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Ali G: just who does he think he is

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 1

Ali G:

Just Who Does He Think He Is?

By Rachel Garfield

Pulbished in: Third Text, 'Ali G: Just Who Does He Think He Is', R.Garfield, vol.
54, Spring 2001,pp.63-70, ISSN 0952-8822

'both whiteness and blackness cover and conceal a host of ethnicities, of

cultural backgrounds whose differences are leveled by the very concepts of

white and black'1

Ali G began as a short slot in an 'alternative' comedy show called the 'Eleven

o'clock show' on the UK's Channel 4. The usual format took the form of an

interview in which the Ali G character (an imbecilic 'Wigger'2) would question a

range of Establishment figures. The source of humour in his act was the

clashing of worlds as the Establishment figures struggled to enter into the

language of a 'street kid'. However whether the laughter was at the expense

of the Establishment, the 'Wiggers', Black kids or a mixture of the three was

unclear. Nonetheless within a few months Ali G was a hit, securing his own

show and latterly appearing in the latest Madonna video.

In mainstream commentary on the phenomenon, much was made of the fact

that no one apparently knew what either Ali G's purported ethnicity was, or

that of the actor who was playing him. However, from the start it could be

argued that many Jews would have already recognized the ethnicity of both,

through such signs as his flashy attire and swagger (spruntz3), albeit through

the coding of the ubiquitous Nike and Tommy Gear street wear.
2

So what relevance does this have? In this paper I want to argue that in

considering the figure of Ali G as a problematizing agent (both his ethnic

ambiguity and his historical/political imbecility are worthy of unpacking) wider

questions can be reconsidered. I am ultimately aiming for a more open

reading on race than those I have often encountered.

As a Jewish man taking on a Black persona Sacha Baron-Cohen seems to

me to be problamitizing a simple reading on race and belonging. He flags up

the flaws of the Black/White binary and the notion of ideological choice as

common indicators of ethnicity. He also provides an opportunity to look at the

shifting sands of the political construct of Blackness and the politics of

appearance.

The suggestions in this paper are speculative and in some ways expose the

difficulty of ethnic categorization. 4 This difficulty centres on ideology, not

biology. With its privileging of maternal lineage, the Jewish notion of identity

stands at odds with the secular post-colonial definitions of globalising neo-

liberalism, (centred upon a Black/White polarity). The concept of a Jewish

man being unable to father Jewish children except with a Jewish woman,

whilst on the other hand a non-Jewish man being able to sire Jewish children,

is not only a thorn in the side of secular patriarchy (not least in its indexing of

a pre-capitalist order) but also highlights the inseparable role of ideology in all

categorisations of race and ethnicity.

 3

In terms of historical contexts I will be looking for precursors, both historical

and contemporary to provide a context for investigating Ali G as a performer.

The history of 'Blacking Up' in the US is an apposite place to begin this

search as there were a disproportionate amount of Jews 'Blacking Up' in the

early part of the twentieth century (The most famous of them were Jews also).

They took over from the Irish who were previously the largest group of

performers in this field5. The whole phenomenon of 'Blacking Up' therefore is

bound to the construction not only of Blacks themselves but to the

construction of the Irish and Jews in the 'Blackface' heyday.

Furthermore, the persona of the Ali G figure is far more complex than the

adoptive stage caricatures of, say, the UK 'Black and White Minstrel Show' of

the 1970's - a phenomenon which cannot in any case be separated from the

politics and racism of the time. However, Ali G can be considered as a

problematized reconfiguration of that tradition. In this context I will be looking

at the tradition of Jews 'Blacking Up'.

