Friday Sep 1
palabras KENDRA DESROSIERS
Dave Chappelle's Comedy Central peer, Carlos Mencia, has picked up where he left off with his hilarious political and racial sketch comedies. Like Chappelle, Mencia exposes racial profiling and political scandals that many would feel uncomfortable discussing but when in blunt sketch comedies one can't help to "laugh to keep from crying."
The exposure of the sad but true facets of society is part of the responsible comedy theme found in Mencia’s work. The point of his responsible comedy methods is to spread awareness and essentially prevent anyone from ever enforcing racism or being passive to political scandals.
Carlos Mencia steps it up with the second season of his hit show, The Mind of Mencia, on Comedy Central. While many feel Mencia tends to be repetitive with his continuation of the 9/11 and Katrina jokes throughout his Stand Ups and sketches, Mencia presents the hilarious "Stereotype Olympics" sketch which wins over his audience almost instantaneously. The "Stereotype Olympics" consisted of athletes of Latin, Asian, African and European descent. All of the athletes are placed in several Olympic events that apply to one of their stereotypes. In accordance with their racial stereotype, they each win their own stereotyped event however Mencia adds a twist with the Black player’s stereotyped event.
The winners were as follows; The White player won the figure skating competition, the Hispanic player the obstacle course, and the Asian the carnival dunking event. Because a large majority of figure skaters are White, the White athlete won however, the Hispanic athlete’s takeover of the obstacle course would be less obvious without Mencia’s narration. The obstacle course was supposed to be comparable to "crossing the border" along the Mexico, California line. The Asian athlete won the dunking event due to his deft rock throwing skill gained from throwing rocks at terrorist tanks. After watching the first few events one would assume that the Black athlete would win the controversial watermelon event, surprisingly the Hispanic player won instead, stating, "I plant the melon, I will eat the melon."
Mencia's responsible comedy method successfully delivers his message of antiracism by blatantly emphasizing the racial stereotypes of the most targeted races. Mencia’s other sketches include exploiting his brother for his deep Spanish accent and some less racially fused sketches that include the likes of leprechauns and wishes gone wrong. While the uptight and narrow minded may not feel at ease when watching Mencia’s work, for Mencia’s audience, season two will just bring more laughs and subconscious awareness.
Mind of Mencia airs on Comedy Central on Sundays at 10p / 9c.