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/rAskReddit Journal

Reddit is a website that aggregates all types of news, discussions, websites, and much more. It has hundreds of subreddits which are different communities or discussion forms, where one user asks a question or creates a post and then other users can comment, upvote, downvote, and repost that post. With the hundreds of different subreddits there comes political and social talk as well. Some of them are dedicated entirely to politics, specific franchises like Star Wars, Game of Thrones, specific video games, books, and a plethora of different subjects. 

I’ll be exploring the subreddit known as /rAskReddit. This subreddit is like the name says one user asks a question and Reddit as a community gives an answer. Like most posts there are some comedians that must point out of the obvious in some of the questions and others who answer the question. Some users post “[Serious]” meaning they want serious answers only because most posts are generally answered with a comedic tone or sarcastically. Based on our reading I would compare this subreddit mostly to the Judy Baca and her use of digital technology to help the community express themselves. The same way AskReddit and most communities on Reddit can express themselves in any way they want to with close to no limitations. AskReddit specifically has some users trying to find out more about a subject or advice on something and everyone’s personality comes out in the comments. This can be related to Harlem Renaissance we explored in week 7, obviously not to the same extent because of the context and circumstances, but the idea of it can be related to AskReddit and Reddit as a whole.

When Judy Baca created SPARC in order to help her community express themselves through art on any issues, they wanted to address issues like immigration concerns or gender and sexuality matters. In the AskReddit subreddit anyone who wants to have an issue or question answered they will ask it. They are usually met with more sarcastic or comedic comments, but there are usually actual answers within them or straight up answers. I feel like this SubReddit and Reddit in general is a kind of like the SPARC program on a much larger level because SPARC was one community and Reddit is millions around the world. AskReddit alone has 25 million subscribers, there isn’t 25 million active members but there is consistently over 100,000 people that are online according to the reddit page. On Reddit you can search for specific subreddits and within those you can search for general topics, by searching for specific topics like gender or sexuality the first and most relevant posts are about questioning sexuality and asking immigrants from china about censoring. AskReddit and Reddit is a great way to express oneself like the community did with Judy Baca’s program

During the Harlem Renaissance there was a great movement not just in Harlem but in other major cities over the world like Paris, France. The movement in Harlem was one of intellectual, social, and artistic within the city. Although not the same in the impact in what the Harlem renaissance had by changing the perception of an entire race. AskReddit, Reddit and the internet became a renaissance of the same kind because it gave a whole new way of communication, sharing ideas, beliefs, art, and much more. AskReddit wasn’t the first subreddit to come about, but has become one of the most popular, reaching the front page almost daily with serious and non-serious questions alike. It being such an influence and daily occurrence in redditors and daily passerby has made it have an impact on people's lives since some take the questions and answers seriously, just how African American culture became more serious in America during the Harlem Renaissance.  

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Joker Review

The Joker is a film based off the DC comic character, the Joker. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the character of Arthur Fleck and goes through his spiraling out of control life. He has a medical disorder that makes him laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate times, and due do the disorder he has had a tough time trying to fit in with society. He has attempted a life at being a party clown and comedian but has had little to no success. Joker has always been an over the top villain with a dark side in the comics, tv shows, and films. In most of the tv shows and films there has never really been an explanation to who or why the Joker was. In this film, it provides a narrative for how society and people beat him down and turned him into the Joker.  People can relate to Arthur in a way and can sympathize with his situation because of the hardships he must go through. Pulling back a little bit there is also an overarching story that is going on in the city while following his downfall. A story of oppression on the disabled, lower class, and minorities within a city that is a fantasized version of New York. A secondary plot to the main story is how the higher class treats the lower class in the city, and this relates back to the civil rights era in America and how African Americans were treated throughout that time. There are also powerful images and actions that people take in the movie that cause the masses to act.

