DEFINING MIXED RACE ON TELEVISION: AN ANALYSIS OF BARACK
OBAMA AND SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
Amanda Joy Davis
B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 2004
THESIS
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
COMMUNICATION STUDIES
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
FALL
2011
© 2011
Amanda Joy Davis
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
DEFINING MIXED RACE ON TELEVISION: AN ANALYSIS OF BARACK
OBAMA AND SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
A Thesis
by
Amanda Joy Davis
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Michele Foss-Snowden, Ph.D.
__________________________________, Committee Member
Carmen Stitt, Ph.D.
__________________________________, Committee Member
S. David Zuckerman, Ph.D.
Date
iii
Student: Amanda Joy Davis
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for the thesis.
, Graduate Coordinator
Michele Foss-Snowden, Ph.D.
Date
Department of Communication Studies
iv
Abstract
of
DEFINING MIXED RACE ON TELEVISION: AN ANALYSIS OF BARACK
OBAMA AND SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
by
Amanda Joy Davis
This study uses a semiotic approach to textual analysis to examine social
constructions of Barack Obama’s race in televised sketch comedy to discover how this
construction contributes to the process of hegemony regarding society’s treatment of
mixed race. Polysemy will be explored as a key contributing factor. The television
program chosen for this study is Saturday Night Live (SNL); the program will be
examined for visual and linguistic references to Obama and mixed race. The absence of
mixed race references will also be analyzed for their contribution to the show’s overall
message.
This study argues that while SNL mentions mixed race, it ultimately adds to the
hegemonic treatment of mixed race individuals. That is, it identifies Obama as
monoracial, ignoring his mixed race heritage in favor of a neat, pre-existing category.
While SNL had the opportunity to step outside of the typical dismissal of mixed race and
defend their choice of actor to portray Obama, and refer to him as mixed race on a
consistent basis, they opted instead to categorize him as monoracial. In doing so, SNL
v
upholds the silent treatment given to the mixed race community, forcing a monoracial
identification based on appearance, a hegemonic course of action.
, Committee Chair
Michele Foss-Snowden, Ph.D.
Date
vi
PREFACE
As a person of mixed race, with a relationship to both dominant and oppressed
cultures in the United States, issues of culture, ethnicity, and race have always been
salient in my everyday life. These issues are personal to me and my experiences within
these contexts have been both troubling and enlightening. In many ways, I have felt the
need to categorize myself based on my race due to the pressures of socially constructed
racial images. Television provided many of these images for me, but I had trouble
aligning myself with the images due to their lack of mixed race representation. However,
I feel lucky about the way television has challenged me in this way. As a result, I have
enjoyed a multiracial perspective that has accompanied me on my lifelong journey of
personal exploration into my identity and culture.
These factors, an accumulation of my life experiences, are powerful in
influencing my approach to everything, including this research. Therefore, this thesis
cannot avoid being a personal work, subjective as a result of my own perspective that
guides my focus. Though my research is most certainly guided by my individual
perspective, the evidence I have investigated and presented in the following pages
provides support for this work’s statements and conclusions.
While it is important to be as objective as possible in seeking truth in scholarly
research, I believe in the power of a researcher’s personal, unique perspective in
establishing the character, integrity, and meaningfulness of research.
vii
DEDICATION
This work is dedicated to my beautiful, mixed family.
To Taron, thank you for your love, friendship, and unwavering faith.
To London, you are a true blessing in my life.
To Debra, thank you for teaching me the power of a resilient spirit.
And to Azaleigh and Benjamin. Far away, but always close to my heart.
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Michele Foss-Snowden for her support and dedication as
my chair and advisor. Her guidance from the beginning of this journey has been
invaluable and I am so very thankful. I would also like to thank Dr. Carmen Stitt and Dr.
S. David Zuckerman for their patience, their interest in my ideas, and commitment to the
completion of this project.
I would like to thank my family and friends for their unconditional love and
support.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface............................................................................................................................... vii
Dedication ........................................................................................................................ viii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ ix
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................9
Television Studies ....................................................................................................9
A Critical Cultural Approach .................................................................................13
Social Constructionism ..........................................................................................19
Constructing Race and Mixed Race on Television ................................................22
The Comedy Genre: Sketch, Parody, and Satire....................................................28
Saturday Night Live and the Presidential Parody ..................................................33
Barack Obama: A Mixed Race President ..............................................................36
Critical Questions...................................................................................................39
3. READING TELEVISION: A METHOD......................................................................40
Textual Analysis ....................................................................................................40
Semiotic Analysis ..................................................................................................46
Sketch Collection ...................................................................................................49
x
4. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ......................................................................................53
Visual: Obama, the Image......................................................................................53
Linguistic: Obama, the Topic ................................................................................59
Linguistic Absence.................................................................................................72
5. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................76
EPILOGUE ........................................................................................................................81
Appendix A. Images of Barack Obama and Fred Armisen ...............................................83
Appendix B. Season 32, Episode 15 (3/17/2007): Monologue: Road to the
White House ................................................................................................84
Appendix C. Season 33, Episode 8 (3/15/2008): Monologue: Black is the
new President ..............................................................................................85
References ..........................................................................................................................86
xi
1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
According to hooks (1992), media representations of race have a “direct and
abiding connection between the maintenance of upholding and affirming racial categories
and power structures” (p. 187). This perspective aligns with the cultural critical ideology
that seeks to examine how media, including television, reinforce and suppress certain
social discourses (Kellner, 1980). In other words, television texts not only represent
society’s structure, including racial categories, but they also have the power to influence,
change, or control that structure through the use of language and images.
It is from this cultural critical ideology that this study seeks to examine Barack
Obama’s role in popular culture’s categorization of mixed race individuals. Beltran
(2005), Nakamura (2007), and Nishime (2005) argue that viewers’ generalized
perceptions about mixed race people is based in part on their perceptions of mixed race
public figures, and those individuals have a social responsibility to identify themselves
with all their racial backgrounds, rather than opting to identify themselves within a single
category. As a person of mixed race and as a major public figure, Obama also has the
potential to influence others about their perception of mixed race individuals through his
own image and rhetoric. Born to a White American mother and a Black Kenyan father,
Obama has called himself a “mutt,” but has also been quoted as saying “I identify as an
African American – that’s how I’m treated and that’s how I’m viewed” (Washington,
2008, para. 3). His potential to influence is even greater than other public figures, given
2
his position as president (Chozick, 2009; Hendrickson & Wilkinson, 2007; Pease &
Brewer, 2008). However, while television texts featuring Obama may have the potential
to address mixed race, the issue continues to be either completely ignored or thoroughly
confused. This study analyzes a few of the scarce and isolated references to Barack
Obama’s mixed race, but these few examples prove through their scarcity that the
ongoing social conversation about Obama has not demonstrated an appreciation for his
mixed heritage.
This study examines television texts that reflect the social discourses on mixed
race through popular culture’s racial identification of Obama on television. Specifically,
it analyzes television texts featuring references to Obama on the television show Saturday
Night Live (SNL). While other impersonations and commentaries on Obama exist in
television, SNL is one of the most appropriate television texts for examination of popular
culture’s racial perceptions of Obama for a few very important reasons. First, the show’s
pervasiveness in popular culture makes it a highly relevant cultural artifact to study. It is
one of the longest running programs in television history, debuting on October 11, 1975,
and beginning its 37th season in September 2011 (NBC.com, 2011). SNL’s lengthy
runtime on television speaks to the show’s immense popularity because most of the
longest running television shows are news programs or soap operas. Not only does SNL
have more longevity than any other show within its genre, but it has also outlasted many
shows in other genres as well. Furthermore, SNL has broken the boundaries of its
Saturday night home; characters from SNL sketches have inspired movies and other
3
references throughout popular culture (NBC.com, 2011). So, while those other television
texts could be considered reflective of popular culture, SNL is unique because of its
marked popularity and pervasiveness.
Further demonstrating the show’s popularity, Bill Carter (1999) of the New York
Times observed, “In defiance of both time and show business convention, SNL is still the
most pervasive influence on the art of comedy in contemporary culture” (para. 4). The
show has been honored twice with the George Foster Peabody Award, in 1990 and 2009,
and cited as a national institution (The University of Georgia, 2011). The Peabody
Award is a significant accolade for SNL, as it is the oldest electronic media award in the
world, recognizing excellence and achievement in its recipients’ work (The University of
Georgia, 2011). In another popular culture accolade, SNL broke the record for the most
Emmy-nominated show in awards show history in 2010 when it earned 13 nominations,
bringing its total nominations to 126 (Itzkoff, 2010). Record-breaking, award-winning,
and acknowledged by its peers, SNL is obviously a worthy television artifact to be studied
for its impact on popular culture.
In addition to SNL’s relevance as a cultural phenomenon due to its pervasiveness
in popular American culture, SNL is one of the most relevant television artifacts to study
with regard to portrayals of Barack Obama because it includes impersonations of political
figures in nearly every episode, with careful attention to details about the political figure
(especially the President of the United States) such as race, appearance, vocal intonations,
clothing, and demeanor. For example, the first few moments of the program before the
4
opening credits are known as the teaser or “cold open;” SNL frequently features a cold
open with an actor impersonating the current president or recent presidents past
(NBC.com. 2011). As SNL’s tradition dictates, ever since Obama’s potential candidacy
in the democratic primary and throughout his presidency, the show has featured multiple
impersonations of Obama in addition to linguistic references to him throughout the
program (Voth, 2008). SNL has also featured recurring presidential commentary and
impersonation from the very birth of the show.
It is true that other sketch comedy or variety shows like SNL (such as Comedy
Central’s The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Mind of Mencia, or HBO’s Real Time
with Bill Maher) discuss political figures. However, they do not feature as frequent or
regular impersonations as SNL. Also, SNL continues to feature impersonations of
presidents even after they are no longer in office, often with the same actor playing the
role permanently. The other shows cycle out impersonators and move on to discuss
current presidents, which makes them less timeless than SNL with regard to their
discussions and portrayals of Obama. Additionally, SNL’s ongoing political
impersonations have moved beyond the show: Will Ferrell’s impersonation of George W.
Bush was turned into an HBO special (HBO.com, 2011). The same cannot be said of
other shows.
Since the present study is concerned not only with SNL as a popular culture
phenomenon and its portrayal of Obama, but specifically with SNL’s message about
Obama’s race, it is also important to note that SNL is unafraid of discussing race. Even in
5
its first season, SNL famously featured Richard Pryor, a comic whose signature style was
to make shocking and unabashed jokes about race and racial differences (Cooper, 2007).
From its beginnings to current sketches such as those titled “The Japanese Office,”
“Blackenstein,” and “The Manuel Ortiz Talk Show” (NBC.com, 2011), SNL has been and
continues to be open to including sketches and messages that comment on race.
While other shows, such as The Daily Show and Mind of Mencia, also openly
discuss issues of race, SNL is of particular interest for the present study because of the
controversy, attention, and public discourse surrounding the actor who currently portrays
Obama on the show (Farhi, 2008; Horowitz, 2007; Kaplan, 2008; Moore, 2009): Fred
Armisen, who is Venezuelan, Japanese, and German (DeRogatis, 2003). In 2009, Moore
bluntly stated that “Barack Obama is still not Black on SNL” (para. 1) and “the lack of
melanin in Armisen’s skin is a hindrance to making his version of Barack Obama funny”
(para. 8). Criticisms, speculation, and focus on the racial identity and portrayal of Obama
are unique to SNL, and make the show’s presidential impersonation even more of a
compelling and interesting text to examine for its location at the intersection of issues of
race, mixed race, popular culture, politics, and Obama’s image. Given that SNL has spent
its entire existence joking about and portraying race on television, it would seem that
mixed race would also be a topic of discussion, especially in light of the controversy and
presence of a mixed race president. However, as this study shows, SNL has not been able
to firmly define and communicate a message about Obama as a mixed race individual.
6
With the always present controversial social, economic, cultural, and global
issues, and his presidential title making him a lasting figure in U.S. and the international
community’s history, Obama’s image has been and will continue to be a popular and
frequent appearance or subject in television texts, both authentic and impersonated
(Fillion, 2008; Marquez, 2009; Metzler, 2009; Naureckas, 2008). In fact, given its
common format of opening with an impersonation of the president, SNL is a program
guaranteed to continue to feature Obama’s impersonated likeness, further emphasizing
the program’s appropriateness as a text for examination of television’s interpretation of
the President. Should Obama be a one-term president, SNL is still a relevant text for this
study’s purposes because of the show’s continuing portrayals and commentaries on past
presidents (for example, SNL continues to feature segments that either portray or discuss
past presidents such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush). The end of Obama’s tenure in
the White House will not be the end of his representation on SNL; it is extremely likely
his image will continue to be discussed on SNL in the future. Unique features of SNL –
longstanding and pervasive in popular culture, unafraid of racial topics, with a tradition
of regular presidential impersonations that have more longevity than most others – make
it an appropriate text for the study of messages about Obama and his race on television.
However, to reference SNL as a television text is not enough because multiple
components make up the text as a whole; these components must be defined. To say this
study is examining the text of SNL is too vague. For example, an important part of SNL
is the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels (Plasketes, 1988). He is a deciding party in the
7
content of the show. Other deciding parties include the writers who create the content,
the editors who review it, and, of course, the NBC network on which the show is aired.
Beyond the network is the parent company to NBC, NBC Universal (NBC.com, 2011),
co-owned by General Electric (GE.com, 2011), and all the entities are monitored by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC; 2011). The aforementioned components
certainly contribute to and have some control over the text.
The message itself is similarly multilayered, containing the dialogue of a segment,
the production elements (such as set design and lighting), and the actors who deliver the
lines of the script. While the previously discussed components (like network and
producer) may create, edit, and monitor the content, the elements that truly shape the
message are the words and ideas in the script, the actors, and the actors’ delivery of the
words and ideas in the script. SNL as a whole text is shaped and created by these
components. It is also shaped by (and, reflexively, it shapes) its U.S. audience and
popular culture. For the purpose of this study, the final product (the show itself) are
examined as a whole television text, with consideration of each of these components as
they become relevant to the analysis.
