person:richard pryor

The Best Of George Carlin
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy-sVByUHqE

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.
— George Carlin, Class Clown, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”

George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic.

Carlin was noted for his black comedy and thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and various taboo subjects. He and his “seven dirty words” comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government’s power to regulate indecent material on the public airwaves. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comics; one newspaper called Carlin “the dean of counterculture comedians.” In April 2004, he placed second on the Comedy Central list of “Top 10 Comedians of US Audiences”.

The first of Carlin’s 14 stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977. From the late 1980s, Carlin’s routines focused on sociocultural criticism of American society. He often commented on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture. He was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era, and hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. His final HBO special, It’s Bad for Ya, was filmed fewer than four months before his death. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him second (behind Richard Pryor) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.

#USA #humour #satire

Vu le documentaire Icon consacré à Richard Pryor sur Netflix. Comme je ne connaissais ni la vie du gars, si réellement son œuvre de standup, j’ai trouvé ça à la fois bien intéressant et touchant. (Après, c’est typique de ces documentaires américains qui font surtout causer des gens qui répètent plusieurs fois la même chose, le tout illustré de zooms sur des photos qu’on voit passer plusieurs fois, mais c’est pas très long, et vraiment, comme je ne connaissais du gars que ses seconds rôles dans des films des années 70-80, ça vaut le coup.)

Également sur Netflix, Get Me Roger Stone, un documentaire sur un spin doctor républicain, désormais assez nettement alt right, proche de la campagne de Trump. Honnêtement, je ne connaissais pas ce type, qui a pourtant l’air d’être plutôt connu dans les milieux de la magouille politicienne américaine, et des commentateurs très à droite de la télé. C’est assez glaçant, et bien intéressant. (Après, je crains que ce genre de choses ne sur-valorisent le rôle des Machiavels dans la politique et reproduisent le mythe du billard-à-14-bandes des coups tordus, mais certains commentaires dans le doc suggèrent justement qu’il faut faire attention aux prétentions du type qui se prétend un peu trop au centre des événements.) La personnalité du type, qui désamorce le fait qu’il est une authentique ordure en revendiquant ouvertement le fait d’être une ordure, c’est assez marrant.

The Aesthetic Failure of ’Charlie Hebdo’
▻http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121748/arrested-development-and-aesthetic-failure-charlie-hebdo

The strategy of using racism to fight racism itself can be questioned. Juice that gave energy to Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor has turned sour after more than four decades. Charlie Hebdo is the French counterpart of Robert Crumb, but the magazine is a Crumb that has never changed or evolved, that keeps using in 2015 an artistic strategy from the 1960s. The real sin of Charlie Hebdo is not so much racism but arrested development, a grave aesthetic failure because political cartoonists have to keep up with times and be mindful of the impact their images have.

Je trouve que, ces derniers temps, ils ne font pas assez de films avec Richard Pryor, à Hollywood.