Park and colleagues' study analyzed both the content of the movie Rush Hour 2 and viewers' reactions to it. They conducted focus groups with White, Asian, and African-American participants and found that no one was offended by the racial jokes in the movie. They said that some acknowledged that the jokes could be considered offensive, but that they personally were not offended by them. Further, many participants noted how the stereotypes portrayed in the movie were based on 'kernels of truth.'
One thing I noticed about their method was that answering questions about the movie in a social group might have kept anyone who was offended by the movie from saying so. So although this research shows that the majority of participants were not offended, I think it's possible that a significant minority was.
My main question related to this study is: does comedy necessarily reinforce negative stereotypes? And if there are some forms (such as satire) that have the opposite effect, what are the conditions for subverting rather than reinforcing stereotypes?
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