Tracy
Morgan is a ridiculous human. I’m not sure he’s actually a comedian. He might
just be a professional ridiculous human. It’s a different category of thing to
be, and as long as he’s able to book himself in 1,000+ capacity venues like the
Pabst Theater, he has no reason to care about the distinction. I’m not sure how
much longer that will be the case, though, because I’m not sure that what I
just saw was entertainment. It might have been a zoo-like display of a
ridiculous human. It’s the come see the ridiculous human tour, coming to a
theater near you.
Morgan
has been getting some flack
recently for his material. There was some hullabaloo as a result of his
performance a couple of weeks ago at the Mebourne International Comedy Festival
in Australia. Some people “stormed out” and called for boycotts of future
appearances, citing misogyny. There is misogyny in Tracy Morgan’s act. There is
plenty of misogyny. There is also excessive vulgarity and shudder-inducing raunchiness and
generally clumsy stagecraft.
If you only know Morgan from his role on 30 Rock, his live performance will likely come as a shock that is
not so much nasty and sharp as it is the cumulative psychic result of a prolonged bludgeoning. But: taking
anything from his act as a failure of the social contract is a serious
misunderstanding of context. When
the crazy guy on the bus starts yelling the C-word, you don’t respond with a
doctoral thesis on power imbalance and gender politics. You just quietly scooch
away from him. So it should be with Tracy Morgan. He’s
not really cause for alarm. Nobody who might otherwise have any hope of
functioning in the world is going to listen to Tracy Morgan and think, “You
know, that guy is making a lot of sense.”
His
act is loaded with horrific “laugh to keep from gagging” and sexually antagonistic
moments, such as his vivid description of anal sex with an elderly woman. He
often fails to contextualize, reign in, and/or protect his most risqué stuff,
instead careening back and forth from loosely-defined bits like a man lazily
obligating a contract. Towards the tail end of his set, he showed off his
surprisingly deft singing voice, doing vocal impressions of various pop singers
without really giving any reason for it. Tracy Morgan can sing like Michael
Jackson. And Michael McDonald. And Meatloaf. In case you’re into that kind of
thing. If not, well, he can just as easily use the term “discharge” for the 9th
time and see if that works. Whatever it takes.
Adding
to the chaos at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee was the crowd itself, which
included the regular Milwaukee percentage of people who’d spent the day (Cinco
de Mayo) drinking until they became nonhuman. They did not so much heckle as
blurt their ids. One woman, if you could call her that instead of the more
accurate “living issue,” walked up to the stage to expose her breasts to
Morgan. Twice. Once before and once after he did the bit about making women
gag on his penis and then treating them to a new television set at Best Buy. "Wooo," this woman responded, repeatedly, "that's me!" This was a reminder that Milwaukee is a city that, on the
level of infrastructure, actually solves its problems with beer. Tracy Morgan
did not bat an eye in this environment. He was more than willing to feed the
bears.
His
attitude seems to be, “fuck it, I’m getting paid,” which is actually his greatest
virtue as a performer. He could not more clearly not care. Given the material
and delivery, it would present storm-out worthy issues if he appeared to give
one fuck whatsoever. Is that his game? Is he crazy like a fox? Is he actually
trying his hardest? Is the idea to expose people to the worst things he can
possibly think of, and trick us into laughing (oh yeah, I was laughing; it was
a partially defensive reaction, but I was laughing; the guy is still Tracy Morgan--how seriously can you take him?) by being ridiculous
and shambolic and ineffably Tracy Morgan?
Is
he even joking? How much is he joking? Is the joke “I have had these thoughts”
or “What if I believed in these thoughts with every fiber of my being”? What if
he DOES believe in those thoughts with every fiber of his being? What fibers of
what being believe in these thoughts of his? What’s the joke and who is it on? The
man is a comedic enigma. Is he a secret genius? A brilliant deconstructionist? Very
probably not, but his motives as an artist are opaque enough to leave the
possibility open. You could even defend him that way if you wanted to be
insufferable. Tracy Morgan is a difficult man to interpret. But not THAT
difficult. At a certain point, a dick joke is a dick joke.
I
think it’s most probable that he is just a guy who was born and/or developed
into somebody hilariously but clownishly funny, due more to absurd environmental
stresses than a passion for comedy. I
think that due to who he is, he’s made a very lucrative career as a comedic
actor with the rare gift of rendering almost any line of dialogue, no matter
how outlandish, both plausible and funny. The Tracy Jordan character on 30 Rock could say anything and sound like he meant it, which to the writing staff
must have been like manna from heaven. One episode featured Morgan literally
reading from the phone book and being hilarious.
These
otherworldly skills flow through Tracy Morgan at a core level of self. But it’s
hard to be a clown for a living and also be a man, and I think with this
material he’s exercising his right, at age 44, not to be cute. It’s a shame,
because he can do anything and be
funny, and the material in his live act might actually be the least funny thing
possible. When the chuckles break through he doesn’t even get artist points for degree of difficulty, because he’s
not trying hard enough to be artful about it. I want to let him off the hook and say “well maybe that’s just who he
is,” but if so then he’s revulsive AND ridiculous, and probably also tormented.
When you see what Tracy Morgan does on stage, you know this about the
Australian protestors: they weren’t protesting his material so much as they
were protesting his existence. Maybe he is too.
Anyhow,
if you want to see a comedy show that will make you question such things as
identity, the nature of art, whether or not the performer is having a life-changing breakdown right before your eyes, AND
feature several uninterrupted minutes of uncomfortably enthusiastic mimicked female
porn moaning, then I recommend going to see Tracy Morgan. If you want to see
anything BUT that, probably not so much.
