Why Richard Pryor is Still Funny

- Here at Say It Loud, comedy is our middle name.

- [Hallease] We could be talking about standards of beauty, baby names, fashion trends, the fascinating world of ancestry DNA testing.

We always find a way to make it funny.

- Wigs are usually involved.

I will not apologize.

- But when we sat down to write an episode about being funny?

Like, the actual art of comedy?

We bombed, y'all.

- Hello, everybody.

Comedy.

I told my mom I was gonna work for a show called Say It Loud, and she told me, "Go ahead and buy some new cardigans."

I said, "Mom, I'm not Mr. Rogers.

- [HECKLER] Get off the stage.

- That was a PBS joke.

- We want to understand how our culture has used comedy to open up, share our human experiences, and expose hard truths.

Somebody's routine clearly still needs work, so we'll spare you our jokes for now and look to the greats for guidance.

- Frequently cited as the greatest of all time, Richard Pryor is probably your favorite comedian's favorite comedian.

- Any comic working in America, whether they know it or not, was influenced by what he's done.

- And it's because he ushered in visceral, uncomfortable observation and vulnerability, from the perspective of his Blackness.

- We know George Carlin exists.

We know, we know.

- We got it.

(upbeat music) - Richard, Richard is the rawest in show business.

Richard is the one that made me wanna do comedy.

- It's 1964, a slick-haired, clean-shaven, 24-year-old guy named Richard Pryor makes his television debut on a show called On Broadway Tonight.

- Yeah, I had a wild neighborhood, I gotta tell you, because my mother's Puerto Rican, and my father's Negro, and we live in a real big Jewish tenement building in an Italian neighborhood.

(audience laughs) Every time I go outside, the kids say, "Get him, he's all of them!"

- Pryor used his own life as the butt of the joke while commenting on the absurdity of American race relations at the time.

- We take this for granted now.

We expect comedy, especially stand-up, to be both deeply personal, yet insightfully uncover an aspect of this weird world we live in.

It doesn't have to be political per se or even politically correct, we just expect it to say something.

But it wasn't always that way.

- Minstrelsy relied on mockery to entertain the audience with song, sketches, and dance.

Vaudeville comedy routines were based on funny situations or silly misunderstandings.

And slapstick used exaggerated physical comedy to make the masses laugh.

Now, do you have to enjoy these particular art forms?

No.

But each of them had their own structure, themes, and place in the limelight of pop culture.

- These days, we've come to value the personal over the situational.

Steve Allen, creator and first host of The Tonight Show said in a 1957 Cosmopolitan interview: "Tragedy plus time, "plus the will to be amused equals comedy."

And that's where Richard Pryor comes in.

- Nothing was off-limits, not cuss words, not slurs, not his childhood trauma, or even his own wrongdoing.

The comedians in the genres we referenced earlier were larger than life, exaggerated parodies of human behavior.

Richard Pryor was just human.

- Look, what Richard was able to do was say "I'm giving you my black experience."

- Historically, Black folks weren't in control of their image or portrayal in mass media.

The stories on stage or on screen were rarely, if ever, in our own words or of our own creation.

Being unapologetically Black isn't about debunking stereotypes, it's taking control of your own story, telling the truth about who you are, where you come from, and how that makes you see the world.

- It inspired a generation of comics and audiences who hadn't seen their experiences on stage before.

- Okay, he was black and young, and so were we.

And so, a new generation of humor came from Richard.

- Mark Twain said that the secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow.

And that man up there is the Evil Kenevil of comedy.

- He talked about his substance abuse, his temper, interactions with the police or women.

We know it as the saying "you gotta laugh to keep from crying".

And if you got a lot to cry about, whether it's your personal experience or a collective history, humor is a huge coping mechanism.

- So when he tells a joke like this-- - I'm doing a standup on the show because the people, NBC said, "Well, America don't know who you are.

"And you come out, and they're scared.

"They just see black people, and they get nervous "If they don't know who they are.

"You should come out and introduce yourself."

I was born.

(audience laughs) - You're laughing because, it's true.

You've either lived it or witnessed it, and you're bonding over shared knowledge or experience.

- Then they feel safe, "Oh it's all right, Marge, "you can watch him.

"He was born, it's wonderful."

- Comedy is also a critique.

It creates a space where you can take back your power or disarm others by choosing to make fun of someone or something.

Take this joke about different types of interactions with white guys.

- Some white dudes you cut in front of don't play that, though, right.

You cut in front of him, "All right, cut the [Redacted]."

(audience laughs) - At the root of this joke is a very real observation: some people get nervous around a group of Black folks.

