Rock returns, gets personal
AS S O O N as Chris Rock strode onstage here on Monday in the first performance of his long-awaited Total Blackout Tour, he explained why, nine years after his last stand-up special, he’s pacing stages again: “That’s what alimony will do to you.”
Rock, who was married for 16 years, divorced last year, and while his quip had the jackhammer snap that has long made him the best deliverer of punch lines in comedy, the old swagger faded during his hourand-a-half show.
Now 52, Rock, looking trim in casual black pants and jacket, talked about his vanity, insecurities and failures with startling frankness. “I wasn’t a good husband,” he said, standing still, shifting into a quieter register. “I didn’t listen. I wasn’t kind. I cheated.”
Rock paused as the audience waited for the joke. It arrived eventually, but it did not match the impact of this silent, dramatic beat. In his new set, Rock appeared to be after something more than laughs. It is rare to see a celebrity discuss his infidelity with the specificity that he did here – detailing who and how many – but he talked about this in an anguished, searching tone that fans may find surprising. At times, Rock sounded like a man confessing his sins, turning vulnerability into his latest provocation.
Ever since his breakthrough 1996 HBO special, Bring the Pain – his new set includes giant initials evoking that seminal show – Rock has maintained a secure place in the stand-up pantheon. But in contrast with peers like Bill Burr and Louis CK, his specials are infrequent enough that every one is a major event. His current show will be released as a special on Netflix, part of a jaw-dropping $40 million deal.
His last, Kill the Messenger, was recorded during the 2008 election, and it’s hard not to be struck by his cheerful mood then, sounding positively giddy as he pokes fun at John McCain, skewering him as a “war hero who got captured”.
In the recent presidential campaign, Donald Trump made the same point about McCain in similar language, but without the punch line. In the past nine years, the line for transgression has shifted. But Rock didn’t try to adjust to it. Nor did he approach the recent election with what has become the standard alarm of many comedians. Barack Obama was the anomaly, he argued, while Trump is a return to business as usual in a conservative country always run by rich white men.
“I’m not scared,” Rock said, looking to the evils of history for comfort.
“I’m black. The future is al- ways better when you’re black.”
Comedy is about surprise, and one reason Rock has been his generation’s finest political stand-up is his ability to consistently go against the grain with conviction. (Unlike some, he always seems to believe the premises of his jokes.)
The rise of Trump, he concluded, taking his critique to a comic extreme, stems from our battle against bullying. “We got rid of bullies,” he said. “When a real one showed up, we didn’t know what to do.”
He also discussed police shootings in an unexpected way, saying that he would think that law enforcement might try to shoot a white kid for once, “just for appearances”. But he also spent time sympathising with police officers, describing work that has zero room for error and draws pay that is far too low.
If his current social commentary has a common thread, it’s an alertness to how economics colours every issue.
“Whole Foods does not say ‘No Blacks Allowed’,” he said. “But a $7 orange does. That’s the new Jim Crow.”
Rock wants to tell us where he came from, and also where he hopes to go. “I’m trying to get a little bit of religion,” he said, before backtracking: “Not a lot.”
He added that he believes in God, but only a bit.
Onstage, Rock has always had the intonations of a preacher repeating premises until they sound like incantations. But his real religion is comedy, and at the end of this discussion of his relationship with God, he contrasted the sureness of faith with the questioning nature of a comic.
But as comedians go, Rock has always been one of the most forcefully confident. What’s different is he now sounds more anxious. And while the election and his divorce may have added heaviness to his gait, this evolution may also stem from simply growing older. In a line he repeated over and over on Monday, Rock explained his spiritual search in the hardheaded pragmatic terms we’ve come to expect from him: “I want to find God before God finds me.”