I will then briefly look at the initial Press responses as a vehicle for

problematising the notion of race ownership. In the final part of the paper I

will be using some of Peggy Phelan's arguments in her book Unmarked: the

politics of performance as a way of thinking through some of the issues

implicit in Ali G's performance as well as the Press' attitude to Baron-Cohen's

ethnicity.
4

The Politics of Appearance

My questions regarding Ali G stem from my frustration at ethnicity being

defined, on the most part, simply along the Black/White divide. In my

experience, other ethnicities are included/excluded in the debates along these

lines, so that, for example, Asian is considered Black (or at least included in

the Black debates) and Jewish is White. The Jewish writings on 'Otherness'

are therefore excluded from the Black debates (with the notable

exception of Paul Gilroy) and vice versa. This encourages an entrenched,

conservatism and a setting up of victim hierarchies where each ethnic group

has a special relationship with the diaspora and oppressive histories,

exclusive to itself.

The debate over who sits under the banner of Black is framed by the history

of Colonialism. Whereas arguments for a non-essentialised subject are

common currency in Cultural Studies research, the membership to the class

of oppressor or oppressed is over-determined. This affects the Jewish

Communities particularly, who are generally seen to belong to the former and

therefore decidedly White. This construct omits Jews of colour, who are the

majority of Jews in the world (and a significant minority within the Jewish

Community in Britain). It is also a recent construct, as James Baldwin wrote in

Essence in 1984; "No one was white before he/she came to America, It took

generations and a vast amount of coercion before this became a white

country. There is an Irish community…There is a German community…There

is a Jewish community….Jews came here from countries where they were not
 5

white, and they came here in part because they were not white… Everyone

who got here, and paid the price of the ticket, the price was to become

'white'".6

Even when Jews arrived in the US they were not considered White. This

passage to Whiteness took until the 1950's and is still problematic particularly

within Europe (US films of the immediate post WWII period, such as

'Crossfire' and 'Gentlemen's Agreement', which pleaded for tolerance towards

Jews, attest to this first point).

To further complicate matters, there are many different positions within the

Ashkenazi 7Jewish Community itself; some consider themselves White, some

'Other'. However, I want to argue here that whilst it is often held that the

opportunity to choose one's position removes Jews from the frame of the

oppressed,8 the lived reality is more complex, and, moreover, the 'choice' of

readings presented by the ambiguities of the Ali G character flag up the

multifarious roles that 'choice' plays in all ethnic categorisation, description

and self description at this historical juncture. In the West Neo-Liberalist

employment laws frequently pay lip-service to the ethnic diversity of the

workforce, if only (!) for 'monitoring purposes'. This is another context in

which the Ali G character can well (and probably hilariously) be imagined: the

context of the DSS office, or the job application form. In such bureaucratic

documentation the purported emphasis is on self definition. Yet according to

the Commission for Racial Equality Guidelines, none of the categories offered

should include 'Jewish', (or a host of others, for example Romany). I would
6

suggest this is because the notion of self definition for Jews has long been

portrayed as one of a choice that Jews already have , whereas for others, the

normative view is of choice as something (yet)to be conferred by benign

authority. The character of Ali G-as-Jew-playing-a-racial-other, or even the

Ali G as-person-of-indeterminate-racial-origin is pointedly vivid in this context.

The notion that Jews have a 'choice' in their identity invariably hinges upon

assumptions that all Jews are White or can 'pass', or are simply a religious

group/ideological cabal, or don't experience oppression any more. I am less

interested in answering this kind of chauvinism at this point than examining

the ways in which such thinking is highlighted by a phenomenon such as Ali

G but one could, of course, observe immediately that all such assumptions

are (a) defined by voices other than Jews and (b) are closely related to the

anti-Semitic, "any problems the Jews have, they have brought upon

themselves".

