Growing up, I always loved to watch stand up comedians. Sometimes, I would have to sneak and watch them because my parents wouldn’t want me watching these comedians at such a young age. I would watch guys like David Chappelle, Katt Williams, and even some of the old heads such as Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx. I never really had a favorite comedian until I watched a very hilarious guy by the name of Chris Tucker. I first saw him as a star in the movie called Friday, when I fell in love with him. Chris Tucker is the best comedian because he does more than other comedians to be funny; he uses his whole body and different voices, and he makes humorous connections that other comedians don’t. Chris Tucker started out as a kid from Atlanta, Georgia, doing small-town comedy gigs. His first stand up I had ever saw was his debut on Def Comedy Jam, which was a very popular show in the early and mid-nineties. He has starred in many movies since then, including Rush Hour 1,2 and 3, Money Talks, and House Party 3. The last I saw him was as the host of the 2013 BET Awards. Although Chris Tucker’s humor is still related to superiority, incongruity, and release, his style has changed from when he started in the early nineties.
As a newcomer in the comedy world, Chris Tucker caught a lot of peoples’ eyes. On stage, he appeared to talk about any random thing that popped up in his head. In one of his early stand ups from the nineties; he had asked the crowd, “What if Michael Jackson was a pimp?” Ever since I had heard that, it has been own of my favorite stand up routines of his. Chris was real good friends with the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. During his early days as a stand-up comedian, Tucker would always mention Jackson in his jokes, and he even would try to dance like him at times, as well. Although Tucker would use a lot of explicit language throughout his routines, that’s what always seems to have made the jokes more and more funny. In his most recent stand ups and movies I would say Chris Tucker’s bad language has toned down from what it used to be when he first started off.
As a rookie comedian Tucker would always come out on stage with an attitude, and the first thing he would always say was “I’m pissed off now!!!, ” and the audience would burst out laughing. He always kept his audience laughing no matter what; even if he was talking about somebody’s mom, he or she would still laugh at all of his jokes. Nobody could get mad at what he said because there are no rules in comedy, but there is often incongruity. In one of Tucker’s stand-ups, he mentions a surprising thing that sealed the deal to make him my favorite comedian. He says, “ I tried to rob a store and got caught, while somebody else outside the store was stealing my car.” When Tucker went to jail, his cellmate was the guy who had stolen his car, and he asked the guy what he was in for, and the guy said, “Stealing some fool’s car with no oil.” So Chris said, “That was my car you stole, fool!!” This joke fits with the incongruity theory because a thief doesn’t expect to get robbed, and the audience doesn’t expect a thief to be a victim.
As Chris got older and more mature his image changed to reflect his increasing fame and wealth. During his early routines, he asked the crowd, “Have you ever had a neighbor that borrows your shit for so long, you have to borrow it back?” After he told that joke the whole crowd burst out laughing because we’ve all had that one aggravating neighbor who just wants to borrow everything we have. In one of his latest routines, he mentioned that he had bought two houses right beside each other, and so now he is his own next-door neighbor, showing how he has become famous and rich enough to own two houses. The neighbor joke is an example of superiority humor when Tucker makes fun of the aggravating neighbor, but when he is rich enough to be own aggravating neighbor, that show incongruity.
Tucker has changed his jokes to show how American society has changed, too. For example, in the 1990s, he said, “White people don’t trust black people. That’s why they won’t vote for no black President.” Tucker said that whites are afraid a black President would “fuck up the White House” by not cutting the grass, leaving dishes piled up and letting little kids run all the around the White House. Tucker’s jokes dealing with race served the purpose of release. In 2013, Tucker appeared on a talk show and told a funny story about riding in a cab with Barack Obama, who was running for senator. Tucker said the two of them talked about “little things like chicken and basketball.” Now that Barack Obama is the first black President, Tucker’s cab ride with Obama seems like a real life example of incongruity.
Chris Tucker’s style of dress and body language on stage has also changed since the 1990s, when he would always come on the stage all hyped and mad, and before he would start talking, the audience would already be laughing. He dressed in baggy clothes and made a thug like impression. Nowadays, Tucker has more of a laid-back swagger when he steps onto the stage and doesn’t seem to have an angry attitude all the time. Having an attitude every time he came on stage in the 1990s was just part of his act, I believe, and it seemed to work for him because later on in his career, he began to play in big movies. In his early acting days he always seemed to play characters with that attitude or edge to them.
Besides the change in Tucker’s humor, there have been big changes in his audience as well. When he first started doing stand up on Def Comedy Jam, there were no white people to be found in the crowd. Now, if you go to a Chris Tucker stand-up show, blacks, whites, Mexicans, and even Asians will be there. Over the years as a stand-up comedian, Chris Tucker has also made some very entertaining movies. The crazy and energetic person who we see on stage is the same character he plays in movies, and who is maybe even funnier. This worldwide fame is quite incongruous for Chris Tucker, who started out as an unknown angry young black male comedian from Atlanta, Georgia. |
