• Dippy@beehaw.org
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    13 hours ago

    Remember when we thought Dane Cook was funny? In my defense I was 13, but wow

  • shapis@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Young Dave Chappelle was the greatest comedian of all time and I’ll die on this hill.

    He still has some sparks of brilliance here and there. But fuck. Yeah. The meme is accurate.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Young Dave Chappelle was the greatest comedian of all time

      He still has some sparks of brilliance here and there.

      Chappelle saw an underfilled market for a kind-of Chris Rock “what white people think black people sound like” comic material and crammed himself into the role.

      Then he saw an underfilled market for a Bill Cosby “what older white people want to hear black people complain about” comic material and crammed himself into that role.

      And now he sounds like a cringe mix of Chris Rock meets Bill Cosby, which is exactly what Trad MAGA gooners will pay out the nose to see.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      I don’t get how his bit about him supporting trans people turned him into what he is now.

      • DaleGribble88@programming.dev
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        1 day ago

        Ooh! I can answer this! He made a joke about someone in his life that was trans. It hit the media that he was doing jokes about trans people. So he tried to explain how he wasn’t transphobic by telling a bunch of actual transphobic jokes, which was certainly a choice that was made. That turned a lot of people off, so he followed the laughs.

        The first “new” Chappelle special is wonderful! No more offensive to any one group than any other. His follow up was mostly good, but some cringing at some bad takes. Clips thereafter are pretty… Well, you see what thread we are in. 🙃

  • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    Imagine buying tickets to a well-established comedian’s show just to hear them read Facebook comments for an hour.

      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        He went to Saudi Arabia to make money and lost many fans. Myself included, those fuck faces killed and dismembered a journalist and deserve no international respect.

        • zebidiah@lemmy.ca
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          14 hours ago

          imagine if your dad died in 9/11 and you STILL went to perform like a dancing little monkey for the guys that ordered those planes flown into those towers…

        • Sharkticon@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          I mean it’s not even that he went to Saudi Arabia and did this absurd show. It’s how he handled the Fallout. If he had just handled it like a comedian by making a joke he probably would have been fine. He said “I’m sorry but you know I needed the money have you see my wife’s Instagram page?” Or something like that he probably could have emerge somewhat unscathed. Battered but unbroken. But the way he handle it was just so tone deaf and so patronizing and so God damn absurd that a lot of it just had to tune out.

          • guitarfosec@infosec.pub
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            1 day ago

            That was my gripe, too. Any one of them could have said, “I know it’s an awful regime, but I went to go give a lot of regular Saudis who live in an oppressive state a chance to laugh and have some real fun.” and I would have said, “You know, that’s fair.”, but for some reason not a single one of them did.

            • fourtonetiger@lemmy.ca
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              1 day ago

              I don’t know all the details, but I get the feeling the oppressed class weren’t in attendance.

        • shawn1122@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          This is interesting because the US government has clearly been very friendly with the Saudi regime for decades, supports monarchy / authoritarianism there militarily and diplomatically, developed the petrodollar system with them which saves the average American household thousands of dollars a year and allows the US government to run a $40 trillion dollar debt with favorable interest rates. Several advantages America has over other Western nations and the rest of the world come from this partnership.

          In a sense every American makes money off of Saudi Arabia and doesn’t realize it. Perhaps that’s something they didn’t consent to so they shouldn’t be held accountable. But if the petrodollar ended tomorrow, inflation in the US would spike almost immediately through currency devaluation and a bond crisis would likely follow.

          The first morally logical step would be to petition one’s own government to stop supporting the Saudi monarchy militarily and diplomatically.

          Tl;dr: The US is the reason Saudi Arabia has international legitimacy and respect. If anyone wants to change that, start with them.

          • ohulancutash@feddit.uk
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            1 day ago

            Won’t work. Saudi spectacularly demolished some NY real estate and the US bent over backwards to pretend Afghanistan was to blame.

            • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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              4 hours ago

              Might work someday if we ever get out of the oil industry. But this probably won’t be in any of your kids’ or even grandkids’ lifetimes.

            • shawn1122@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              Well that just makes the US government look worse. I’m all for bringing down theocratic monarchies but if one’s democratically elected government is the only thing propping that up, it would make much more sense to direct the rage there, within a system that answers to its people. Either that or it looks like they’re enjoying the financial benefits of the partnership quietly while engaging in moral grandstanding outwardly.

              If one’s morality is on a firm foundation, petition your government to bring an end to the petrodollar. The Saudi monarchy will fall as you wish for it to. Anything less amounts to hipocrisy.

          • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I think a lot of people don’t realize how much power they have when they become popular. That their shitty ideals will spread like wildfire if not kept under control. Once money gets involved people do wild shit.

    • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      His last Oscars speech had him basically spit facts in a funny way. Guy isn’t a comedian, he’s a court jester, and I mean that in the most positive way.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        How much do you enjoy the joke “God isn’t real and everyone who believes in God is stupid” on a loop?

      • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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        23 hours ago

        So here’s the thing. In his prime in the early 2000s there legitimately was a liberal PC orthodoxy in comedy. This meant if you made a joke about a marginalised group it was implicitly understood that the humour was either in the outrageousness of it, or that bigotry itself was the true target of the joke, and that we weren’t supposed to take it at face value.

        But then actual fascists started gaining power by campaigning against those same marginalised groups, and that type of joke stopped being possible even when played back verbatim. Gervais either hasn’t realized that, or is happy to play to the tastes of real bigots.

