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December 12, 2005
Stanley Crouch Comments on Flawed Richard Pryor
You can count me among the long list of people who enjoyed Richard Pryor's work. He was an amazingly funny man, and may go down in history as one of the top comedians of the latter part of the 20th Century. That said, I have to agree with Stanley Crouch that Richard Pryor was not someone to look up to as a role model. While he was extremely funny, his was not a humor that looked to the best of society. No, he reached down to the worst as a source of humor, and helped lead the way to a comedy market that relied on shock and raunch as the primary tool to be funny.
"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."
Like Crouch, I acknowledge Pryor's genius and absolutely funny work. He was a great comedian. It does no one any good, however, to forget that Pryor, along with many who followed, did damage to society with his work. Like Dave Chappelle and South Park, Pryor's work was biting, cutting-edge, and funny. Another thing he has in common with them is that no one should really be watching them.
Even I shouldn't be watching them, but I do.
Posted by Lockjaw at December 12, 2005 6:13 PM
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Comments
Richard Pryor was a trailblazer and one of the true Kings of Comedy.
Posted by: Lamar Cole at December 28, 2005 2:05 PM
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