I’m not going to go into a complete review of The Aristocrats which I finally saw on Netflix today while on baby watch.
Suffice it to say… It was amazing. I loved it. And I don’t recommend it to anyone unless you can transcend vulgarity to see the meta-humour.
I would like to point out 2 things from the documentary. One is an fantastically performed version of the joke as a series of card tricks.
But the most important thing is a quote from Saint George Carlin. Because it hit me on a philosophical level at the core of who I am. It’s an interesting quotation because I know it is fundamentally how I feel about the world and how I live my life. It seems to run utterly counter to the philosophy of Thelema that is also very much a piece of who I am. I see how the two paths run together in my universe. And it also makes it clearer to me when I’ve really pissed people off in my world.
I like this because it puts together an idea in a very simple and succinct way while not losing any of the impact of it’s viciously subversive nature.
I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it, bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did. – George Carlin
Possibly, I’ll go further about “The Aristocrats” later.
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I watched it recently on HBO. I found it someone interesting, but the main version of the joke wasn’t funny to me. However, the reverse version of the joke was hilarious… even though it uses exactly the same premise.
My favorite two points:
Pat Mcann’s completely clean version. A perfect example of what humor can be in the mind of a truly funny comedian. Managing to remove all of the obscenity that virtually every other comedian saw as the point of the joke, he mutates it a little and manages to perform a rendition that’s one of the funniest in the film. Martin Mull gets a runner-up nod for his completely different Aristocrats joke. His joke was, in my mind, funnier than The Aristocrats, but most importantly he just patently refused to perform the joke demanded of him as part of his participation in the film. His insistence to follow the beat of his own drum just really impressed me.
The second moment has to be Gilbert Gottfried at the Hefner roast. Gottfried is a genius, a complete genius, but like so many geniuses before him, he is misunderstood and highly irritating to most. So soon after 9/11, he steps up there and -knows- the crowd is on edge, -knows- everyone will be tip-toeing around the subject. He jumps right in and gets called down by the crowd. Okay, fine…you can see his resolve form. He’s pissed. People come to a comedy event and have the nerve when the comedian dares to cross their sacred cow du jour?
What follows is comedy as assault. He just pretty much says ‘fuck it’ and lays into the crowd, unleashing this fabled comedic equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons. The result is what I love the best: as one of the interviewees said, it was -exactly- what was needed. New York needed to laugh, they needed to blow off that tension. Gottfried’s genius is that he refused to step down when they were reluctant to take their medicine and just keep pushing.
Can you tell I like the movie? 🙂
I can get vulgar with the best of them but I thought that movie was just stupid. I couldn’t even watch the whole thing.
But other friends of mine loved it so go figure.
I managed …
to make it through once, but some of it was over my top. Jane, on the other hand, watches it whenever she can. I’m not really sure what that means.
I was expecting to howl with laughter. That only happened at one point: Kevin Pollack impersonating Christopher Walken telling the joke.
I don’t see it as running completely counter to Thelema…the point is to challenge your audience’s comfort zone and to expand their horizons, the task of any teacher. For some you may be providing a stepping-stone towards finding their True Will, for many you may merely be opening a window, but you would not be doing anything counter to their will…after all, they choose whether or not to listen to you. It isn’t as if you’re strapping them down with their eyes open, Clockwork Orange style, and making them watch the movie.