Documentário - O Riso dos Outros (Pedro Arantes) HD

Nothing describes better people's character than that which they find ridiculous - GOETHE
Because there are many kinds of laughter, right?
For instance, there's that asthmatic laughter, that goes...
There's the porcine laughter.
The porcine is that laughter
that seems the person came in here with a pig, you know?
What's that? There's a pig in here...
There's also the mute laughter, that goes...
There's also that laughter that rewinds, right? It goes...
There are the folks that don't laugh at anything, nothing at all...
I don't usually look at anyone specifically, but every time
I see someone who is not laughing, the person looks like this...
The regretful laughter has a sort of sigh in the end,
it seems the person gave up finding that funny, you know?
No, it's not funny...
THE LAUGHTER OF OTHERS
Squinted and very angry eyes are chinese.
You know that guy who sells yakisoba at Paulista Ave?
You say: "Pal! Have you got Yakisoba?"
"There's small three, medium four, big five!"
You go: "Slow down, dude! Give me a small one and a coke."
"There's no coke!"
I would like to talk about some things I don't really understand on TV.
For example, I don't understand that soap opera Workout, I don't get it...
The name of the show is Workout
and it's been eighteen years that there's no gym on that shit...
Proof of that is that the actor who was in it
is totally obese on his new show.
Because women want the fat guys as friends when everything goes wrong...
When her life sucks, she calls the fat guy and says: "Hey friend, come over."
"Everything is going so wrong. Let's have some chocolate?"
"And so we go, 'cause we love chocolate."
"It's true, it's true..."
There's nothing in Switzerland, man... There's no emotion in Switzerland...
That's why they invented the penknife.
A dude went to rob another dude and said: "This is a robbery."
Then he remembered: "Wait, I'm a millionaire, man!
"Let's pop a bottle of wine?"
People laugh at an observation that is in their minds
but that someone else will say it.
It's like if you would rescue the humor that is in someone's brain.
The person is there, all sad, saying "fuck, I don't know, life sucks,
"my job sucks, etcetera."
Then you pull it out the person's head and say: "But your boss is impotent!"
And so the person goes: "That's right, he is!"
It doesn't matter, you know? He might be rich, but he's fucked.
Because people are tense, because their lives are boring,
and because they go there to disburden, right?
To disburden and laugh. Because laughing is good,
it liberates endorphin, it even heals.
You laugh at someone who fell on the sidewalk.
That's funny because it's a break of something that was linear
and then suddenly got ruptured.
Ruptures are funny.
You only laugh at the person who fell first because the person didn't die,
and second because it wasn't you.
Humor depends on the absence of compassion.
You have to be able to look at tragedy without sympathizing.
The profit, the humorous joy...
is proportional to the savings of emotional expenditure you make.
In a poor comparison, if you laugh at a joke or a humorous situation,
let's say someone trips, slips on a banana peel and crashes on the floor,
that pleasure is proportional
to the expenditure you would have if that person was your mother...
She falls and breaks her hips, you'd have to take her to the hospital,
and it's a hole context of pain and suffering.
Pathos, pathetic, right?
You know traffic is chaotic when you are stuck in it,
an ambulance comes and needs to pass.
So everyone opens passage to the ambulance.
And you're in your car looking at the ambulance drive away and you think:
"Oh, the person inside it is so lucky."
"If only God would bless me with a heart attack!"
Humor and comedy have a lot of spontaneity,
but I think after it happens you can very well analyze it,
what worked and what didn't, why didn't it work.
I never thought of myself as a funny guy,
I never thought I was an entertaining person.
I've always been shy, but whether you want it or not,
I think it's the fat guy's destiny:
at school you become a joke, you have to learn to respond to jokes.
I have always been very out there, get it?
There's a gift, either you're funny or you're not,
but you can also learn to be funny.
Humor has a math. It has an equation.
Humor in theatre is one thing, on TV is another,
and on cinema it's something else.
It's just like math.
There are formulas, a logic inside your brain, right?
I went to a restaurant the other day, and I said to the waiter:
"Pal! Can you wrap this?". He said: "To go?."
I said: "No. It's a gift."
"I'm going to give half a steak as a Christmas gift to someone."
I'm a comedian with a sense of humor that is a bit more acid,
others are more clownesque, or more physical.
