Stand-up comedy appears to be in a teetering position right now. Nevertheless, it is all over the internet with new shows popping up on streaming services like Netflix all the time.
But as popular as those shows are, riskier stand-up comedy that directly challenges popular opinion is rarely seen in the present cultural era. It makes you think: Can we still appreciate or react to stand-up comedy that offends?
The use of the word “offend,” is thought about by viewers after watching the cable networks A&E’s docuseries called, “Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution.” The series consists of directors Mario Diaz and Jessica Sherif examining the eventful history of Black comedians.
“The Right to Offend” features interviews with comics and historians. For example, a black comedian named Whoopi Goldberg interrogated prevalent prolife opinion in the early ‘80s with an unapologetically incisive and hilarious act about DIY abortion. She did so in front of a largely white audience while affecting a white woman’s voice and manners.
The docuseries serves as a reminder of comedy’s most important goal: to disrupt societal conversation and what is accepted. If you think about it deeply, Black comedians’ acts were as oddly disorientated as their white counterparts’, but because of completely different things.
Diaz says, “There have always been the societal constraints for comedians dating back to, well, slavery but also minstrelsy. If you go back to the vaudeville era, the audiences were white and this is what popular culture was: ‘Let’s go see these people with cork on their faces act like a fool.’”
For audiences, that saying was absolutely hilarious. Some think it was offensive. But black comedians ultimately sat in the place where some people genuinely cried with tears of laughter, and others considered unacceptable. “You have two things. You have society restrictions and then you have the audience that is a tiny smidge more liberal,” added Diaz. “They were still pretty much also constrained by what society dictated. And I think that happens even today.”
Comedians still feel the pressure to negotiate their comedic provocations with the present’s most popular societal mindsets. This is no longer an exclusive choice to structures that open racism or bind women’s rights. That means comedians as of right now should recalibrate the phrases they want to say and what they want their show to portray.
But as popular as those shows are, riskier stand-up comedy that directly challenges popular opinion is rarely seen in the present cultural era. It makes you think: Can we still appreciate or react to stand-up comedy that offends?
The use of the word “offend,” is thought about by viewers after watching the cable networks A&E’s docuseries called, “Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution.” The series consists of directors Mario Diaz and Jessica Sherif examining the eventful history of Black comedians.
“The Right to Offend” features interviews with comics and historians. For example, a black comedian named Whoopi Goldberg interrogated prevalent prolife opinion in the early ‘80s with an unapologetically incisive and hilarious act about DIY abortion. She did so in front of a largely white audience while affecting a white woman’s voice and manners.
The docuseries serves as a reminder of comedy’s most important goal: to disrupt societal conversation and what is accepted. If you think about it deeply, Black comedians’ acts were as oddly disorientated as their white counterparts’, but because of completely different things.
Diaz says, “There have always been the societal constraints for comedians dating back to, well, slavery but also minstrelsy. If you go back to the vaudeville era, the audiences were white and this is what popular culture was: ‘Let’s go see these people with cork on their faces act like a fool.’”
For audiences, that saying was absolutely hilarious. Some think it was offensive. But black comedians ultimately sat in the place where some people genuinely cried with tears of laughter, and others considered unacceptable. “You have two things. You have society restrictions and then you have the audience that is a tiny smidge more liberal,” added Diaz. “They were still pretty much also constrained by what society dictated. And I think that happens even today.”
Comedians still feel the pressure to negotiate their comedic provocations with the present’s most popular societal mindsets. This is no longer an exclusive choice to structures that open racism or bind women’s rights. That means comedians as of right now should recalibrate the phrases they want to say and what they want their show to portray.
