Context and who is saying what and to whom is, in the case of the routine, certainly everything. No white comedian could ever do that sketch and get away with it, and there is an interesting sub-text point that Rock was trying to make, was it about race, or class within a given race?
Friday, June 08, 2007
Chris Rock on Racism
Two people today have now mentioned the following Chris Rock sketch to me after reading my earlier post, so here it is.
Context and who is saying what and to whom is, in the case of the routine, certainly everything. No white comedian could ever do that sketch and get away with it, and there is an interesting sub-text point that Rock was trying to make, was it about race, or class within a given race?
Context and who is saying what and to whom is, in the case of the routine, certainly everything. No white comedian could ever do that sketch and get away with it, and there is an interesting sub-text point that Rock was trying to make, was it about race, or class within a given race?
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7 comments:
He also did funny skit about how to NOT get beaten up by the police. (Don't break the law, be polite.)
I think a lot of people read that sketch very differently. I've seen it used on the internet a lot of time to illustrate very different points.
Shame we can't get Chris Rock to comment on your blog.
Bill Cosby ignored political correctness taboos too a while back when he suggested that black americans shouldn't blame white people for failures within their own community. Sort of an anti-chav speech.
Speech transcript.
I just can't get the joke - it must be a black theeng!
When you listen to that though, don't you wonder about why the audience are in such raptures?
They've clearly all just been longing to hear someone really laying into the lazy thick niggers (with apologies to Big Ron, who had similar urges).
And for many of them, that desire will until then have been totally subconscious.
You can hear the joyous release in their laughter - finally they can let out everything that they suddenly realise they had pent up inside them - a whole set of thoughts, an aspect of their worldview they had to bury: many black people are lazy and thick, and the word that best describes them is "niggers".
How many of them would have made those criticisms of blacks themselves? I don't mean using that word, but just making those points: that many blacks are poor because they are also lazy; that it isn't the media or the culture that holds them back, but themselves; and that those blacks who have screwed up their own lives should get contempt, not pity?
I would suggest, very few of them. And yet when Chris Rock makes those points, they nearly choke with laughter. And as he makes each new point, opens up to them each new criticism which they never thought they wanted to hear made, they laugh more and laugh louder.
I'd say that's the subtext to the skit - by making all the criticisms no one else could make, the most effective criticism he makes is the only one that isn't explicit: pointing up how fucking cowardly so many white Americans are, who'd rather pretend these problems don't exist than open their eyes to the true position, because they're scared of being called rascist and because the pretence costs them nothing, because they don't live in black areas and their kids don't go to black schools.
That's the subtext as I see it anyway - Rock's a funny man, but his audience are cowards.
The late great Richard Pryor was the inspiration for this piece.
Although I do think that people over react to this word, I also can't think of a single instance where someone referring to me in these terms would be doing in anything other a pejorative term.
I just don't get why white people somehow feel aggrieved they can't use this word. Do they also want the right to call people 'cunts' with impunity.
Channel 4 didn't take the context of the girls comment into account, but my real problem is the widespread normalisation of general levels of incivility to everyone.
"Do they also want the right to call people 'cunts' with impunity"
'They' already do that: "Fancy another pint, ya cunt?". It's quite common really.
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