Food for Thought: Direction of Black Comedy

I found myself watching a Showtime Special called "Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy" interviewing Black comedians, of different genders, ages, styles, etc., talking to them about the evolution of Black Comedy and it's portrayal of our society.This intrigued me because I like comedy but furthermore I have strong opinions on how Black comedians present themselves. There are comedians who tackle race and societal issues in an intelligent way that is still hilarious; others simply sling coonery (or niggerdom as I like to call it) onto society that reinforces every negative stereotype that Black people have been working to rid themselves of. It's easy to watch comedy from the Jim Crow days and weep at how Black entertainers had to demean themselves to make "The Man" happy by portraying Blacks on their terms. But upon watchin this special I gained more respect for their ambition within the confines of their time. In the '20s and '30s, a character called "Stepin Fetchit" (pictured beside cartoon version) became popular to white America playing an illiterate and infantile but charming Black servant who was too happy to "tap dance for whitey" on the screen. He even took this persona off the stage and that was how white people perceived him. But in actually, he had two phones in his home. The one to the studio would be answered by the character "Stepin Fetchit" dumb and happy nigger the white people knew and loved. His personal phone was answered by the man, actor Lincoln Perry, an educated Black man who wrote for a prominent newspaper and realized that he could parlay "tap dancing for whitey" into secretly grasping a whole lot more money and power that the white man would ever allow him to have. Lincoln Perry used Stepin Fetchit to become the first Black millionaire entertainer and to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the black face and minstrel show era, Amos 'n' Andy carried a story of minstrel-show style characters onto television. The show was seen as so demeaning to Black people that the NAACP eventually got it shut down. What the NAACP didn't realize that was that no matter the content, this was the first Black sitcom and despite the images, the show broke down another wall for our people. Dick Gregory (pictured left) followed up by satirizing race issues in a way that penetrated white audiences while educating them. He was a political activist who could take his cause straight into the whitest of audiences and all they could do was laugh and pay him handsomely. Next came Redd Foxx, pushing the envelope on Gregory-style satire with even more shocking material. Bill Cosby appeared with the ability to tell stories about anything that won the world over. He gained so much power that he made "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World," the first shows to put educated and successful Black families on mainstream prime time television. Then came the one and only Richard Pryor (pictured with American flag), widely known by blacks and whites as the greatest and most influential stand-up comedian to ever live, "the freest Black man America has ever had" according to Dr. Cornell West. His experience-based social commentary broke every mold and status restriction; comedians before him worked to be successful within the conflicts of their time and chipped away at the door holding us from artistic freedom. Pryor kicked that door down. Next, although he didn't have the societal and political content of Pryor, Eddie Murphy (pictured with Pryor and Redd Foxx) took that same raw, in-your face boldness from the stand-up stage onto the big screen in the '80s. At this point, Whoopi Goldberg was breaking down barriers for Black women who could be respected for their comedy without having to oversexualize or water down their issues. Chris Rock (pictured below) followed with an added educational and intellectual spin that made him a hit; a mold Dave Chappelle and others would follow. In 1987, Richard Pryor, tired of being pigeon-holed into negative movie roles, made a movie called "Hollywood Shuffle" satirizing how the industry still tried to force Blacks to play nothing but pimps, gangsters, and bums on the big screen. This slowly opened up more opportunity as it put these issues out for the world to see. With "In Living Color," The Wayans Brothers showed the world that a Black run show with a diverse cast of comedians could take over the airways. So this history is what has opened the door for today's Black comedians to be respected and valued side-by-side with white entertainers on the stand-up stage and the big screen. Despite its rocky beginnings, its a world history of steady progress. Some modern comedians are doing this history justice and adding their own history; however, unfortunately, we have many that are sending us in the wrong direction instead. For every Chappelle, Rock, or D.L. Hughley (who even got a comedy talk show on CNN) who have intelligentsia mixed into their routines, we have 5 up and comers trying to make a name by feeding into the minstrel-style ignorance that some of White America still longs to see from Black entertainers. That's why it's so hard to get funding for quality Black movies, it's much easier to get the studio to pay for some movie making Blacks look like buffoons. I understand incorporating a little bit of that buffoonery as bait mixed in with your greater content; but too many now have no real content to follow. Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" is a satire displaying Hollywood's perpetual longing for watermelon-eating, dancing & singing, jigaboo-style Black entertainment and showed how successful a Black man could be if he sold his soul for the money and made such offensively racist garbage. Its horrifying to think that such over-the-top satire could be fairly accurate but it is on some level. As many people have spoken about (including an uncharacteristically enthusiastic and blunt Bill Cosby in 2004), history deserves more; the aforementioned ground-breakers from the past deserve more from today's entertainers just as the civil rights activists and leaders deserve more from today's Black communities. In the first half of the century, Stepin Fetchit and minstrel show era comedians "tap danced for whitey" becuz they had no choices; they excelled at taking those lemons and making lemonade. What excuse do the entertainers have now? Dave Chappelle (pictured on "Inside the Actor's Studio) walked away from a contract worth up to $50 million becuz the studios were taking away much of his creative freedoms and minstrel-ize him (figuratively, and literally as he walked away from a skit that featured him as a pixie in blackface, to which he felt was too demeaning to complete). Despite all that money, his integrity led him to decide that he couldn't be a party to the new less-political and more buffoonish direction the brass was trying to send his show in. Today's Black comedians should take a lesson from Mr. Chappelle and consider than your integrity is more important than the money. A wise man once said "it's awful hard to shave if I can't bear to look myself in the mirror." So comedy needs to find a way to keep our race progressing and most importantly, put out a product that allows us to have our heads held high; not something that makes us look like big-lipped monkeys for the world. Food for Thought...