Jews Playing Black: A potted history

Michael Rogin in his book Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrant in the

Hollywood Melting Pot,9 looks specifically at the Jewish players within the

history of 'Blacking up' and what the investment may have been for those

actors to have played such an important role within this niche of acting. He

suggests that 'Blacking up' was a way of representing Blackness in a

containable and benign form for the White audiences10 and that it was taken

up by Jews as a way of identifying Blackness as the 'Other' and themselves

 7

as fully integrated Americans, leaving behind their ethnic difference (Using

the example of The Jazz Singer , he explains how Al Jolson escapes his 'Old

World' ethnicity through 'Blacking up'). He explains that as 'Blacking up'

'essentialises' blackness so it 'liberates'11 Jewishness to be mainstream and

White (all these terms essentialise, however). Furthermore, it was part of the

great post-war push for Jews to be fully emancipated at the expense of

Blacks. (It is interesting to note that according to Rogin, Jolson's films were

very popular until he tried to bring his Jewish identity into the films at which

point they flopped.) Jews wanted to be White. But that is not the whole

picture. Maria Damon in her paper Jazz-Jews, Jive, and Gender, argues that

for some Jewish men, to immerse themselves in Black culture was a way of

being able to be '"more Jewish"', she states, ' a number of Jews found in

African American culture the resources for resisting absorption into a

dominant culture they found stultifying, hierarchic, unjust, unaesthetic, and un-

Jewish'12 she cites Mezz Mezrow, Phil Spector and Lenny Bruce, as three

paradigms for the 'assimilating down' as she puts it (this term in itself speaks

volumes of the power relations between the two groups) - Mezz Mezrow

becomes Black in his own mind, Phil Spector desires the trappings of

Blackness and Lenny Bruce, who posits Blacks as honorary Jews. Damon

notes a distinct nostalgia in these figures for a time when the Jew was more

'Other' than he is in today (i.e. post-war America) an Otherness that has been

supplanted by the African-American.

Any investigation into the Jewish-Black relationship in the West has to take

into account that the 'Grand Alliance' of the Jewish involvement in the Black
8

Civil Rights movement in the United States (which Baron-Cohen himself has

researched for his BA thesis, according to the Jewish Chronicle) was much

better for the Jews than Blacks, at best it was fueled by an ethical position of

empathy; at worst it was somewhat paternalistic. Jews have gained a much

greater economic base in the US and have largely been accepted as 'White'

along that aforementioned great divide, as suggested in Blackface/White

Noise, 'Those with the insignias of power can play at giving them up, without

putting themselves at risk' 13

So, is the allure for some Jewish artists and performers of identifying with

Black culture, a case of identifying with a group who are more 'more "us" than

"we" have become'?14 Sandra Bernhard in her film Without You I'm Nothing

explores and plays with this theme15. In some ways she is the closest parallel

to Ali G. Anne Pellegrini in her essay 'Whiteface Performances: "Race,"

Gender and Jewish Bodies', analyses this film in detail.16 I will select a few of

her points useful to an analysis of Ali G.

The film opens with the song from Nina Simone 'Four Women', where,

dressed in African dress she sings 'my skin is black, my arms are long, my

hair is woolly and my back is strong..' , she continues to mimic a whole series

of Black singers as part of her 'show'. Much of the tension within the film is

created by the relationship between Bernhard and her observers, that is the

Black audience who 'don't "get" Bernhard' and Bernhard who 'does not "get"

her audience' 17, thereby critiquing the ability of any White person to truly

understand what it feels like to be Black. Except that Bernhard is not White;
 9

she does not identify as being White but as a Jew. She describes her liberal

Jewish background and posits White as Christian as she describes a

childhood fantasy family to which she "belonged" who had gentile, all-

American names and celebrated a 'white' Christmas. She refers to her

father's gentile girlfriend sneeringly as having 'no lips', and refers to her piano

player who is Black as ' me and my Jewish piano player, we get along so

well'. Like Lenny Bruce she suggests that Black and Jewish are one and the

same thing, while concurrently critiquing that position, destabilizing the

Black/White dichotomy. As Anne Pellegrini states 'this destabilization occurs

through the introduction of an excluded middle term, which resembles both

sides, but is identical to neither: Jewishness' and continuing with' In posing

herself as the question of race, Bernhard appears to align herself with

blackness not so much over and against whiteness as conceived through it.

Her passage from blackness to Jewishness takes place through a caricatured

whiteness.'18 Perhaps Baron-Cohe's passage is from Whiteness to

Jewishness through a caricatured Blackness?

