ABSTRACT
In the Chappelle's Show parody of the domestic reality television Wife Swap format, comedian Dave Chappelle sends up the reality format's emphasis on housekeeping and social difference. Playing both the black and white husbands as the fictionalized show “goes interracial” for the first time, Chappelle comically points to some typical elements of the format: racial, gender, and class conflict played out around the domestic routines of housekeeping. In observational documentary mode, Chappelle's working-class black husband Leonard orders his new wife around and refuses to do any housework. Chappelle's middle-class white husband Todd makes unappreciated gourmet dinners and sends his new son to take a time out. Later, in the “diary cam” sequence as each relates what they learned from the experience, Leonard expresses his disgust at the hygiene of his new family while Todd talks about his first foray into interracial sex. While the skit, which swaps husbands rather than wives, pokes fun at the exploitive and trashy dimensions of the format, it also highlights the format's basic element of dramatizing social difference through housekeeping and its twin imperatives to “educate and entertain” which results in contradictory texts. The format's emphasis on difference and housekeeping has traveled across the globe as the Wife Swap format has been adapted in over 20 countries in both licensed and unlicensed forms, making it a global phenomenon.
