A broken world of bedsheets and bicycles
In “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (And Vice Versa),” Seymour Chatman argues that in film, “the dominant mode is presentational, not assertive. A film doesn’t say, ‘This is the state of affairs,’ it merely shows you that state of affairs.” Consider a key scene in Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Ladri di Bicyclette (Bicycle … Continue reading
Kane’s gifts
There are two snow sleds in Citizen Kane. The first, as everyone knows, is named Rosebud and is given to Kane by his mother; the second is a Christmas present from Kane’s guardian, Thatcher, and is seen so briefly that audiences are unaware that it, too, has a name. If you press the pause button … Continue reading
When the laughter stopped
Chappelle’s Show is a strange hybrid. The cinematic clips uproot it from the live experience, but the recorded audience pulls it back down again. The big laughs are all things that a 2004 audience found funny or shocking. And some of them just aren’t that funny or shocking any more.
On top of this, so many of Chappelle’s sketches have become comedy classics that it’s hard to genuinely find them surprising anymore. “I’m Rick James, bitch!” was hilarious. Then your mom’s skeezy brother said it ten times at one holiday party a year after the show aired, and it didn’t feel so funny anymore.
Chappelle’s Show also gets bound up with what we know about Dave Chappelle’s history afterward. Dave famously quit the show because he felt that he was creatively tapped and was increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that jokes he’d intended as racial satire were getting laughed at for their silly, minstrelsy qualities. He even felt that his co-creators were complicit in this—he no longer felt comfortable working with them, so after recording several sketches for a much-anticipated third season, he briefly disappeared. There were rumors about his mental health and the possibility of drug abuse. Nobody could seem to grasp that somebody so successful didn’t like what he was doing anymore.
Laughing again, streaming this time
The decade’s five best, most influential comedies are all on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” online streaming service. What are the odds?
In this short series, I’m going to watch each of them—notice I’m using the future tense, even though I’ve totally gone back and watched all of these—and pick them off and break them down one by one. How have they held up? What do we learn about them (and about us) by rewatching them? I’ll also pull in some additional commentary—some from earlier in the decade, some later—that helps offer some perspective on (re)watching these series. And I’ll definitely be letting you know what I think, offering my take on how we got here.