Ali G makes himself look ridiculous. By stating, 'Is it 'cos I is Black'19 when

clearly his skin is not, he also makes explicit a tension between what is seen

and what is perceived. He is parodying the desire to be Black. He is also

questioning what makes a Black male black. (Much like Adrian Piper

questions what being Black means in some of her work20) He indicates that

he may be a 'Wigger' by identifying himself as part of the 'Staines massive'

and therefore a suburban boy (for suburban read white) , but also, like
10

Bernhard operates within the gulf of not 'getting' the audience. For Ali G,

however, the audience is the interviewee, the White establishment, who does

not 'get' him either. Bernhard is identifying with but not being understood by

her objects of desire. Ali G pretends (possibly) to be a 'Wigger' who is not

being understood by the white establishment except he is not white either

(possibly). Like Bernhard, Baron-Cohen is a Jew so maybe he is also

implying a gulf between White and Jewish.

In the final analysis Ali G's position is more ambiguous than Sandra Bernhard.

In Without You I'm Nothing, not only does she critique the parody within the

fabric of the film by having an indifferent and often hostile Black audience as

a 'reality' check, but the last word is given to a Black women who writes 'fuck

you Sandra Bernhard' on the table' alerting the viewer to the fact that

whatever Sandra Bernhard thinks she feels, she does not know what it feels

like to actually be Black. Baron Cohen/Ali G does not have this self-

reflexivity. Although in his most recent series he has a Black DJ who disses

him as an ignorant whitey, it is too staged to be convincing, too tokenistic.

The question is could a male gentile have played the Ali G character. Does

this cross-dressing mark the Jew as liminal or does it reinforce his

Whiteness? What saves Ali G from the position taken up by Rogin - of benign

minstrelsy as an assimilationist tactic - is the political stance he takes up.

Minstrels played straight, Baron-Cohen is constructing himself as an object of

laughter. He is not there merely to entertain or make White people feel safe

within their view of Blackness. The people he interviews are the wielders of
 11

power, while feigning ignorance he teases out the inconsistencies, of these

figures, exposes the thinly veiled bigotry. For example in the now much

quoted interview of George Patten, the Chief of the Grand Lodge of

Orangeman, Ali G forces Patten to admit that he would never even consider

'going out' with a Catholic woman and watched Major General Perkins, who

had fought in World War II, flounder, having asked him if he ever thought of

changing sides.21 (He is also a bridge between generations as he 'explains'

politics to a young audience). Furthermore by keeping the audience

guessing about the true identity of the character, we are forced to question

what we, the audience think we are laughing at, which is also a political move

on Baron-Cohen's part.

Identity Anxiety

'The Politics of identity call for the "self-representation" of marginalised

communities, for "speaking for oneself" and while poststructualist feminist,

gay/lesbian and postcolonial theories have often rejected essentialist

articulations of identity, and biologistic and transhistorical determinations of

gender, race and sexual orientation, they have at the same time supported

'affirmative action' politics, implicitly premised on the very categories

elsewhere rejected as essentialist.' 22

The public discussion regarding Ali G began with the New Nation report in

January 200023. Curtis Walker, branded Baron-Cohen racist while all the

other (Black) comedians interviewed in this report, expressed differing

12

degrees of ambivalence about the character, while admitting he was funny.

Felix Dexter even suggested that the 'interviews do expose a patronising

deference from the great and the good to a man saying totally ridiculous

things and that reaction borders on racism'24. However over the following

week a flurry of articles in the national press asked the question 'Is Ali G

racist?' ignoring some of the finer points of the Black comedians' statements

in the New Nation report. The only attempt at intelligent comment was the

Gary Younge article in The Guardian25. The rest seemed premised upon the

position where, 'culture is analyzed as property rather than process' 26. As

Ella Shohat and Robert Stam observe, in their article 'The Politics of

Multiculruralism in the Postmodern Age' that while the 'constructionist'; view

suggests 'that no one can speak for anyone' the 'identity politics' view is that

only 'delegated representatives can speak' . These two positions, they state,

sets up the trap of both Gilroy's 'ethnic insiderism' and of wondering how to

'not prolong the colonial legacy of misappropriation and insensitivity towards

so-called minorities without silencing potential allies?'27

So is Ali G the bridge between camps, the figure who takes us out of the

place where skin colour denotes which group you belong to and who you

speak for. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that Ali G transcends the

