ABSTRACT
TheHollywood Shuffle has been a commercial, popular success; indeed, it was "phenomenally" so, according to Bassan. Through self-directed stereotypes, Hollywood Shuffle challenges any naive understanding of practical strategies generally meant to combat misrepresentation by the hegemony, whether those misrepresentations be of women, non-heterosexuals, ethnic minorities, or other marginalized groups. As Bassan notes, Robert Townsend has, like Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen before him, moved from being a comedian and actor to being a director by making a film that can appropriately be called a "mosaic", one made up of comic skits woven together into a narrative. Robert Townsend does this in Hollywood Shuffle by contextualizing the ontological status of the stereotypes he presents as performances. Because Townsend himself plays Jimmy, Speed, and other stereotypical characters, he undercuts those stereotypes, in that they become instances of foregrounded performances. In contrast, a white audience may bring a different comic tradition and its own responses to the experience of viewing Hollywood Shuffle.