Specifically, this study analyzes three types of racial references to Obama in the
text of the five seasons from 2006 to 2011 (Seasons 32-36) of the shows that span
Obama’s time as a possible candidate in the democratic primary, an official candidate in
the primary elections, a presidential candidate, president elect, and the first years of his
presidency. First, this study analyzes all visual texts of Obama, including impersonations
8
by an actor, cartoons, or photographs, to determine how the show visually communicates
about Obama’s race. Second, this study examines all linguistic texts that reference
Obama and race. The texts are examined for messages that indicate the show’s
characterization of Obama’s race and racial persona through verbal communication.
Third, this study explores the absence of certain messages regarding Obama’s race and
how those voids in the text also shape and communicate his racial identity to viewers.
The voids are analyzed by examining the surrounding television text to determine how
the text missed an opportunity to make racial commentary. Further explanation of the
three types of Obama references and how they were categorized and selected are
explained in detail in the Sketch Collection section.
The findings in the analysis will support this study’s argument that while SNL
mentions mixed race, it ultimately adds to the hegemonic treatment of mixed race
individuals. That is, it identifies Obama as monoracial, ignoring his mixed race heritage
in favor of a neat, pre-existing category. While SNL had the opportunity to step outside
the typical dismissal of mixed race and defend their choice of actor to portray Obama,
and refer to him as mixed race on a consistent basis, they opted instead to categorize him
as monoracial. In doing so, SNL upholds the silent treatment given to the mixed race
community, forcing a monoracial identification based on appearance, a hegemonic course
of action.
9
Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Television Studies
The study of television has been established as a field of scholarship due to the
research and published work of many academics. However, for years after the invention
and proliferation of television, no one in the scholarly world had, or would, define
television studies. Among others, John Hartley published his contribution to the
development of the field, which he called “the un-discipline of tele-ology” in 1992. He
described tele-ology as “a set of essays on television as a cultural, aesthetic, political,
textual industrialized medium” (Hartley, 1992, p. 4).
In consideration of television as a popular medium, and also in consideration of
its wide audience, Hartley (1992) defined his area of study as untraditional and took a
very casual voice, though his contributions were anything but. Hartley (1992)
downplayed his work by saying it was not necessarily an academic study, but he also
pointed out that he collected and strung together the essays to offer an approach that
works on critical theory, instead of working through it. The creation of an approach
working on critical theory in television studies was Hartley’s (1992) attempt to incite new
ways of thinking about a familiar cultural phenomenon. The essays were an important
first step, but they did not “lead readers by the nose towards a teleological final cause”
(Hartley, 1992, p. 5). As Hartley stated, it “was written in an exploratory, experimental
mode” (p. 5).
10
Linking the essays together was ‘intervention analysis,’ a theoretical model of
television that provides a “strategy for interrogating various centres, whether intellectual,
aesthetic, or political, from their margins, seeking to interconnect the domains on whose
margins the analysis stands” (Hartley, 1992, p. 6). From this theoretical framework, he
proposed that there are various interventions to be made by both audiences and creators
of television texts to break the medium and its content down to both scholarly and
popular understandings, such as first justifying television as an object worthy of study;
this, he said, was the first step (Hartley, 1992). For these reasons, Hartley’s essays
represent the first brick in the foundation of television studies.
Even earlier than Hartley, Stuart Hall (1982) published works that examined
ideology at the intersection of culture, society, and media. Hall’s findings created an
important layer to the foundation for television studies. Hall (1982) asserted that
linguistic performance and the understanding of that communication is distributed by
social institutions, which play a crucial role in delivering messages about gender and
class. Given the linguistic performance by television texts, and the linguistic competence
of the audience as negotiated by the viewers, Hall’s observation made an important
argument for television as a powerful institution of sense making for the masses. It then
follows that television is also a worthy medium to be studied closely, thus making
television studies necessary for those attempting to understand culture and the world.
Hall’s (1982) critical version of cultural studies influenced the political-economic
work in communications research (Budd & Steinman, 1987). Interest in the area of
11
textual analysis and television grew among communication scholars, and the field of
television theory moved away from focusing on just the text to focusing on ideology,
audience reception, and the interaction of all of these elements and how they form
societal norms, beliefs, and culture (Budd & Steinman, 1987).
The idea that television was more than just a text, rather that it was a sensory
extension of an audience member’s primary experience, was introduced by Marshall
McLuhan (1964). Disinterested and unconcerned with the content, programming, or
social context of television, McLuhan instead focused on the outcomes or consequences
of exposure to the medium itself. He argued for television as a medium that begged for
participatory viewership, and as an exciting medium, but also as a strangely difficult
medium to define in cultural value (McLuhan, 1964). While others critiqued television
because of its failure to honor the traditions and standards of literate culture, McLuhan
appreciated the medium for the experience it offered viewers that other media in the
culture tended to constrain (Corner, 1999).
Like McLuhan, Raymond Williams (1974) had a critical approach to television
studies that had a significant impact on the field. Williams was also interested in the
relationship between the medium and society. However, his account of television used
technology as a category that could open a study of television and as something that
needed a new kind of critical inquiry in its relation to cultural change (Corner, 1999). His
approach, unlike McLuhan’s, was historical and social, exploring the tensions between
the socially conservative and the socially innovative aspects of television (Williams,
12
1974). Williams’ approach to critical cultural studies of television, focusing on the social
and historical contexts of television texts, is one of the most characteristic features of his
work.
From its transformative years in the 1970s and 1980s to more recent studies in the
1990s and since then, television studies have evolved from purely textual analyses to
robust examinations of the cultural and societal impacts of the text and of the medium. It
is at this very intersection of textual analysis and social influence that this study seeks to
explore the topic of mixed race on television and how it shapes culture. Television texts
articulate and cultivate dominant cultural values, prevailing political ideologies, and
instances of social change, and, in this way, they shape our culture (Baran & Davis, 1995;
Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980).
Further, according to Hall (1980), “Any society/culture tends, with varying
degrees of closure, to impose its classifications of the social and cultural and political
world. This constitutes a dominant cultural order, though it is neither univocal nor
uncontested” (p. 134). In other words, the dominant culture determines the social,
cultural, and political categories communicated to individuals, but these categorizations
do not go unquestioned, and they can have multiple meanings and interpretations. In the
United States, perhaps more than in any other country, this dominant cultural order is one
that frequently asserts two-dimensional stereotypes of people of color on television
(Mastro, 2003). Given television’s impact on societal values, the tendency on the part of
visual media (including television) to generalize race and under-represent ethnic
13
minorities, and the impact the various interpreted meanings of these messages have on
cultural values, the importance of television to issues of race cannot and should not be
ignored. The following section describes the critical cultural approach to analyzing
media messages on race and the impact these messages have on cultural values.
A Critical Cultural Approach
This thesis incorporates the theory of social constructionism (Berger &
Luckmann, 1967) from the critical and cultural studies perspectives to examine Obama’s
racial persona as constructed through language and impersonations on SNL. Also, this
research relies heavily on the concepts of polysemy in television texts (Fiske, 1987) and
hegemony (Gramsci, 1971) to analyze SNL’s construction of race in relation to existing
power structures in media and society. This section is both a review of important
literature in critical and cultural studies and a presentation of the concepts of hegemony,
polysemy, and social constructionism to be applied to the analysis of the text that follows.
In the mid-1800s, Marx and Engels (1973) argued that the ideas of a society’s
most wealthy class are what determine the cultural ideals; therefore, the wealthy class is
the ruling class. This central Marxist concept, the examination of how a society’s
wealthy elite cultural ideals become the dominant determining factor in the ideology of
the entire society, contributed to the agenda of the Frankfurt School, founded by
members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in 1923. The Frankfurt School
brought together scholars from a diverse range of academic backgrounds; most of these
scholars immigrated to the United States where their work became known as critical
14
theory (Strine, 1991). While Marxism was more specifically and narrowly focused on
the economic aspect of domination, the Frankfurt School was concerned with critically
analyzing threats to individual freedom and consumerism and their relationship to the
mass media.
These founding concepts led to critical theory applied within the field of cultural
studies. Cultural studies perspective, begun from early British scholarship of the 1950s
(During, 1993), examines the ways cultural artifacts function to represent the values,
ideologies, and constructions of gender, race, and class in a society and how these are
related to influence the culture and individuals within it (Kellner, 1995). As Foss (2002)
observed, “Critical theory allows cultural studies to broaden its focus without losing its
critical rigidity” (p. 67), and “Critical theory, often confused or used interchangeably
with cultural studies, should be considered more of an approach to cultural studies” (p.
67). As a synthesis of both critical theory and cultural studies, “Cultural criticism as an
academic practice today unites aspects of both of these traditions. It generally focuses on
the everyday, on meaning making processes that are practiced by portions or all of
society” (Vande Berg, Wenner, & Gronbeck, 2004, p. 391). This mutual consideration of
critical theory within a cultural studies perspective creates the critical cultural studies
approach to examining influential communication artifacts.
Since their beginnings in early Marxist ideology and the research of the Frankfurt
School’s scholars, critical cultural studies have taken on new directions, with new
versions and types of scholarship developed in the field. A critical approach can be
15
applied to a variety of artifacts and areas, including cultural studies, with very specific
and diverse interests of scholarship. However, the concern with critically examining
concepts and representations of mainstream or dominant ideology is still the most guiding
fundamental aspect in the work of critical theorists. As Kellner (1989) argues, some
takes on critical theory serve an interest in connecting the theory to the political sphere,
as well as an interest in the freeing the oppressed from a dominant cultural order.
In American culture, television exists as one of the most significant systems that
disseminate sets of ideals to the entire society (Butler, 2002), and that serves the interests
of the dominant culture. A critical cultural studies approach then, using the most basic
concept of the existence of mainstream dominant ideologies, is effective in the
examination of television as a medium of mass communication of the dominant culture’s
values and beliefs.
In addition to examining and defining the presence of a dominant ideology,
critical theory also examines how a dominant culture is effectively accepted by the
society. Though Selections from the Prison Notebooks was not published until 1971,
Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of hegemony in the early 20th century. With
hegemony, Gramsci elaborated on the more traditional Marxist ideology of the late 1800s
(Marx & Engels, 1973) suggesting dominated groups do not understand the process of
domination as it occurs. Instead, Gramsci (1971) suggested the dominant culture
maintains its position of power not only by imposing ideas onto the dominated group, but
also by gaining the consent of the dominated in doing so. He says the social context of a
16
text is what makes it a text, such as the social status of the author, values of the culture in
which the text exists, and other socially accepted assumptions.
Consent enables the dominant group to maintain itself as dominant; by
manipulating a variety of key elements in the process of hegemony, those in power gain
the consent of those they wish to dominate, and the cooperative process of defining and
setting up methods of dominance is effectively achieved (Gramsci, 1971). Stuart Hall
(1980) adds, in agreement with Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, that the dominant
culture’s ideals do not go unchallenged, but they are still dominant.
A related concept within critical cultural studies is the idea of polysemy, or the
notion that one text can have multiple meanings. In 1979, Hebidge applied the idea of
polysemy to cultural studies, positing that each text should be seen as having the potential
to contain or communicate an infinite array of meanings. Though Hebidge asserted the
polysemy of texts to be infinite, Fiske (1987) described a text’s multiple meanings as
being “neither boundless nor structureless: the text delineates the terrain within which
meanings may be made and proffers some meanings more vigorously than others” (p.
16). Fiske suggests there is a structure to the potential meanings, as well as a limit to
what can be interpreted.
Based on Fiske’s assertions, Foss (2002) argued that hegemony needs polysemy
to be effective. She further supports this argument by reasoning that because the average
viewer has at least a reasonable amount of critical ability, if a text were not polysemic
and did not leave any room for resistant interpretations, it would be completely rejected
17
and hegemony would not succeed. Though many meanings may be possible, hegemony
ensures that the meaning most actively and positively represented and pushed most
strategically forward for acceptance will always be the one that serves the dominant
culture best (Foss, 2002). Though other meanings, acknowledged by the dominant group
in the process of creating a text, will exist and be read, the dominant group’s preferred
meaning still receives priority.
Within critical cultural studies, television functions as a medium of mass
communication and a means by which mainstream dominant ideology is presented to
society to oppress or marginalize groups (Butler, 2002). This marginalization on
television is maintained by the dominant, elite culture that controls television
programming, imposing their dominant ideology on viewers (Newcomb, 2000) and
oppressing other non-dominant groups, such as communities of color, in American
television. Critical cultural approaches deem dominant ideology so pervasive that it
becomes invisible or undetected (Fiske, 1989). Hegemony, in the critical cultural
approach, holds that the dominant ideology represented on television contributes to
society’s perspective on race, class, and gender. In sum, television texts advance the
interests of the elite majority in America, but the advancement is so widespread and
pervasive, it is not obvious and accepted as the standard or norm of operation. By this
description, and Gramsci’s (1971) definition, television is fundamentally hegemonic.
It is appropriate, then, to consider hegemony and polysemy within a critical
cultural studies perspective in approaching a television text. For a television text to
18
become successful, it has to be widely received and considered popular with viewers. As
Fiske (1989) states,
A popular text, to be popular, must have points of relevance to a variety of readers
in a variety of social contexts, and so must be polysemic in itself, and any one
reading of it must be conditional, for it must be determined by the social
conditions of its reading. (p. 141)
Television texts are popular texts, and therefore polysemic by definition. Following the
logic that polysemy exists in television, and that those in control of television content are
part of the dominant culture, it reasons that hegemony also exists within television texts.
For these reasons, a critical cultural approach to television texts is the best method to use
to examine hegemony as sustained by polysemy within popular programming.
Using Kellner’s (1989) definition of critical theory, Gramsci’s (1971) concepts of
hegemony, and structural polysemy as described by Fiske (1989) and Foss (2002), a
critical cultural approach is applied in the following pages of this work to examine
television as a medium used to communicate the ideology of the dominant culture to
mass audiences, the ways in which those who are oppressed consent to their own
domination, and the multiple meanings implied or received. The discussion of SNL
within this context applies a critical cultural approach to sketches that reference race to
evaluate how the show operates within the hegemonic medium and how the texts employ
structured polysemy to invite various interpretations and to construct concepts of race and
mixed race. Additionally, the discussion will include consideration and analysis of the
19
impact the lack of mixed race acknowledgement has on the message to the audience, and
how that absence influences society’s formation of racial categories.