colour divide amongst young people, maybe because many of the codes of

Blackness - of dress, music and speech have been so widely adopted that

they have become positively mainstream. Black street culture is no longer

black and you no longer have to be Black to be black. Anecdotal evidence

(i.e.: New Nation poll where 80% thought Ali G was very funny and hadn't
 13

thought about whether he was offensive or not) also suggests that many of

his supporters are Black - not that this sanctions his act. The point is

however that Ali G is not generally seen to be representing Blackness - but

representing a character who is an object of fun for many different reasons,

depending on who's looking.

Performing Black

Peggy Phelan in her book Unmarked: the politics of performance28, explores

the politics of representation using Freud and Lacan to understand some of

the failings (as she argues) of contemporary debates on gender and race.

She is looking at the relationship between representation and politics, aiming

to undermine the assumption that visibility equals power. She suggests that

there is much power in the 'unmarked' and that the politics of appearance is

misleading and counterproductive.

Talking of some of the issues arising out of Adrian Piper's work Phelan states

that, 'The same physical features of a person's body may be read as "black"

in England, "white" in Haiti, "coloured" in South Africa and "mulatto" in Brazil.

More than indicating that racial markings are read differently cross-culturally,

these variations underline the psychic potential and philosophical

14

impoverishment of linking the colour of the physical body with the ideology or

race"29

She also draws on Judith Butler’s position of gender being constituted through

performativity. Butlers position outlines how gendered behaviour and

sexuality is learned, that in order for the subject to adopt heterosexuality they

must reject homosexuality or in order for the subject to adopt 'female'

behaviour they must reject 'male' behaviour, there is therefore no originary, all

is a copy of a copy.

If Adrian Piper identifies as an African American yet she 'looks' white enough

to 'pass' then what is it that makes her black. Is an American of African

derivation who 'passes' white? Or does the 'one drop' policy still apply? And

what does this imply?

Before Ali G was identified as Jewish, there was much speculation (according

to the press analysis) as to what his ethnicity actually was. His name seemed

to be Islamic, possibly. He was identified as, possibly Asian, North African,

mixed race (i.e. having one black parent) but no one seemed to suggest he

was White (or maybe no one considered that anyone white would take up the

position he does). No one mentioned Jewish either. This suggests that he

was seen as neither White nor Black (north African is considered Black within

the Post-Colonial debates) and corroborates with Pellegrini's30 argument of a

third, unacknowledged position.

 15

Once it was 'discovered' Sacha Baron-Cohen was Jewish, every article

described him as 'White Jewish'. This is an interesting juxtaposition Citing

him as White Jewish identifies him as non Black yet citing him as White

Jewish, identifies him as different from the normative White - and therefore

Other, thereby acknowledging Jews as non-White. 31 Furthermore, the need

to know his 'real' identity says much about the politics of ownership of race.

(Felix Dexter, a comic of Carribbean derivation has created a character to

lampoon who is Nigerian, but the politics there is different - Black is conflated

as one, the friction between different Black groups is often unacknowledged).

