Comedy can serve as a disguise for many issues being portrayed by the media. Racial tensions and stereotypes are just one of these issues that ignite less controversy once wrapped up in comedy. Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1975) is a sitcom that revolves around the concept of diversity and ethnic stereotypes. The show’s audience does not walk out in offense towards its racial jokes, but rather laughs along with its hilarious racism (as cruel as it sounds). Somehow cracking jokes and taking away the seriousness of ethnic conflicts gives birth to comfort and laughter.
Every character in Welcome Back, Kotter is a distinct personality that provides humor by playing on ethnic stereotypes. Mr. Kotter’s (Gabe Kaplan) students are an interesting bunch to introduce and demonstrate how ethnicities and their stereotypes were thrown into characters consciously. Freddie Washington (Lauren Hilton-Jacobs) is the African American of the group. He’s one of the over-confident hip students who disregards schoolwork because he just knows he’s going to be a basket player. Mr. Kotter struggles to emphasize the importance of school over Freddie’s unguaranteed shot as a basketball career. He gives Joe Franklin’s unsuccessful example of neither becoming a basketball player nor graduating college. Of course all this stereotypical jumble of an African-American not considering college and aspiring to be a basketball player is concealed under jokes of taking Advanced Toe-Nail Clipping classes and Hair Combing 101(which had me dying of laughter, by the way!).
Vincent “Vinnie” Barbarino (John Travolta) is the cocky Italian-American of the group. His name itself shouts out his Italian roots, and I must say his personality does not fall short of representing Italian-ness either. Vinnie is the classroom leader. He has authority over other students and stands up and speaks for everyone. Mr. Kotter asks the students to introduce themselves, and the very confident Mr. Barbarino not only introduces himself but his class as well. He even controls when Arnold Horshack (Ron Pallilo) can speak and goes so far to participate in an insult competiton with Mr. Kotter. The boy is a little mastermind as he comes up with various tactics to cheat on the test and even tries to bribe Mr. Kotter into passing Freddie. Stretching his personality perhaps a bit too far, he almost reminded me of the mafia in Goodfellas (1990). The need to be a leader, the obsession of having authority, and the criminal mind are common stereotypes associated with Italians. The director has obviously made a conscious choice in incorporating such characteristic into Vinnie, only of course, he made it funny.
Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) is the proud Puerto-Rican Jew, whose ethnic relationship to humor comes quite close to being offensive, in my opinion. He was considered the tough one amongst the group and even voted “Most Likely to Take a Life”. Offense and controversy were nowhere to be seen however, as Epstein was proud of his threatening persona. He outright stated his favorite subject to be assault as well. Although such jokes allow the audience to make the connection between the character’s personality to his ethnicity, they allow force the audience to laugh it off.
Lastly, we have the foreigner of the group, Arnold Horshack. His laugh, accent, and just odd nature are so hilarious that the audience is forced to forget the underlying racism against immigrants. Rather than spewing out negative emotions, the audience in fact, makes a positive relationship with Arnold and they love his humorous stupidity. My favorite part was when Mr. Kotter asked Arnold to distribute the test papers, and the kid literally walked towards the door to distribute the test papers elsewhere. Moreover, he had it in him to ironically ask the teacher to use English properly as it is a very “precise tool”.
Hence we see humor’s dual nature here. Not only is it being used to highlight one’s ethnic differences from another, it is blindfolding the masses and steering them away from any possible racism that might be felt as well. Although the show is funny and I did enjoy it, I’m not too sure if ethnic/race humor is the best. The humor kind of makes fun of each ethnicity. Bringing ethnic stereotypes to the media only reinforces the notions held against every ethnicity. This show reminded me of a show called Asunción that I went to see with my Arts in New York City Seminar. The show was definitely amusing and had the audience cracking up to tears, but is it disturbing if I tell you that it was about an extremely innocent guy who mistook a Pilipino girl to be a sex slave just because she was Pilipino? Of course it is, and that’s exactly my point. I’d still love to go watch that show again because the characters were just hilarious, but the underlying concept of unintentional racism and negative preconceived notions against ethnicities even by the most innocent of people shows how perhaps this issue needs much more (for the lack of a better word) broad-mindedness.