My humor comes a lot from words, from text, my text.
A great contribution stand-up brought to comedy:
people who know to write their own texts,
that make an effort to write their texts,
the originality of each person's text.
Because, actually, a stand-up comedian is a guy with a text of his own,
and with a difficulty, that which the theatre guy sees as a facility,
which is that he doesn't have the whole apparatus,
he doesn't have lighting, a scenario, a costume.
He's there with his clean face, with his own clothes,
and he has to make the audience laugh.
The comedian has to be a prostitute,
what I want is laughter. I sell myself for laughter.
If you laugh, I will keep talking, get it?
The traffic agent gives me a fine, so I ask: "Why?"
He says: "Because your car is ugly."
"There's no point on appealing, I took a picture of it, here it is, look."
My car is very ugly indeed.
My car is so ugly that if it was a transformer
it would turn into Preta Gil. It would.
It's not only whether people laugh or not,
because otherwise you are going to go on stage
and make jokes about how small your dick is for 20 years,
and about Preta Gil being ugly, or Hebe being old.
And it's going to work every time,
people are going to laugh hard every time. So what?
You shouldn't laugh at this joke, you know?
It's a very shitty joke.
Every comedian when they don't have anything to say, say "Preta Gil",
and everyone laughs. I don't like saying that.
So why do I say it anyways? Because you people laugh.
Who is the son of a bitch. Me? No, you are.
The stereotype is a crutch, that's how we call it in comedy.
It's not a good day, no one is laughing at your jokes.
"São Paulo's soccer fans are fagots!", the audience will applaud,
'cause there are people who cheer for Corinthians there.
For those who cheer for São Paulo, you say : "Corinthians' fans are thieves!".
They'll laugh.
And people say Corinthian's fans are disorganized.
But they aren't, man.
Because while one jumps, the other chants,
another one is stealing from you, you know?
Why do Corinthians' fans do that?
Because they are crazy in love with their soccer team. Right?
You don't see that in other fans. None.
Take São Paulo's fans for instance, they are in love,
with the player of the team. That's different.
And humor dialogs with people's prejudice.
Humor, to have an effect, has to speak the same language.
Everyone who is there sharing, be it a comedian, a joke teller, or whatever,
has to share with its audience a repertory of concepts,
and yes, they are pre-concepts, previous concepts.
Without that sharing you can't accomplish humor.
Prejudice jokes are the first level of humor.
It's a lower humor, the easiest humor, right? It's a shallow humor.
The longer you stay on a bus to get to a neighborhood,
the uglier are the people inside it.
Once I went to Itaquera, holy shit, pal!
It looked like a...
Are you from Itaquera? Yes, I noticed.
Two hours to get there, and for each hour that passes
the passengers had two teeth less.
The prejudiced joke is anchored on determined values, by definition,
prejudices that are solidified in society.
So it is easy to make jokes with those stereotypes, right?
Because they are ready for you. To dismantle them is much harder.
"The attack on minorities is a rule of humor"- ANDRÉ DAHMER
I found out my neighbor is a whore.
And it's so cool to have a neighbor who is a whore, man.
It's like living next to a celebrity. There is the whore, an actual hooker.
And I met her at the elevator, she said :"Wow, You are a comedian, right?".
I said :"Yes. And you're a whore, right?".
She said: "Wow, I very much enjoy your work..."
"I also enjoy yours..."
She said: "It makes me laugh". I said "It makes me come".
She said "Oh, funny guy". I said: "Whore, go take it up..."
Another problem is that humor always carries a dose of cruelty.
My God! How is humor not going to be offensive, right?
Of course it works with insult, because it works with caricatures.
Humor is that, you have to search the worst, it's the destiny of the clown,
of anything that is funny you are going to search for a fault.
The caricature is that: to expose the biggest flaw.
The joke usually goes there, on that spot, it is a caricature, right?
It takes a certain point, a certain characteristic
that many times is the characteristic of a determined identity or of a group
and it exaggerates that. It reverberates that.
And not always the way in which it does so
is a respectful way towards that group or person.
The black drunk and the poor fagot: none of these can be in our new humor show.
Times are changing, but there must be a minority which no one depends.
Hahaha, throw shit at the midget!
