The Best Medicine is an animated documentary that explores the true stories behind the live performances of stand-up comedians. The film juxtaposes live stand-up performances with candid interview footage combined with animation and illustration. Three subjects– Michael Burd, Casey Stoddard, and Jacob Kubon– discuss alcoholism, childhood abuse, and sexual anxiety, respectively. Their candid, intimate interviews reveal personal information, creating a new context with which to understand live stand-up comedy performance. This illustrates themes of finding humor in dark or painful circumstances and the cathartic nature writing and performance.

The cultural and popular media landscape of the United States of America changed after the Civil-Rights movement of the 1960s. The word “Nigger” was changed during that same period of American history. There are several authors and a comic that helped change this word during the 1960s. The post Civil-Rights American has a different experience and understanding with this word than those born before 1970. This work triangulates the current cultural location of the word “Nigger,” “nigga,” and “the n-word” using linguistics, law, and two media case studies. The “Nigger” trinity is a model that adds value to the discourse that surrounds this one word in post civil-rights/post 1960s America.