Talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres is being accused of racism for doing a bit on her show about rapper Nicki Minaj’s big butt.
The sketch was a satire “preview” of what an episode of Minaj’s upcoming ABC comedy show might look like, and featured an entire family (including the dog) wearing large prosthetic butts.
“They have big butts,” Ellen said after the sketch was over. “That’s the joke.”
Unfortunately for Ellen, however, that joke was not well-received by Social Justice Internet. For example, check out what was posted on Gawker:
“What exactly was the joke? That Nicki Minaj has a big butt? (OK, fine, but that’s just the truth, not really…a joke?) That black people have big butts? That black dogs have big butts? That black women’s bodies are absurd?
And it wasn’t just Gawker. A Huffington Post piece, titled “Nicki Minaj Parody Forgets That Black Women’s Bodies Are No Laughing Matter,” even went so far as to assert that “minstrel show would be the only fitting description” for it. Vox said it “reduced Minaj entirely to her most famous body part.”
Okay. I’d agree that the sketch was “lazy,” and that it didn’t make me laugh, but was it really that bad?
Nicki herself hasn’t commented on it — which really isn’t all that surprising. Based on how many pictures of her butt she posts on her Instagram, and the fact that she made her butt the star of her “Anaconda” music video, it seems like her butt is something she hardly minds (read: loves) getting attention for. She’s associated with her butt because she has purposely made that butt a major part of her brand, and a sketch like this is what you can expect to happen when you do that.
#share#What’s more, DeGeneres did a spoof of that “Anaconda” video when Minaj was on her show in September — and Minaj laughed.
But Social Justice Internet obviously disagrees. The sketch, they argue, is saying that the only thing worth mentioning about Minaj is her butt.
Some articles, such as this post in the Root, maintain that it should have gone deeper:
What would have been really funny would be to show a young Minaj, who was a performing-arts student at New York City’s famous LaGuardia High School, perfecting her acting chops. Or even a young Minaj at her first job at Red Lobster and getting fired for being too fiesty [sic]. But no, a little black girl with an overexaggerated butt isn’t funny.
#related#My first thought: Just watching her go to school would be boring, and this idea kind of misses the whole point that comedy is supposed to make jokes — and that it frequently does so at the expense of others. Oh, and by the way, I’d also bet the Red Lobster idea would just result in Ellen being slammed for perpetuating the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype.
Does a comedy sketch have to capture every single thing about a person? I sure hope not. Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of feel like having to portray a complete, resumé-worthy picture of a person during a minute-long sketch is kind of a lot to ask.