George Carlin and Dave Chappelle: How comedy has been saved

Theres something about comedy that separates it from other performing arts. While plastic arts deal with imitating life and performing arts deal with interpreting and presenting a conception of life, comedy is the art of challenging life and it's conceptions. 

Ever since I was a kid growing up in NY I remember seeing comedians perform and push the limits of what was acceptable in the time. Since I was a kid I only had time to see comedians on TV. I remember a show called "In Living Color". All the comedians in the show were black except Jim Carrey. Carrey was always overacting and stretching the limits of comedy bordering on the line of what was acceptable, funny and objectionable.  

Dirty Carlin

Before Carrey, there was a comedian who many regard as one of the greatest. His name was George Carlin. He had a witty and caustic humor that really pushed boundaries intelligently. He made social criticism in a way that made you both laugh and think. Inside his act were tiny kernels of wisdom here and there that people used as reference on some topics. But the day Carlin made history was when he said the forbidden "7 Words You can never Say on Television", Up until that moment there was an explicit written rule in performing venues that prohibited the uttering of seven specific curse words. You couldn't say them on public spaces and that included TV, Radio and Theaters. 

George Carlin decided to create a stand up around that prohibition. It sold well and people like it. If you listen to it he makes a lingüistic analysis of the seven words and questions why were those the only censored words out of the 400,000+ words contained in the English language. On July 21, 1972, Carlin was arrested at Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Summerfest and charged with violating that state’s obscenity laws after performing his controversial routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”. He was eventually acquitted. But this caused an uproar on the comedy and performing arts community that ended in the Supreme Court because one radio station decided to air his act uncensored as a way of protesting his arrest and was fined by the FCC. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC had oversight over the airwaves. Carlin later found refuge in cable TV were the FCC doesn't have a jurisdiction. 

Speech regulation

After Carlin's arrest and acquital, and the decision of the Supreme Court, comedians could only perform fully on comedy clubs and theaters. Some developed clean versions of their acts for presentation on TV. If you saw Sam Kinison on TV he had an act suitable for that venue but if you really wanted to see him unchained you could go see him at a club or theater and get the full experience. That was how comedian dealt with the regulations. 

Skipping forward to the 90's we see the emergence of a comedian called Dave Chapelle. He satarted performing in clubs in NY and his act caught the eye of the people at a cable TV channel called Comedy Channel (Later Renamed Comedy Central). Chapelle had the opportunity to do sketch comedy on a show of his own called "Chappelle's Show". His socially critical act focusing on race was criticized but he was out of the reach of regulations because he was on Cable TV. Nevertheless there were people who tried to regulate his speech especially his constant use of the "n-word". He made fun of that in some of his sketches. Chapp   

Chappelle has always been a real comic. He loves stand up more than anything has has gained his placed among the greatest in the genre. Be it on stage or on Cable he always kept it real by talking about things in a candid way. 

 Fast forward to the 2010's and the advent of Streaming TV which is not regulated by the FCC. Netflix decided to book Chappelle for a couple of shows. His act incorporates current social issues and Chappelle decided to go like Carlin against censorship, specifically the new regulators in communication, the LGBT community. Chappelles has poked fun at white, people, black people, asians (he is married to a filipina) gays, and trans people. Of all the people who he mentions in his act only the people form the LGBT community are the ones making a fuss of what he said especially, trans advocates. 

Ever since he started his series on Netflix the influncers and organizations under the LGBT community have been calling for Chappelle's censorship. The woke mob wants his career destroyed just because they don't like his jokes about them, but they don't complain about his jokes on white people. Using the power of cybermobbing, some woke influencers want to do what the FCC can't and censor Chappelle only for making references to the trans community in his show. His last episode for Netflix is aptly called "The Closer". "The closer" in comedy is the name given to the best joke a comedian has in his show with which he closes his act. His response to the criticism and calls for his cancellation was brilliant: "In this country you can shoot a kill a n**** but better not hurt a gay person's feelings." That sounds like Bill Maher when he said: "I think there is a gay mafia. I think if you cross them, you do get whacked."

If you look at it, Chappelle has done for comedy on this time what Carlin did for the genre on his, unshackle it from the chains of censorship. He has gone full frontal on the woke mob and with his mic dropped on Netflix has done what a couple of days later earned him a standing ovation in Hollywood were he settled the matter definitively: 

“If this is what being canceled is like, I love it...F— Twitter. F— NBC News, ABC News, all these stupid-ass networks he reportedly said. I’m not talking to them. I’m talking to you. This is real life.”

Carlin and Chappelle are comedy's saviors. 

See also

Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Defends Dave Chappelle Special in Staff Memo: ‘Artistic Freedom’ Is Different for Stand-Up (EXCLUSIVE)