Michael Richards. Mel Gibson. Pat Robertson.
Chris Rock. George Carlin. Richard Pryor.
Lenny Bruce

On January 24, 2007 at the San Francisco Comedy Club – shoulder to shoulder with the tenderloin – local comic Boxcar presented Upside Down With a Fork Up Your A**! : An Interactive Study in Racism and Comedy; under the guise of his weekly show High Contrast Comedy.

After Michael Richards decided to put on his hood in front of the world last winter, some online discussions with comics took place, understandably. Fellow comic Joe Klocek sent me an email. He knew i ran a weekly show – "High Contrast Comedy" – that tries to promote thought-provoking and intelligent standup comedy and avoid the typical mainstream pablum that has become synonymous with standup comedy. He suggested a theme of racism and comedy. Born from several emails between us i settled on a format for the evening.

Three panelist comics and six performing comics. The performing comics would perform racially sensitive material. It would then be discussed by the panel. I was to be the "moderator" for the show, whatever that means. The audience was to be encouraged to comment and ask questions. I wanted to focus not on the quality of jokesmithing that was to be going on, but rather the appropriateness of some humor, the merits of racial humor, whether exposing racism through comedy helps bridge the differences it exposes or does it serve to reinforce the primal fears from which racism breeds? Stuff like that. Heady challenges for a standup show (and audience). But, I knew that the subject was timely and volatile enough that it would make for good theater.

The evening opened with a brief intro of what was going to happen. The audience, while being on the light side for such a wild night, became more and more involved as the night went on. After my opening, one of the panelists would do a set of comedy. Ten minutes or so of whatever they wanted to do. I was SO fortunate to get three of San Francisco's most respected, intelligent and funny comics. Aundre The Wonder Woman, the masterful Tony Sparks and, of course, Joe Klocek.

Tony Sparks took the stage and was wonderful. Then i introduced the panel who took seats near the stage. The first comic then performed.

When reaching out to comics to fill the line up for the show i sent out an email with some instructions:

What i need is (6) comics who are willing to come down to 50 Mason and perform 3-5 minutes of "racially charged" material.

Y'all know what i am talking about.
After each comics' set, there will be a panel of three comics who will then be lead in 10 minute discussion of the material just presented. The audience will be encouraged to ask questions and comment on the material.

The comic who just finished their set will not be included in the discussion-- meaning, you will NOT be able to defend your work. This is firm. So please do not reply if you don't think you can take having your work talked about in front of an audience. As the "moderator" it will be my goal to maintain levity, civility and brevity in the discussion. I do not want to hurt people's ego's. But this is a potentially volatile subject so i can't make any promises.

Feel free to be as "out there" as you want to be with your material. I think we can all agree that much discussion has taken place on this board regarding racist/offensive comedy and i want to bring this to the stage. Should be a wild night.

That is what happened. Comic – Discussion. Interspersed throughout the evening, the other two panelist/comics, in turn would perform a ten minute set of comedy. This really helped break up the evening and keep things light and funny.

Of the number of comics that contacted me regarding appearing in the show, i was able to select a good six. Six i knew covered a bit of the spectrum in comic skills and experience. I did not know any of them to be really the type to be an out and out racist comic, ala Andrew Dice Clay. I knew what the lines were in the San Francisco comedy scene regarding race on stage, so i knew that if i even got a sampling of that that there would be plenty to talk about.

Now, I had never done anything like this before. Being a moderator of sorts. I'd be sitting on a stool, looking over at the three local comic sensei and all i am thinking about is "keep things moving...keep things moving..." BUT I didn't have to do anything. Joe, Tony and Aundre were fantastic. After each comic performed the three jumped right in and off we went. I was able to direct the flow of the discussion, bringing in the audience as needed. And managing the time. Knowing when to move on to the next performer.

There was an eerie out of time and space feel to the room. Why? Because of that word. People were saying it! There were three black performers (including two on the panel). The rest were white, totaling 7 and then myself (white). I have never known my fellow comics to talk hurtful, mean-spirited racists rhetoric amongst each other (misogyny, well that's another story...) however, before the show even started, the "N'word" was already making its presence felt. Comics riff and before this show there was talk of which comics are better at racial material, so names like Pryor and Carlin and Rock, Chappelle and others emerged. And of course Lenny Bruce. No one has ever dissected race with comedy better than Bruce. Deconstructing race and religion were his genius. But his trailblazing of language on stage, his exploding the boundaries of what it means to be a stand-up comic – yes, left a legacy of a few Carlins and Hicks and others. But his real legacy is the endless cesspool of Andrew Dice Clay's. It's as if Lenny Bruce discovered the atom and used it for a fuel cell. And then Dice Clay comes along and says, "Let's make a bomb out of that too!" There are way more Dice Clay's than Carlin's walking around.

A white comic approached the group before the show, "So i guess we can use the word nigger tonight". Well, initially people looked at me, being the producer and all..but i musta given this hunched shoulder, "um...i don't....ah..." I hope i said something like, "yea, on stage, in context of a joke..."

