Fragmentation and Identity in Moroccan and American Entertainment Discourses

Abstract

This thesis offers an enquiry into the ways in which entertainment discourse can go beyond its merely humorous articulations through the fragmentation of one’s identity by employing irony and jesting to commercializing stereotypical images of different races. In other words, entertainment discourse proves to be not made only for entertainment, but it also goes beyond its initial humorous function to be infused with political and ideological underpinnings. On the one hand, ‘laughing the Other’ is employed as a traditional mode of representing other’s identity in some American entertainment discourses that proves the amalgamation of different political backgrounds and orientalist principles into the production of ideologies. On the other hand, this thesis tries the ‘laughing back’ as a way to bring the voice of the Other onto an equal ground where s/he becomes able to produce, reproduce and deconstruct the compartments of knowledge in a way that may dismantle the stereotypical implications of Western discourse. Accordingly, between ‘laughing the other’ and ‘laughing back’, this thesis examines some American and Moroccan entertainment discourses that contribute to transcending both the Western stereotypical construction of the Other and the Third World eulogistic construction of the self. This inbetween discourse functions as a bridge to dismantle the antithetical epistemic systems that have crippled academia.