Comedy Bang Bang! is a talk show with a comedic twist that features host Scott Aukerman and band leader Reggie Watts. Though talk shows generally are serious, this one doesn't force the host (or his bandleader) to play everything straight. In the episode featuring Gillian Jacobs as a guest, Comedy Bang Bang incorporates a nonlinear story structure comprised of converging sub-plots to create a vehicle for focused humor that works implicitly. This set up allows for a self-analyzing of the exchange between Scott (white) and Reggie (black). Scott can play the straight man while Reggie can play the comic.
White privilege, at least according to Patty McIntosh, pervades our society and yields an invisible package of benefits available only for white people. This bundle pertains to Comedy Bang Bang! because American television is a whitefest - it is fostered by white culture's self-propensity and its disdain for non-white cultures (typically). Coming into Cbb, one could easily assume the same dynamic to be at play. After all, Scott appears on screen far more often than Reggie, to which a character calls attention in this episode.
Now, what joke am I referring to? The episode combines many jokes, including Gillian Jacob's feigning a lethal egg allergy, Reggie getting a controlling girlfriend named Amber, a vampire chef named Emeril Luigi, and the usual jokes. Explaining jokes, however, is bad comedymanship so I won't do that. Scott and Reggie are both strongly differentiated as the sub-plots coalesce. This approach then appears to seamlessly fit within the white privilege scheme. But the roles are overdrawn. Scott puts on a facade where he acts quite serious and civilized when on the show. Yes, white culture as it sees itself. At first this mask seems so organic that it is his face but the character is quickly revealed to have strong elements of caricature.
In the "On This Day in History" segment, Scott plays a 20th century rich person who wears all white and has a bushy mustache and uses a cane. Her he is so white as to be an emissary for the whole race, for only the rich and white matter nor does a white person need to speak for whitemandom. Scott plays the contrived elitist millionaire, a fact hinted at by his mockery of things that later become very successful. Picasso, basketball, or the Internet? Clearly nothing that important! Yet at the same time he falls for a scheme that takes all his money. We see Fake Scott with the other Fake People who share his socioeconomic background and who laugh at childish things that will never amount to anything. This segment openly mocks that blinding whiteness - not unlike the sun - and hints that Scott plays the comedic straight man to the point of satire. The whole sketch was performed to mock a millionaire who lost everything on one day, which further adds to this parody. Thus, Scott is resolved.
What about Reggie? He spends a lot of the episode being swindled and being dminished by the camera's Scott-gaze. But this act is betrayed by Scott's outrage at Amber's suggestion that they kill Reggie, highlighting his importance to the show. The bandleader and foil is required, or Comedy Bang Bang! would fall into despair and disarray. This situation is typical of white people portraying black behavior - being black is then reduced to being childish and easy to fool like Reggie apparently is. This illusion is, however, shattered when he realizes Amber tried to poison him. Though the typical racial dynamic appears strong in light of Reggie's behavior, we see that he too is rational outside of this situation. He realizes what Amber did and accepts her arrest. Reggie often plays a more vital role in the show, so his relatively minor appearance in this episode can be forgiven.
Gillian Jacobs is also white, so how does she play into this affair? (The vampire chef does not fall into a "race" necessarily because his vampiric status is held higher than his alleged race status.) Though her role is apparently neutral, one could argue she is a centerpiece for this racial "tension" to unfold. In particular, Gillian's act of eating Scott's egg salad sandwich - which she describes as delectable - then pretending to have a deadly egg allergy pokes fun at Scott's white facade. He betrays a grimace when she avoids confessing to her heinous act of eating his sandwich, which reveals a gap in the designed character. The scene where Scott accosts Gillian reveals "off-the-set Scott" (because it is still staged) who acts very differently from the facade he shows "on set" (still staged). Gillian does not fully play the white role, at least not the way Scott does; rather, she is an intermediately white person and her presence supports the overarching racial self-analysis present in this episode.
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