We see something similar at work when Tara Schultz, another college student, calls for certain comic books to be “eradicated from (her university’s) system” because she considers them “pornography.” And there are hints of it when a video game critic like Anita Sarkeesian seeks to eliminate choices she disapproves of from the market in the hopes of altering what people find entertaining. Note the imperatives insisted upon by Young Master Berteaux, the “can no longers” and “musts” and “needs to be’s.” It’s a rather blinkered, vaguely totalitarian view of art. There needs to be a message, a central truth behind comedy for it to work as humor.” “Provocative humor, such as ones dealing with topics of race and gender politics, can be crass and vulgar, but underlying it must be a context that spurs social dialogue about these respective issues. Sexist humor and racist humor can no longer exist in comedy because these concepts are based on archaic ideals that have perpetrated injustice against minorities in the past. “It isn’t so much that college students are too politically correct (whatever your definition of that concept is), it’s that comedy in our progressive society today can no longer afford to be crass, or provocative for the sake of being offensive. Writing for the Huffington Post’s college vertical, the proudly PC undergrad at San Diego State instructed the legendary comedian about comedy’s true purpose in these progressive times of ours. The most entertaining response to Seinfeld’s critique of modern audiences was almost certainly Anthony Berteaux’s. What do dopes like Seinfeld or Bill Maher or Chris Rock know about comedy anyway? He’s on Tinder, he said, under his own name, with a photo of himself hosting the Oscars as his profile pic.When Jerry Seinfeld went to the mat against political correctness - saying he has been warned against playing campuses and that kids these days were too quick to throw around words they didn’t understand like “sexist” and “racist” and “prejudice”_you knew that the easily offended would come out swinging. He talked about their custody battle and about the ugliness of family court, noting a silver lining in being surrounded by lawyers trying to take his money: “That’s when I realized I made it.”īefore ending his show with a literal mic drop, Rock briefly touched on his current romantic life and the brave new world of online dating. His advice: when you have to play the tambourine, play your heart out. Out of the specifics of his screw-ups, he turned philosophical on marriage and relationships: “You are not equals. Rock said he got “pornoed out” and warped by internet pornography, that he stopped listening to his wife, that he got selfish, and that he cheated on her. Addressing his divorce, he was funny, revelatory, often self-lacerating and moving. The latter part of Rock’s 90-minute set, however, marked a striking shift in tone and topic for the stand-up legend. And, touching on the racial inequities in the criminal justice system and the lengthier prison sentences given to African-Americans, he suggested courts take a page from Wal-Mart: “If you find a lighter sentence, we’ll match it.” In an insta-classic extended riff on gun control, he argued that only people who had to pay a mortgage should be able to own firearms. Rock may have been away from the stage for awhile, but his genius for mixing astute cultural analysis with gut-busting laughs and a dose of vulgarity is still in tact. Some jobs, like pilots and cops, he argued, can’t have a few bad apples. There may not be a “whites only” sign at Whole Foods, he said, but the $7 oranges on the shelf have the same effect: “Prices are the new Jim Crow.”Īnalyzing the spate of police shootings of young black men, he suggested that cops might want to shoot a white teenager every once in a while, “just to make it look good.” And he tore apart the “few bad apples” argument that most police are good people. Racial discrimination, he noted, has grown less overt but no less exclusionary. “When you’re black, the future is always better,” he said, “because the past sucks ass.” Rock underscored the point with a hilarious extended metaphor about Obama as a woman who goes to bed with you, even though she’s way out of your league.Īnd, he argued, as an African-American, it’s easy to be hopeful - even at the dawn of the Trump era. President Obama, he argued, was the aberration. Rock said he wasn’t worried about Trump - that an out-of-touch 70-year-old white guy in the Oval Office has been the status quo for most of his life: “Trump is the natural state of America.” “Every time you fall asleep, you wake up to a new government!” he exclaimed.īut the heart of his Trump material steered away from the outrage and umbrage most comics have brought to the stage in the last few months.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |