QAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK ANDA MISUNDERSTANDING AUDIENCE by JOHN VALENTINE BJeing a black comedian is a bitch!” comedian Richard Pryor has been heard to say on more than one occasion. The talented but troubled comic probably best describes the black comedian’s dilemma with those seven words. The job of the black comedian is a hard and demanding one. Comedians must constantly walk the tightrope between what’s funny and what’s in bad taste, and the black comedian must be particularly wary of offending his audience. He must weigh every word. Every joke. If he does jokes about his black experience, which often means making fun of himself, he is considered an Uncle Tom...a black who has sold out for money and exposure. Conversely, if he acts too mad about his experiences of being black in White America, he is just another angry nigger...and who wants to relive the sixties? To further understand the particularly delicate plight of the black comedian in the ’80s, one must go back to the ’60s. The attempt by blacks to open the ear of White America to the anguish and suffering of their second-class citizenship gave rise to a new black consciousness not only for blacks, but for whites as well. Blacks were rioting in the streets, marching, protesting, boycotting and in general making a nuisance of themselves, and just as in any time of strife and upheaval, the media moved into the fray with zeal. Suddenly black faces were all over the six o’clock news and it was more or less understood that it was time to give blacks some forums for expressing the way they felt about being black in America. One of the foremost proponents of this new awareness was the black comedian. Suddenly everything he uttered was funny. He could now joke about things like sitting on the back of the bus, being refused service in white restaurants, dating white women and other aspects of black life theretofore considered very unfunny. The club circuit opened up all over the country, and hued humorists like Dick Gregory, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Slappy White and others found themselves much in demand. The very same things they had been saying for years on the debilitating “chitlin circuit”...a series of one- night stands in small, smoky black clubs which usually offered more frustrations than rewards...were- funny now to both blacks and whites. The young, liberal white crowd came out in droves to hear the black comedian “tell it like it is.” Probably the hottest black comedian on the club circuit during the ’60s and early ’70s was Dick Gregory. Gregory, in addition to possessing one of the most analytic minds in comedy, wrote several best selling books, the most notable being his autobiography simply titled Nigger. Gregory best summed up the essence of being a black comedian and black comedy in general when he cracked to a mostly white audience that “America is really a funny place. It’s the only place in the world where I can be made to sit on the back of the bus and then get paid for just talking about it.” Born in a St. Louis ghetto in 1932, Gregory started his trek into comedy in the late ’50s, but it wasn’t until 1961 that he began to win recognition and prominence in the comedic arena. Credited with being the first comedian, black or white, to do so called “healthy racial jokes,” Gregory blazed new paths with his humor for other comedians to follow. Gregory best summed up the essence of being a black comedian when he cracked to a mostly white audience that “America is really a funny place. It’s the only place in the world where I can be made to sit on the back of the bus and then get paid for just talking about it.” Gregory’s humor also cut scathingly across racial lines, chiding whites for their prejudices toward blacks, and introducing the art of social commentary into comedy, in much the way a black politician would seek to serve the interests of both politics and his black constituency. “If there is any resentment in the house,” Gregory once told a Las Vegas audience, “please burn your cross now so we can get it over with and get on with the show.” Gregory’s humor could also make whites laugh at themselves while exposing their vulnerabilities for all to see. Said Gregory: “You gotta give white folks credit...their self-confidence is astounding. Who else could go to a small island in the South Pacific where there’s no crime, poverty, unemployment, war or worry...and call it primitive?” While generally acknowledged to be the Dean of black comedians, Gregory now finds himself sitting at home out of work and disillusioned about the whole unfunny business of comedy. Always a strong supporter of the black cause, Gregory has fasted, marched, demonstrated and been arrested countless times for his civil rights activities, most of it during the time he was widely heralded as one of the best comedians in the business. Refusing to knuckle under to the pressure of “cleaning up his act” for the advent of the ’70s and television, Gregory’s humor became bitter and caustic, relegating him to the junk pile of obscurity in the ’80s. Now a virtual recluse, the man who started it all for black comedians must content himself with helping to raise his large family, giving occasional interviews to magazines, and fasting over issues which affect the poor and minorities. Comedy is supposed to be funny, but such isn’t always the case. Like any other form of entertainment, especially where the big bucks are concerned, comedy is a cutthroat business, and often the jockeying for position and prestige can cause the waters to become extremely rough and choppy. Those at the top of the heap, a Johnny Carson, George Burns or Bob Hope, are among the highest paid superstars in show business, regularly sitting in with heads of state and laughing all the way to the bank. A few rungs down the ladder, where even the most successful black comedians tend to find themselves, the going gets much tougher. Gregory wasn’t the only victim of the intrusion of television and big bucks into comedy. Many black comedians fell by the wayside when black comedy came out of the closet and was showcased as prime-time fare for television and films...some unable, others unwilling to make the switch. But make no mistake that television helped to make the careers of many up-and-coming black comedians who were more than glad to trade in their club dates for appearances on the “Johnny Carson Show.” One of the most successful at making the transition to television was Redd Foxx. Born in St. Louis ten years before Gregory, Foxx can tell his own share of hard luck stories. Born Jon Elroy Sandford, Foxx, started out espousing black humor in Harlem niteries. He was also one of the first black comedians to abandon the rural black humor approach so popular with black comedians of that era and do urban ghetto material, of which he had firsthand knowledge. It was only after decades of black- and-blue obscurity on the chitlin circuit that the turbulence of the ’60s gave Foxx the forum to express his “risque” humor to whites. “I don’t want no white woman. When you see me with a white woman, I’m holding her for the police. I ain’t stupid either. I prefer Elizabeth Taylor to Shirley Chisholm. I even prefer Richard Burton to Shirley Chisholm. Just like you white cats prefer Lena Horne to Eleanor Roosevelt.” “When I see a fat dude in the audience, I always try to tell him, ‘Man, do something about that weight. When did you last see your weenie?’ ” Foxx claimed: “I educated young America. It’s important to let your kids hear these records, things they can’t ask you, they hear on the records.” He recorded comedy albums by the dozen, the ones that were supposed to be hidden away. In 1972, Foxx’ big break came. He was signed to play the cantankerous, grouchy but lovable old junk man in the “Sandford and Son” series. Foxx was wise enough to use the popular series as a springboard to bigger and even better things...the big bucks of the prestigious Vegas club scene and appearances in several movies. Tne success of Foxx in making the transition to television and the failure of Gregory to do the same probably can best be explained by the nature of black comedy before the advent of television. Black comedy was largely Al Jolson in black face singing “Mammy” or Stepin Fetchit rolling his big eyes in fright and uttering his famous “feets do yo’ duty” line. The few black comedians who did manage to gain recognition in the pre-sixties era were having trouble facing themselves in the mirror after they got off the set. The black comedy of the pre-sixties era wasn’t only offensive to blacks who were joyfully discovering a new awareness of themselves, but to the whole ideal of freedom, justice and equality for all Americans. When television moved into the comedy business full time, all hell broke loose! It became not only survival of the fittest, but also of the wittiest. The strife and turmoil of the ’60s was over and America was supposedly setting about the business of ushering in a new era of equality and prosperity for all its citizens. Yet with comedians like Pryor and Rudy Ray Moore slinging words like “nigger,” “honky” and “pussy” around, just the thought of introducing the black comedian to the sterilized pablum television viewers had become accustomed to was a thought which caused many producers to break out in cold sweats. Black comedians had two choices: either clean up their act for television or fall by the wayside. They had to change their image and material to fit the image television was looking for in the ’70s...that of the happy-go- lucky black without a care or serious thought in his nappy head. Black comedy, as practiced by the Gregorys and Pryors, was now too political for TV, and black comics who subscribed to that particula- brand of humor were considered rabble-rousers. The progression from the club circuit to television was a particularly stormy one for the enigmatic Richard Pryor. Pryor’s plight probably best illustrates the struggle for identity and self-respect many black comedians find Clinton St. Quarterly 17
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