Humor has always flirted with the matter of truculence, of violence.
It's not rare, right?
You know that humor, the attack on minorities is a rule of humor.
I have a neighbor who is a glutton, and she is fat.
But she isn't just chubby.
She occupies approximately this perimeter.
And a little more. I'm serious.
She is so fat that her mother prepares her vitamin in the washing machine.
And people come and say: "Come on Marcela, stop messing with the fatty."
People! It's not that I want to mess with her.
Her sweat smells like ribs.
She has folds like this. She looks like that Michelin doll.
The other day I met with her in front of the elevator, and she said :
Marcela, I can't get a boyfriend!.
But come on, the last one who tried to have sex with her
took so long to find her vagina that he ended up having sex with one of the folds in her arm.
That's heavy, right? The level is getting low.
But it'll keep getting lower, this is just the beginning.
Humor, many times serves the purpose of reinforcing values
that are traditional, to say the least.
That are conservative, even clearly prejudice.
"I have no prejudice, but..."
Gays can't be a family 'cause they can't breed.
Sterile couples can't either.
They can adopt.
Homo couples can too.
If everyone is gay it'll be the end of society.
That's what you're afraid of? That everyone is gay?
Yes.
So much for self confidence, right Doc?
People exaggerate when they talk about prejudice.
Ah!, Because it is prejudiced!.
In fact we are simply giving back,
putting on the table thoughts that already exist.
The humorist is not responsible for the ills of society.
He is just expressing, in his own way,
which is that that provokes laughter, the ills of society.
So don't blain the humorists for making jokes
about things that already happen in society.
It is curious that homophobic jokes,
that places homosexuals as subalterns, are only told by heterosexuals.
The gay, he is more polite, you know?
I'm gonna give an example: I have a straight friend over, in my house.
I say to him: "Dude, could you get me some water, please?"
And he's like: "Don't be a jerk, dude! Go get it in the fridge."
"You lazy ass." You know? He won't give me water!
He denies me water!
The gay is so polite that if you ask him, you don't even know the guy,
you say: "Hey dude, can I ass fuck you, please?: And he says "yes, man!"
It's curious then, this joke is not neutral.
In the name of freedom of humor, we can't think that every joke is valid,
that everything is humor.
I believe that no good humorist will waste time
making a lightly joke on race or gender, or whatever.
Wow, that man is gay! Ass fuck is so funny. Hahaha.
The dick went up his ass. Ha. So funny.
Fuck. It's only a sexual practice of the guy, I have nothing to do with it.
You get it? I don't think it's funny to get ass fucked.
But other people do. There's nothing funnier than..
Well then, go rent a gay porn movie and laugh yourself out!
It's like kicking a dead dog. There are a lot of dead dogs around.
But to take the bull by the horns, which is to make a great joke,
an upbeat joke, to overthrow authority,
to reveal your own ridiculousness, that's harder.
And when you manage to do that the joke is better.
There are other ways of making humor.
There are ways to make people laugh without humiliating others.
Someone with real talent can do that.
And even if you bring minorities into your joke,
it doesn't have to necessarily humiliate the person.
People who try to convince us that we are gay.
Let me explain.
I like strawberry caipirinhas,
but, every time I'm about to have one next to a friend
he always says : "hummmm!"
"Strawberry caipirinha! Ahnnn! Fagot!"
To me that's clearly product of a sexist, prejudiced, heterosexual thought.
Only a dude does that to another dude.
I doubt anything similar would happen with two gays, for instance.
I doubt one gay would mess with another gay
because of the drink he is ordering, you get it?
I don't think that happens. I doubt if two gays are at a club,
and one of them asks the bartender :
"Give me a lemon caipirinha, with no sugar and no ice."
I doubt the gay next to him would say: "Hummm... Manly!"
"Hummm... are you going to lick pussy now?"
Humor has the capacity to perpetuate certain prejudices,
but it also has the capacity to disrupt certain prejudices.
Or to ridicule certain prejudices.
São Paulo is full of modern people, right?
We are all modern on the outside.
Only on the outside, stupid cowpoke!
"Every joke has a target"- DANILO GENTILI
It's obvious. Brown is talking to me like that
because, fuck, we are like brothers...
-Careful not do do shit, careful... -...from the quilombo, right?