Self-reflexive and self-critical, critical cultural studies accepts its weaknesses
from the beginning by acknowledging that its method will always be biased because the
researcher cannot be objective or reject her humanity to objectively apply the method.
Because critical cultural studies’ themes of hegemony and polysemy are qualitative, there
is no predictable or quantitative measure for the results of an inquiry, and the lack of
quantitative measure leaves room for interpretation and personal biases. This study
acknowledges this aspect of cultural critical studies and approaches the analysis
conscious of this researcher’s, and all researchers’, unavoidable biases, and, in doing so,
adds a unique layer onto the lens being used to examine the text.
While the cultural critical approach is used to examine the text, the idea of
socially constructed identity is also applied to analyze how SNL operates as a television
text that socially constructs race. The following section provides a definition for the
concept of social constructionism and describes how it works within critical cultural
studies and why it is an appropriate concept in examining the chosen artifact.
Social Constructionism
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967) argue, “identity is a phenomenon that
emerges from the dialectic between individual and society. Identity types, on the other
hand, are social produces (tout court), relatively stable elements of objective social
reality” (p. 174). They also found, “Identity remains unintelligible unless it is located in
20
a world. Any theorizing about identity – and about specific identity types – must
therefore occur within the framework of the theoretical interpretation within which it and
they are located” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 175). In other words, identity types only
have meaning when seen within society, as a relevant context for understanding. Berger
and Luckmann (1967) defined “social constructionism” as the idea that the world people
create in the process of a social exchange becomes their mutually understood reality. It
reasons that as audiences interact with television texts (McLuhan, 1964), a group reality
is formed, making the study of popular television texts vital to the understanding of our
culture.
Other studies built upon Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) introduction of social
constructionism. Kenneth Gergen (1985) focused on the world of shared, social
constructions of meaning, and explained social constructionism as being based on the
assumption that the tools and rules used to understand the world are social artifacts and
are products of human interchange couched in a historical context. Another distinctive
characteristic of their approach is that unlike radical constructivism, which places
emphasis on studying meaning making in the individual mind (von Glasserfield, 1991),
social constructionism focuses on the collective generation of meaning making activity as
shaped by social processes (Gergen, 1985). Additionally, Kenneth Gergen (1986) asserts
that the meaning a group derives from that shared social process is only a reality based on
language, and that there are no concrete references in which social descriptions are
rooted. This idea that meaning comes from shared social interaction with no concrete
21
references is very close to the claims of Stanley Fish (1989), who posited that reality is
the result of accepted social processes within a specific context, and that knowledge can
only be addressed within that context or society.
While social constructionism defines reality as being negotiated and created as a
group through shared experiences (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; McLuhan, 1964), the
critical cultural approach contextualizes that shared experience. Critical cultural studies
views the communication, such as the negotiation of meaning in social constructionism,
as happening within the power structures of the dominant culture in which the exchange
occurs (Kellner, 1989). Therefore, within the critical cultural approach, social
constructionism of reality on television as communicated and negotiated to its audience is
restricted to the values of the dominant culture, which are present in television as a social
phenomenon. Social constructionism and television can be more completely analyzed
and understood when using a critical cultural approach, to focus not only on the social
construction of mixed race (as in the case of this study), but to also focus on how the
hegemonic values influence the television text’s message on mixed race, the polysemy of
the messages on the issue, and how the values of the dominant culture shape to the
meaning making process.
Further, Newcomb (2000) observes, “[American] television secures conventional
and dominant formations of race, class, gender, age, ethnicity, region, and style” (p. 7).
Thus, television is a social process in which cultural issues are negotiated and defined for
a community or society. In other words, television is an influential part of U.S. society
22
used to construct images of race, and, therefore, an important medium to examine for
communicated messages about race. The next pages of this study review the influence of
racial representations on television and introduce the social construction of mixed race on
television.
Constructing Race and Mixed Race on Television
By Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) definitions of social constructionism, race is a
social construction created by various aspects of a society, including its media. Further,
race is socially constructed as opposed to existing biologically, as evidenced by the
American Anthropological Association’s (AAA; 2011) position released on the nature of
race, stating that commonly accepted “racial” groupings differ from each other only in
roughly 6% of their genetic material (AAA, 2011). They also note that race has become
a worldview, a societal belief in categorization, supported by the dominant culture’s
conceptions about human differences and similarities, thus concurring with the concept of
race as a social construction. The visual representation of racial categories in television
and other media is also a basis for racial constructions (Fiske, 1989).
Other studies have suggested the strength and influence of the media in
constructing racial categories by emphasizing the impact they have on power structures
played out in real life (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992). Ideally, a media
system suitable for a democracy should provide its readers with some coherent picture of
the wide array of social forces that affect the shape of their everyday lives. However,
media discourse in the United States does not remotely approach this ideal (Gamson et
23
al., 1992). The overwhelming conclusions reveal that the media generally operate in
ways that promote apathy and cynicism rather than active citizenship and participation.
Further, the media’s promotion of apathy and cynicism translates to ethnic and racial
apathy so viewers lazily rely on media images for their definition of self and others in
terms of race (Gamson et al., 1992). This association between exposure and belief
systems has also been linked to minority group members’ evaluation of their own selfesteem (Greenberg, Mastro, & Brand, 2002).
These mediated and persuasive constructions of race go beyond opinion and
actually affect the quality of life for racial minorities. As hooks (1992) asserts, since the
field of representation remains a place of struggle for ethnic minorities, it is most evident
in critical examinations of contemporary representations of blackness and Black people.
Based on the accumulation of the reviewed findings on race and the media, representation
goes beyond identification to construction of social structures and beliefs about race and
power structures. In fact, there are a number of studies that examine the relationship
between mass media depictions of racial/ethnic groups and the subsequent impact of
those depictions on social perceptions. The findings indicate that televised portrayals of
racial/ethnic minorities influence majority group members’ real-world perceptions about
minority groups as well as minority group members’ evaluations of self (Armstrong,
1992; Botta, 2000; Faber, O’Guinn, & Meyer, 1987; Ford, 1997; McDermott &
Greenberg, 1984). Further, the media articulate and cultivate dominant cultural values,
prevailing political ideologies, and instances of social change, and in this way, they shape
24
our culture (Baran & Davis, 1995; Gerbner et al., 1980). The tendency of visual media,
including television, to generalize race, to under-represent ethnic minorities, and to make
a significant impact on cultural values (Mastro, 2003) has sparked much interest in
communication scholarship in this area of study.
Existing research examining the relationship between media primes and racerelated outcomes has concentrated largely on how positive and negative media
stereotypes affect racial attitudes and judgments (Bodenhausen, Schwarz, Bless, &
Wanke, 1995; Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996) about monoracial individuals and
groups. However, a fairly recent controversy over racial categories underscores the
enormous growth in the number of multiracial individuals and their impact on American
culture. The controversy emerged over whether the 2000 Census should have been
altered to include a multiracial category in addition to the singular categories previously
offered (Shih, 2005). Until then, individuals of mixed racial heritage had to choose
between their component identities on the form. However, groups of mixed race
individuals have grown, and their argument that identifying with just one racial category
forces a denial of one or more aspects of their heritage was heard (Gaskins, 1999).
Mixed race individuals and their advocates further argued that the Census racial
categories did not accurately reflect the nation's actual racial composition (Holmes,
1997). This public discourse, controversy, and subsequent change in standard categorical
racial assignments demonstrates how multiracial identities present challenges to the
25
traditional U.S. culture’s assumptions about race and racial categories (Johnson, 1992;
Ramirez, 1996; Root, 1992; Spickard, 1992).
Given the difficulty U.S. society has had with trying to understand multiracial
identity, psychologists began studying many of the questions asked by the United States
Census Bureau Task Force, including the ways in which multiracial individuals
understand their racial identities (Shih, 2005). In addition, it became more widely
acknowledged (across disciplines) that the existence of multiracial families and
multiracial individuals challenges existing racial categories and the social systems upon
which these categories are built (Shih, 2005). For example, scholars in psychology
showed interest in the multiracial family and how it deals with issues such as a lack of
social recognition (Nakashima, 1992). Communication scholars focused more on how
those families or individuals communicated their identity to society and the role of the
media in assigning and shaping race for people of mixed heritage (Johnson, 1992;
Ramirez, 1996; Root, 1992; Spickard, 1992).
According to Wardle (1999), mixed race individuals must face the challenge of
identifying role models that are also mixed race to provide guidance to understanding
their racial identity. Such a challenge suggests that media representations reflect
society’s difficulty in accepting the existence of mixed race people, whose very image
challenges rigid notions of racial stereotypes and the culture of thinking that contributes
to the perceived and sometimes categorically invisible multiracial communities.
Additionally, multicultural or multiracial public figures are enjoying their new niche, but
26
the media avoids acknowledging and discussing their mixed race (La Ferla, 2003). In a
New York Times article entitled “Generation E.A.: Ethnically Ambiguous,” author Ruth
La Ferla (2003) reported that racially mixed actors and public figures are now being
“perceived as good, desirable, successful,” because they possess “a face whose heritage is
hard to pin down” (p. 46). La Ferla (2003) asks the reader to “consider the careers of
movie stars like Vin Diesel, Lisa Bonet, and Jessica Alba, whose popularity with
audiences seems due in part to the tease over whether they are Black, White, Hispanic,
American Indian or some combination” (p. 46). La Ferla’s (2003) textual analysis found
various forms of television entertainment (situation comedy, soap opera, and science
fiction) that worked to maintain continued exclusion of mixed race individuals rather than
acknowledging their relevance.
In addition to Wardle (1999) and La Ferla (2003), still other studies have noted
the exclusion of mixed race acknowledgement on television and in the media. Rucker
(2008) found that the language used in films was inadequate to discuss mixed race and
led to a silencing of the “multiracial voice” (p. 3). Further, other studies found that
mixed race was actually ignored for the purposes of casting. Jiwani (2005) found that
mixed race Eurasian (Caucasian and Asian) female actresses were being used to play
Asian female roles on television. The mixed race of the actors was not acknowledged
and was purposefully hidden and ignored (Jiwani, 2005). These studies all concluded
that mixed race was excluded from being represented or acknowledged in the media,
specifically in film and on television. The exclusion of mixed race representations on
27
television suggests society’s difficulty accepting the presence of multiracial people,
whose very images challenge rigid notions of racial stereotypes.
Due to this failure of the media to acknowledge mixed race individuals or include
content about mixed-race in their programming (Jiwani, 2005; La Ferla, 2003; Rucker,
2008; Wardle, 1999), famous multiracial individuals such as Frederick Douglass,
Olympic medalist Greg Louganis, and songwriter and performer Lenny Kravitz are often
categorized as monoracial individuals, even though they claim their multiethnic
backgrounds (Shih, 2005). Further, it has been found that the media representations of
mixed race individuals that do exist help to shape cultural racial reality (Koeman, 2007;
Lee & Bean, 2007; Teng, 2006). As President of the United States, Barack Obama is
frequently present in the media and on television and is a public figure (Hendrickson &
Wilkinson, 2007; Pease & Brewer, 2008). His public presence has been made more
significant in United States popular culture by television. Because mixed race
individuals in the media shape our cultural racial reality, it reasons that Obama’s presence
on television also contributes to the formation of that reality.
One of the ways Obama has been discussed and represented racially on television
has been in the comedy genre, through sketch format and parody on SNL. However,
jokes about Obama and race on SNL are not the first example of race as a topic for the
comedy genre on television, or on the show itself. The following section provides a
review of research in this area as it relates to this study.
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The Comedy Genre: Sketch, Parody, and Satire
Humor is often used to negotiate the discussion of an uncomfortable topic (Miczo,
2004), and the subject of race on television is no different. Studies done on comedic
television, specifically sketch comedy programming, have grown in popularity
(Campbell, 2009; Compton, 2010; Lester, 2005; Perks, 2008; Reincheld, 2006; Shulman,
1992). The following is a brief history of live comedy shows on television and a review
of studies on contemporary sketch comedy programs that discuss race in the genre. But
as the literature shows, while the comedy genre has become more and more candid about
the topic of race, images and discussions of mixed race on television have yet to be
portrayed or thoroughly examined in scholarly studies.
Comedy programs on television have been around for years, addressing political
and social issues of the day. For example, during the 1960s, a period in U.S. history
when television was actively talking about social issues, The Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour was “the only network show to reflect directly and aggressively the subversive
attitudes of the sixties” (Thompson, 1990, p. 21). While some argued it was “television’s
symbol of dissent” (Thompson, 1990, p. 23), the show Laugh In was also present on
television at the time. Laugh In not only joked about social issues and politics, but also
showed scantily clad women dancing on the stage and even hosted a show with special
guest presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 (Erickson, 2000). Late-night comedy
shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson were
longer running shows, and they were not as politically and socially radical in their
29
content (Inglis, 2006). In 1977, NBC premiered The Richard Pryor Show (Cooper,
2007). Pryor, known for his controversial racial humor, was only on television on his
show for four episodes. Among other issues, controversy about the content of some of
the sketches, such as one in which he appeared as a rocker who used a machine gun to
kill all of his White fans, was a central factor in the cancellation of his show (Cooper,
2007). Though short-lived, it was one of the most daring sketch comedy shows of its
time (and in television history).
More recently, sketch comedy shows that joke about politics and controversial
racial issues have emerged. In the 1990s, Keenan Ivory Wayans's program, In Living
Color, was one of only a handful of primetime television shows that were both written
and produced by African Americans; the show presented “an interesting example of how
difficult it is to attack racism in a comedic format without giving the appearance of
reinforcing those very stereotypes whose absurdity is being ridiculed” (Shulman, 1992, p.
