As opposed to the The Best of the Dean Martin Show, this DVD did not come out decades after Chris Rock’s talk show and sketch comedy bit went off the cable (which is “off the air” in the late 20th century–the modern equivalent would be “out of the stream” or something). Rock’s show appeared on HBO, so I didn’t have access to it when it was on, and I am not one for the talk shows anyway, so I probably would not have seen it.
I have, however, seen the skit “How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police” a time or two.
This single DVD does not include the aforementioned skit, but it does have some humor poking fun at The Race Question from the perspective of the middle 1990s. One skit is purportedly about an academic who is barred from entering establishments or who gets thrown out of establishments because he’s black. But when they go to the video proof, the man is naked and is getting thrown out or barred entry for that.
Man, what a wonderful world that was. Imperfect, but better than what we have now, where these sorts of jokes and poking fun at minorities’ pecadilloes just don’t fly, and we’re not allowed to laugh at obvious stereotypes.
Man, Chris Rock was everywhere up until some point in the early part of this century, but he seemed to have disappeared. Actually, I was going to posit he got supplanted by Kevin Hart, but in reality, it’s probably that my pop cultural awareness took a nosedive this century. I see he’s been in several films in the Sandlerverse–I saw Grown Ups–twice, in fact–but not much else of his work in the last fifteen years. I guess that’s on me.
