ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Black Pack: Comedy, Race & Resistance is the first book to chronicle the untold history behind the iconic collaborations between a legendary group of comedians—Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend, and Arsenio Hall—who joined forces as the “Black Pack” in the late 1980s to create a series of socially-charged comedies that revolutionized popular culture and transformed American comedy.

Working together as writers, directors, producers, actors, and consultants, the Black Pack created some of the most provocative and enduring Black films and television shows of the twentieth century, including classic productions like In Living Color, Coming to America, Hollywood Shuffle, and The Arsenio Hall Show. The Black Pack collective was armed with a signature comedic style which combined politically-Black satire with edgy social humor that entertained millions, shattered box-office records, and slyly critiqued America’s racial condition. Amid escalating social tensions in the 1980s, the Black Pack’s comedic output transformed anger into art, wielding the cloak of humor as a rebellious tool to confront unjust business practices in Hollywood and challenge racial narratives embedded in American culture. Their work empowered unapologetically Black voices and expanded creative possibilities for Black artists in the entertainment industry.

In The Black Pack, Artel Great delivers the most comprehensive analysis of this groundbreaking comedy collective, uncovering how the group’s socially and politically-charged humor defied systemic barriers to achieve unprecedented commercial success and establish a cultural legacy that continues to inspire media creators today and across new generations.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

ARTEL GREAT is the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African American Cinema Studies and assistant professor of cinema and media at San Francisco State University. He is an Independent Spirit Award–nominated filmmaker and the coeditor of Black Cinema & Visual Culture: Art and Politics in the 21st Century.

REVIEWS

"Through the strong analysis and details of production, financing, social, and cultural contexts, The Black Pack effectively brings together production studies, political economy, and cultural analysis of film and television. Artel Great provides readers an in-depth analysis and explores practices that produced revolutionary laughter, a Black gaze, and Black resistance cinema."— Herman Gray, coeditor of Racism Postrace

"Steeped in a deep understanding of history, Black culture, and media industries, The Black Pack is a critical intervention that contextualizes, recuperates, and rearticulates the significance of the work of this collective of Black multi-hyphenates for a new generation of viewers."— Christine Acham, author of Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power

"Provides a necessary history of Black resistance humor from its origins in American slavery to the present. It also presents a lot of fascinating ideas Great refers to throughout the book, such as the Black Pack's ability to entertain audiences across multiple mediums, the group's role in representing 1980s Black masculinity, what counted as success and resistance humor in the Reagan era, and Afrofuturism. Great provides a breakdown of Black resistance humor through waves, referring to the Black Pack as the pioneers and faces of the sixth wave of Black resistance humor. . . . Ultimately, The Black Pack fills a gap in humor scholarship by offering an account of a relatively underexplored group of comedians in media and comedy studies. Great is at his best when he demonstrates the significance of these comedians as legitimate agents of Black resistance humor, especially Eddie Murphy, arguably the most successful comedian in American history. Great makes the book feel personal by relating his own experience as not only a comedian and actor but also as someone who derived joy from the Black Pack's comedy productions. More uniquely, The Black Pack makes a significant scholarly contribution to the research on Afrofuturism."

— Studies in American Humor

"Great deftly examines an era when a group of Black actors, writers, and comedians met and collaborated on a brand of subversive comedy that generated laughs while calling out the hypocrisy and absurdity of racism. . . . Great gives the talented men of the Black Pack their due in each chapter, while providing social and cultural lessons. . . . An entertaining and essential read."— Library Journal

“This compulsively readable book provides a long-overdue assessment of the collective achievement of the "Black Pack," a group of African American humorists who revolutionized comedy in the 1980s and 1990s. . . . The book is an essential addition to the history of Black comedy."

— Choice

"As The Black Pack makes clear, the idea of comedy as a form of Black resistance didn't start with this group. It'd been around for more than a century—and they skillfully amplified it. . . . It's the sections about Paul Mooney that stand out, mainly because his contributions are so often overlooked."

— KQED

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Richard Pryor Show

Hollywood Shuffle

The Arsenio Hall Show

In Living Color