Bad Chappelle Bits

deems if you meant "is there a single good stand-up comedian who just says funny things" then the answer is no, there are lots

― bae (sic), Wednesday, 3 January 2024 23:41 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

mayne im imploring you to read what i actually wrote

xps re comedy = making audience uncomfortable, re "comedy must punch up", re "comedy must make the target laugh also" imo all of this is taking views of what any given comedy act can do, sure, but treating any of these personal preferences as imperatives is .... wrong, imo

for thread purposes ofc its irrelevant chappelles stuff isnt funny and most happily the reasons it isnt funny are at least linked to his focusing more on his own self indulgence than being funny

left a chara i think not liking comedy is fine but it cant be ones whole personality, we had a poster or two do that bit before and well they were awful

The thing that I found most valuable about Gadsby’s Nanette was when they broke down the mechanics of a joke, paraphrased: “you are trying to say something that makes the audience uncomfortable enough to elicit laughter, because that’s what laughter is, a response to discomfort.” It makes total sense to me that a comedian like Chappelle might be failing to distinguish between “this is making people laugh” and “this is just making people uncomfortable”. Either way I wish he’d make different, actually funny, jokes. I’ve often said that comedians should be afforded a lower standard of accountability when it comes to the expiry date on their material— jokes that were funny ten years ago might be found to be just straight up insulting (or even hateful) in present day; it’s good to keep in mind that the line comedians have to dance around, for their job, will change and their jokes become less-funny over time. Unless you’re a genius (Dangerfield, Rivers).

― he’s an adventurer (derogatory) (flamboyant goon tie included)

laughter isn't the _only_ response to discomfort, though! so is silence. dead fuckin' silence. god, the fucking silences were the worst. when someone stops yelling at you at all and just stops saying _anything_. that's when you don't know what comes next.

of course, that's not comedy, that's childhood trauma. stand-up comedy has nothing whatsoever to do with childhood trauma.

a lot of people don't necessarily have to try to make people uncomfortable around them. some people - including, as it happens, a lot of trans people - have the amazing ability to make people uncomfortable around them just by existing. but i mean, any member of a marginalized group can have that experience. it's not exclusive to trans people by any means. all it really requires is that one not conform to someone else's preconceived expectations.

a comedian who conforms to other people's preconceived expectations is unlikely to be a great comedian.

left a chara i think not liking comedy is fine but it cant be ones whole personality, we had a poster or two do that bit before and well they were awful

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac)

deems have you read any of left's posts? have you read their _username_? accusing left of making their entire personality about one thing is fine, but hating comedy isn't it.

fwiw from my perspective "hating capitalism and transphobia" is the _ideal_ personality.

Can we derail this thread to talk about Katt Williams instead? First of all, he's much, much funnier than Dave Chappelle, and second of all, he showed up for a three-hour interview with a flamethrower strapped to his back. And had some extremely insightful thoughts about the craft of comedy, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oRRZiRQxTs

left a chara i think not liking comedy is fine but it cant be ones whole personality, we had a poster or two do that bit before and well they were awful

I don't know who you're referring to there, the main "I hate comedy" person on ILX was Lex, who I hope you're not calling awful. Anyway I've increasingly come to agree with him, though it's really comedians I hate rather than comedy per se.

Hating all comedy is a fine and reasonable position to take, but posting it on comedy threads is pointlessly antagonistic.

that may have been a fairer summation, even if i think doing so every now and again as a confirmation is probably fine

i was ofc speaking generally

Gary Gulman, another non-mean comedian (although he can be pretty mean to himself).

Gulman is one of the funniest guys I've ever seen. We caught him again back in November and he absolutely killed it.

Hating all comedy is a fine and reasonable position to take

... hold up one sec here.

there are things within that category that are probably worth saving but there is something inherently authoritarian about standup comedy. the non-awful standups are like enlightened despots.

uh

Why standup comedy specifically and not, say, slam poetry, or one-person theatrical shows?

because nobody has ever defended those tbf

OTM

pretty booming column from Bramesco on this

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/jan/03/dave-chappelle-the-dreamer-ricky-gervais-armageddon-netflix

Okay maybe Left has a point

xps lol

To the quaveringly earnest strains of Daydreaming by Radiohead, he smokes a cigarette in silhouette, as if taking a cue from Dewey Cox to think about his whole life before he goes onstage.

Does this mean Radiohead OK'd the use of its music for him? Wasn't one of the Radiohead guys caught up in some at least fleeting transphobic twitter thing?

Jonny Greenwood

There’s the Hot Pockets guy, I don’t think he thinks he’s, like a philosopher with his lantern looking for one honest man

I saw a recent clip of Gaffigan on Bill Maher's show gently pushing back against Maher's anti-Union bullshit.

Does this mean Radiohead OK'd the use of its music for him? Wasn't one of the Radiohead guys caught up in some at least fleeting transphobic twitter thing?

― Josh in Chicago

jonny greenwood is a transphobe, yes

There’s the Hot Pockets guy, I don’t think he thinks he’s, like a philosopher with his lantern looking for one honest man

Gaffigan's most recent special is pretty fucking dark. Not quite Marc Maron dark, but definitely in that neighborhood.

When Gaffigan denounced Trump there were loads of butthurt conservatives whining about how he wasn't supposed to talk about politics

Gaffigan’s segments on CBS Sunday Morning are getting to be almost suicidally depressed.

No that would be me, watching Gaffigan's CBS Sunday Morning segments

(jk I fast forward through them)

Gaffigan’s segments on CBS Sunday Morning are getting to be almost suicidally depressed.

going back up to Katt Williams upthread (I missed that discussion)...I'm a little lukewarm on the praise he's getting for his interview, not because I disagree with the central points he's making, or anything like that, but because he always seems to sidestep his own toxic past.

he told a Mexican heckler to "go the fuck back to Mexico" in an unhinged rant, and never really adequately apologized for it, as well as physically assaulting a 17 year old, physically assaulting a woman at a hotel and leaving visible bruises, and beating an 18 year old with a bottle. He never really took accountability from what I could see, blamed the people he assaulted most of the time.

He seems to have left that behind and I did enjoy his last special and I do like the dude, and don't want him to be 'cancelled' or anything, but if he's crate-digging into other people's pasts as far back as he's going, why couldn't he take the opportunity to admit his own role in toxicity, rather than elevating himself above the people he's critiquing?

idk...I still found his last special funny.

Williams is definitely not a 100% good dude, and there are several moments in that interview where the host asks him about shit that might reflect badly on him and he freezes up and goes very noticeably silent for a long time before answering in a much more measured fashion than when he's discussing other subjects. So yeah. Agree.