Pryor chooses to zero in on the way these people move and talk and nails it.

"White dude, 'sure go ahead, sure cut in, sure cut.

"Well, then, what do you want, trouble?

"There's a whole bunch of 'em.

"They could be cousins or anything."

- You can't spend your whole life sitting with this knowledge that there are people who are afraid of you.

It's just too heavy.

- Yeah.

- So instead, you make fun of the situation and the characters involved as if to say, "Isn't this absurd?

"We're both just people."

- It could be Pryor, Dick Gregory.

- When Negros in Chicago move into one large area, and it look like we might control the votes, they don't say anything to us.

They have a slum clearance.

(audience laughs) We do the same thing on the West Coast, but you call it freeway.

(audience laughs) - Wanda Sykes or Amanda Seales.

- When I was growing up, my mother, she wouldn't even let us dance in the car.

You know, we sitting in the car, a good song come on the radio, we (humming) my mother's like, she would stop the car.

"White people are looking at you."

(audience laughs) - Wait, huh?

"White people are looking at you."

I'm like, "Oh, damn."

(audience laughs) She was right.

- They use comedy to challenge cultural norms or complacency.

They blow the lid off all the ugly stuff our society thinks it's hiding.

- That's why there's often tension in the laughter.

This sort of comedy plays on people's biases.

The humor relies on your ability to at least acknowledge or buy into the prejudice the comedian experienced or the stereotypes in the joke.

That tension reorients the audience's point of view.

- To get the joke or find it funny, you usually have to sympathize, even if that means you're implicated in the joke.

And once a comedian can get you to that point, to laugh at your own behavior, they can take it on home by giving you a dose of social commentary.

- There ain't a white man in this room that would change places with me.

None of you.

None of you would change places with me, and I'm rich.

(audience laughs) - Where you might have had a wall up, laughter makes it possible to turn that wall into a window into another point of view.

Satire sticks with us.

Which might be why this particular style of comedy is so popular.

Just look at SNL or the Daily Show.

- Studies shows that people who get their news from a comedy show exhibit more fact retention than people who read a newspaper or watch CNN, all because of the brain's dopamine-reward system.

- Laughing feels good, which makes you remember stuff better.

- And maybe that's why Black people continue to use comedy as a tool for social change.

It's definitely harder to hate someone while you're laughing with them.

- 'Cause some people, people don't hate each other, and people start talking to each other, and then they start talking to each other, they find out who's the problem.

- Which is?

- Uh, greedy people.

- But while we'd all like to believe in comedy's unwavering ability to bridge the gap between us all, when you're a sub-culture within a larger society, nothing, not even humor, is entirely for you.

That's not how culture works, especially when technology is involved.

- Journalist Wil Haygood aptly described this catch-22.

With more visibility, comes more opportunity to be seen and heard and misunderstood.

To paraphrase, "The negro comics' trajectory has gone from minstrel shows "to the big screen.

"Sometimes the laughter is of a confused sort, "owing to misinterpretation, the joke merged with history "and the ears of whites placed at awkward angles."

Television put Black entertainers like Richard Pryor into white homes where there had been no Black people before.

- Did Richard Pryor's use of the n-word empower the wrong people?

Is it his responsibility to even take that into consideration?

As he paved the way for more unapologetic Black comics with various Black experiences, the issue of crossover or palatability was questioned or compromised.

- Stand up, sketch shows, and sitcoms could be someone's only interaction with a particular group of people.

And not everyone is laughing at the same joke.

In 2005, Dave Chappelle famously exited his show at the height of its popularity, and quit comedy for over a decade.

- And it all started with one long and hardy laugh from a white guy in his audience, as Chappelle performed a satirical sketch in blackface.

It made Chappelle deeply uncomfortable, and he had to ask himself if his work was effectively criticizing stereotypes or simply reinforcing them.

- What I didn't consider is how many people watch the show, and how the way people use television is subjective.

Somebody on set that was white laughed in such a way...

I know the difference of people laughing with me and people laughing at me.

And it was the first time I'd ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with.

Not just uncomfortable, but like, "Should I fire this person?"

(audience laughs) I don't want black people to be disappointed in me for putting that out there.

- Well you don't wanna be disappointed in yourself.

- You know what, Oprah?

(audience laughs) You're right.

- Yeah.

- I mean, I can't even lie.

I struggle with this, too, as a frequent consumer of Instagram comedy.

These videos get millions of views and thousands of comments.

I know why it's funny, but does everybody else?

- Especially with the use of AAVE or Ebonics, certain movements and behaviors.

