Chris Rock vs. Dave Chappelle: The True Kings of Comedy
One of my favorite small jokes on Chappelle’s Show is during “Kneehigh Park,” the sexually explicit spoof of Sesame Street. Before Dave introduces a group of small children to the dangers of venereal disease, a young girl says excitedly, “Hey, you’re Chris Rock!” Chappelle lets the mistake slide. With a weariness that shows he’s heard it before, he says: “No, but close enough.”
Since the two most prominent comedians of the post-Seinfeld era happen to both be black males, it’s easy for America to get them mixed up or lump their racial musings together. In fact, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle have fairly divergent approaches to stand-up comedy. Rock is a combative lecturer, while Chappelle is a conciliatory storyteller. Chris Rock likes to remind you of everything that wasn’t accomplished during the Civil Rights Movement, while Chappelle is trying to figure out if a post-racial America is even possible. They’re both incredibly funny, and insightful if you take an extra moment to reflect on any of their jokes. But who’s the better comedian?
For this competition, I decided to do a strictly stand-up comparison. While Chappelle’s Show is brilliant in a lot of ways, it’s the product of a lot of people’s talent and hard work (and would sway my opinion to such an extent that this wouldn’t be much of a contest). Stand-up offers an opportunity to evaluate both comedians at their most essential, with only a mic and an hour to tell us something about the world. I rewatched the two best television specials each comic has produced: Bring the Pain (1996) and Bigger and Blacker (2000) for Chris Rock and Killin’ Them Softly (2000) and For What It’s Worth (2004) by Dave Chappelle. My evaluation is based on all four standup specials in their entirety, but I’m just pulling out a few great bits to discuss for this post. All right, game time:
Chris Rock: The King of Racial Rhetoric
“What the fuck did you expect him to sound like? ‘I’ma drop me a bomb today! I’ll be pres-o-dint!'”
I have seen two bits of stand-up comedy in my life that were truly revelatory, in that they immediately made me view my world a little differently, and this is one of them (the other is Louis CK’s rant about how little we appreciate technology). Chris Rock’s gift is in being able to peel back the layers of our social interactions and reveal the often dysfunctional clockwork that actually makes the world tick. So it is with this segment. It reminded me of learning to read around age 4 by sounding out the signs at the supermarket, and how my grandmother seemed to resent the white shoppers who were so impressed by me. How do you deal with a burden that produces such an odd mix of emotions as the burden of low expectations? One approach is to laugh at it. I love Dave Chappelle, but I don’t think he’s ever said something so true so succinctly.
“Ever since you were 13, every guy you met has been trying to fuck you.”
Mostly I pulled this clip to show that Chris Rock can also be hilarious about things besides race. He’s equally direct when it comes to relationships and a bunch of other issues (like his awesome rant about medical care). I like this bit because it’s one that both men and women can relate to, whereas most gender dynamic jokes really only resonate for one side. Eddie Murphy’s Raw still has some of the funniest jokes I’ve heard about relationships (“Half!“), but this great bit shows that Rock has range.
“Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people.”
Can Chris Rock take real talk too far? If there’s a boundary, he nudges up to it in this skit. Not because it’s offensive, but because this isn’t necessarily something everyone on Earth needs to hear or is responsible enough to hear. This eight-minute manifesto, so famous it was spoofed on The Office and offered as sage advice by President Obama, is almost like lifting the veil on black culture (and black divisions have only gotten more pronounced since he launched his rant in 1996). It’s devastatingly funny, it’s how lots of (most?) well-off black people think, and it’s an insight that only Chris Rock could really get away with. Bill Cosby sparked controversy almost ten years later when he basically said the same stuff without couching it in comedy. The most interesting thing about this bit is what Rock said on 60 Minutes years after it became a part of our culture and shaped how blacks are viewed: “I think a lot of people were thinking in those terms and hadn’t been able to say it. By the way, I’ve never done that joke again, ever, and I probably never will. ‘Cause some people that were racist thought they had license to say n—–. So, I’m done with that routine.” Whether it was smart to let this genie out of the bottle is up for debate, but you can’t argue that every bit of this eight minutes isn’t side-splittingly funny.
Dave Chappelle: A Universal Comic
“Gun store, liqour store, gun store, liquor store…where the fuck are you taking me?”
The advantage Chappelle has over Rock is his gift for storytelling. I might take a political science course from Rock, but I’d rather grab a beer with Chappelle. His stand-up is filled with great asides and odd, colorful details and bizarre characters, just like his show. Here are some of the elements that set the scene in Chappelle’s trip to the ghetto: a street full of gun and liquor stores, a crackhead leaping from a tree and an angry, drug-dealing baby prowling the streets at 3 a.m. He’s the master of telling small, captivating stories that you’re so happy to listen to, you’re not even concerned about the punchline. But the punchlines usually kill, as this one definitely does. I fell off the couch laughing the first time I heard this.
“I want that purple stuff….”
In the long history of “white people do this, black people do that” jokes (which Chappelle openly mocks in one skit on his show) this is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a wonderfully simple observation that works because it’s universal. It’s also a great exmaple of how his style differs from Rock’s. The joke is set up as a learning experience for two cultures instead of a confrontation. You don’t have to deal with the subtext of the ever-growing wealth gap between blacks and whites if you don’t want to, but that’s a point that would probably be made a lot more explicitly in the hands of Rock. It’s these kinds of jokes, poking fun at all races, that made Chappelle’s Show both hilarious and accessible. Dave really is the master of telling racial jokes that everyone can feel comfortable laughing at. Plus, I actually had never noticed that the “purple stuff” my Mom had been buying from Wal-Mart all my life was in fact called “Grape Drink.” Good eye, Chappelle.
“Once you fuck a monkey, that’s a firm decision.”
Of all the jokes in the four hours of stand-up I watched, “Fucking Monkeys” is by far the most universal. This joke requires no prior knowledge or life experience–you don’t have to understand race relations or be in a relationship or have kids to comprehend the very basic idea that “no one fucks monkeys and people.” It’s a joke without a lesson, without a message, just an absurd desire to take a silly concept to its illogical conclusion. Knowing that Dave has spent time ruminating on this scenario–and the fact that he acknowledges that fucking just monkeys could sort be reasonable– makes it funnier. It’s nonsensical in the best way.
The Verdict
Chappelle and Rock are both brilliant entertainers who cast an insightful eye on how we function as a society. But for stand-up alone, I think the edge has to go to Chris Rock. He’s a thought leader. He said things, especially in Bring the Pain, that people hadn’t been willing to say out loud before. You can laugh watching Dave Chappelle; you can understand how the world works watching Chris Rock. Even now, a decade after these specials were filmed, listening to Chris Rock feels a lot like ripping a band-aid off an old societal wound. The stuff he’s talking about would be tragic if he didn’t make it so fucking funny.
Pop Battles 