An excerpts from William Jelani Cobb’s collection of essays pictured above.
Pryor told The New York Times Magazine in 1975 “I think there’s a thin line between being a Tom and [depicting] human beings. When I do the people I have to do it true. If I can’t do it, I’ll stop right in the middle rather than pervert it and turn it into Tomism. There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at.” That line was at the forefront of Pryor’s mind when he returned from Africa in 1979. He renounced his use of the word nigger, later saying it was “a wretched word. Its connotations weren’t funny even when people laughed… It was misunderstood by people. They didn’t get what I was talking about. Neither did I.”
. . .
By season three, though, Chappelle’s Show had officially crossed over, meaning that he was virtually assured of an audience too big to really dig what exactly he was laughing at. Jimi Hendrix encountered that same paradox when he became big enough to attract an audience that couldn’t grasp his guitar genius but did manage to get hung up on their image of him as a Black Dionysus who burned guitars on stage.
And this is where the demons come in.
Pryor told The New York Times Magazine in 1975 “I think there’s a thin line between being a Tom and [depicting] human beings. When I do the people I have to do it true. If I can’t do it, I’ll stop right in the middle rather than pervert it and turn it into Tomism. There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at.” That line was at the forefront of Pryor’s mind when he returned from Africa in 1979. He renounced his use of the word nigger, later saying it was “a wretched word. Its connotations weren’t funny even when people laughed… It was misunderstood by people. They didn’t get what I was talking about. Neither did I.”
. . .
By season three, though, Chappelle’s Show had officially crossed over, meaning that he was virtually assured of an audience too big to really dig what exactly he was laughing at. Jimi Hendrix encountered that same paradox when he became big enough to attract an audience that couldn’t grasp his guitar genius but did manage to get hung up on their image of him as a Black Dionysus who burned guitars on stage.
And this is where the demons come in.