We might be in control of our content now more than ever, but social media can make us lose sight of intentions and context when stuff is interpreted and reposted by others.

- Oh, and don't forget Black Twitter.

Remember when we said comedy is tragedy plus time?

The span of time between traumatic events and viral hashtags is almost instantaneous now.

- Does this quick-witted coping mechanism lead others to believe things aren't really that bad?

Just because we fire off thousands of BBQ Becky tweets in a day doesn't mean we enjoy the idea of having the cops called on our family function.

So, who are some of your favorite funny people online right now?

- Right now I am loving @YesImPrettyVee and @TheBSimone2.

These are some funny ladies on Instagram, and also everywhere, but I watch them on Instagram.

And I love how they use physical comedy, so it's their exaggerated movements, their exaggerated voices, but they're also like super observant, so they're somehow extra and on point at the same time.

And I think it's so smart.

- And that's like a skill.

- It's a skill, yes.

- A legitimate skill.

I mean, for me, you know, aside from you-- - Oh, thank you.

- Obviously, I also enjoy KevOnStage.

- Yes.

- His brand of comedy isn't necessarily feel good, but in a hectic world, I could always go to him for a good wholesome laugh.

- Guilt-free laugh.

- A good guilt-free laugh.

- I think for me, it's all about you know, being true to myself.

If it's something that I think is edgy, I decide, I spend a lot of time before I make the video deciding if I'll make it, if I do, what angle I take, 'cause I don't like to hassle with deleting videos.

Nobody is above these jokes.

Everybody get these jokes, me, my wife, kids, my grandma.

You, if you fell down the stairs, you get these jokes.

And I know we just met, these jokes are for everybody.

- One of my favorite sketches that you did is the Calling in Black sketch.

I would think a lot of people probably know you for because it really had a great commentary around something that we're all sort of experiencing and going through.

And to understand the joke, you have to be socially aware.

- Yes.

Sometimes, I need a minute.

Okay, and that's where calling in black would be so clutch.

Oh, no, no, it's not contagious, I need a solid day to reaffirm my humanity to myself.

So, I'll see you tomorrow.

I have a slight fever boiling with the rage of the police killing my people.

- So, how hard was it to write that?

Is it hard?

- Mmm, yes.

So, Call In Black was a video I made that was me re-imagining what it sounded like and looked like if I was able not to call in sick, but to call in black.

Like, we've had a hard new day-- - A hard news day.

- You know what I'm saying, Not guilty-- - Yeah.

(chuckles) - You know, having been declared not guilty, and I just need a day off.

- Yeah.

- You know, so, it was definitely a difficult process, because I had to teeter that line between making sure people didn't think I was making light of a situation, but instead I wanted to communicate how exhausted I was.

So, it's definitely a lot of effort that goes into that.

Comedy looks effortless, but it's very effortful, and so, I had to make people feel what I felt.

- I think I would love people to realize that probably our greatest skill is making it look easier than it really is.

Laughter is involuntary.

I have to say something that triggers a response in your brain that laughs.

That is very difficult.

Comedians, we gotta prove to you I'm funny.

And sometimes you come to a comedy show, for whatever reason people do this all the time, come to a comedy show, and they're like, "You prove to me that you're funny.

"I'll be the judge of that."

They don't necessarily come to laugh, we gotta work to prove to you that we're funny.

People only give you about, there's slot only give you about three to five minutes.

- Comedy has been our greatest gift and our sharpest tool.

Should Chris Rock have boycotted the Oscars that one time?

That's up to your personal opinion, but getting the Oscars to pay you to roast Hollywood to their face?

- Hollywood is sorority racist.

It's like, "We like you, Rhonda, "but you're not a Kappa."

(audience laughs) - It was awkward.

I mean, even on this show, we use comedy to talk about pretty hard topics, because we want you to engage with us, and as Baughman said, "One of the greatest sins in teaching is to be boring" - For better or worse, Pryor's work was groundbreaking because it was honest.

The good, the bad, and the ugly personified.

And if we're going to teach each other about our experiences, sometimes that's the only way to go.

- So what makes y'all laugh?

Let us know in the comments.

Also we've linked a bunch of resources for you to check out about this topic.

So, go forth and learn about what makes pain so funny.

- Subscribe or follow this channel, give this video a like, follow us on social media @SayItLoudPBS, and we'll see y'all next time.

- [Both] Bye.

- Yeah, what's the deal with, um, you know, uh, privacy settings, and the terms and services, am I right?

What's the deal with, um, algorithms, am I right?

Like, Al Gore Rhythm.

(music chiming) (dramatic music)