On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy

by Mel Watkins

This comprehensive history of black humor sets it in the context of American popular culture. Blackface minstrelsy, Stepin Fetchit, and the Amos ’n’ Andy show presented a distorted picture of African Americans; this book contrasts this image with the authentic underground humor of African Americans found in folktales, race records, and all-black shows and films. After generations of stereotypes, the underground humor finally emerged before the American public with Richard Pryor in the 1970s. But Pryor was not the first popular comic to present authentically black humor. Watkins offers surprising reassessments of such seminal figures as Fetchit, Bert Williams, Moms Mabley, and Redd Foxx, looking at how they paved the way for contemporary comics such as Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, and Bill Cosby.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, Comedy, History, African American, Film, Race

672 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

watkins did something valuable here: despite not being employed in a lofty academic post, he assembled the first major scholarly work on a heretofore ignored topic in cultural history. the book is "dated" and "uneven" only in the sense that it's a starting point. as with all books of this kind, its very existence is a miracle.

if you're doing research on humor, here's where you go first.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge Richard Pryor fan and I'll be shallow and admit that I bought this book years ago solely because he was on the cover. I've passed over it for years but I'm circling the steaming carrion of a novel I want to write about a stand-up comedian so I thought I'd finally give it a whirl.
Let me just say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this book. I'll explain my personal three-star rating in a moment.
Watkins does a fine job taking us back, pretty much to distant West Africa to show us the roots of the African-American cultural matrix that gets transplanted and transformed once slavery dumped everyone in the New World. He traces with a fine point the evolution of black humor as we know it. And these bits are great. Well-researched, lots of example, and so on. But the bulk of the book covers this more distant historical period. In fact, current black funny people, with the exception of Dick Gregory, kind of get short-thrift. From, say, Cosby and Foxx on, there's only about a hundred pages left for Pryor, Murphy, and the great stuff from the 70s and 80s. Now, I'm find with a historical perspective, and the stuff on minstrelsy, early radio and TV, blackface comics...all that stuff is wonderful and fascinating, but I was really, really looking forward to the contemporary bits. He does go into some detail on Pryor, an American hero in my opinion, but the end is a bit of a rush job. You could write a book just on the 1960s until now, when African-American humor went through all its metamorphoses that gave us what we have today. Alas!
Still, if you're interested in the earlier period, you'll love it.

[Sonja Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great historical account of black comedy and comedians

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read so far this year!

[Dwight Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned so.much from this book, long read, have to treat it like a manual but you'll come out with a greater appreciation of what black folk have done and endured in the entertainment industry.

[Anne Libera · Rating 4 out of 5]

In depth and scholarly look at African American comedy from minstrelsy to Richard Pryor. A great deal of insight into comedy as a whole as well as highlighting areas of comedy history not often seen.

[Diann Blakely]

Lawrence Hill, perhaps the best independent presses specializing in African-American literature, published this updated edition of Mel Watkins' ON THE REAL SIDE: A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN COMEDY FROM SLAVERY TO CHRIS ROCK around the millennium. Watkins, a former editor of the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, uses humor as a lens for exploring American race relations. "For a vulnerable black minority," he writes, "surreptitiousness and trickery were the principal defenses against repression." The latter often involved false ignorance and naiveté--think "Sambo" of the minstrel shows, Amos and Andy, or Eddie Murphy in some of his Saturday Night Live routines. But playing dumb--a ruse scarcely limited to the African American cultural tradition--has its drawbacks, having too often "fostered and affirmed the most insidious and demeaning stereotypes."

Yet what Watkins calls "Sambo comedy" serves as one of the foundations of modern African-American comedy; "surreptitious" humor, developed in the privacy of wholly black settings, represents the other. Watkins explores both, showing how the latter began to trickle into the mainstream with performers like Redd Foxx. The author's inclusion of jokes from slavery times to mid-century to the present era--including those of Foxx, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock--makes for a compendious, erudite cultural study that is also a delight to read.








(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of my favorite history books of all time. It has all the elements I like: a history that is not about the dominant culture, that takes a unique approach to understanding history, and provides connections between the approach and the larger questions confronting American society. The jokes are really funny as you learn the history of African American comedy and show business. Really great.

[John senesy]

While this book was interesting and informative it fell into the trap that many books of its type can not seem to bypass: it reads like a text book. There is almost no personality to the book.