Phelan suggests that 'The focus on skin as the visible marker of race is itself

a form of feminizing those races which are not White. Reading the body as

the sign of identity is the way men regulate the bodies of women.' 32 It is

interesting to note here that in European anti-Semitic discourse, the Jewish

male was feminized. This image has been absorbed within Jewish self-

image, which often sees the Jewish mother as all powerful and the father as

ineffectual.33 Maybe Baron-Cohen's adoption of Ali G is a bid to find a

different image of manhood than this. Many North-West London Jewish boys

have been mimicking street codes of Blackness for years34. It would not be

too far fetched to consider that maybe these young men are the models for Ali

G, after all it is the community in which he grew up. If, as identified by Rogin,

Jews 'Blacking up' was a symptom desiring Whiteness, in post-war America -

in 21st Century Britain it seems young Jewish men are turning their back on

Whiteness, desiring a Blackness that has mainstream currency amongst the

youth.
16

In his act Baron-Cohen (unlike Bernhard) remains invisible as a Jew but

visible as desiring to be an 'other'. The earlier suggestion that the desire for

the Jew to be seen as 'Other' within a culture that does not openly

acknowledge the 'Otherness' of Jews may be simplistic. Peggy Phelan, in

identifying some of the flaws in what she describes as 'representation' politics,

states that 'unable to see oneself reflected in a corresponding image of the

Same, the spectator can reject the representation as "not about me"' 35. This

"not about me" becomes complex with Ali G - if the viewer cannot make a

clear assessment of who he is, "not about me" becomes meaningless.

Phelan continues 'or worse, the spectator can valorize the representation

which fails to reflect her likeness as one with "universal appeal" or

"transcendent power"'36. Ali G sidesteps this issue by failing to reflect

anyone's likeness, he confronts us with the impossibility of the 'real-Real' and

breaks down the barrier between 'one who is and one who sees'37 His

popularity undermines the conventions of 'representational politics' and

moves the conversation away from who has a right to speak for whom into

the realms of the failure of representation to really represent.

Phelan argues that within the discourse of the gaze the desire for a reciprocal

gaze has been inadequately examined. She uses Lacan to suggest that in

the gaze between Mother and child, lack (of the phallus) is met with lack and

so desire is born and despite the 'psychic paradox: one always locates one's

own image in an image of the other and one always locates the other in one's

own image'38, one can never truly satisfy the desire to see oneself in the
 17

other. Baron-Cohen, by 'playing' a Black man acknowledges that the failure to

meet the gaze of the other is what incites desire in an endless replay of

deferral. By being a Jew 'playing' a Black man he acknowledges the failure of

the reciprocal gaze between Jews and Blacks - one can never be the other,

yet (some) Jews continue to nostalgically desire the closeness of the 'Grand

Alliance' where they imagine Jews and Blacks were seen as one.

Conclusion

Much work has been done on the representation of the Black male body as a

means of control of that manhood by the White wielders of power. While it is

confining for Black men, (and one has to take into account the huge amount

of money being injected into the music industry which is currently dominated

by black musicians), nonetheless, it seems to be a liberating identification for

many other young men not of African descent (including Asian and Jewish).

The press responses to Ali G show what a transgressive move his character

is and how much investment remains in the entrenched Black/White

dichotomy. It asks questions regarding how one is seen as well as who can

speak for whom. (The lack of attention given to Felix Dexter's Nigerian

character or Harry Enfield's Cypriot character also collaborates in an

essentialised Black/White positioning).

The question Ali G may be proposing for young British Jews is that of how to

be Jewish. The only obvious models here seem to be those of either

18

assimilation or religious orthodoxy; there is a lack of self-formed external

identity If you reject the two already mentioned options, where is there to go

except for other, more seemingly visible ethnicities. Black is sexy. Jewish is

not.

Whereas the usual springboard for discussing race in this country is racial

violence, a seemingly marginal activity (according to the Press), Baron-

Cohen's character acknowledges how mainstream black culture has become

and has forced the issue onto the public agenda with humour. Through the

awkward laughter may come a new discussion.

