“The Proud Family” is a cartoon on Disney. The main characters are an African-American family. But after watching an episode of it, it’s almost comical how stereotypical it is–and I think it has to be some sort of joke. Some of the stereotypical characters:
A mother who dominates the father and a and stupid father.
A chubby, “sassy” African-American girl who has 10 siblings.
Asian-American girls with buck teeth and a father who forces math on them.
A dorky, awkward white girl.
The plots of the show are comical because they’re stereotypically overly-PC and innocent.
Is “The Proud Family” some kind of joke between executives?
It’s obviously not an inside joke since you & I both caught it.
One joke that kiddies watching it surely do not get- Old Pappy with his purple suit, green hair, maniacal laugh, only speaking in Spanish & sporting a CESAR ROMERO mustache!
Well, “Dad’s a bumbler and Mom’s the real brains behind the operation” is a standard stereotype of a majority of modern sitcoms, so this one is nothing special.
As to the others, yes, I think part of the deal is that we’re supposed to recognize the old stereotypes from TV past, in a “corrected” version.
In the case of the kiddies who may be too young to catch a prior reference, the justification may be one of “reverse psychology”: by overcartooning the stereotype maybe they’ll realize people are NOT like that. And children today probably are quite aware that the super-inclusive world of officially-sanctioned reading/viewing material does not really reflect reality.