2). According to Shulman (1992),
In Living Color’s hardhitting satire, which seems to appeal to white as well as
black audiences, is double edged enough to allow viewers with different
orientations to tailor its message to their own particular perceptions of the racial
climate of America of the 1990s. (p. 2)
Shulman (1992) found the In Living Color attempt to address racism to be partly effective
since it was able to reach dual audiences, but she also found that it potentially worsened
the issue. Because In Living Color depended on audience understanding of African
30
American caricatures and stereotypes, it had to at least have the potential to be
destructive, reinforcing the bigotry and illogic it was trying to expose (Shulman, 1992).
According to Dates and Barlow (1990), humor that sharp and controversial could reach
both Black and White audiences because there are Black audiences who have become
more comfortable with ambiguity, as well as White audiences who also see racial matters
as less divisively Black and White.
Shulman (1992) argues that the stylistic devices Wayans used did not seem to
take the dominant culture’s viewing perspective into account. According to Shulman
(1992), In Living Color lived in a “new, idealized social order in which African
Americans achieve parity,” and assured its audience that the demonstrated social and
racial power structures were the ideal (p. 3). The show was also innovative because it
reversed the traditionally accepted roles of Blacks and Whites in sketches featuring
characters in interracial pairs; these segments of the program (a Black police officer
ticketing a White motorist, a Black preacher being presented as more intelligent and
articulate than his White counterpart, a Black child playing the princess in a school play,
and more) were anti-stereotypical, and they leaned toward breaking previously held
societal categorizations of Black and White people (Shulman, 1992). Though not the
first of its kind, In Living Color is worthy of consideration and review within this study
because it managed to appeal to a diverse audience while using the sketch comedy genre
to joke about racial issues (Shulman, 1992).
31
Another sketch comedy program, Chappelle’s Show, also contained a mediated
discourse on race. Perks (2008) analyzed possible hegemonic and counter-hegemonic
readings of the racial humor from several sketches of the show and observed that even
the show’s creator, comedian Dave Chappelle, could not help but notice the potential for
both types of interpretation of his comedy. In one situation, Chappelle saw that a White
audience member laughed noticeably loudly at a joke aimed at a Black character, and the
experience caused “Chappelle to wonder if the new Season of his show had gone from
sending up stereotypes to merely reinforcing them” (Perks, 2008, p. 1). Perks (2008)
suggested that Chappelle’s ethical dilemma (continuing with a successful program versus
potentially culturally damaging content) pointed to important questions about the danger
of polysemic interpretations of stereotype-based humor.
Chappelle’s Show was unique for its attempts to include a conversation about
mixed race. This show is significant to this study because there are so few references to
mixed race identity on television and within the sketch comedy genre, and it is important
to carefully examine the mixed race references that can be found. Perks (2008) notes the
“Racial Draft” sketch, which addressed a “notable social issue that precedes
discrimination, which is the United States emphasis on racial and ethnic categories and
biological definitions for one’s belongingness in a particular category” (p. 16). The
sketch featured teams of monoracial individuals attempting to “draft” certain “ethnically
mixed celebrities including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, and Mariah Carey, thus helping to
demonstrate the prevalence of people whose identities resist racial or ethnic
32
classification” (p. 16). According to Perks (2008), the sketch had the potential to break
down these previously constructed racial categories, or provide a platform or incentive to
re-categorize race by parodying exiting definitions of race and by exposing “the
ridiculousness of making people fit into neat categories” (p. 17). Chappelle’s Show and
its racially charged sketch comedy segments are relevant to this study because the issue
of mixed race was used as a topic of an entire segment “Racial Draft” and because race
was such a central theme to the show. Given the focus of this study on mixed race and
the sketch comedy format on television, Chappelle’s Show and its use of humor to talk
about mixed race is especially relevant in contextualizing the discussion of mixed race
and SNL in television programming.
The growing body of sketch comedy scholarship reveals how humor on these
particular programs shapes our view of cultural categories such as race, but research has
yet to thoroughly explore the televised presence of mixed race individuals, much less the
societal implications of decisions made regarding how to present a mixed race public
figure such as Obama. There have been studies on race on television (Armstrong, 1992;
Bodenhausen et al., 1995; Botta, 2000; Faber et al., 1987; Ford, 1997), politics on
television (Erickson, 2000; Gaber, 2007; Hendrickson & Wilkenson, 2007; Pease &
Brewer, 2008), race in sketch comedy (Cooper, 2007; Lester, 2005; Perks, 2008), and
politics in sketch comedy (Compton, 2010; Inglis, 2006; Reincheld, 2006), but certainly
none examining the intersection of race and politics and sketch comedy on television,
much less mixed race and politics and sketch comedy. As the longest running sketch
33
comedy show on television, SNL is of particular interest to this study because it features a
mixed race public official (Obama) and has the opportunity to comment on him both
racially and politically. However, while studies have not been done on Obama’s racial
representation on SNL, the impact of the show and its various political sketches have
been the subject of scholarly investigation and are of relevance to this study because of
the study’s focus on both mixed race and politics. A review of mixed race on television
has been provided in this study, and the following reviews the accompanying topic to this
study, political satire on SNL.
Saturday Night Live and the Presidential Parody
Aaron Reincheld (2006) notes that Saturday Night Live is a “television institution
that has played a pivotal role in cultivating American television satire with its main target
being politics and politicians” (p. 190). After interviewing SNL contributors, writers, and
even the creator, Lorne Michaels, to examine how the Weekend Update sketch was
developed over the show’s first five years, Reincheld (2006) found that the show
influenced society’s tolerance for political humor by expanding the parameters of what
was considered acceptable for a television show and what was acceptable to parody and
present in a joking manner.
Reincheld (2006) argues that these expanded parameters led SNL to play an even
more influential role in American television satire and parody. Much of the show took
comedic aim at political targets, including every U.S. president beginning with Gerald
Ford, causing subsequent presidents to wonder what part of their campaign, public
34
appearance, or persona “would be magnified and ridiculed at 11:30 on Saturday night”
(Reincheld, 2006, p. 190). Compton (2010) argues that the SNL presidential parodies had
such a great impact that by the middle of the first season in 1975, President Ford's press
secretary, Ron Nessen, made the decision to host the show as possible damage control.
SNL “changed the way political campaigns are run, and that far-reaching impact is
exactly what its creator, Lorne Michaels, intended” (Reincheld, 2006, p. 195). Michaels
is quoted as having said that the ultimate goal of the program was to “make its viewers
laugh a lot while learning and thinking at least a little” (Reincheld, 2006, p. 195).
Tinic (2009) argues that Michaels was successful in reaching this goal, maybe
more successful than he might have imagined. With the arrival of Tina Fey’s
impersonation of Sarah Palin, even the people of Canada turned to SNL instead of their
own national political satire comedies (Tinic, 2009). Even though public leaders in the
country pleaded with viewers to pay more attention to the Canadian election coverage,
more Canadians watched the American vice-presidential debates than the Canadian
federal candidate debate when the two were scheduled for the same broadcast timeslot;
this lack of domestic political interest resulted in one of the lowest voter turnouts in the
nation’s history (Tinic, 2009). Clearly SNL’s political impact was felt, even across the
borders of its home country (Tinic, 2009). Tinic’s study and the widespread popularity of
Tina Fey’s impersonation is important to this study because though the Sarah Palin
character was not technically a presidential parody, it still brought a significant amount
of attention to SNL during a time when Obama was also being parodied and discussed on
35
the show. It brought an increased level of attention to the Obama texts, and many who
may not have originally been interested in the show were exposed to Obama
impersonations as they tuned in. A well-known sketch of SNL that features political
satire, and one which no doubt received more attention due to the popularity of Fey’s
Sarah Palin impersonation, is the Weekend Update sketch. As viewers tuned in to see
Fey’s impersonation, they were also privy to discussion about Obama.
In a study that analyzed a segment of SNL titled Weekend Update, Reincheld
(2006) argues, “America's teens and twenty-somethings have been taught the news by the
smart alecks behind the Weekend Update desk for thirty years” (p. 195). While viewers’
opinions of the news and a news-themed sketch shaped politics, racially themed sketches
were shaping viewers’ opinions about race and racial categories. If Weekend Update
gave a voice to alternate points of view that could reach the mainstream audiences, and if
that sketch publicly questioned political norms and leaders, so too could sketches making
racial statements about currently accepted norms and stereotypes give voice to alternate
standpoints on those categories. However, it is interesting that even while SNL has
ongoing themes of politics and even race, and even with the presence of a mixed race
character in Obama, it does not have an ongoing theme of mixed race.
While the scholarship on SNL has explored the social and political implications of
presidential parody and political satire, research has yet to examine how race intersects
with these elements on the show. The presidential campaign and election of Barack
Obama presented SNL with an opportunity to comment on race and politics, and
36
researchers received the opportunity to observe and analyze the intersection of race,
mixed race, politics, presidential parody, and sketch comedy. Barack Obama is the
common denominator shared by all these categories, and the section that follows reviews
scholarship and references on the issue of Obama’s race.
Barack Obama: A Mixed Race President
Much has been written and explored regarding Obama’s race and racial
perceptions of his heritage and identity. On the proliferation of racial coverage of
Obama, McIlwain (2007) argues, “Obama’s candidacy has been largely framed around
the question, ‘Is America ready for a Black president?’” (p. 64). Scholars disagree about
the importance of Obama’s race as a factor in his perceived ability, identity, appeal,
characterization, and relation to White and Black Americans. Harlow (2009) questioned
Obama’s importance as a figure in the racial discourse arguing,
Having a black face in the office of the presidency, alone, does nothing to change
the structure of inequality that exists in the country, and Barack Obama has done
nothing to indicate that changing entrenched social and economic racial inequality
is on his agenda. (p. 164)
Yet McIlwain (2007) disagrees and underscores the importance of racial perceptions of
Obama, stating that he has a “broad appeal to White Americans” (p. 64). He also argued,
[In spite of] his message and approach, which, different from the others, is not
premised on the pursuit of racial groups interests…recent research on the use and
effectiveness of White racist appeals demonstrate that racial prejudices,
37
resentments, and fears still persist in the minds and feelings of White voters. (p.
64)
Walsh (2009) found that due to Obama’s presence in the election, major news
media (such as CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times) could not ignore the topic of
race and, therefore, created “a story that resonates with commonsense understandings of
race, gender and power, rewords the representations of the candidates in a way that does
not challenge the White, masculine hegemony” (p. 121). By examining the media events
during the democratic campaign, Walsh (2009) focused on the construction and support
of the hegemonic view of racial identities of Black people through their portrayal of
Obama’s character as a Black man on the ticket. Walsh (2009) refers to Obama strictly
as a Black man and does not acknowledge or discuss Obama’s mixed race; the study
examines how the media pitted the White, female candidate, Hillary Clinton, against the
Black, male candidate, Barack Obama, but the study does nothing to address Obama’s
mixed race.
However, Obama’s mixed racial heritage has not gone unmentioned in the body
of knowledge. Lugo-Lugo and Bloodsworth-Lugo (2009) labeled Obama’s portrayal in
the media as not Black or White, but a “browned body,” and that “while Senator Obama
may be considered the first African American (or mixed race) presidential candidate of a
major U.S. political party…the public was positioned – during the primary season – to
view Obama as ‘brown(ed),’ in addition to a black body” (p. 110). Obama’s perceived
race was a national point of confusion, placing the President between being Black, brown
38
or mixed race (Lugo-Lugo & Bloodsworth-Lugo, 2009). Interestingly, Lugo-Lugo and
Bloodsworth-Lugo (2009) use Black and mixed race interchangeably in their study, while
most others strictly refer to him as African American or Black, acknowledging his
parents’ race, but not the resulting mixed race within his identity.
McMillan Howell (2009) moved beyond the Black or mixed identification of
Obama and hailed him as a complex and courageous voice in the discourse of race in
America. In contrast to many of the studies focused on the ‘blackness’ or ‘browning’ of
Obama, or the quality of the man as a morally and professionally prepared candidate,
Roane (2009) issued a challenge for people to focus on whiteness as culture in the
blackness of Obama as a “reflection of the similar complexity lying within them” (p.
184). Roane’s (2009) focus on Obama’s blackness of Obama pushes White Americans to
identify with the ‘otherness’ in themselves, but again puts the concepts of White and
Black as similar/separate concepts. Much of the scholarship focuses on White and Black
identities within the Obama media portrayal, but most only occasionally mention his
mixed race or imply it by mentioning his parents’ races. There is a significant gap in the
research focused specifically on the issue of mixed race and Obama on television. As
previously mentioned, the presidential parody on SNL provides a perfect research
location for the analysis of these elements, and what follows is a description of this
study’s specific areas of inquiry and the definition and description of the method
employed to complete the analysis and answer the research questions.
39
Critical Questions
In examining Obama’s role in reconstructing popular culture’s discourse on
mixed race, this study seeks to answer the following questions: How is Barack Obama‘s
racial identity communicated by Saturday Night Live, as evidenced by performances and
characterizations on the program? What are the implications of the SNL message about
Obama’s race for the social construction of mixed race?
40
Chapter 3
READING TELEVISION: A METHOD
Textual Analysis
To understand the method of textual analysis used in this study, one must
understand the method and also the possible implications for meaning making that exist
within a text and within the researcher. Textual analysis has been described by Denzin
and Lincoln (1994) as “an approach that often treats texts as self-contained systems” (p.
3). They observed that in a very traditional location (literary studies, for example), the
method operates under the assumption that a chosen text can be analyzed for meaning
based on its contents only (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). However, they make important
mention of the method operating in concert with cultural studies. With this consideration
for a cultural critical perspective, “a researcher employing a cultural studies perspective
would read a text in terms of its location within a historical moment marked by a
particular gender, race, or class ideology” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994, p. 3). Denzin and
Lincoln’s (1994) consideration for the cultural critical perspective is an important
distinction in the use of textual analysis, that while at face value it is a method of
collection and analysis for examination of a mass media text (such as television), the
meaning derived from the text must be determined based on the culture and societal
values in which the text is couched, not merely the textual artifact itself.
Kracauer (1953) defended textual analysis as a qualitative method, arguing that
the inadequacy of quantitative analyses in general stems from the methods themselves.
