Since it is Friday night, and almost time for the biggest and best street fair on the annual calendar in Los Angeles ([update: not counting the Halloween Carnaval!] the Sunset Junction Street Fair – they shut down several blocks of Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake for two solid days of fun [update: oh dear]), it is time to recall the excellent careful series of scientific experiments in blowing apart stereotypes performed by Dave Chappelle, assisted by John Mayer (along with two other musicians when they do the controls at the end).
The video quality is not perfect, but this is simply hilarious, and rather well thought out. It is presented as though it is a set of experiments, with a control group, and so forth. Really good. They’ve cut out the bit at the beginning when he explains the problems with humour that relies on playing with stereotypes, and what he intends to do in this clip, but you’ll get the idea soon enough.
Enjoy!
-cvj
i love that show! this was hilarious!! lol. their dance theories are so well thought as well.
Yes… I was not rejecting your theory, just sharing about that part of the sketch.
Cheers,
-cvj
Oh, I do love the whole Chappelle skit. I think Chappelle’s takes on race are funnier by far than most comedians’ and I think he gets white people pretty good in a lot of his skits. I just wanted to voice my personal theory of the “white people can’t dance” phenomenon.
Don’t you just love the boardroom scene though? That cracks me up every time…! Especially the appearance of a particular item of clothing…
-cvj
(Thanks for the id of the drummer…)
Oh, and I tend to believe that a big reason why the “white people can’t dance” stereotype persists is that white people insist on trying to dance to music that is just not dance music. I don’t care how much you like Bon Jovi, everybody’s going to look bad trying to dance to “Livin on a Prayer.” Of course, it’s also a little bit of a self-reinforcing stereotype as well.
The drummer is ?uestlove of the Philadelphia-based hip hop band The Roots. The Roots are a live band with a drummer, bassist, keyboardist, and a rapper. Pretty good music and an interesting concept for people who don’t realize the variety of musical expression within hip hop.