Or maybe Ali G just reflects the contemporary London where it's 'post-colonial

character means that difference is routine. This otherness is magnetic but

need not be exotic. There are still conflicts but there is also a savvy, agonistic

humanism around' 39

R.Garfield 2001

1
Pellegrini, Anne, 'Whiteface Performances: "Race," Gender, and Jewish Bodies' from, Jews and
Other Differences, Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin (eds), University of Minnesota Press, 1997,pg. 141
2
A 'Wigger' is a term for a White person, usually male who 'acts Black'.
3
This is a yiddish term meaning 'flashy'.
4
I will refer to Black as a person or people of African descent and Jew as someone born to a Jewish
mother. These two terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive but I have not scope in this paper to
discuss what a Jew is or may be.
5
Rogin, Michael, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigration and the Hollywood Melting Pot,
California University Press, 1996 pg 56.
6
op. Cit. Rogin pg. 12
7
Ashkenazi Jews are those of European derivation.
 19

8
Adrian Piper's position problematises the argument that Black people can't choose and Jews can.
9
op. Cit., Rogin,
10
In a way reminiscent of Homi Bhabha's exploration of the beginnings of mimicry, where Indians
were educated as minor officials for the British Colonial power as mediator and acceptable face of the
Indian.
11
The term liberate is Rogin's term, I would argue that it is a false liberty, see Tamar Garb's
introduction Garb, Tamar, 'Modernity, Identity, Textuality' from The Jew In the Text, ed by Linda
Nochlin and Tamar Garb, Thames and Hudson, 1995
12
Damon Maria, 'Jazz-Jews, Jive and Gender: The Ethnic Politics of Jazz Argot' from, Jews and
Other Differences, Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin (eds), University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pg. 157
13
Rogin, op cit, pg.34
14
Damon, op cit., pg,168
15
Sandra Bernhard, Without You I'm Nothing, dir. J Boskovitch, 1990, US
16
Pellegrini, Anne, 'Whiteface Performances: "Race," Gender, and Jewish Bodies' from, Jews and
Other Differences, Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin (eds.), University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 130-
143
17
ibid., pg. 135
18
ibid., pg. 139
19
The Ali G Video, Channel 4, 1999
20
There is not room in this paper to explore this more fully, although I hope to expand on this point
in future work
21
The Ali G Video, Channel 4, 1999
22
Shohat, Ella & Stamm, Robert, ' The Politics of Multiculturalism in the Postmodern Age' in Art
& Design, Art & Cultural Difference, A&D 1995, pg.10
23
Slater, Ross, 'Should we laugh at Ali G', New Nation, 10 January 2000, pp. 6-7
24
ibid.
25
Younge, Gary, 'Is it 'cos I is black?'. The Guardian G2, January 12, 2000, pp2-3
26
Gilroy, Paul, Joined-Up Politics and Post-Colonial Melancholia, ICA Diversity Lecture, 1999,
ICA Publications 1999, pg.17
27
Shohat, Ella & Stamm, Robert, ' The Politics of Multiculturalism in the Postmodern Age' in Art
& Design, Art & Cultural Difference, A&D 1995, pg.10
28
Phelan, Peggy, Unmarked: the Politics of Performance, Routledge, 1993 pg.8
29
ibid., pg.8
30
Pellegrini, Anne, 'Whiteface Performances: "Race," Gender, and Jewish Bodies' from, Jews and
Other Differences, Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin (eds), University of Minnesota Press, 1997,pg.139
31
Reminds me of Griselda Pollock's statement 'Western white men produce art; the rest of us produce
art which must be qualified by an adjective' Pollock, Griselda, 'Is Feminism to Judaism as Modernity
is to Tradition? Critical Questions on Jewishness, Femininity and Art' from Issues in Architecture,
Art & Design, Vol. 5 No. 1, Gender and Ethnicity, University of East London 1997,pg 42
32
op cit, Phelan, Pg.10
33
For an in depth look at this subject see 'The Mouse That Never Roars:Jewish Masculinity on
American Television' the catalogue Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities, ed. Norman L
Kleeblatt, The Jewish Museum New York and Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick New Jersey,
1996, pp. 93-107
34
Thanks to Ruth Novaczek for this insight.
35
Op cit., Phelan, pg.11
36
ibid.
37
ibid.
38
ibid., pg.18
39
Gilroy, Paul, Joined-Up Politics and Post-Colonial Melancholia, ICA Diversity Lecture, 1999,
ICA Publications 1999, pg. 17

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