41
When trying to establish the meaning of texts by breaking them down into quantifiable
units (like words or expressions), analysts in fact destroy the very object they are
supposed to be studying. Kracauer (1953) advocated an approach that examined the
content of a text as a totality, taking visual, verbal, cultural, and social contexts into
consideration while analyzing the text, as opposed to simply counting the frequency of a
word or phrase within a text. Of course, based on this definition, the method opens the
door to the possible ability of the analyst to bring out the whole range of meanings that
did not exist when looking strictly at the text without consideration for less obvious
meanings. In fact, Kracauer (1953) argued that it was the job of the analyst to find these
less obvious meanings.
Multiple meanings of a text (polysemy) exist because audience members read
texts based on their personal perspectives, experiences, beliefs, and cultural values
(Vande Berg et al., 2004). Because of the various meanings that exist within a single text
due to the individualistic experiences of each reader, and since the dominant ideology of
a society can only be presented and not forced upon a viewer (Gramsci, 1971), polysemy
is inherent in a text. Since a single meaning cannot be derived from a text because it is
partially based on each viewer’s perspective, the critic must consider where meaning
actually exists. Some say meaning exists in the text (Mills, 1951), while others argue the
meaning is in the medium (McLuhan, 1964). Still others propose that deriving meaning
from a message is a practice mediated in part by the mind of the viewer, and in part by
42
the text itself (Hall, 1980). Taking this idea even further, Fiske (1989) asserted that the
meaning of a text exists only within the mind of the viewer.
Television texts are even more likely to have ambiguous and polysemic
interpretations because writers must create their messages and their texts within the rules
of television networks. As Newcomb and Hirsch (1974) argue, there are “institutional
constraints on television writers, beginning with the difficulty of breaking into this
position, and of the various levels of control that exceed the traditional notion of
authorship as an individual autonomous voice” (p. 160). The argument for the presence
of these institutional constraints is especially true in the case of politically charged topics,
such as race, because writers must tread even more carefully when creating their texts so
as to avoid offending certain groups. Because television texts are created within these
constraints, they are not able to contain such a literal message as the writer might intend,
which leaves even more room for multiple interpretations of intended, and unintended,
meanings.
Kracauer (1953) argued that a way to minimize the possibility of
misinterpretations from those intended by the writer is to analyze texts within their
historical context, to the extent that they express the general ideological trends of a given
period. Therefore, texts should not be regarded as closed, segmented objects, but rather
as indeterminate and dynamic fields of meaning in which intensions and effects intersect.
Especially with regard to television texts, which involve meaning making negotiated by
writer, viewer, the text, and indeterminate cultural factors, the text must be considered as
43
a continuous, meaningful piece (Kracauer, 1953). By this definition, analysis
necessitates the act of interpretation, which, like other readings, is based on specific
assumptions that should be made explicitly clear through the process of textual analysis
(Kracauer, 1953). It is the job of the analyst to acknowledge and identify specific
cultural assumptions and norms in which the text is situated; this process of
acknowledgment and identification reveals meaning.
According to Kracauer (1953), “the deciphering of latent meanings through
qualitative content analysis implies a deconstruction of ideology and a critique of its
social origins with a view to political action” (p. 161). This idea connects to the basic
assumptions of critical cultural studies; while television texts can have multiple meanings
and interpretations, since they are situated within cultural ideology, the meanings can be
found by using textual analysis layered against the backdrop of the society’s origins and
beliefs. While Kracauer was most likely not writing with television specifically in mind,
as it was a fairly new medium at the time he was published, the concepts presented here
are still valid as they relate to a critical cultural approach to television studies.
The researcher is also a part of the process of textual analysis. In acknowledging
the role of the researcher as a part of the method, Hall (1980) stated that the coding of a
message on the part of the sender (writer, producer, director, or other individuals who
play a role in a television text’s creation) controls some part of the message’s reception,
but it does not control reception transparently. Hall (1980) identified four stages of
television communication (production, circulation, consumption, and reproduction) and
44
stated that each stage has its own determining limits and possibilities. Though Hall
(1980) acknowledged the existence of polysemy in television texts, he was careful to note
the texts are not open to any interpretation. Based on Hall’s (1980) definition, each stage
in the circuit of coding limits the possibilities for meaning making in the next stage. The
various steps of coding work together to shape the meaning making possibilities of the
text.
Television texts have a complex structure of dominance, because at each stage of
this coding circuit, they are imprinted and recoded by existing institutional power
relations (Hall, 1980). In other words, hegemony makes its way into message coding
throughout the communication process. Further, Hall (1980) asserted that a message can
only be received at a particular stage if it is recognizable to its audience. Since television
texts are produced for mass consumption, the only way to guarantee a text will be
consumable by viewers is to relate it to a dominant and mutually understood ideology.
Therefore, the television communication circuit is one that cannot help but reproduce a
message of dominant ideology and be inherently hegemonic (Hall, 1980). It is important
to this researcher, and others that take a critical cultural perspective in textual analysis, to
be aware of this circuit of reproduced hegemony to adequately analyze a television text
for all possible meanings.
The researcher’s role in the method can take form in three ways, as defined by
Hall (1980). First, is the dominant-hegemonic position, in which a critic takes the
connoted meaning from a television text and “decodes the message in terms of the
45
reference code in which it has been encoded; in other words, the viewer is operating
inside the dominant code” (Hall, 1980, p. 101). This format is the ideal case of perfectly
transparent communication, but it is not always the most inquisitive way to read a text.
The present study does not adopt the dominant-hegemonic position.
The second type of role a researcher may take is that of the negotiated position, in
which a member of the “majority audience probably understands quite adequately what
has been dominantly defined, but the dominant definitions are hegemonic precisely
because they represent definitions of situations and events which are in dominance”
(Hall, 1980, p. 101). This second type of position acknowledges the legitimacy of the
hegemonic definitions, but also makes note of the alternate ground rules by which to
assign meaning, namely those that differ from the system of meaning making created and
imposed by the dominant culture. This second type position Hall (1980) says a
researcher may take considers a reading of events that sees the dominant culture’s
perspective, while reserving the right to make a more negotiated application of meaning
making and consider other meanings.
Finally, it is possible for a viewer to perfectly understand both the literal and
connotative meanings in a text, but to decode the message in a way that is completely
contrary to both the intended or unintended meanings (Hall, 1980). As Hall (1980)
states, “The viewer detotalizes the message in the preferred code in order to retotalize the
message within some alternative framework of reference” (p. 102). In combination with
46
the negotiated position, it is this third position that this study takes in viewing and
analyzing the SNL texts.
This study uses close textual analysis as its method of examination (Leff, 1986).
Leff (1992) defined this method (also known as textual criticism) as a focus on the intent
and intentional efforts of texts. The method is a useful means of examining television
media texts specifically for the social constructs they contain. Among many others, Leff
and Sachs (1990) pointed out the ability of rhetorical texts to create and shape a viewer’s
reality by assigning meaning to shared groups’ experiences. Further, examining these
television artifacts for their treatment of race as a social construct is particularly
appropriate for supporting scholarly understanding of the nature of the impact and
influence the messages have on the overall discourse on a given topic. In the case of this
thesis, the topic will be mixed race as a social construct in television texts featuring
references to Obama on SNL, as a television institution of popular culture.
Semiotic Analysis
Various methods of analysis exist under the umbrella of textual analysis. Some
textual analysis approaches focus on the storytelling feature of a text, or the production of
a television text, while others allow the critic to focus on elements such as the symbols
used to create meaning. Due to this study’s concern with both visual and linguistic
references to cultural meaning, and the process by which that meaning is negotiated using
those cues, semiotic analysis will be employed.
47
The basic concern of semiotics is to discover how a television program, or any
text, generates and conveys meaning (Culler, 1975). Eco (1972) articulated semiotics as
a system for understanding and translating signs within the context of a culture to
understand cultural phenomena and how they communicate meaning. More recently,
other scholars (Scolari, 2009; Szkudlarek, 2011; Torop, 2002) have used this semiotic
approach to decode meaning in areas of study such as education, politics, identity theory,
and mediated communication. Culler (1975) explains meaning is created through the use
of signs that reference cultural phenomena. Within this study, signs are examined using
de Saussure’s (1966) definition as the relationship of a sound or image (signifier) to the
concept or understanding it represents (signified).
However, since the relationship between a signifier (perhaps a gesture, such as the
Hillary Clinton character rolling her eyes while Obama’s character speaks) and the
signified (Clinton does not believe or is annoyed by Obama’s statement) is arbitrary
(Berger, 1993), a signifier can have different meanings for different people. Therefore,
the ability to understand how these signs are organized and relate to each other, and the
possibility of discovering meaning requires an uncovering of the codes, or cultural
conventions that connect a sign with its meaning (Gunter, 2000). However, different
groups and sub-groups have different codes based on their cultural references such as
religion, ideology, values, or other factors (Eco, 1972). The different codes that exist
within various groups in society leave room for multiple meanings to be interpreted by
individuals; thus, the concept of polysemy fits well with semiotic analysis.
48
Berger’s (1990) analysis of the sitcom Cheers illustrates how a semiotic analysis
can be used with television texts. Using de Saussure’s definition of signs (1966), Berger
(1990) examined the blondness of the character Diane Chambers’ hair. He considers the
culture in which the text of Cheers is couched, interpreting blondness as a sign that has
much richness and meaning in a country where the phrase “gentlemen prefer blonds” was
coined and blond hair coloring is the most popular type sold (Berger, 1990). He reasons
that, for some women, having blond hair is a way of attempting to escape their ethnic
identity or sometimes their age (Berger, 1990). However, Berger (1990) also
acknowledges other meanings taken from the sign, such as the idea that blond hair is
appealing to men because blond equates innocence, and because innocence could
translate to inexperience. An inexperienced lover would not know how to judge a man’s
sexual performance, which would make the blond seem more forgiving, and thus a more
desirable partner, and thus a more attractive character (Berger, 1990).
Berger (1990) also uses Eco’s definition of codes (1972) to discover what codes
operate within the Cheers text and how they contribute to the message. Using the
example of blondness, Berger (1990) describes the code used to read the sign of
blondness as “propriety.” When one character, Carla, discusses putting her husband
through school, the blond Diane automatically assumes the term “school” means
university. The audience reacts with laughter at Diane’s appalled reaction when Carla
reveals that she was referencing a television repair academy. In this case, the humor
arises from the violation of the propriety code: the audience finds it amusing that Carla
49
does not seem to understand why Diane is so appalled and surprised. SNL also uses code
violation to create moments of humor by suggesting multiple meanings as determined by
the various codes that exist in U.S. culture surrounding race and mixed race.
The present research replicates Berger’s (1990) approach to semiotic analysis and
uses it to examine the visual and linguistic signs on SNL for their racial messages as
coded within the U.S. culture in which the show exists, and for their ability to construct
mixed race meaning through television. Thus, this study uses the semiotic approach of
close textual analysis, based in cultural critical studies, to examine sketches and
performances on SNL that reference Obama and his race (both visually and verbally) to
answer the critical questions driving this research. To examine the sketches, data was
collected by reviewing SNL episodes and analyzing the symbols that existed within
sketches that were relevant to the topic of Obama and his race. The following section
describes the data collection process.
Sketch Collection
This study is interested in how SNL has discussed and presented the racial
background and position of Barack Obama. Painting a complete picture of the overall
SNL message about Obama’s race required the researcher to review all episodes of the
show to find individual references to Obama. The show began referencing Obama once
he came into the popular media spotlight as a possible presidential candidate in the
democratic primary in 2006; thus, data was collected by viewing SNL episodes from the
beginning of Season 32 on September 9, 2006, through the finale of Season 36 on May
50
21, 2011. The five seasons of SNL featured impersonations of Obama as well as sketches
that did not feature impersonations, but contained verbal and visual texts discussing
Obama and his race. The complete episodes were accessed through a combination of
Netflix instant video online (Netflix.com, 2011) for the first four seasons, and
Amazon.com (2011) instant video for Season 36.
There were 98 episodes total during the five seasons from 2006 to 2011. Those
98 episodes contained 136 distinct direct references to Obama. To clarify the distinction
between a direct and an indirect reference, comments that only mentioned Obama’s
name, but in which he was not the topic of discussion, were not considered direct
references and were not included in this study. Comments, discussions, and sketches
referencing Obama or featuring him as a topic were included. For example, one faux
news story in a Weekend Update segment reported at length on the Republican
dissatisfaction with President Obama’s health care reform bill, but the story did not
mention Obama beyond that brief reference, nor did it feature a visual image of Obama.
Such mentions were not included in this study. However, another Weekend Update
segment reported on Obama touring the country for backyard chats, and featured a photo
of Obama and discussed his tour. These types of direct references were included in this
study because they had visual and linguistic text about Obama and his behavior,
appearance, and character.
Even the direct references to Obama were not all equal in terms of the level of
detail or type of reference made. For example, some sketches did not include images of
51
Obama or Fred Armisen in character as Obama, but Obama was discussed at length and
his race was occasionally mentioned. Other references, such as the ones made in the
Weekend Update segments, included photograph images of Obama and covered news
stories about him. Still others, such as the cold open segment at the beginning of many
episodes, provided a visual representation of Armisen’s Obama impersonation but did not
verbally discuss his race at all.
In many cases, though sketches featured an impersonation of Obama, the topic
discussed in the sketch was not relevant to this study at all. For example, Armisen
appeared as Obama in a sketch that mocked a debate between Hillary Clinton and
Obama. The topic of that sketch was the debate and political issues such as health care,
not race. Even fewer still mentioned mixed race and Obama, the central topic of this
study. Thus, the direct references to Obama were extremely diverse in degree of
relevance to the topic of this study. As Denzin and Lincoln (1994) described, “Faced
with large amounts of qualitative materials, the investigator seeks ways of managing and
interpreting these documents” (p. 14). It was necessary to organize the data collected in
this research in a way that managed the material and made interpretation possible. To
that end, the 136 direct Obama references were organized into three categories, as briefly
mentioned in the introduction of this study. The following is a description of each of the
three categories of direct Obama references.