Throughout the movie there is a secondary story that is happening in the larger city that is inadvertently started by Arthur. This is caused by the constant oppressive nature of the city on the lower class and minority groups. Instead of being just one race it’s everyone that is poor and downtrodden that are completely different from the higher class. There is a distinct difference when he goes from his part of town to the higher-class parts of town. The city is extremely dirty, garbage can be seen lying around everywhere, and there are giant rats that roam the city (which may or may not be a reference to a lesser known Batman villain). When Arthur defends himself and the city starts rising and protesting the higher class, meanwhile the higher class tries to snuff out any resistance or cove it up. I would relate this to our previous project based around the March in Milwaukee and similar events across America. Where the Marches were mostly the African American population of Milwaukee what happened in Joker was a large group of minorities that first were protesting peacefully until it reached a boiling point. In the movie it was the shooting of the talk show host Franklin Murray and the talk with Arthur that led everyone to start rioting. While in real life it was the murder of Martin Luther King Jr that led to riots across America, although these riots didn’t occur in Milwaukee. On the contrary there was a peaceful protest that was the largest at the time in Milwaukee after his death. The actions taken by the public in the movie shows how a group or community of people no matter the color of their skin, sex, or beliefs will start fighting back for a common cause if they get pushed enough.

Like most movies, there is powerful imagery throughout the movie. The most powerful image may not be an image at all but the “mask” Arthur wears. This mask is the clown makeup that has become so synonymous with the Joker character since its inception. The mask becomes a symbol reminiscent of the Guy Fawkes mask that is used in protests and has become synonymous with anonymity. The clown mask becomes the same thing within the city and reminds me of when we were talking in week three about race, photography, and the index. Nick Cave took symbols of oppression from the past and made them into pieces of art, that gave a beauty to the cruelty. The same goes for the mask of the Joker, maybe not in the exact same way, but the mask became a way of Arthur to “express” himself. It also became a symbol of the people to fight against the oppression of the city.

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Chappelle’s Show Review

Chappelle’s Show is a stand-up routine performed by Dave Chappelle that also leads into comedy sketches performed by Chappelle, other actors, and regulars on the show. Chappelle’s Show is known because of the controversial topics and norms that his routine and sketches bring up, and he essentially is just parodying all these topics and dialing it up to eleven in the sketches. There are plenty of sketches that he does that show the racial norms for certain races. In one episode there is a sketch called “I know black people” that is a game of jeopardy wherein a diverse cast of people play a version of jeopardy to see how much they know about African American culture. This is all satirical and made for comedic purposes, but the questions are all very stereotypical, and the answers to them seem to make some of the contestants become visibly uncomfortable when answering them. In fact, this became a staple of the show and his comedy acts, making people uncomfortable in order to bring up some subjects and answering them in a comedic way to lighten the tension while also addressing them. Keep in mind that this show was created in 2003 and lasted until 2006, this time period was nothing like the one we know now, and much has changed in the world since its inception. 

Dave Chappelle is a comedian and like most comedians he turns controversial topics into comedy. Some may squirm at some jokes and laugh out loud at others, but they all convey a message that he is trying to send or discuss. In one sketch called “Reparations”, they look at what it would be like if reparations were actually paid to the black community, with a hint of comedy added in. The first thing you see in the sketch is Dave Chappelle as a presumably white news anchor.  He has a blonde wig on, speaks in a “white” tone of voice, and has a stereotypical white name. After the white news anchor segment is finished, it goes directly into Chappelle playing another character that’s an extremely stereotypical African American in the “hood”.  In this sense I think the way he can blend racial humor with thought provocation is an art form, like how the “30 Americans” pieces all conveyed something about African American culture or the artists past and/or passion in a thought-provoking manner.

I would also relate Chappelle’s Show back to our week two reading of Mirzoeffs “The Shadow and the Substance” that talks about race, photography, and the index. The reading and the show both go over issues with racism. The show does so through many different sketches and jokes. It also goes over the index that Mirzoeff talks about because whenever a character is presented the viewer can automatically assume nearly everything about them. This is showed through how stereotypical they are. Mirzoeff describes the photographs as the prime locus, but in the show, it became the representation of the characters themselves. The clothes they wore, the accent they used, and even their skin tones became the focal point of the . The characters of the show became Mirzoeff’s photographs by becoming the focal point of each stereotype they portrayed in all of his sketches.