Dave Chappelle's "Sticks & Stones"

[Lexicon]

Maybe I'm just afraid of a future where the entirety of comedy is nothing but jokes about Trump being an orange cheeto.

Dammit, this will always be funny.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Dammit, this will always be funny.

That was actually really funny.

What's with the pinky thing?

 

[The Cat]

Dammit, this will always be funny.

That guy gets it.

 

[FemMecha]

It seems like the underlying issue in society is a lack of sense of boundaries between the personal and the public, and so it assumes a right to impose personal opinion to control others. The issue with people feeling they aren't allowed to hold their own set of beliefs when different from the norm is in part based on that underlying lack of social boundaries. If we had an understanding as a culture that a personal belief doesn't translate into entitlement to impose it on others, then it would change the discussion. Can we picture someone with a phobia or hate of a category of people that doesn't try to change anyone or make them leave their environment?

 

[anticlimatic]

It seems like the underlying issue in society is a lack of sense of boundaries between the personal and the public, and so it assumes a right to impose personal opinion to control others. The issue with people feeling they aren't allowed to hold their own set of beliefs when different from the norm is in part based on that underlying lack of social boundaries. If we had an understanding as a culture that a personal belief doesn't translate into entitlement to impose it on others, then it would change the discussion. Can we picture someone with a phobia or hate of a category of people that doesn't try to change anyone or make them leave their environment?

Did you come up with this boundaries analogy or read about it somewhere?

 

[FemMecha]

Did you come up with this boundaries analogy or read about it somewhere?

I don't remember reading about it anywhere, so as far as I remember I came up with, but i'e had discussions sometimes about it.

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

The Liberal Right needed to let off some steam because although they believe themselves to be "winning" politically, they still feel like they're losing culturally. Netflix, a decidedly Liberal Left platform which in part has a dominant cultural voice hosted this so-called "Right" comedian to act as a cultural "pressure valve" for the Liberal Right. Either way, Netflix is getting paid.

It seems the "level 1" folks (pawns) on both sides are reacting as expected with the pro and con reviews making rounds hyping this show up to both sides with Netflix and the cultural Left winning this chess match.

The division of the people has been successfully maintained by the oligarchs.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Christopher Reiss's answer to How does Dave Chappelle get away with his outrageously politically incorrect - and brilliantly funny - material about the LGBTQ and MeToo communities on his new Netflix special? - Quora

How does Dave Chappelle get away with his outrageously politically incorrect - and brilliantly funny - material about the LGBTQ and MeToo communities on his new Netflix special?

20-something’s, there is something we Gen-X’ers haven’t been telling you. It’s not been very mature of us, admittedly. But the joke has gone on too long now, it’s time to come clean :

Political trends are temporary. Everything - from the hippy peace movement to feminism to conservative materialism - takes about 5 years to ramp up. Then it peaks. Then it ramps down for another 5 years.

Then it swings the other way. We get out of Vietnam, and 5 years later decide to re-arm like crazy to drive the Soviets into bankruptcy. Those flower children at Woodstock became investment bankers in their mid-30’s.

Let’s check the calendar. The ‘woke’, intersectional, third-wave, 60 gender pronoun thing got started around Obama’s second term, 2012 or so. It peaked a couple of years ago, when Trump got elected. It reached maximum shrill after the election, but a lot of folks quietly, secretly noted that their wokeness just lost an election to the weakest candidate in American history. Whoops.

That would place the peak around 2017, and we are now halfway down the decline. A growing chorus of voices is directly challenging it. A chorus from the Left.

Comedy is an excellent detector of insanity. A funny joke is one that reveals the absurd. Not in an intellectual way, but in a visceral way. A good joke targets the things that we deeply understand to be absurd, without regard to idealogical fashion.

In a political conflict, a reliable indicator of who is right is quite simply : The one who’s laughing. The non laughers are just angry.

So as wokeness approaches its end-of-life, cue the comedians : Dave Chapelle. Ricky Gervais. Jerry Seinfeld. Chris Rock. I only stopped because I’ve got stuff to do, the flood is endless. Just google ‘comedian woke’ and you can stretch the list into the hundreds and thousands.

So, woke millenials, here comes the pendulum swinging back, right on schedule. Might want to scrub your Twitter posts before somebody archives it and blackmails you later (you think bell-bottoms don’t age well, wait till people quote you in 5 years.)

Yea, we Gen-X’ers should have told you sooner. If it’s any consolation, the boomers did the same thing to us …

 

[Maou]

I got about 3/4ths of the way through it before I got bored. I can see why the lefties were offended, but I have seen much much worse on the internet. This was like granda's first experience with internet trolling level of offensiveness. It was all low hanging fruit. But then again, I am not a fan of comedy, and have never watched this show. But I did find the message he was trying to make clear. People need to lighten up. Ravenetta had a great post that aligned well with it. I think is someone can't laugh at themselves and have boundaries in identity, they are probably mentally unwell.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Jesus, can you imagine what they'd be calling Pryor or Carlin if those guys were still alive and performing?

 

[Stigmata]

Jesus, can you imagine what they'd be calling Pryor or Carlin if those guys were still alive and performing?

