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Hannah Knorr
Nic Ruley
Culture, Race, and Media
15 July 2014
Final Project: Operation Behind the Laughter
This purpose of this project was to examine media literacy in comedy, specifically as it
pertains to the racial structure of whiteness. For my midterm in Culture, Race, and Media, I
deconstructed the music video for Boyz in the Hood by Dynamite Hack (link in Works Cited).
The video uses the juxtaposition of wealthy white stereotypes in the visual pictures over a song
with lyrics signifying poor black stereotypes. I argued that because this juxtaposition is so radical
that rather than a form of cultural appropriation (a current hot topic amongst many), this video
instead causes the viewer to examine how ridiculous white privilege is. The enemy of progress is
the ignorance of the ruling class to acknowledge their position. Dynamite Hacks consumers are
a largely white audience, so this video was a way to get many more white people to examine
their white privilege.
However, I found that in showing this video to a class of my peers (and in viewings with
other friends) the most popular response was laughter and many seemed mildly confused about
my deconstruction of the piece. I wondered if the message was not immediately accessible to
viewers. While deeper analysis is often necessary to reveal the true meaning of the piece, the
majority of the viewers of this video would probably not put the time in to find it. Instead, it
could me sending a more dangerous message of white=bad via cultural appropriation or
obnoxious socioeconomic privilege. Almost every viewer of this video will laugh at it, so it is
obviously comedy, but are they simply laughing at the surface imagery and discounting this
video as the frivolous project of a white male rock band? Thus, I decided to formulate a survey
that would help me examine the media literacy of a group of viewers to see if they could deduce
the true racial meaning behind this video. I hypothesized that the majority of the viewers would

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recognize the video as comedy, but few would recognize the true racial meaning behind the
laughter.
Having formulated a purpose, a hypothesis, and a method it was time for me to draft my
survey. This was probably the hardest part of my process. In acoustics, we have to complete a
training program by Columbias Institutional Review Board in order to pursue our senior
portfolio projects. This involves how to formulate surveys and methods that will be as harmless
and general as possible while still allowing for useful data. To do any project with people
involved, we must submit a long proposal documenting every planned part of our project
including any surveys we intend to distribute. So, I was fairly confident in how to construct
demographic questions and how to get the finished form public, but I ran into a problem when
trying to ask questions about the video itself. I did not want to lead participants to an answer, but
I wanted to get them thinking about the racial meaning. I was afraid that without direction too
many people would shove it off as dumb white people are funny and leave me with a wide
skew of results. My solution was to just ask about as much of the video as possible with a five
point scale so there would be less decision pressure on the taker as opposed to a simple true/false
dichotomy, and a five point scale would help me see any borderline areas in the stereotype
content model. Also, I kept questions to one or two on a page only so there was less chance of
the participant wanting to go back and change answers if a realization they do not like happens
later. Race is a very sensitive subject nowadays, and showing a video like this is just asking for a
horde of guilty responses. I did not to make people feel guilty about white privilege, just
recognize that the video is meant to examine it and how it was doing it. Additionally, I wanted to
work a bit with stereotype content modeling. I writing my midterm paper, I found a study by
white male stereotyping to be particularly interesting. In this study, three different white
stereotypes were established from non-socially hegemonic participants:

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Three main images of White males emerged in our analyses: the cold
incompetent frat boy, the cold competent Gordon Gekko, and the warm and
competent nice guy. Another image related to White mens lack of coordination
and referenced incompetence. Therefore, in the main dimensions we identified,
themes of warmth/morality and competence emerged. Racism also continued to
be a prominent theme in stereotypes of White men. (Conley, et al)
As the main characters of this video are white males, I wondered what kind of white guy
stereotype viewers would identify most. For me, they lean towards warm and incompetent,
placing them in a pity category, and I would argue that the frat boy stereotype from Coneys
study would skirt the line between pity and disgust due to the current trend of incompetent but
nice frat boy types among summer movie plots (see: 22 Jump Street, Zac Efrons recent roles).
Having drafted the survey, I published the form to Facebook and waited for the responses to pour
in.
Overall, I was able to gather 13 individual responses. Demographically speaking, females
dominated 11-2. I was kind of disappointed in this because the main characters were white men,
so I wanted to see if there was a big difference between female and male viewers. Age-wise there
was a pretty even spread with 18-24 year olds taking 36% of the response. I thought it was
interesting that I had 36% from 45-65+ participants as arguably they would have less exposure to
political correctness being from a different generation than the majority of the responses.
Racially, 85% of the participants were white, with one Hispanic and one black participant each. I
also asked about education because I wondered if more educated people would better understand
the racial meaning as cultural classes are often required in higher learning versus basic
education. Thus, my majority here were white females age 18-24 with some college education.

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Arguably, this is great because this is very representative of the target audience of the music
video.
Overall, the objective points varied a lot among the participants. There was a lot of
neutrality among the results, which led me to believe that a lot of the participants were
overthinking the questions as how they think it relates to the video on a wide scale rather than
what they personally felt which was my original intention. As expected, the majority (62%)
found the video funny. However, 62% also said that the lyrics were not funny. I had assumed
more would find the lyrical content funny simply because the video was so detached from it, but
it seems instead that this detachment caused many negative responses as black stereotypes are
generally seen as more negative and hands off because they come from a non-hegemonic
group. When asked if the video matched the song well, neutrality was the most common result,
with disagree only edging out agree slightly. This is surprising because so many identified the
funny video with unfunny lyrics, which most would argue makes the point that the video does
not fit the song. When looking at the stereotype content model, the majority said the people in
the video (all white) were not warm. When asked about their competence, the majority ruled
slightly in favor of incompetent. So, combining these two, the white men in this video fit the frat
boy stereotype found in Coneys study with the results lying near the disgust/envy border, but far
to the bottom of the grid. I had expected this due to the excessive wealth displayed as although
many of the physical actions of the characters were uncoordinated or incompetent, we tend to
associated wealth with competence as it signifies a greater means for education and opportunity,
and nearly all the participants identified the white people as rich/important. The most neutral
responses were taken when asked whether the people in the video were good guys. The wide
majority did not wish to pick a side. I think this was because as mostly white people they
identified with the characters in the video, so they not want to choose bad, but the socioeconomic

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privilege kept them from seeing them as inherently good. Finally, the majority were able to
identify that the video had a racial message. However, it was harder for the participants to
examine exactly what it was. The majority ruled that the video did not portray white people
positively, but many more also agreed that the portrayal of people of color was not positive. So,
no one wins here according to the audience. I was curious as to why they thought POC were
portrayed negatively when the video itself had no black people, but I think it came from the
assumption that the lyrics were speaking to a socioeconomically disenfranchised black culture
and thus offered a negative view of the population overall. Also, I wonder if the lack of diverse
representation in the characters ethnic background evoked a negative response simply because
by not including then, it implies that they do not exist/belong in the entitled community shown
here.
The results of the groups subjective deconstruction were rather surprising. Overall
among the written response portion where participants were asked to type out what they
specifically thought the videos meaning was, five out of thirteen participants were able to
recognize the commentary on white socioeconomic privilege in the visuals versus the black poor
imagery in the lyrics in some way. (This could arguably be six. One person said the message was
a little racial, but mostly just privileged which was so close but so far that it hurt.) As expected,
the participants in the middle aged to elderly demographic were more likely to recognize a black
versus white message, but did not mention any sort of socioeconomic advantage or concept of
privilege from the characters. I think this is because white privilege is a more recent cultural
concept that this generation would not have had as much exposure to. The next most popular
response recognized the socioeconomic privilege and entitlement of the characters, but did not
associate this with race. I found this interesting. A lot of people are missing the racial message,
but are still recognizing the characters holding societal power. This begins to enter the

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intersectionality realm of white privilege combined with socioeconomic privilege. However, I

doubt that if it were a group of privileged black men performing in the video that the concept of
their privilege would be recognized. Analyzing these results, I realized that I needed to examine
both the racial and socioeconomic lines in this video as there were many people focusing on one
or the other rather than combining the entitlement of the wealthy into a white package.
Personally, I was happy that more people seemed to understand the racial message or at least part
of it rather than taking the comedy at face value.
In conclusion, if this survey were to lead to future experimentation, I believe it would
need to explore the inclusion of socioeconomic privilege within white privilege. We see white
people as inherently more entitled, but do we also see white people as inherently wealthier? I had
not considered this intersectionality. Would a similar message be found if the white men were
singing lyrics about gold chains and expensive alcohol (signifiers of a wealthy black culture) or
if it was wealthy black men singing about poor white culture (the white trash stereotype)? Are
viewers more likely to pick up on a rich/poor dichotomy versus a white/black dichotomy?
Additionally, each demographic makeup needs to be expanded, especially among males, racial
minorities, and less educated populations to have an equal spread, or a researcher could
purposely focus on a specific demographic as shown in the Coney study. Overall, I was surprised
that there was more media literacy amongst the participants than what I expected, especially as
for most this was probably their first viewing of the video. It honestly warms a bit of the
cynicism wrapped around my heart and proves that we as a society are not totally doomed.

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Works Cited
Boyz In The Hood. Perf. Dynamite Hack. YouTube. N.p., 24 June 2011. Web. 19 June 2014.
<http://youtu.be/aeL9gagV_VA>.
Conley, Terri D., Joshua L. Rabinowitz, and Jerome Rabow. "Gordon Gekkos, Frat Boys and Nice
Guys: The Content, Dimensions, and Structural Determinants of Multiple Ethnic Minority
Groups' Stereotypes About White Men." Analyses of Social Issues & Public Policy 10.1 (2010):
69-96. Web. 19 June 2014.