We all love a good laugh. And there’s no better place to get it than in a nice, uncomplicated comedy series or movie. As someone who is not a keen fan of stand-up comedy, I always get my kick from different offerings on the small and big screen.
Like many others I have come to roll on the floor laughing at Leon Schuster’s plethora of offerings. The Mama Jack moviemaker has made a killing from the box office to the clips of his gaffes on different family WhatsApp groups.
In the past 46 years, Schuster has become an icon, playing a pivotal role in creating humour that transcends racial groups. You don’t even have to know Afrikaans to understand how funny his scenes are. Whether it’s a pun, a relatable oopsie or a slapstick slap across the face, Schuster has built a brand where he will do whatever it takes to make us laugh.
Well, maybe just one exception won’t make the cut – and that’s dealing with the racial undertones of his work. In an alternate world where the events of 1994 to 1997 were successful in nation building and ending racism, Schuster’s jibes and blackface would probably have gone down well.
While Schuster has backed down from ever portraying characters in blackface, other elements of his backward approach to comedy still exist and are evident in his latest flick – Mr Bones 3. While the extent to which this movie takes on the topic is unclear since it has not hit cinemas yet, Schuster will once again play a Tarzan type character whose antics are not in a jungle but in a fictional African tribe.
It comes as no surprise that he has revisited the franchise. Schuster has been interviewed, stating that he does not see race and therefore his intentions are not harmful – which is where the problem lies in his work. The notion of colour-blindness that he subscribes to has been criticised for the pretence that race is not an issue – when it is, especially for those who are discriminated against based on their skin colour.
While it comes off innocent, this naïve approach to race relations becomes insensitive. It even begs the question of whether Schuster would have stopped blackfaces at all if there had not been a social media outcry in the past couple of years.
This also reflects a sense of white fragility, a term coined by sociologist Robin DiAngelo, where a discomfort and defensiveness occurs when white people are faced by issues pertaining to racial injustices and inequality.
Throughout the era of his career where he has been questioned about race, Schuster has taken a stance that constantly defended the comical merit of his work instead of actually accepting how problematic it was. He was beside himself and unable to accept the repercussions of having his work removed from Showmax recently, rather than accepting that he was wrong in his portrayals of different racial groups and the prejudices that some of his work carries.
In continuing the Mr Bones series, Schuster again escapes the need for fresher and funny storytelling that does not rely on cultural appropriation (or in the case of Mr Bones, cultural exploitation) but delivers a genuine laugh.
However, there also exists the matter of local audiences who enjoy Schuster’s work without wanting to see the issues in it. I cannot help but feel it’s a case of internalised oppression, a term often used to describe members of an oppressed group who accept of reaffirm negative stereotypes against their own people. This can also play out in beliefs that the dominant group is superior to them – especially if they are not a part of that group.
Schuster believes his work is for our diverse nation and those who love it believe it’s not something to think about too deeply. The result is a society that is united in pretending that racial issues don’t exist, from the likes of Schuster, who won’t see racial injustice, to black folk who don’t acknowledge it. In the end, its Schuster who gets the last laugh while black and other people of colour think it is too woke to stop the joke that’s on them.