You'd have to weed through a sea of rioters and protestors to go see an Eddie Murphy standup performance by today's standards of political correctness in comedy.

I wonder what the cultural response will be to this hyper-PC era, because eventually there will be another shift but in what direction I wonder.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

You'd have to weed through a sea of rioters and protestors to go see an Eddie Murphy standup performance by today's standards of political correctness in comedy.

I wonder what the cultural response will be to this hyper-PC era, because eventually there will be another shift but in what direction I wonder.

It's probably only a matter of time before Murphy returns to stand-up. All of the big former comic-turned-actors seem to do at least one big "back to basics" comeback tour or special. Williams did it, Seinfeld did it, Chappelle, et al.

I guess the cultural response to his comedy will depend on A) when he does it and what the general tolerance is for raunchy, edgy humor, and B) how over-the-top he goes; will he return to extremely raunchy comedy like in Raw and Delirious or will he do something a little more toned down and in-line with his more family friendly acting roles since the early 2000s?

I would LOVE to see him return to stand-up, go all out and do some raunchy, uncensored Raw style comedy, although admittedly, some of his jokes, particularly those aimed at homosexuals, have not aged very well at all. They're funny in the context of the period when he wrote the jokes, but I do think some of his humor about gay people bordered on crossing a line into outright homophobia at times. And his jokes about AIDS just seem flat out ignorant, but then they were made at a time when people still didn't know much about how the virus was transmitted

 

[The Cat]

I highly dout Eddie Murphy will ever return to stand up

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I highly dout Eddie Murphy will ever return to stand up

Supposedly he's toyed with the idea.

Never say never. If he gets to a point where the acting roles dry up and he wants a little extra cash, or to just solidify his legacy so he's not remembered mostly for a string of mediocre comedy films, he might return for a one-time HBO or Netflix special. And you know agents and producers have probably been begging him to return to stand-up for years. Think about the benefits of doing a contract for 1 to 3 stand-up specials if you're a big established name...you basically film at most 3 hours of standing on stage riffing and joking, versus an acting job that involves 3-6 months on a hot movie set under studio lights reciting some other writer's material, no matter how cringeworthy said material may be. Imagine each job pays about equal, and with the former you get it over with and get to spend more time with your grandkids or sailing to Aruba.

Plus he's returning to guest host SNL. Which will almost certainly involve his opening monologue containing some stand up jokes. I think he's testing the waters to see if there's a real demand for a comeback.

Eddie Murphy Eyes Return to Stand-Up Comedy | Hollywood Reporter

Asked whether he's nervous about going back on tour, Murphy said, "No … when I think about doing stand-up, this is the perfect analogy: When you go to the pool and the water is cold, freezing, and you go, 'Ah, the water's fucking cold' before you jump in, that's how I feel with stand-up. It's that feeling of ooh, it's going to be freezing when you first jump in. That's not nervous or scared; that's just I know the water is cold."

In a recent episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, host Jerry Seinfeld brought up the fact that Murphy fans are waiting for his return to stand-up. He said to the actor, "You know that you're not doing stand-up drives everybody crazy, right?" Murphy replied, "I'm going to do it again. Everything has to be just right. You have to get up there and start working out."

In other words, he's waiting for the right timing so it doesn't come out in the middle of 5 other aging comics releasing specials. And also he wants to make people wait a little longer, every passing year building more demand for him. He's still relatively young and in good health, so I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a Murphy comeback until the 40th anniversary of Delirious, or in the least, at the beginning of the next Presidential term. I think he'd be about in his early 60s by that point, around the same age Williams was when he did his big HBO comeback special. And no surprise Williams had previously starred in a string of mostly forgettable dramedies in the late 90s and early 00s. It always seems like the stand-up comebacks occur after a period of dormancy or failed films.

 

[Stigmata]

I highly dout Eddie Murphy will ever return to stand up

Apparently it's already in the works: Eddie Murphy's long awaited return to standup is finally happening - CNN

Half the problem with Eddie Murphy returning to standup is that when throw the baton to Saturn on your first two comedy specials, the downside is that people not only expect you to retrieve it, but throw it even farther.

I imagine this immense pressure he'd feel to not only measure up to his previous work, but also work within the confines of today's PC culture climate, is largely why he has shied away from it.

Look at Chappelle: The masses begged and pleaded him for his return, and based on some of the latest reviews it seems as if some are less than pleased with the subject matter of his latest special. Outside of the enormous cash grab, kinda makes you wonder why they bother.

For Eddie to come back, he has to completely reinvent himself and his style of humor: his old stuff is just completely not relevant and wouldn't be considered appropriate for today's audiences.

 

[Lark]

I like Eddie Murphy and Dave Chapelle, Murphy is better though.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Well I guess as long as what’s her face is breaking ground talking about her smelly vagina, comedy is in safe hands

 

[The Cat]

God damn it Carl.

 

[Stigmata]

Well I guess as long as what’s her face is breaking ground talking about her smelly vagina, comedy is in safe hands

Amy Schumer?

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Amy Schumer?

Yaasssss I love her.

I mean, she’s kind of doing an Andrew Dice Clay thing. It’s alright but Iliza Schlesinger is way better, if we were to compare last comic standing alumni