The Black Pack - by Artel Great

About the Book

This book tells the story of how five comedic pioneers--Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend, and Arsenio Hall--joined forces to revolutionize American popular culture. Known as Hollywood's "Black Pack," they shattered Hollywood norms, using sharp social satire to boldly critique America's persistent racial inequalities.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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"

"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"

"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"

About the Author

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.