Sunday, September 17, 2006

That joke isn't funny anymore

I saw the one of the most vile, but not the most funny, movies, the Aristocrats. Apparently the Aritocrats is an old vaudeville joke, and comedians have a tradition of riffing on the joke and making it as over the top as possible. The only rule is that the start and the punchline are the same. And the punchline is lame. So the documentary asks comedians to talk about it and tell it.

The joke is vile because it seems to always include piles of fecal matter, gallons of orgasm product, urine in keg sized amounts and often random acts of violence. Oddly no pus was mentioned. Pus is pretty gross, so it should be added I think. Anyway, most of the jokes aren't that funny, just nasty. There are some exceptions. Here is part of Kevin Pollack telling the joke as Christopher Walken would tell it. The one that is most worth watching is the Bob Saget joke. This is only part of it, but it is fun to watch his face. It's like the joke has taken over and he can't stop it. Sadly most of the rest doesn't reach those heights.

All the comedians in the movie are white. Chris Rock pops on and says black comedians don't tell the joke. Since they weren't mainstream to begin with, they just talked dirty on stage anyway.

5 comments:

mademoiselle sand said...

I love the way chris rock is black opinion for rent

Tripp said...

It's a pity Rudy Ray Moore was not asked.

Tripp said...

I always knew you are Laura were fond of base humor.

I kid, I kid.

For me there was too much down time between funniness.

Brack said...

My take is that the movie is more about the stand-up subculture - how they interact, how they know someone's earned their chops, etc. - and less about the joke itself. Perhaps a pomo discourse on signifiers vs. content would be in order here. T, you could call it "De Aristocratia"

Plus, Gilbert Gottfried's profane flailing during the Hefner roast was hy-f*cking-sterical.

Tripp said...

Rather than get in the semiotics of porno, I recommend a Marxist class study which exposes the critique of exploitation inherent in the genre. Much as Salo condemned cruelty by being cruel, porn castigates abuse of people by abusing them.