The Boondocks is a hilarious and satirical cartoon. The episode we watched in class lightened the heavy weight I have feel when thinking about Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. One aspect that struck me the most was how accurate the shows interpretation of the news was. In this episode, a white woman from News 5 is quickly and unexpectedly interviewing Robert Freeman about his recent sheltering of Katrina refugees. She asks Robert, “What do you hope to get out of this?” Robert responds, “Not a damn thing.” The reporter mistakes this as selflessness instead of heated selfishness. She is so caught up in her own unaware, ignorant world that she cannot detect the true story happening in Robert’s house. The news and media often does that.
News 5 seems to linger outside of Robert’s house. They return when Robert is about to kick the refugees out of the house and the same news reporter frames him as a jerk. This was funny to watch because here we have the juxtaposition of the news, which portrays inaccurate information and is not helping with Katrina, and a man who is sheltering refugees even though he doesn’t entirely want to. This reflects the injustices that occurred after Katrina hit, and perhaps even now still.
The second example of News 5’s stalking behavior is when they report the “drug related crime” which obviously means, “the crime rate is rising.” It’s not a coincidence the camera was filming Robert, Uncle Ruckus, and another man of color. Again, this mirrors the present day news and the obsession with crime, what groups of people are focused on, and the faultiness of the news. Uncle Ruckus is also a good parallel to the news because he is outwardly racist, while the news can be subtler. He truly believes that he is white and he is the physical form of racism.
Despite the humor in The Boondocks, I thought that they did a great job at portraying the fears of the refugees. Robert panics the refugees when he says they have to evacuate. In conclusion, the refugees scream and run and end up sitting on the roof. Robert now has to fix a hole in his roof that they made, their escape route. This put the anxieties of refugees into perspective for me. It’s a different experience to read a memoir or book, like Chris Rose, about Katrina refugees being depressed, drinking excessively, and having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even though this was a cartoon, which can make emotions and moments less emotional, it really hit me. It’s so different for me to see even cartoon characters fleeing to the roof and breaking a hole in the roof. The stress and fears that some refugees now have can be hard to grasp for me.
The question we discussed during class, about when it’s okay to make something serious funny, has been resonating in my head. Even more so after I read The Falling Man by Tom Junod. Junod talks in his article about an artist named Eric Fischl who scultpted a large bronze state entitled Tumbling Woman. He wanted to redeem all the jumpers on 9/11 and this is what the statue reflects: a woman who appears to be falling through space. When this was exhibited people had very negative reactions and it has to be taken out of the exhibition. Fischl even received bomb threats, which I thought was just ridiculously dark. I can understand people being offended and not ready to face something that emotionally triggering, and may even get the wrong idea, but a bomb threat after 9/11? Seriously? That’s just sinking to a new level of extreme and viciousness, especially after the loss of the Twin Towers. I personally think that The Boondocks was enjoyable to watch and it feels that there’s been “enough time” to be able to joke about the horrid event.
