Revolution Televised.pdf

That Nigger’s Crazy 147
duce his revamped, edgy, confrontational style. Slowly but surely
Pryor’s voice began to attract younger African Americans who were
also inspired by the Black Power movement. Bill Cosby attended a
Pryor performance during this period and remembers,
I was in the audience when Richard took on a whole new persona—
his own. Richard killed the Bill Cosby in his act, made people hate
it. Then he worked on them, doing pure Pryor, and it was the most
astonishing metamorphosis I have ever seen. He was magnificent. 10
Pryor released the album Craps (After Hours) (1971), which was
recorded at Redd’s Place and followed this up with That Nigger’s
Crazy (1974), . . . Is It Something I Said? (1975), and Bicentennial
Nigger (1976).
Pryor’s very imagistic material relies on the use of street language
and characters and deals with social issues as diverse as politics, the
prison system, police brutality, and sex. While many comics then
and now depend on joke-and-punchline humor, Pryor’s routines
are based on character development and storytelling more akin to
theatrical monologues. Many comics expect the audience to laugh
at their facial gestures by revealing bugging eyes or shocked looks.
Pryor is different; he uses facial expressions, body postures, movements,
and gestures to embody the characters and tells humorous
first-person stories or relays a conversation among characters, all
of which have their own unique voices, looks, and expressions. He
described the process of creating his routines:
I couldn’t do it just by doing the words of the person. . . . I have to
be that person. I see that man in my mind and go with him. I think
there’s a thin line between being a Tom on them people and seeing
them as human beings. When I do the people, I have to do it true.
If I can’t do it, I’ll stop right in the middle rather than pervert it and
turn it into Tomism. There’s a thin line between to laugh with and
to laugh at. 11
Some of his most famous characters include Mudbone, a wise
old black man from Tupelo, Mississippi; Oilwell, a “crazy shoot me
nigger . . . 6 foot 5, 422 pounds of man”; 12 a philosophical wino;
and a junkie. While their stories are often hysterical, depending on
the direction of the narrative, Pryor reveals poignant and critical
issues about the lives of these black characters, which lead one as
easily to laughter as to tears. In one routine from That Nigger’s