"I think I know you from somewhere, yeah"

As promised, a whole post dedicated to Lil' Doogie. And the sociological questions prompted by his existence ("Brah, I'm real?" "I am a puppet, but not really a puppet, I'm more like a man 'cuz I'm real, you know, I don't play no games...You know sometimes people look at me and think that I ain't really real, but I'm just out here to breathe like every other man.") Ok, not those questions...more like, is "wigger" a racist term? How far have we come from the days of minstrel shows, when white men wore black face and played characters that were caricatures of black folk? Is Lil' Doogie a social commentary on the petty caricatures of African-Americans in the media, and the plight of the white kid who mistakenly appropriates the media-inspired "ghetto" culture of the black man for his own identity? Or is he merely a perpetuation of these negative stereotypes, a contemporary version of those "minstrel shows"? Is it more a laugh at "ghetto" black people, then at the racist, misguided white youth who falls for the stereotype?

First off, potential offensiveness aside, Lil' Doogie is funny as shit. I did show his videos to a kid from the Upper West Side, Manhattan, and a kid from Princeton, New Jersey, and neither of them got it...but what do you expect.

So, who is Lil' Doogie? My boyfriend Odoms does the voice for the puppet, Douglas Fontaine, aka "Lil' Doogie," an aspiring rapper from Marrero, and, basically, a white kid(puppet) who thinks he's a "thuggish black guy." There-in lies the humor; everybody knows dumb-asses like this, and when reincarnated in puppet-form, we can hardly hold in our piss. Lil' Doogie is especially funny to New Orleanians, because he is our local version of this wigger-phenomenon, which occurs in pretty much every moderate-sized-to-big city.

I would argue the analogy that Lil' Doogie is to Marrero, Louisiana, (yah, dat Westbank) as Ali G, (aka Alistair Leslie Graham) is to suburban Staines, London. Both are white, or at least, not African-American, or any of the other ethnicities, or stereotypes of ethnicities, that they project. They affect, without any irony or self-awareness, a ghetto, thuggish demeanor, speak in slang, and aspire to be a part of hip-hop "ghetto" culture. However, the creators of Lil' Doogie (Ballzack and Odoms) and the creator of Ali G (Sascha Baron Cohen) do craft their characters with an ironic perspective. That's why it's comedy.

So how can we be sure Baron Cohen and Ballzack/Odoms are being ironic, and not just carrying the minstrel-show ideology into the 21st century? For one thing, Odoms gives voice to a white character who takes on the stereotype of an African-American, as Baron Cohen acts out a white guy who takes on the stereotype of an African-American. In the minstrel shows, white men wore black face, playing caricatures of black people. The satire of Lil' Doogie and Ali G works because it's twice-removed. The characters Lil' Doogie and Ali G are ignorant of the racial, sociological issues that they prompt, but their creators aren't.

Our times are more complex these days, the lines between class and race much more blurry than in the days of minstrel shows. Back then, the culture of whites and blacks was firmly divided. One could argue that a character like Lil' Doogie, or his real-life counterparts, occur because of the intermixing of black and white culture. Ballzack and Odoms, from the Westbank, aren't "wiggers," but they are heavily immersed in New Orleans "bounce" culture, in which they have picked up certain qualities generally associated with African-Americans (as "bounce music" is predominately black). Perhaps Lil' Doogie is more credible because there is a little bit of him in his creators, rendering them self-aware, and capable of self-parody.

Another Ali G/Lil' Doogie type of character that I found out about is Saul "Tre" Cohen, a Jewish kid from Berkeley, California who also thinks he's a ghetto rapper. Played by Rene Solomon, a Jewish kid from Berkeley, California, there might be a little bit of him in Cohen, lending more credibility to his satire.

All right, here are my favorite Lil' Doogie videos, so you can decide if you think he's funny:


Doogie Gras from lil Doogie on Vimeo.