TBS recently added an new show to late night television. It is called Lopez Tonight, hosted by actor/commedian George Lopez. He is the first Latino to host a late night talk show on an English language network. The show features a lot of audience interaction with a high energy format. Although I didn’t have much interest in watching it, I decided to watch the episode for the first time tonight because the actress from a show I love called Glee was a guest. She was talking about the success of the show and how her dress for the Golden Globes got stuck in her locked car so she needed a new one. Lopez quickly remarks that she shouldn’t have said that because the many Latinos watching will steal it and wear it to a quinceanera, and make it smell like mexican food. The audience roared with applause and laughter. After that I noticed that he makes many racial remarks making fun of Hispanics.
Is it okay to make fun of your own ethnicity? I have recently noticed that it is considered normal and funny if somebody makes fun of their own ethnicity, but let them say one thing about yours and suddenly its not so funny anymore. I think as humans we automatically feel defensive to whatever group we belong to, no matter how random or arbitrary. But we must learn our limit too what extent these ‘jokes’ can come to. For example with George Lopez, he makes funny remarks based on Hispanic culture but never really goes farther than that. I believe that if we don’t talk about thses things it just makes the subject more tense and ‘forbidden’ to say. This show is a funny way to bring many different kinds of people together and make remarks about what people are thinking, but are afraid to say outloud.
