Tracy Morgan is an unusual kind of American actor. He’s seems at first glance to be the spilled-upon, not the spiller: the Costello, not the Abbot. But he’s more than that: his recurring character is not only aware of being a character, but demands that we pay for our flashes of superior feelings, rising so quickly we cannot stop them though we know better, with the follow-on thought that we’re being judged for our condescension. His character is nuts, but more than nuts, and nuts for a reason. The audience begins to realize that we are that reason – maybe this unstable character is not performing for us, but as us, or our worst version of our collective self, debased because that’s what it seems to take to win some amount of collective self-approval, or at least self regard of any genuine kind.
And so the fun-house mirrors of ironic intent wrap around his homophobic remarks. Is he playing a man with those ugly thoughts? If so, why is he playing him so well? And why do we watch – not only in spite of, but perhaps because of our revulsion.
The idea of turning away – personally, collectively, immediately – seems impossible. The notion of fighting Morgan on the ground of the literal meaning of what he said, and the seeming commitment behind the words, is ultimately self-mocking. We find ourselves right back to the fundamental question of Morgan’s comedy – does he really mean, or even understand, what he’s saying? And that, alas, seems to be the almost the same as the fundamental question of American public life: Do we really mean, or even understand, what we say day in and day out, about who we are as a nation?
The.American.Word. 