The first category of direct reference is visual. These references include any
images of Armisen as Obama or images of Obama himself. Of the 136 direct references
52
to Obama, all of them included an image of him. While all visual references to Obama
did not contain linguistic references to race, hooks (1992) asserts that even the simple
visual presence of a person is a commentary on that person’s race. So while the visual
references do not all contain verbal references to race, the imagery says plenty.
The second category of direct references is linguistic discussion or comments on
Obama and race or mixed race. There were 18 direct linguistic references in this
category. These references indicate the show’s characterization of Obama’s race and
racial persona through verbal communication.
The third category of direct references to Obama is linguistic discussion or
commentary about Obama that hint at race, but avoid discussing it openly. In other
words, this category examines the absence of certain messages regarding Obama’s race
and how those voids in the text also shape and communicate his racial identity to the
audience. There were 11 instances of references in this category. These voids illustrate
how SNL had (but passed on) an opportunity to make racial commentary.
The following chapter presents the findings in each of these three categories and
an analysis of the results.
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Chapter 4
FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
Visual: Obama, the Image
The five seasons of SNL between the years of 2006 and 2011 contained 136 visual
presentations of Barack Obama. During this time period, Obama was a U.S. Senator, a
candidate, the Democratic nominee, the President-elect, and the President of the United
States. The 136 visual representations of Obama fell into four categories: photographs of
Obama, a cartoon drawing, multiple impersonations by Armisen, or, in one instance, an
actual appearance by Obama himself.
Photos of Obama were commonly shown during the Weekend Update segment
that appears on every episode. Weekend Update features one or two cast members
serving as news anchors reporting on current events. The first time a visual of Obama
appeared on SNL was in one such Weekend Update photo, accompanying a story that
joked about how hip hop artist Flava Flav, known for his lack of apparent intellect and
political savvy, did not know who Obama was. The topic of the joke in this example is
not race-based, nor were most of the news stories accompanying a photo of Obama, as
they were strictly political in nature. However, while the photos are not an SNL
construction of Obama’s racial appearance, they are still relevant to this study because of
the large number of times they were shown (83), and because of the fact that Obama’s
mixed race was never a topic of discussion with any of the stories accompanying the
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photos. The mere presence of his image presents his mixed race as a topic (hooks, 1990)
even without linguistic reference.
Semiotically speaking, the coarse texture of his hair is a sign of his African
American heritage, and his lighter skin tone is interpreted in the United States as a sign of
his Caucasian heritage; the combination of these signs alerts the viewer to Obama’s
mixed race. Also, since it is common knowledge in the U.S. that Obama is a descendent
of a White American mother and a Black Kenyan father1, his image signals mixed race.
However, in the few instances when race was the topic of the news story on Weekend
Update, he was only referred to as a “Black man.2” The verbal reference to Obama as
only Black indicates a need for the audience to think of Obama as monoracial, but never
both White and Black. The visual signs indicate his mixed race, but the linguistic signs
indicate a monoracial individual. So, to show Obama’s mixed race image, but never refer
to him as such, invites polysemic interpretations of his race, and causes a lack of clarity
about the presence of mixed race, what mixed race is, or how to define a person of mixed
race. Mixed race is displayed as a blurred, undefined, and confusing state, thereby
continuing the hegemonic stereotypical tradition of a mixed race individual having to
choose between one racial identification or another, and still being received and
perceived with bewilderment by society.
1
Leading up to and during the 2008 presidential election, Obama openly discussed his racial
background (Washington, 2008), as did news pundits and the general public, making his racial
background common knowledge to the U.S. public.
2
Segments that linguistically refer to Obama’s race are explored in detail in the “Linguistic”
section of this research. The racial references are only noted here for their relevance to the photo
image of Obama that is being analyzed.
55
Another method of visually presenting Obama on SNL was through an animated
drawing of him as a character in two TV Funhouse segments of the show. TV Funhouse
is a cartoon-esque segment of SNL that pokes fun at various topics. In the two instances
in which Obama was featured as an illustrated character in this segment, he was pictured
along with characters of Black celebrities and public figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Al
Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson. Obama’s character was illustrated with a light to medium
skin tone, and Winfrey, Sharpton, and Jackson were illustrated with the same skin tone,
although the individuals themselves actually have deeper, browner complexions.
Because the same skin tone is shown on all four characters, it is a sign to viewers that all
four of the characters are the same color; in this case, racially speaking, they are all
Black. SNL literally illustrates a visual message about Obama’s race that, again, signals
the audience to identify him as monoracial.
Obama’s one guest appearance on the show offered a third type of visual
reference. He was a guest in a cold open that aired during the democratic primary season
in Season 33 on November 3, 20073 called Halloween at the White in which democratic
hopeful Hillary Clinton (played by Amy Pohler) hosted a Halloween party. Obama
comes out in an Obama mask, and very soon takes it off, to great applause from the
studio audience. He is dressed in a suit, and he looks exactly as he did in most television
appearances, such as debates and addresses. Though this visual of Obama is not a
3
The air date is relevant for this example because it is a standout appearance.
56
construction of him by SNL, it is worthy of brief mention simply because his presence
signals mixed race to the viewer and brings the topic of race and mixed race to the show.
The fourth type of visual presentation of Obama is through Fred Armisen’s
impersonation. Armisen first appeared as Obama in Season 33, Episode 5, which aired
on February 23, 2008. Following that appearance, Armisen impersonated Obama 28
more times through the end of Season 36, solidifying Armisen as the only actor
associated with Obama, and elevating his impersonation to regular and expected status.
During all of his impersonations, Armisen’s appearance is altered in various ways to be
more Obama-like. Armisen, a fair-skinned man, dons tan makeup on his face and hands
that is a few shades darker than his own, though not as brown as Obama’s actual
complexion. The actor’s hair is replaced by a wig of short, coarse looking, salt and
pepper hair. Though Armisen’s eyes are naturally green, and Obama’s are brown, the
actor’s eye color is not altered through the use of contact lenses. Finally, his lips appear
to be darkened to a purple/brownish tint. The choice to use Armisen to portray Obama
and the choices made to alter Armisen’s appearance are very telling of SNL’s message on
mixed race. Choosing a non-Black person to play the role is a controversial but not
unexpected choice, considering the program’s casting history, their many years on the air,
and their track record regarding covering controversial issues such as race.
SNL did not choose to use a Black actor to portray Obama, though they clearly try
to make Armisen look more stereotypically Black by using a wig with coarse hair and by
darkening the lips and skin. It could be said that SNL clearly wanted Armisen to look
57
Black, and it would have been easier to simply use a Black actor, such as Kenan
Thompson (the only Black actor on the show at the time when the Obama impersonations
began), who has portrayed several Black characters such as Al Sharpton, Steve Harvey,
Don King, and even Whoopi Goldberg. It could be argued that Thompson was not
chosen because he does not resemble Obama, but Thompson has impersonated Tiger
Woods who is also mixed race and looks nothing like the actor. Thompson received no
make-up used to lighten his skin to Woods’s complexion, and though Thompson is
significantly heavier than Woods and did not attempt to speak like Woods, he was still
chosen for that role. It could be said that the same situation occurred with the Obama
role, and that while Thompson, again, did not resemble Obama, he was the only Black
actor on set and, therefore, should play the role. The casting for both roles implies that
skin tone plays a role in how Black someone is. Since Woods has a deep brown
complexion, a Black actor should play him. But since Obama has more fair skin, a Black
actor could not be used. Interestingly, SNL verbally and physically characterizes Obama
as a Black man, even in how Armisen is dressed in the role, yet the Black male cast
member was not chosen to portray him. This choice was met with criticism; some argued
that Armisen’s Obama was not Black enough (Farhi, 2008; Moore, 2009). Moore (2009)
called Armisen’s make-up “blackface.”4 So if SNL was willing to take the racially
controversial risk of using darkened makeup on Armisen to make him look more like
4
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used to make White actors look dark-skinned. The
technique was used in the 19th century to create caricatures of Black people and to propagate
racial stereotypes (Byrd, 2009).
58
Obama, it is strange that they did not make a much simpler change to his appearance in
using brown contact lenses to mimic Obama’s eye color. Armisen’s skin was also not
darkened to Obama’s actual complexion; it was much lighter, a choice that hints to
sensitivity about the use of blackface to make a non-Black actor look Black. The use of a
non-Black actor made to appear to be mixed race is less controversial or more acceptable
than dressing a Black actor to appear mixed race. Further, the choice suggests that while
some Black features on a non-Black person (Armisen) can make him completely Black
(they reference the character as a Black man), applying some White features to a Black
person would not make him more White. The suggestion that simply using some
stereotypically African American enhancements to Armisen’s appearance make him able
to be classified as a Black man in the role of Obama hints to the “one drop rule” (Davis,
2001, p. 4). This rule was a definition of Blackness used in the American south during
slavery and Jim Crow segregation to oppress people of color, which states that if a person
has one drop of African American blood, she is considered Black (Davis, 2001). This
rule makes the presence of mixed race nearly impossible, since it requires that a mixed
race person must be considered monoracial. It can be argued that SNL followed the one
drop rule in casting Armisen as Obama, but characterizing him visually and verbally as
exclusively Black.
The visual racial message here is jumbled, to say the least. And, instead of
clarifying the mixed signals the Obama impersonation sends to viewers, SNL has not
released an official statement or publicly responded to any of the criticisms. SNL
59
continues to refer to Obama as Black in episode scripts (as will be described in further
detail in the Linguistic section of this study), but they make choices about their reading
and portrayal of Obama’s race visually that hint at his mixed race. Instead of providing
more clarity and creating a visual they defend, explain, and that contributes to a solidified
definition of mixed race, SNL invites polysemy and confusion in their visual
representations on the issue. They, therefore, contribute to the marginalization of the
mixed race community, in compliance with the hegemonically unbalanced treatment the
community has endured already. Accompanying these visual references are direct
linguistic references to Obama’s race that occurred throughout the episodes reviewed in
this study.
Linguistic: Obama, the Topic
Of the 18 direct verbal references to Obama’s race in the episodes analyzed,
several were straightforward about the topic of racial characterization. The scripts
repeatedly refer to Obama as a “Black man,” and use cultural codes about racial
stereotypes, racism, and ‘playing the race card’5 to reinforce this message. While the
analysis that follows will make several points about SNL using racial stereotypes to shape
a message about Obama, it is important to frame this analysis within the code of assumed
humor. Because SNL creates messages using racial stereotypes with a satirical style, and
because the program promotes itself as comedic in nature, their use of stereotypes is not a
promotion of stereotypes, but as an attempt to poke fun at their ridiculous nature. As
The phrase ‘playing the race card’ refers to the exploitation of racist attitudes to gain advantage,
for example, falsely accusing others of racism against oneself (Lee & Morin, 2009).
5
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Berger (1990) noted, when audiences watch comedy, they are prepared to laugh and
interpret the text in a non-serious fashion. However, this analysis will uncover how SNL
uses that satirical humor about racism and monoracial stereotypes to construct Obama as
a Black man. They thus create a new stereotype against the mixed race community,
which is that society must identify a person as a monoracial, even if the person is known
to be mixed race, and that racial identification is based on the physical stereotypes most
apparent in the mixed person’s appearance.
SNL also relies on the code that many White people are racist towards Black
people. These codes are used to create humor to reinforce Obama’s blackness in several
jokes told on Weekend Update. For example, in Season 34, Episode 3, Seth Meyers6
referred to Obama’s comment that he would be at the upcoming debate in Mississippi,
whether his opponent John McCain appeared or not. As Meyers joked, Obama’s position
marked “the first time in history that a Black man was more eager to go to Mississippi
than a White one” (Season 34, Episode 3). The use of Mississippi signals a long history
of Southern racism in a supposedly post-racial era, and the fact that Obama should be less
eager than McCain to go to this area signals that he is truly not White but a fully Black
man. The joke relies on the irony in the idea that a Black man would be happy about
visiting a region that continues to deal with the legacy of slavery.
Also in Season 34, on Episode 19, a Weekend Update sketch about Obama’s
attendance at a meeting with other political leaders showed a photo of Obama smiling
6
Meyers is a White actor who plays the recurring role of a news anchor on Weekend Update.
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and flanked by two White men who were also smiling and had their arms over his
shoulders in a friendly gesture. Meyers joked, “I haven’t seen old White dudes this
excited to meet a Black guy since Michael Jordan’s basketball camp” (Season 34,
Episode 19). Here, the code of racism from White men against Obama as a Black man is
used, and the joke signals the opposition of Obama’s identity to being White.
In Episode 20 of Season 36, another Weekend Update sketch referenced racial
coding about the propensity of the U.S. justice system to preemptively convict and
condemn Black people of crimes. Meyers joked about the recent death of world terrorist
Osama bin Laden at the hand of U.S. forces stating,
In the wake of President Obama’s decision not to release pictures of Osama bin
Laden’s body, a number of new conspiracy theories are surfacing claiming Osama
bin Laden is not really dead. Which means Barack Obama will go down in history
as the first Black person ever to have to prove that he killed someone. (Season
36, Episode 20)
Again, this joke assumes that the viewer understands Obama is Black, and that he would
normally suffer the injustice of having to prove he is not a criminal because of his race.
Not only do all of the above jokes signal Obama’s blackness by labeling him
using the term “Black,” but they go even further by joking about him experiencing (or
potentially experiencing) racism from White people to reinforce his non-whiteness. In
this way, SNL denies Obama’s whiteness in compliance with the one drop rule (Davis,
2001), and, therefore, also denies his mixed race. SNL linguistically positions Obama as
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an outsider to White people, even though he was raised by a White single mother. Even
if he was raised in a predominantly White environment (Washington, 2008), his
experience in interacting with others throughout his life has been from a Black American
perspective. His appearance ensures that he identifies and is identified as a Black man.
SNL confirms this superficial racial judgment. The linguistic message does not include
an option in which Obama may touch both sides; he must be either one or the other, but
really he can only be Black as is alluded to in their constant references to him as such.
Because there is no commonly accepted code to facilitate a conversation about mixed
race (like there is for conversations about racism, blackness, and whiteness), SNL ignores
the presence of Obama’s mixed race, thereby ignoring mixed race altogether.
