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Ntfs_encryption
Regular Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 30
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 11:43 pm: | 
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Well, one thing is for sure, you can never accuse Stanley Crouch of holding back and biting his words. The Man has given the word controversial new meaning. This is his assessment of the career of Richard Pryor. Your thoughts?
Pryor's flawed legacy
Monday, December 12th, 2005
By Stanley Crouch
This past Saturday Richard Pryor left this life and bequeathed to our culture as much darkness as he did the light his extraordinary talent made possible.
When we look at the remarkable descent this culture has made into smut, contempt, vulgarity and the pornagraphic, those of us who are not willing to drink the Kool-Aid marked "all's well," will have to address the fact that it was the combination of confusion and comic genius that made Pryor a much more negative influence than a positive one.
I do not mean positive in the way Bill Cosby was when his television show redefined situation comedy by turning away from all of the stereotypes of disorder and incompetence that were then and still are the basic renditions of black American life in our mass media.
Richard Pryor was not that kind of a man. His was a different story.
Pryor was troubled and he had seen things that so haunted him that the comedian found it impossible to perform and ignore the lower-class shadow worlds he had known so well, filled with pimps, prostitutes, winos and abrasive types of one sort or another.
The vulgarity of his material, and the idea a "real" black person was a foul-mouthed type was his greatest influence. It was the result of seeing the breaking of "white" convention as a form of "authentic" definition.
Pryor reached for anything that would make white America uncomfortable and would prop up a smug belief among black Americans that they were always "more cool" and more ready to "face life" than the members of majority culture.
Along the way, Pryor made too many people feel that the N word was open currency and was more accurate than any other word used to describe or address a black person.
In the dung piles of pimp and gangster rap we hear from slime meisters like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, the worst of Pryor's influence has been turned into an aspect of the new minstrelsy in which millions of dollars are made by "normalizing" demeaning imagery and misogyny.
What is so unfortunate is that the heaviest of Pryor's gifts was largely ignored by so many of those who praised the man when he was alive and are now in the middle of deifying him.
The pathos and the frailty of the human soul alone in the world or insecure or looking for something of meaning in a chaotic environment was a bit too deep for all of the simpleminded clowns like Andrew Dice Clay or those who thought that mere ethnicity was enough to define one as funny, like the painfully square work of Paul Rodriguez.
Of course, Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam is the ultimate coon show update of human cesspools, where "cutting edge" has come to mean traveling ever more downward in the sewer.
In essence, Pryor stunned with his timing, his rhythm, his ability to stand alone and fill the stage with three-dimensional characters through his remarkably imaginative gift for an epic sweep of mimicry.
That nuanced mimicry crossed ethnic lines, stretched from young to old, and gave poignancy to the comedian's revelations about the hurts and the terrors of life.
The idea of "laughing to keep from crying" was central to his work and has been diligently avoided by those who claim to owe so much to him.
As he revealed in his last performance films, Pryor understood the prison he had built for himself and the shallow definitions that smothered his audience's understanding of the humanity behind his work.
But, as they say, once the barn door has been opened, you cannot get all of the animals to return by whistling. So we need to understand the terrible mistakes this man of comic genius made and never settle for a standard that is less than what he did at his very best, which was as good as it has ever gotten.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3130
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 01:50 am: |
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As evidenced by my post on this subject, I am pretty much aligned with what Crouch has to say on this subject. And, like him, I am especially mystified at the way white America is now deifying Richard Pryor. (They are doing the same thing with Muhammad Ali who in the prime of his career was demonized as being a draft dodger and black racist, even as he compared his black oppnoents to gorillas and monkeys and showed a definite preference for light-skinned woman. Now suddenly he has become an American hero to white America. )Ironic. |
Nels
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 175
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 02:00 am: |
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Cynique --
Yup. Shit happens.
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1684
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 01:49 pm: |
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Cynique:
I--oh well. Why bother? The Andy Griffith Show is coming on, Granny. Brew up some sassafras tea and blow your mind.
I started to post this tripe by that toad Stanley Crouch but I had decided not to--I am waiting wih great satisfaction for him to be revealed as some sort of pervert--such self righteous people usually are |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3134
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 02:12 pm: |
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"Why bother" is right, chrishayden. Is it finally sinking into your thick skull that your opinion is not important to me? Waddle on back to reading your comic books and watching wrestling until the 3 stooges come on. That will stop you from pouting because somebody wrote something that rains on your parade and dares to disagree with the way you think. The more I'm exposed to your swill, the more I like Stanley Crouch and Thomas Sowell. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1687
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 02:59 pm: |
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Cynique:
The more I'm exposed to you the fonder I become of euthanasia.
You ARE Stanley Crouch and Thomas Sowell-- in drag! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3136
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:11 pm: |
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If you weren't so stupid, you would stop exposing yourself to my posts. Obviously, you just keep hoping I'll agree with something you say so that you won't have to wish I was dead. You're so transparent and pitiful. LOL
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