On "Borderline" Comedy

"And you guys wonder why Dave Chappelle quit and went to Africa. Wanna know why? It was because of dumb fans."

I've heard this from more than one comic. Chris Hardwick threw out a variation on the theme on a recent Nerdist podcast. His comments were more to the effect that Chappelle quit at the height of his game because the tongue-in-cheek racial comedy he delivered with the intention of satirizing racists was embraced and non-ironically co-opted by, well, racists.



The above quote came from Daniel Tosh last night, who played at the Murat Theatre in downtown Indy. It came as part of what seemed to be a canned response to hecklers, although he deployed it in response to some disruptive-but-not-malicious "woo!"-ing and shouted requests for particular bits.

But I was reminded of Hardwick's comments during Tosh's set. Tosh has blown up in popularity since Tosh.0 started airing on Comedy Central, and part of the show's schtick is a lot of borderline (and not-so-borderline) racist and misogynistic riffing on the people featured in the web videos. I was admittedly addicted to the show through the first dozen or so episodes, but my interest started to wane when the off-color jokes seemed to make up the majority of the content. Not because I was offended, but because it seemed to rely on the principle that it's funny because it's wrong, which is not inherently true. And also maybe a little because if you repeat something enough, people start to think you really mean it.

Although my husband and I and quite a few of our mid-20s, totally non-racist friends are pretty regular viewers, I can't help but wonder if Tosh.0 hits a lot of the same demographic that made Chappelle pull anchor and GTFO. I'm sure Tosh and his show's writers don't really subscribe to the stereotypes they play off of, but  I'm guessing the material is received by a few people who kinda do.

Tosh's standup last night was hilarious, and he's a very talented performer. His standup does weave in some of the funny-because-it's-wrong stuff, but it's balanced out by enough non-squirmy material that it didn't bring down the show for me.

I did find myself bracing a little every time he rolled out another black or Latino joke*, but it was mostly because I was afraid the Indy audience would break out in roaring applause and cheers and just generally be a little TOO appreciative of the stereotyping and all "he's one of us! this guy gets it!" I was pleasantly surprised to see this not happen. But I still walked away feeling a little like maybe this isn't for me.


*There were some misogynistic jokes in the standup too, but (logically or not) this bothers me a little less. I guess because I find it plausible that some people in the audience are "a little bit racist" but I'm not really banking on anyone being "a little bit of a wife-beater."