race or racism so can't give you first-hand comedy writing advice (although as a mixed race woman I can give you plenty of first-hand real life experiences of people being racist without ever saying overtly offensive things... but this is probably not the thread for that! But if you can draw from real life, it's definitely better).
I can think of a couple of episodes of sitcoms that have dealt with racist characters without putting the show itself too at risk of becoming offensive: The episode of Peep Show in which Mark accidentally makes a white supremacist friend is a good example because his behavior is kind of slowly revealed until the very end (when at a WW2 reenactment he says something like "England for the English" instead of "Germany for the Germans" and Mark realises he's not just role-playing any more).
The one that makes everyone a bit eye-rollish is the Office, but I think it's pretty clever in the ways it shows an obviously racist Brent trying to over-compensate by repeatedly singling out the one black guy in the office and trying to ask him really embarrassingly stereotypical things about reggae etc, or starting to tell a racist joke and then falling silent only when he realises he's in the room. The bits where you know what he's going to say even though he never does (and when you can see he obviously expects some kind of medal for not saying what he really wants to say) are the most true to life I think.
Quote: kate to the party @ 1st September 2015, 1:43 PM BSTI've never attempted to write about race or racism
What do you write about Kate? More importantly who?
Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 2nd September 2015, 3:03 PM BSTWhat do you write about Kate? More importantly who?
It depends on what it is/where it's for. I've attempted sitcom pilots before which have always kind of been based around people and places I know, and then sketches for things like The Show What You Wrote/Class Dismissed which were on the slightly more ridiculous side (although usually still with some truth in them).
I live in a small town in the West Midlands so you would think the kind of everyday micro-aggressions and issues you get in such a place would feature in stories with this setting at some point! Stuff like feminism and gender is being talked about a lot in mainstream media at the moment so in a way it makes it easier to write about in comedy. I think when it comes to things like racism, although it is something that is beginning to be addressed a bit more on a wider scale, I'm still trying to work out exactly what it is I want to say and how.
I have no idea if this answers your question. (Hopefully yes?)
I'm not sure that feminism is being talked about more than usual? Certainly immigration is.
Exaggeration is key. Turn the racist into a caricature who couldn't possibly be taken seriously (think Alf Garnett, if you're old enough to have seen/remember the character or Archie Bunker - essentially the US version).
Alf/Archie are both ridiculously racist/sexist/homophobic, but work as comic characters because the audience is mocking how ludicrous their opinions are.