SNL further cemented the idea of Obama as a Black man by using impersonations
of Black public figures to be the voices of those stereotypes forced on Obama. For
example, in Episode 13 of Season 32, the characters of Al Sharpton (played by Kenan
Thompson) and Jesse Jackson (Darryl Hammond7) appeared on Weekend Update to tell
Obama how to be Black, but not too Black to be elected. The two present a chart that
they call a “Blackness Scale,” which has faces of Black people at the very bottom who
are described as being most stereotypically Black, and faces of Black and some White
people toward the top who are considered more stereotypically White. Jackson begins by
saying that “unfortunately, there are degrees of blackness,” and that the chart measures
7
Hammond is a White actor, which would be relevant to this study were it not for the fact that
Thompson is the only Black actor on the show at the time this episode was filmed. The show had
no other option but to cast a White person in the role of Jesse Jackson because their only Black
cast member was already in the sketch.
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blackness in the eyes of others, to which Sharpton adds, “White people!” Jackson states
that everything on the chart is “unequivocally Black,” but that some things are more
Black than others, and he begins by pointing out Obama’s characteristics that make him
Black.
J: For example, you were raised by a single mother and your grandparents.
S: Moving up!
J: In Hawaii.
S: Moving down.
J: You have an African name.
S: Moving up.
J: But in high school you went by Barry.
S: Moving down.
J: You married a Black woman.
S: Moving up.
J: But in the past you dated White women.
S: Still moving up (Season 32, Episode 13).
This sketch uses negative stereotypes about Black people to demonstrate that
Obama needs to stay as Black as possible without being offensively Black, based on
these stereotypes. Being from a single-parent household, having an African name, and
marrying a Black woman, but dating White women are all features that Sharpton and
Jackson say are too Black to be electable. The stereotypes signal Obama’s blackness,
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while they rely on the code that assumes racism and the racist meanings inherent in those
stereotypes.
On Episode 12 of Season 33, the characters Sharpton and Jackson appeared again
on Weekend Update to give Obama advice about how to clinch the presidential
nomination by, again, being careful to not be too Black. Jackson points out that Obama
has a good chance of winning and becoming president, but warns him not to let White
people take it away if they believe him to be too Black. Jackson says,
If you’re gonna wear a dashiki, they’ll take it away. It’s okay to be close with
black leaders, but take a picture with Farrakhan, and they’ll take it away. Mr.
Obama, you’re a smoker, so it’s fine to partake of a menthol here or there, but if
you smoke a whole pack of Newports, they take it away. It’s fine to have the
media talk to women from your past, but if they dig up one baby mama, they take
it away. Mr. Obama you must never let them take it away. (Season 33, Episode
12)
Here, again, SNL reinforces racial stereotypes of Black people: that they smoke
menthol cigarettes and they have children with women out of wedlock. However, in this
case, the stereotypes are not associated with Obama to prove his blackness, but the use of
the word “them” by a Black character when speaking to Obama, indicates that the “us” in
this case would be Obama and Jackson as Black people. By taking an us-versus-them
linguistic stance with Black and White people, and by verbally claiming Obama into the
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Black group in these references, SNL further solidifies their positioning of Obama as a
Black person.
These examples also assume a sweeping stereotype of White people as racist. An
example is found in Season 33, Episode 11, when Amy Pohler appeared as Hillary
Clinton to give the audience reasons why she should be the democratic candidate and
why voters should vote for her. Clinton says,
My supporters are racist. If and when I am the nominee, Senator Obama’s African
American supporters will be disappointed, perhaps, but they will still rally to me.
If, however, Senator Obama is the nominee, my supporters will refuse to vote for
him. Partly because I will secretly tell them not to, but mainly because they are
racially biased, and would never vote for any African American candidate.
(Episode 11)
The message relies on the audience’s assumption of the code that Hillary’s supporters are
White. By using White stereotypes in opposition to the image or idea of Obama, the
message reinforces the fact that he is not White, but decidedly Black. This positioning of
Obama in opposition to White people ignores a large part of his racial background,
thereby silencing any mention of mixed race.
Another verbal reference SNL uses in securing Obama’s blackness is the
discussion of the suffering of Black people because of Whites. Obama is presented as a
part of that suffering, and, therefore, a Black man. In Season 32, Episode 15, Chris Rock
appears and performs a monologue to open the show. In the monologue, titled “Road to
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the White House,” he calls the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Obama a
“suffering contest:” the one who has suffered more should be elected out of sympathy.
But, he asks, “how could you compare the suffering of a White woman to the suffering of
a Black man? It’s not even close” (Season 32, Episode 15). He goes on to point out
historical facts such as Black men being burned, giving up their seats for Whites on the
bus, and being hung for even looking at White women. He closes by stating that Barack
Obama will be the first Black American president.
Rock abides by the code that the audience understands, the one that holds that
Black people in the U.S. have suffered greatly at the hands of Whites during the times of
slavery. By referring to Obama as Black or as a Black man, and by discussing the
horrific suffering of Black people caused by White people in the U.S., he signals to the
viewer that Obama has been a victim of this racism and abuse by White people because
he is Black. This alignment of Obama with the suffering of Black people solidifies
Obama firmly on the side of the Black community, and decidedly not with White
communities, thus denying Obama’s mixed race. In this same monologue, Rock
addresses mixed race when he mentions mixed race actor Halle Berry saying, “If Black
people were the majority of this country, there’d be another a Black president every
day…Oprah would be president, OJ would be president, Flava Flav, Halle Berry would
be president for half a term” (Episode 15). The punch line relies on audience
understanding of the code of referring to mixed race individuals as “half” one race, and
half another. Rock acknowledges here that Halle Berry is mixed race, but including a
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mention of Obama’s mixed race, even with the “half” convention, would confuse the
more important sign (namely, the one that promises the audience that Obama is a part of
the Black community only).
There are notable mentions of Obama’s potential to play the race card; these
mentions serve as reinforcement of the construction of Obama as Black. The code
assumed here is one in which the audience understands that only people of color can play
the race card. Therefore, suggesting that Obama could play the race card is a sign of his
position as a person of color. These verbal suggestions, combined with other direct
linguistic references to Obama as Black, support the SNL construction of Obama as
monoracial; if SNL acknowledged Obama’s White heritage, then jokes based on ideas
such as the race card would lose coherence.
Season 34 (2008-2009) contained three references to Obama’s ability to play the
race card. Episode 3 featured a sketch about a presidential debate between Obama
(Armisen) and republican candidate John McCain (Darrell Hammond). In the sketch, the
moderator of the debate asks Obama what he would do differently in trying to stop Iran
and North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. Obama answers, "I'd use traditional
diplomacy, something that this administration has repeatedly refused to do. If that fails,
then I would do something I call playing the race card” (Season 34, Episode 3). The
sketch suggests that because Obama is the only person of color in the debate, only he
could play the race card.
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In Episode 11, Pohler appeared as Hillary Clinton for the opening monologue of
the show. She says she is the most qualified candidate for the presidency, listing reasons
that reference her lack of moral compass, which enables her to do much more than
Obama would dare. She says:
There are some things Senator Obama simply will not do. Take for example the
race card, which he has been reluctant to play. As in, anyone who doesn’t vote for
me is a racist. I, on the other hand, will be happy to play the gender card and say
that anyone who doesn’t vote for me is a sexist. (Episode 11)
Again, this message reinforces the idea that Clinton cannot play the race card (she
is White), but Obama can, because he is not White. The mention of the race card is a
signal to Obama’s non-whiteness, as the code used here requires the understanding that
only non-Whites in the U.S. are able to play the race card.
Additionally, in Episode 14, during which time Obama was President-elect, Seth
Meyers reports on Weekend Update that the Republican National Committee elected
Michael Steele (a Black man) as their party chairman. He follows with the punch line,
“You guys know it doesn’t just work with any Black guy, right?” (Season 34, Episode
14). The code used here suggests that blackness is in style, or trendy, and the
Republicans elected Steele because he is Black and they hope to cash in on the apparent
national favor toward blackness. The only way for the people in the audience to
understand this joke is if they know the code by which to decipher the meaning. This
joke, then, signals that then President-elect Obama is, like Steele, a Black man, and
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nothing more. It suggests that Republicans think Obama was elected because he is Black,
a definitive use of the race card (if voters elected Obama because they did not want to
appear racist). In fact, the joke actually accuses Republicans of trying to play the race
card to get Steele elected in the future. While the text here does not suggest Obama could
or did use the race card, it suggests that perhaps Republicans think he did, inviting
polysemic readings of the joke. Thus, the race card texts contribute to the construction of
Obama as a non-White person. However, he is biologically just as much White as he is
Black8, so the signal given here is one that ignores mixed race, again.
In Season 33, Episode 8, former SNL cast member and Black comedian Tracy
Morgan appears as a guest on Weekend Update (as himself) and comments in a
monologue on the accusation by Hillary Clinton’s advisor that if Obama were a White
man, he would not be a presidential candidate, suggesting that he played the race card to
gain his position. Morgan responds, not by correcting the statement that Obama is not
White, but by agreeing with the statement about his race, then refuting the use of the race
card, thereby working with the accusation that constructs Obama as a Black man.
Morgan says “Why is it that every time a Black man in this country gets too good at
something, there’s always someone to come around and remind us that he’s Black? First
Tiger, then Donovan McNabb, then me. And now Barack” (Season 33, Episode 8).
Morgan mentions Tiger Woods who is also mixed race, and classifies him as monoracial
as well. Race is present as a topic, and Morgan references it, but the fact that two of the
8
Though the text hints at biological race, it should be noted that race is not a biological state of
being (hooks, 1992).
70
people he mentioned (Obama and Tiger Woods) are mixed race does not equal a
reference to mixed race. This example signals that when race is present, it is discussed,
but when mixed race is present, it is ignored.
Further, Morgan’s commentary secures Obama as a Black man by not only
calling him such, but also referencing racial stereotypes. Morgan says, “Barack’s not just
winning because he’s a Black man. If that was the case, I’d be winning. And I’m way
blacker than him. I used to smoke Newports and drink Old English. I grew up on
government cheese” (Season 33, Episode 8). Interestingly, Morgan references some of
the more negative Black stereotypes, instead of the ones that could be seen as less
damaging (such as athletic ability or musical rhythm).
The SNL linguistic text on the topic of race card appears repeatedly, and each
example adds another piece to the construction of Obama’s monoracial status as a Black
man. More importantly, it seems SNL invites polysemic interpretations: some audiences
could read the text as “Obama is not White,” while others could read the text as “Obama
is Black.” These concepts are different from each other; it is possible to be non-White
and non-Black. Both readings are possible, but both serve the same purpose in
supporting the hegemonic marginalization of mixed race.
SNL did address Obama’s mixed race; the reference was indirect and it appeared
just one time in all of the 136 references to Obama throughout the seasons reviewed in
this research. In Season 32, Episode 11, the opening scene features Hillary Clinton
(played by Pohler) being interviewed by reporter Chris Matthews (played by Darrell
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Hammond). In this scene, Matthews asks Clinton if it bothers her that Obama gets such
good treatment from the media.
C: I will say that it’s interesting the media constantly refer to him as Black, when
we all know, and let’s be honest, he’s only half Black. I mean, I’m half Black,
AND a woman, but so what? I think voters want to hear about the issues.
M: You’re half Black?!
C: It’s something I don’t wear on my sleeve. I only recently found that out.
M: Your critics might say you don’t look at all Black.
C: You know, Chris, isn’t it interesting how when a male senator says he’s half
Black, he’s immediately taken at his word? But when a female senator says the
same thing, suddenly she has to prove it. (Episode 11)
This exchange between the characters over the issue of being mixed race makes some
important contributions to SNL’s construction of mixed race. First, it acknowledges that
the media refers to Obama as Black, but the script signals his mixed race by noting that
he is “half Black.” This example is the only instance of mixed race acknowledgement in
all of the five years of episodes of SNL that have discussed Obama.
Immediately after Clinton makes the statement that she is also half Black,
Matthews responds by acting incredulous about discovering this fact, and says that she
does not look Black at all. This statement relies on the code that says one can look a
certain race, and that physical attributes can determine a person’s race. The text signals
that race cannot simply and only be claimed, but that it must be proven also by a person’s
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appearance, based on stereotypical standards. The statement that Clinton does not look
Black indicates that for mixed race people, race is assigned based on the physical
characteristics they possess. This idea that a person must only be monoracial, and based
on their appearance, signals that mixed-people are not actually mixed. Instead, they are
actually whatever race they look like, in the stereotypical and phenotypical sense.
This scene also contributes to the SNL message that mixed race is confusing.
Nothing about this exchange makes a clear statement about mixed race. In fact, all of the
linguistic references to race make mixed race unclear, if alluded to at all. The verbal
references to race have almost all signaled Obama’s monoracial, his degrees of blackness,
his associations with blackness regarding shared suffering and discrimination, and his
status as a non-White person. The repeated verbal signs of these messages work together
to create a system of signs that codes mixed race as non-existent, unimportant, and
confusing. The visual and linguistic references discussed up to this point directly
addressed race; however, as previously mentioned, a third type of SNL reference to
Obama hinted at mixed race, but did not discuss it openly. Those references are
presented and analyzed in the section that follows.
Linguistic Absence
In several instances, the SNL text examined for this study provided an opening for
commentary on mixed race; unfortunately, the text ignored both the potential openings
and, especially, the topic of mixed race. For example, in Season 33, Episode 1, during
which time Obama was a candidate in the Democratic primary, the cold open featured
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Hillary Clinton (played by Pohler) talking about Democratic primary candidate Bill
Richardson as “part Mexican or something” (Season 33, Episode 1). This moment was a
perfect opportunity for SNL to signal to Obama’s mixed race, also, but the text did not
include Obama in this way. This absence is polysemic in nature, open for many
interpretations. The absence could be understood as meaning that Obama’s mixed race
was not relevant, or it could mean that Obama as a candidate was not significant enough
to discuss. The absence could also be seen as meaning that the specific mixed race
combination of Black and White is taboo, due to the historical context of Black and
White relations in the U.S. However, the code by which SNL abides throughout its
treatment of Obama’s mixed race assumes the audience will ignore mixed race in favor of
seeing Obama as monoracial (Black). This same code assumes audiences know that in
any case in which mixed race is present it should be ignored. The absence of the mention
of Obama’s mixed race in this scene, then, signals that mixed race is (at best) unclear (as
demonstrated through the use of the term “or something” when describing Richardson’s
background). This example reinforces the linguistic and visual references that signal the
hegemonic definition of mixed race as ambiguous, confusing, and taboo.
