Posted on 12/12/2005 8:49:58 AM PST by .cnI redruM
Richard Pryor's world was filled with prostitutes, pimps, winos and those others of undesirable ilk.
This past Saturday Richard Pryor left this life and bequeathed to our culture as much darkness as he did the light his extraordinary talent made possible. When we look at the remarkable descent this culture has made into smut, contempt, vulgarity and the pornagraphic, those of us who are not willing to drink the Kool-Aid marked "all's well," will have to address the fact that it was the combination of confusion and comic genius that made Pryor a much more negative influence than a positive one.
I do not mean positive in the way Bill Cosby was when his television show redefined situation comedy by turning away from all of the stereotypes of disorder and incompetence that were then and still are the basic renditions of black American life in our mass media.
Richard Pryor was not that kind of a man. His was a different story.
Pryor was troubled and he had seen things that so haunted him that the comedian found it impossible to perform and ignore the lower-class shadow worlds he had known so well, filled with pimps, prostitutes, winos and abrasive types of one sort or another.
The vulgarity of his material, and the idea a "real" black person was a foul-mouthed type was his greatest influence. It was the result of seeing the breaking of "white" convention as a form of "authentic" definition.
Pryor reached for anything that would make white America uncomfortable and would prop up a smug belief among black Americans that they were always "more cool" and more ready to "face life" than the members of majority culture.
Along the way, Pryor made too many people feel that the N word was open currency and was more accurate than any other word used to describe or address a black person.
In the dung piles of pimp and gangster rap we hear from slime meisters like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, the worst of Pryor's influence has been turned into an aspect of the new minstrelsy in which millions of dollars are made by "normalizing" demeaning imagery and misogyny.
What is so unfortunate is that the heaviest of Pryor's gifts was largely ignored by so many of those who praised the man when he was alive and are now in the middle of deifying him.
The pathos and the frailty of the human soul alone in the world or insecure or looking for something of meaning in a chaotic environment was a bit too deep for all of the simpleminded clowns like Andrew Dice Clay or those who thought that mere ethnicity was enough to define one as funny, like the painfully square work of Paul Rodriguez.
Of course, Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam is the ultimate coon show update of human cesspools, where "cutting edge" has come to mean traveling ever more downward in the sewer.
In essence, Pryor stunned with his timing, his rhythm, his ability to stand alone and fill the stage with three-dimensional characters through his remarkably imaginative gift for an epic sweep of mimicry.
That nuanced mimicry crossed ethnic lines, stretched from young to old, and gave poignancy to the comedian's revelations about the hurts and the terrors of life.
The idea of "laughing to keep from crying" was central to his work and has been diligently avoided by those who claim to owe so much to him.
As he revealed in his last performance films, Pryor understood the prison he had built for himself and the shallow definitions that smothered his audience's understanding of the humanity behind his work.
But, as they say, once the barn door has been opened, you cannot get all of the animals to return by whistling. So we need to understand the terrible mistakes this man of comic genius made and never settle for a standard that is less than what he did at his very best, which was as good as it has ever gotten.
Yep. That really enraged a lot of jazz aficionados.
Filth and nastiness are always good for a laugh or two, right?
I think Crouch is right for this reason -- I've heard more than one black artist who uses the N-word cite Pryor as the reason why (Aaron McGruder of Boondocks is one person who has used that excuse), even though, as you allude to, Pryor later disavowed using the N-word.
The vulgarity of Pryor's material cannot be separated from its genius. It's easy to fall back on foul language as a blunt instrument of shock (see Clay, Andrew "Dice), but that was not what Pryor did. He used profanity as a stiletto, for shock value, yes, but a shock that drove the message home rather than drowning it out.
Profanity is not appropriate for all occasions, but why would someone who paints with words categorically take the most vivid, most shocking -- and, yes, ugliest -- colors from his palette?
If Pryor were beginning his career today, I doubt that he would embrace the profanity-laced gangsta thug culture; it's too easy. It substitutes the shock of the F-word for any real message behind it (though there are, of course, exceptions).
The comics who most embody his legacy today are Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle, who use profanity skillfully and sparingly. He would certainly lay off the N word, as he had begun to do -- and explained -- by the time of "Live on the Sunset Strip."
The oft-repeated mantra is that the use of profanity is an hallmark of limited wit or vocabulary. I disagree. Sure, profanity us a substitute for wit far more often than a tool in service of wit, but when you have both, it's a powerful combination. And a rare one. Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and only a handful of others have mastered it.
I have no idea what sector of white America that would be, maybe the insane and over sensitive. I never heard him say any part of America was superior to any other, better off financially maybe, but not superior.
I don't think I've ever heard a racist use Pryor as an excuse, that's simply nonsensical on it's face.
"No one ever said Pryor was a role model, nor did he claim to be.
But he sure was funny."
That is the bottom line. I liked Mr Pryor and I dont ever recall him shooting his mouth of regarding politics.
Seems I read something like this about the Roman Empire ":^{
Had me fooled all these years! (grabbed the wrong choice on spell check)
Neither. In the early days of black ragtime, entertainers would stick shouts into the middle of their songs, and the audience would often shout back. These were called "coon shouts"...a label that was invented by the blacks themselves. After a while, black musical shows started becoming known as coon shows because that kind of shouting was a mainstay. Eventually, black shows in general...whether musical or stand-up, became known as coon shows as its use spread.
It's not used much anymore, but it's not a racist term. It just means that it's a show with black entertainers, marketed to a black audience, that employes crude or basic humor to entertain. Pryor's shows certainly fit that bill.
I think it's avoided by most people nowadays because it is so close to the old racist insult of calling blacks "coons". Like the ni***r word, it's pretty much only used by blacks when referring to themselves anymore.
Sorry, but I just can't relate any of Priors movies, to something that generates a mind F...other than laughing a lot for a short period of time.
I've heard that Diceman is doing pretty well for himself in Vegas and still married to the same babe for all these years.
Mitch Hedberg died this year... his lifestyle included drug and alcohol abuse. No role model discussions there, and the talk about the "next Seinfeld" was quickly forgotten.
John Belushi too. Anyone lament the fact that he wasn't a "good role model" when he OD'd? Nope. We simply recognized him for his talent.
Lev Kuleshov Born: 1899
A distinguished Soviet director of the silent era, best known today as a theoretician. The famous "Kuleshov experiment" was central to the development of montage and led Kuleshov to the belief that inter-cutting, rather than performance, was the prime basis of filmic expression. More...
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