Yet at the same time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives.he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another" (21). Further, "In being identified with B, A is 'substantially one' with a person other than himself. Or he may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so" (Burke, Rhetoric 20). Thus, though person "A is not identical with his colleague, B.insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. This common substance allows for the process of identification, or the critical overlapping of interests and reference points in tandem. In The Boondocks, popular culture becomes the protoplasmic "stuff" of identification, which Kenneth Burke, in his seminal A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) calls "substance." For Burke, this common substance takes the form of anything that can be cited as mainstream or popular - an interest shared in common with the larger collective. In other words, because Ed and Rummy are recognizable as bicultural products, they cannot be claimed as embodiments of a single cultural entity, and therefore excluded from critical, bicultural analysis. Such activity serves ultimately to "unify" the viewing collective, obviating the need for the "policing" of cultural boundaries or outright dismissal of McGruder's characters as products of monocultural satire against whites, behaviors characteristic of an "exclusionary" or "diametrically polarized" cultural paradigm. This shift, in turn, allows for what Burke deems communicable identification recognition becomes, in effect, a pathological process, capable of transformative transmission between one body and another. Like an ice rink (a slight modification of Burke's own defining paradigm), the slippery sub/culture below one's tribal/ racial stance permits the swift reallocation of perspective - a partial "side-switching" that raises the possibility of shifting identifications (peership groups) in the viewer. This cultural substance - a mixture of popular films, recognizable political satire, and contemporary comedians - constitutes the common substance whereby the signifier of individual identity is permitted to slide. These ambiguities of identification are further complicated by the consistent direct referencing of the ubiquitous (espoused by both blacks and whites) popular culture the celebrities themselves embody.
Jackson, respectively - celebrities widely adopted by and accessible to mainstream (youthful and culturally attuned) black and white audiences. Most surprising, however, is the fact that both Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy are immediately recognizable as being voiced by celebrities Charlie Murphy and Samuel L.
Gin rummy the boondocks series#
The Boondocks, Aaron McGruder's notoriously pugnacious comic strip (1998) and animated series (2005) about Huey and Riley Freeman, two ten-year-old black boys uprooted from the Chicago projects and transplanted into an affluent white suburb, affords an excellent case study immediately following their move, the boys encounter two twenty-something white men who, despite their wealth, periodically engage in armed robbery and auto theft, dressing in stereotypically "black" fashions, engaging in stereotypically "black" pastimes, and speaking in a stereotypically "black" cadence. Popular culture provides an ideal medium in which to examine this phenomenon. Though difference exists between individuals, tensions between their common humanity and more narrowly defined tribal/racial identity render personal identification susceptible to the vicissitudes of usurpation, reassignment, and unconscious alliance-making shared non-tribal interests can easily result in non-tribal group formation and non-tribal identification/peership, creating an ambiguized sense of self. For Kenneth Burke and his adherents, identity is a tenuous and ever-shifting condition.
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