Satire misfire

After the sadly ridiculous Dame Edna melodrama comes Asian American improv group Cold Tofu’s declaration letting us all know what is racist and what is satire after their viewing of a comedy skit performed by the Liquid Radio Players (“A Spoof That Did Not Amuse,” Feb. 23).

Satire assumes one thing, which is the viewers’ basic knowledge of the object that its humor is commenting upon. Of course Fu Manchu was an outrageous stereotype. That’s why its use by the Eurocentric media in the first half of the 20th century is comical. Maybe the humor in the skit was based on a simplistic view of a foreign culture that many Americans didn’t understand and at times (World War II) were afraid of, not the culture itself. Just as Dame Edna’s politically incorrect representation of Latinos by an upper-class British twit is an obvious poke at the elite’s mind-set and not the abilities of a people, is it possible that the joke is on the dumb white guy dressed as Fu Manchu, and his oblivious colleagues, in the 1940s radio skit?

Does this mean the Cold Tofu Improv Group will never depict another group, race, religion, sexual orientation or nationality in any way that some ignorant audience member might possibly misconstrue it as a negative representation?

Chris Wheeler

West Hollywood