The Generic Closet by Alfred L. Martin

Author:Alfred L. Martin [Martin, Alfred L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253054593
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

MOESHA, BLACK MASCULINITY, AND THE LAUGH TRACK

In Moesha’s “Labels” episode, the humor and laugh track/audience laughter begin by positioning Omar not necessarily as gay but as different. In the first scene after the opening credits, the episode sets up this difference in relationship to teenage Black masculinity. Before Hakeem, Moesha’s friend and neighbor, enters the scene, much of the humor centers on the notion that whenever he visits the Mitchell household, he ravenously eats whatever meal has been prepared. Because the Mitchells are already aware that he will be bringing his cousin Omar, the assumption is that he, too, will have a voracious appetite. Instead, Hakeem’s brash personality is contrasted with Omar’s politer demeanor. Hakeem quickly seizes on the invitation to join the family for breakfast, telling Omar, “Yeah, grab a plate boy! Don’t be shy!” Omar responds, “Thank you. But, I don’t want to impose.” This utterance stops the Mitchells in their tracks and elicits audience laughter. The humor within this scene is built on the incongruity theory of humor. Incongruity theory hinges on humor arising “from the disparity between the ways in which things are expected to be and how they really are.”21 Incongruity theory is built on the assumption that as humans, we are somewhat like machines: we come to expect particular patterns and when things deviate from that pattern, they are inherently funny, mostly because they shock us with their deviation. By familial relation (and the ways the Mitchells have set viewer expectations), Omar and Hakeem are expected to have similar temperaments. To underscore this strangeness, Frank, Moesha’s father, says, “Hakeem, I thought you said this was your cousin,” which elicits a second laugh from the audience/laugh track. The third joke in this scene occurs when Omar asks if he can wash his hands before he eats. To further mark Omar’s difference onto his body, Moesha’s stepmother, Dee, asks Hakeem if he, too, wants to wash his hands before eating (although he is already eating). Hakeem, while licking his fingers, says, “I’m good. I ran [my hands] through the sprinkler before I came over.” Taken together, Omar’s politeness and manners are juxtaposed against Hakeem’s brashness and lack of manners to mark Omar as other. While the particularities of Omar’s difference remain unclear, those differences are positioned as ripe sites for laughter.

Furthering Omar’s otherness, he tells Dee, “Mrs. Mitchell, in payment for your hospitality, I insist on doing the dishes afterward.” This line, which is unlikely considered humorous on its face, is followed by a light giggle from the audience/laugh track. The laughter here is rooted in the incompatibility of Black gayness with the operative norms of the Black-cast sitcom. Building on the politeness and manners Omar has demonstrated, his offer to wash the dishes is also understood as a kind of otherness—one that I argue tethers Omar to the domestic, which is always already understood as feminine (or in Omar’s case, he is tied to the “incorrectly feminine”). This tethering sutures Omar to a hermeneutics of

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