Quvenzhané and the Comedians: Black Girlhood and Sexuality at the “Edge” of Mediated Humor

Abstract

During the 2013 Academy Awards, the satirical newspaper The Onion tweeted a sexually explicit message about the child actress Quvenzhané Wallis. While the racism and sexism of the tweet drew fire, the tweet was also hotly defended by comedians who insisted that it functioned to “expand the boundaries of comedy.” In this essay, the tweet is analyzed as a “discourse knot” to interrogate the intersections of comedic discourse and the construction of Black girlhood in U.S. culture. The study's 2 key findings are that first, purportedly “edgy” comedy can function to sustain social power hierarchies, and second, Black girlhood constitutes an unintelligible subject position in the Foucauldian sense, necessitating rigorous attention, especially with regard to issues of cultural sexualization.