Episode 6 of the same Season contains a TV Funhouse segment titled “The
Obama Files;” in this segment, the illustrated Obama tries to hide his associations with
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The humor here relies on the audience accepting the idea
that Obama’s associations with those individuals would make him seem too pro-Black.
The Obama Files was an opportunity for SNL to show Obama trying, then, to more
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closely associate and identify with White leaders, or claim his Caucasian heritage and
parade around his White mother. But, this route was avoided and the route selected
discussed Obama’s blackness, but not his mixed-ness. Based on the code SNL has used
in its ignorance of mixed race, this sketch continues to signal that mixed race is not to be
discussed, even jokingly, and even when many other potentially sensitive racial subjects
are fair game.
In Episode 8 of the same Season, a Weekend Update report mentioned that Obama
won the Mississippi primary with 90% of the Black vote and 25% of the White vote.
Interestingly, no joke about race followed. The void is palpable, and the scenario almost
begs for a racial joke, especially a joke about mixed race, given the reference to a mixed
review from Black versus White voters. The absence here again signals that mixed race
is taboo, irrelevant, or perhaps not even present. Though the message is polysemic, the
hegemonic meaning is consistent with SNL’s other representations of mixed race: it does
not exist or it is not important enough to warrant mention.
In Season 34, Episode 8, Meyers reports on Weekend Update that Obama’s wife,
Michelle, visited the White House after her husband was elected president, to meet with
First Lady Laura Bush for a private tour of the residence. Meyers jokes that Bush gave
the tour “without once taking her hand off her pocket book” (Episode 8). This example
relies on the audience recognizing the code that says White people are generally
distrustful of Black people and fearful about becoming victims of Black criminal activity;
Laura Bush keeps her hand on her pocketbook because she is worried Michelle Obama
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would steal from her. However, unlike the direct references to race, this sketch only
hinted at Barack Obama being Black by joking about his wife’s blackness; this moment
was an opening for SNL to finally avoid directly referring to Obama as only Black. In
fact, Michelle Obama is married to a man who is part White and who is part of a family
including White individuals, just as Laura Bush is White; the text could have made
mention of this reality. But, since SNL only refers to Obama as Black, it would not make
sense, then, to refer to him as White in this situation, in spite of the fact that it could have
been done. Once again, mixed race is avoided in favor of signaling two opposing racial
groups: the White Laura Bush versus the Black Michelle Obama, with no mention of
Michelle’s association with her White (and Black) husband. It could be argued that in
ignoring mixed race and missing the opportunity to joke about it, SNL’s text implies that
mixed race is not only irrelevant, but it also is not funny. This example is not surprising,
though, given the multitude of similar signs provided throughout the SNL text.
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Chapter 5
CONCLUSION
According to bell hooks (1992), media presentations of race directly affect and
exert control over the continuation and maintenance of racial stereotypes. From this
critical cultural perspective, this study sought to uncover how the process of hegemony
operates in a television text toward the construction of stereotypes about mixed race.
This study used a semiotic reading of the text to identify and analyze the codes and signs
used on SNL in their representation of images and words of or about Barack Obama,
thereby revealing the show’s message about mixed race. SNL’s message on race was
created through social construction, a process in which meaning is negotiated by a shared
social experience; in the case of SNL, meaning is negotiated through audience
participation in viewing the show.
Analysis of the polysemic visual and linguistic messages about mixed race,
collected from 98 episodes across five years of the program, revealed that while SNL
occasionally mentions mixed race, those rare messages ultimately conform to the
hegemonic treatment of mixed race individuals. A true discussion of mixed race, even a
comedic discussion, is skipped to allow room for monoracial stereotypes of Obama. That
is, SNL uses cultural codes and visual and verbal signs to present Obama as a Black man
exclusively, ignoring his mixed race. The visual representations of Obama confused the
concept of mixed race instead of creating a progressive position on visual definition. In
illustrations, Obama was presented as the same color as his monoracial African American
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co-stars in the TV Funhouse segments, indicating his unmistakable inclusion in that
monoracial category with them. Additionally, the linguistic references to Obama as
Black were accompanied by photos of the real Obama, which could be confusing to
audiences who know Obama to be both White and Black (Dacosta, 2009). By presenting
the mixed race image of Obama, but avoiding mention of mixed race, the visual message
invites a polysemic reading about his race, thus creating further confusion about his real
heritage.
The impersonations of Obama by the non-Black Fred Armisen, combined with the
use of blackface, darkened lips, and stereotypically coarse hair, was also a confusing
message to analyze about mixed race. SNL refers to Obama as Black, but they use a nonBlack actor to portray him, and then they try to make that actor look more Black. This
decision faced scrutiny from the news media, and these criticisms offered SNL the
opportunity to come out and make a statement that defended their choice. SNL could
have argued that Armisen is mixed race, like Obama, which is more than what Obama
would have in common with a monoracial actor portraying him. They could have noted
that Obama is both Black and White, not simply one or the other, and Armisen was
chosen based on his ability to speak and motion like Obama, not just match half his racial
identity. Had SNL taken such a position, then they would have created a visually,
verbally, and textually counterhegemonic message that would stand for and defend mixed
race. Instead, they further convoluted the message about Obama’s race and solidified the
message indicating that mixed race is confusing and impossible to define. SNL’s
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message, therefore, allows the continuance of the hegemonic idea that race is a onedimensional, single category that must not be mixed; SNL continues to argue that, if
mixed, race becomes a confusing and fragmented image, visually irreconcilable.
Linguistically, SNL strictly presents Obama under the monoracial label of
“Black,” not mixed race. They reinforce it by using the code of racism and pitting White
people against him in jokes to signal White dislike for him as a Black man. For example,
various sketches reference stereotypes of Black people as Newport-smoking, fatherless,
uneducated, criminal people with illegitimate children and “baby mamas.” The text
encourages Obama to be unlike these stereotypes, to be less Black, which is offensive in
itself, so White people will like him more and vote for him. In aligning Obama with
Black stereotypes, even when encouraging him to avoid falling into behaviors linked with
those stereotypes, the text codes Obama as belonging outside of the White community,
thereby excluding the possibility of him being both Black and White. They reinforce the
exclusion by joking about him experiencing racism and suffering. They reinforce his
non-whiteness and deny not only his whiteness, but also his mixed race.
SNL also verbally aligns Obama with blackness by using Black commentators or
characters to claim Obama as one of them. These characters express sympathy for
Obama regarding his suffering at the hands of White people. This representation signals
Obama’s blackness, and most certainly his non-whiteness. By affirming what Obama is
(Black) and then reinforcing it by affirming what he is not (White), it precludes the
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possibility of mixed race. Since Obama is mixed race, to cut off the possibility of him
being both Black and White ignores the presence of mixed race.
The jokes about Obama’s potential to use the race card are signs that refer to him
as a non-White person. The code used here is the audience understanding the definition
of a race card as something that only a non-White person can use. This decision again
reinforces Obama’s non-whiteness, which is just as important in SNL’s construction of
Obama’s race as affirming his Blackness. In this way, SNL’s construction of Obama’s
race denies his mixed-ness and ignores the possibility altogether, a typically hegemonic
treatment of mixed race (Foss, 2002). SNL’s linguistic signs work hegemonically, not
only to construct Obama’s race as singular, thereby ignoring mixed race, but also to
create confusion around it when it does happen to appear. SNL then reconciles this
confusion by indicating that, when in doubt, the audience is free to judge a person’s race
by that person’s appearance (another hegemonic tradition). In the Hillary Clinton “I’m
half Black” sketch, her claims of mixed race are met with disbelief because of her
appearance, another indication that one must resemble the stereotype of a race in order to
be of that race.
The absence of verbal references to mixed race discussed in the analysis of this
study also reinforces another major problem with media representations of mixed race.
Ignoring mixed race when it is present supports the treatment of race in which the
presence of a person of color necessitates a conversation about race, but the presence of a
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mixed-race person does not make it a conversation about mixed race. In adopting this
position, SNL upholds the silent treatment given to the mixed race community.
The biggest challenge for the mixed race community is the basic right to be
recognized and acknowledged, as evidenced by this study and others this research
referenced. This challenge is made greater by television texts such as SNL that only
support the silence surrounding mixed race, instead of giving voice to the issue, even
when the opportunity presents itself so conveniently in a subject such as Barack Obama.
The challenge is made greater by texts that create confusion surrounding mixed race,
instead of taking a stand and offering a definition, as imperfect as it may be. Texts
encouraging and participating in the identification of mixed race individuals based on
their most strongly prominent racial physical features and by indicating that race can be
assigned purely on appearance makes the challenge greater still. Asking mixed race
individuals to choose to identify with only one cultural or racial group, thereby forcing
them to stand against the other (to stand against themselves), contributes to the problem.
The challenge will be made lesser when popular media, such as television programs
begin acknowledging mixed race. Perhaps popular culture and then all of society will
follow, and the mixed race community will finally take its rightful and proud place in our
cultural dialogue.
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EPILOGUE
This research has been a journey of academic, yet deeply personal, discovery.
Along the way, I have been acutely aware of my perspective as both a scholar and a
member of the mixed race community. In both capacities, I have sought the truth about
social constructions of race on television and how they influence the mixed race
community. What I found was that there are many truths about mixed-race on television,
and that my perspective enriched the experience of inquiry as much as it enriched the
research itself.
As a person of mixed-race, I felt frustrated that mixed-race is still a widely
ignored, confused, and marginalized subject on television. I was exasperated to find that
even in a progressive text, the images and dialogue about race still encourage mixed race
people to pick a side and offer little to identify with. But as a scholar, these feelings
drove me to work even harder to make the study academically sound so it can offer a
meaningful contribution to the field and give voice to the issue, hopefully bringing about
change. While some argue that any subjectivity endangers the validity of the study, I
found that my perspective gave me a greater sense of pride and dedication in my work,
which only helped establish the character and integrity of the research.
In the end, I am proud to offer this study to the mixed race community and the
field of communication studies as a scholarly work and as a labor of love.
82
APPENDICES
83
APPENDIX A
Images of Barack Obama and Fred Armisen
Barack Obama
Fred Armisen
Fred Armisen as Barack Obama on SNL
84
APPENDIX B
Season 32, Episode 15 (3/17/2007): Monologue: Road to the White House
Chris Rock:
“Then we have the democrats, and everyone is saying the same thing: a Black man or a
White woman? It’s so hard to make up my mind. It’s as if it’s a suffering contest. And
even if it was, how could you compare the suffering of a White woman to the suffering of
a Black man. It’s not even close. I mean White women burn their bras - Black men were
burned alive. I mean sure White women couldn’t vote for a minute. So they marched and
protested, and when they had to get on the bus to go and protest, who do you think gave
up their seats? Do you know how much better Seabiscuit’s life was than my
grandfather’s? I mean, when a horse can’t run anymore, they put him out to stud. When a
Black man can’t run anymore he gets shot 50 times. I mean how can you compare the
pain of a White woman to the pain of a Black man? They used to hang Black men for
even looking at a White woman. Nobody ever lynched no White woman, no White
woman has ever been assassinated. Everyone loves White women, White men love White
women, Black men really love White women, I mean did you see Anna Nicole Smith’s
funeral? She had six Black men pallbearers. I thought Farrakhan died. Everybody loves
White women except White women. White women are the majority of the country and
have had the right to vote for over 100 years, but have still never elected a White woman
president. What are you bitches waiting for? If Black people were the majority of this
country there’d be another a Black president every day. In every year a new Black person
would get a turn to be president. Obama would be president, Oprah would be president,
OJ would be president, Flava Flav, Halle Berry would be president for half a term. And
for that very reason I predict that Obama will not only be the democratic nominee for
president, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. And for those
doubters out there who keep asking the question: is America ready for a Black president.
I say why not? We just had a retarded one.”
85
APPENDIX C
Season 33, Episode 8 (3/15/2008): Monologue: Black is the new President
Tracy Morgan:
“Why is it that every time a Black man in this country gets too good at something, there’s
always someone to come around and remind us that he’s Black? First Tiger, then
Donovan McNabb, then me. And now Barack. I gotta theory about that. It basically goes
like this: we are a racist country, the end. Maybe not the people in this room, but if we
aren’t a racist country, then how did Hillary convince everyone in Texas and Ohio that
Barack didn’t know how to answer the phone at three in the morning? Let me tell you
something, Barack knows how to answer the phone. He’s not going to answer it like,
‘Hello, I’m scared, what’s going on’…he’s going to answer it like I would get a phone
call at three in the morning: ‘Yeah, who’s this? This better be good otherwise I’m going
to come down there and put somebody in a wheelchair.’ Some things just never change,
Seth. People are saying he’s not a fighter. Let me tell you something; he’s a gangster,
he’s from Chicago. Barack’s not just winning because he’s a Black man. If that was the
case, I’d be winning. And I’m way blacker than him. I used to smoke Newports and drink
Old English. I grew up on government cheese. I prefer it. Barack gotta stay away from
the pastor; he’s too Black. But just because he knows the dude doesn’t mean he’s going
to think like him. Barack is qualified. Personally I want to know what qualifies Hillary
Clinton to be the next president. Is it because she was married to the president? If that
was the case then Robin Givens would be the heavyweight champion of the world. If
Hillary’s last name wasn’t Clinton she’d be some crazy White lady with too much money
and not enough lovin’. That’s where I come in. I know women like that, and you do not
want them on the phone at three in the morning. In conclusion, three weeks ago my girl
Tina Fey came on this show and declared that bitch is the new Black. Now you know I
love you, Tina, you know you my girl, but I have something to say. Bitch may be the new
Black, but Black is the new president, bitch.”
86
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