      • KuroiKaze@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Very hot take, he’s often cited as a comedic genius. British office will always be way better than its American shadow. Afterlife showed he has range, extras gave us some of the funniest bits ever, etc

      • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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        14 hours ago

        I remember laughing hysterically at his bit about Humpty Dumpty being reassembled by horses, “…if you were to design the perfect egg smashing device…”

        I also found his portrayal of the titular Derek to actually be quite touching. I enjoyed the show.

        • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          I haven’t seen it, but the reviews I’ve seen sorta said it was funny because of the underlying premise, not because of Gervais.

          My view of the guy is he has a negative amount of humour. Not only is he totally unfunny by himself, but he actively removes the humour from scenes he’s in.

          • Omega@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            Oh, he does not belong in front of a camera. He’s not a good actor and he has the comedic timing of a ham sandwich. But he wrote and co-produced it, so I give him credit for it.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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        21 hours ago

        Has he changed much? If you didn’t like him before you probably won’t now. If you did like him before but have already seen a lot of his stuff you will probably still like it but it might feel a little repetitive.

        • adam_y@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          I think you need to go back to the late 90s with the 11 O’Clock Show to see his earlier work.

          That’s the same show that brought us Ali G as well.

          See, the other commenter is right. These comedians didn’t really change their act, but what did change was the context.

          British honour in the 90s was a wild time where only a decade previously we had Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson and a who host of rotters as weekly fixtures. Outright bigotry as commedy.

          Then it swung back hard (starting with the Comic Strip guys, possibly) but it was still fringe until the mid 90s.

          That said, if any of you guys are unaware of who Alexi Sayle is, you are in for a treat.

          Alexi Sayle Playlist

        • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
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          21 hours ago

          I’ve never found the guy funny, no. I remember what an obnoxious twat he was in An Idiot Abroad, never intentionally watched something he’s in.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    While I still think Chappell is talented if he actually put more effort,

    Man his comedy has gone downhill. It’s not a skill thing, it’s a: “I care about money and I know I’m gonna make enough anyway” kind of attitude.

    IMO this is why artists should never be payed too much. They should make what a good doctor makes, not enough to “build a brand”

    • Furbag@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      I’ve noticed that once comedians “hit it big” and can live off of the royalties that their specials generate, their comedy tends to go way downhill and they start using future performances as almost soapbox-adjacent platforms rather than writing actual jokes that people find funny. They don’t need to write funny material to live off of anymore, they can just ride on their fame and sell out venues wherever they go, so it becomes more of a speaking gig rather than an act.

      Like, I remember sitting down during the pandemic with a few friends to watch one of Chappell’s new specials and it was just him ranting the whole time, there might have been one or two jokes in there, but I think that was just his personality coming forward and not any conscious effort to deliver a setup and a punchline. It was such a letdown, because we were set for a night of comedy and it was just an angry rant with serious undertones.

      Maybe just anecdotal, but that’s how I see it going for a lot of famous comedians - not all of them, of course, but a lot of the household names from the past two decades have gone this route rather than segueing into showbiz like comics from the 90’s era.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        There is a video of Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK talking about comedy and their different approaches. This was before we knew about Louis CK but it was enlightening on how different the approaches are and I appreciated the difference between CK and Seinfeld. Seinfeld basically does the same act every year and changes maybe 20% at most. CK does an entirely new act each time. I did respect his decision to rewrite his whole performance each time he changes it.

        Unfortunately things are where we are at now but I think someone said prior and Carlin would do the same thing and they are some of the greats in comedy

    • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      He was always this way. Born to upper-middle-class parents, growing up in the suburbs, cosplaying aa an urban poor black person to grift white people put of their money. Punching down on Mexicans and Asians, anyone he could to be profitable. Now it’s trans people, but the grift has always been the same.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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        1 day ago

        He has a pretty well known interview where he whines about not being able to make fun of gay people and says something about how Comedy Central didn’t mind him making fun of black people and…

        Well, Dave, I don’t know if anyone mentioned this to you but you’re black and not gay.

        If he’s always at some level just never really identified with other black people, or at least the poor ones, that would make a lot of things about that disconnect make sense.

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      13 hours ago

      IMO this is why artists should never be payed too much. They should make what a good doctor makes, not enough to “build a brand”

      Yes, because it only corrupts the artists and not the companies paying them. /s

      Also, have you ever met a doctor when they’re out and about? What a crazy take you have.

    • criticon@lemmy.ca
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      When they become too rich they start making bits like “isn’t going to the Bentley dealership the worst?” or “oh I hate it when I can’t book first class and I have to travel on business cramped with all the others”

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    2 days ago

    I sat my girlfriend down to watch Robin Williams’ Live on Broadway set because it was stuck in my mind as the greatest comedy show of all time. I love that man and miss him, but we had to turn that set off a third of the way through. It has not aged well

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Is that the one where he’s got an entire table filled with water bottles and he makes it through like half of them by the end of his set?

      • scops@reddthat.com
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        1 day ago

        Yes it is. He uses one bottle to make a show of marking his territory like a dog.

    • Butterphinger@lemmy.zip
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      Same for my mom and I’s viewing of “Good Morning Vietnam”.

      Yeah, uhm. Great film, if you can get past the 1980’s Shock-Jock Robin Williams yelling to himself, from himself, at himself, back, forth, ad-nauseum.

      • Soulg@ani.social
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        1 day ago

        Completely agree. Never been a fan of his stand-up, but incredible comedic actor. And dramatic actor too for that matter