Crossing the Line: Multiracial Comedians
Producer – Teja Arboleda
In Distribution
The day I arrived in LA in November of 2006 to begin shooting this documentary, television’s Seinfeld star Michael Richards lost his cool to hecklers and retaliated with the ‘N’ word. Subsequently, Rosie O’Donnell, Don Imus, Senator McCain and others continue to cross the line without real consequence.
In today’s world of race-relations, immigration and entertainment, the ultimate question is: where is the line, and who can cross it? Exploring these questions exposes the very nature of where pain and laughter come from in a racially divided world. Caught in the cross– fire are millions of bi-racial and multiracial Americans, and competing against the mainstream on all counts, humorists and comedians provide meaningful insight into what really divides us.
Crossing lines of racial, ethnic, and cultural acceptability by their very existence, multiracial comedians reveal that meanings of race vary across ethnic combination, gender, place, and time.
From the research of Dr. Darby LiPo Price, and multiracial comedian/ Producer/Director Teja Arboleda, comes this fascinating discovery of comedy, from the perspective of multiracial/bi-racial comedians. This full-length documentary analyzes how mixed race comedians mediate multiracial identities and humor.
The film features the experiences, perspectives, and performances of American comedians of more than one racial ancestry–Sunda Croonquist (Swedish/African), Kate Rigg (Indonesian/Australian/Canadian/ Nuyorasian), James Connolly (Mexican/ Irish), Mark Yaffee (Navajo/ Mexican/Scots-Irish), among others, and is based on Dr. Darby Li Po Price’s dissertation “Mixed Laughter: Mediating Multiracial Identities in American Ethnic Comedy”.