But i am pretty sure i had no real response. Aundre said something back but i can't recall what it was. Either way, it was odd. The comic who said it did not, i believe, have any malice. He was exploring boundaries OFF THE STAGE. Generally, a bad idea when it comes to things like the n'word. It did set a little tone of hostility. Was it going to play out along color lines this evening? Turns out only about half of the comics used the n'word. It was agreed by all that comics, ALL comics, regardless of race can say any word they want. However, if white, when it comes to that word you better have some air tight logic, stellar performance skills and a great punch line. Otherwise, stay away.

The evening focused almost entirely solely on the black/white issue. This surprised me. I know the diversity of the SF comedy pool and was hoping to have a more diverse evening. However, the comics, the panel and audience had plenty to work with.

I made it clear that this was not a class in how to help comics write their jokes better. I wanted to really study stereotypes, excessive or unnecessary use of certain words (the n'word) and a let the conversation go where he would. And all of these issues were continually in a frame of reference that black and minority comics have a greater latitude with language than whites. Why? Because white people have kicked a lot of other people's asses for a lot of years. This topic erupted on the SF Comedy Bulletin board shortly after.

Each of the six performers - which actually turned into seven as i received a request from local madman Kurt Weitzman that he wanted to go on – went up and jumped right into their sets. Doing as i directed there was none of the customary get to know me comedy you sometimes have to do to get an audience on your side. The acts varied in quality of jokes, skill of performer/writer, and sophistication (or lack thereof). Kurt was amazing. A true craftsman. He alone, i felt, rose above the work and brought true insight to the topic. His material would cut across color lines. That is what good comedy, on any subject, can do. One other comic presented well thought out, intelligent comedy on race. His material was less charged mainly because it was presented in a very mild way but was also well written and on-point (very San Francisco PC). Most of the others, i felt, dabbled lightly with borderline racial material. There were mostly the "black people do it this way and white people do it that way." This is very hacky, not offensive (other that being hacky!) and while may get a ton of laughs at "clubs and colleges across the country" – is not really anything more than material oh-so-done-before. A few of the other comics did push the line (or so they thought they were). There weren't ton's of n-bombs dropped and i ensured to make them accountable to our panel. The panel surprised me by all agreeing the word is fair game. All also admitted that a white comic better know what they're doing, but blacks can say it any time. I questioned a black comics use of the word in the aside "Niggers love to buy shoes." Why put that in there? And one of the black panelists laughed and said "Cause it's true!" Answers to tough questions, eh?

There was a wonderful theme that recurred through the discussion: The experience of the black comic trying to make it in comparison to the white comic. There was one moment where it was mentioned that black comics NEED to work white rooms to make it, but a white comic doesn't need ever to work a black club. And I'm thinking to myself, "wow, how nice to work a club!" This was a great point.

Another related point, it was said that a reason why white comics are not as successful with black audiences as black comics are with white audiences, is because the whites don't take the time to learn anything about black culture. Many whites can live their entire day, week after week without ever interacting with a black person. So how would you expect to claim to be able to want to use the n'word in public and get laughs! Um. No. I wonder how many African-American folks Michael Richards associates with? Aside from the countless blacks that were cast on Seinfeld, i mean....

It was then said that white comics often come into a black club and start making fun of jesus and expect not to get in trouble with the crowd. I chimed in that that is not really a race thing, is it? I mean go to Alabama and make fun of jesus and you'd get the same reception – trying to raise the discussion to the broader issues of stereotyping.

This side discussion of the different experience a black comic has from a white comic was both wonderful and unexpected. It added to the overall discussion of the merits of race related material as perceived by the audience. What this brought into focus in my mind is that all good comedy comes from personal experience. Hence the differences in experience in trying to achieve success in comedy is so racially defined that it is almost by definition that a minority comic would be better at race related humor. So why aren't there more successful black comics slicing and dicing race in this country? Hhmmm...who controls the media?

A final note on the production of the evening. In staging my High Contrast Comedy in Seattle for years, i customarily showed videos and audio clips. I was hoping to be able to show videos of comics over time as well as illustrating the intentional attempts by the mass media to reinforce these stereotypes on the viewers. Divide and conquer.

Throughout the night the audience became more willing to jump in. There were at least two occasions where i had to shut down the discussion to move the show on. There was a little tit-for-tat between two of the comics there that night, but it was more play than anything else. Otherwise the conversation with the audience was lively, but not too provocative.

One great note provided by Joe Klocek:
The second thing that amazed me was after more than a few white people had used the N-word on stage, an audience member was hurt by my use of the word retards, to sum up my experience with people in the Midwest. Oh San Francisco. I am by no means a conservative, but I am drifting away from the liberal base for reasons like this. More than a few times in this city I have been on stage and done a joke that only a table of African-Amercians have laughed at while the guilty white liberals clutched their hands to their chest and exclaimed in shock. To me, this represents the height of intellectual racism. "Well, since you don't understand that you should be offended by that, then we'll be offended for you." These are the same people who right after slavery might have said, you can still pick our cotton because it's all you know, and we will gladly hold your money for you. For the last time San Francisco; to make fun of the bad thing, you have to actually use the word that the bad thing is called.

All in all i thank everyone who had the courage to take part and to Joe Hunt and the San Francisco Comedy Lounge at 50 Mason for his support in staging such a daring effort. It was a wonderful challenge and i could not have been happier with the way it all played out.

peace
boxcar

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