-What the fuck are you doing there? -You're too close to the table.
-Fuck it, if I want to be close, I will.
I just can't be close to you because of the smell, but...
Every joke has a target. There's no joke without a target.
You can tell me any joke you like, and I will find the target of your joke.
The target can be a speech, an object, the target can be an ethnicity,
a country, or the target can be a person,
with a familiar name or face.
Humor needs a victim, right?
You need to beat up someone in order to create humor.
You'll always be criticizing something in humor.
The problem is what to criticize. Get it? Who is the victim?
The victim can be the logic, for example.
Humor is against, but it can be against death,
against myself, I can be the victim.
I have no criteria what so ever to choose the target of my jokes.
My only criteria is whether it is funny.
There are lots of things I don't understand.
I don't understand niggers that get tattoos.
It's just like painting an avatar with a blue pen, you know?
Guys, if there is a nigger in here he must be thinking
"Shit! I spent money for nothing. Was it in this arm?"
"I can't even remember, fuck! Was it on my back?"
You should had gotten a fluorescent one, right dude?
If humor needs a victim, let us pick the right victim, right?
Because there are so many people who deserve to be beaten.
Why should we beat blacks? Or women, right?
They have already been beaten enough. That's the truth.
"Our fight is for respect" - FEMINIST MOVEMENT
Women are marvelous beings, who had all the power,
and the power was taken by men's strength.
A round of applause to all the women here today!
You, women, are amazing!
That's why I fuck you hard!
Are you amazing? Then suck my dick, amazing, suck it!
I don't give a shit. Marvelous!
You gotta make her suck it, lick it, take it in the backdoor!
Isn't it heavy?
Because most actors that work with humor are males,
I got tired of seeing the female universe being decanted, and screwed, and swerved.
I have said that in all the interviews, people are tired of saying it.
And even women that work with humor, the few ones that do,
they also practice a very sexist humor.
They reinforce the readings that men already make of them, get it?
Why can't women take jokes, right, man?
Mine doesn't take any jokes!
This morning I went to grab her teats, you know, like this?
Women don't like that, they get angry.
You grab it, and she says: "Vitor?!"
"Now is not the time to grab my boobs."
I don't know about you girls,
but for us, men, all the time is the perfect time to grab some teats.
Teats for us are like horns, we want to, uhuuuu teats!
Do you know one of these women who are around 40, successful,
company owner, and single who says: "I am single cause I choose to be."
Do you believe that?
Try something out: come close to her ear and whisper:
"Will you marry me?"
The answer will be something like :
"zaz, zaz, and I would marry, and I'd throw the bouquet, and zaz, zaz."
Better alone than in bad company...
That's an excuse for people that don't get any, man!
There's no bad company. Women have a pact with the devil.
Does she have a vagina? Then it's a deal, bro!
People try to naturalize that,
as if it were natural for women to be inferior to men,
because it is of women's nature to be inferior.
It's not natural! It's cultural.
And if it is cultural, and culture changes in time and space,
that kind of mentality can also change.
We organize politically for that change.
I'm a feminist! I'm radical! I'm no doormat to the federal government!
Our fight is constant! We are women not goods!
We fight for respect! Women are not just ass and breasts!
Come to the streets, stand-up against sexism!
Sexist jokes try to put women in a place that we are trying to get them out of.
In a place of submission, oppression,
in a place of ignorance, of objectification,
and we are trying to do something else,
we try to put women in a place of autonomy, in a place of respect,
in a place where we can be in charge of our own lives.
What an ugly woman, you are fucking an ugly woman,
and while you're at it she seems interesting.
But once you come, bro,
"get off, get out of here."
Or else you punch her in the head son of a bitch, mother fucker!
If a guy says "I believe ugly women should get raped",
he might get arrested for it.
On the other hand, if he says :
"ugly women should be grateful of their rapists"
"because at least they were desired by someone, that is accepted as a joke",
and a guy can say that, although he is actually saying the same thing, right?
Every time he sees a testimony of a woman who was raped,
that woman is usually ugly.
So he says : "Why would that guy rape this woman, right?"
That guy deserves a hug.
Dude! I think Rafinha's great great grandfather used to tell that joke.
In exactly the same way.
It seems he told it at a show, and people laughed.
But then it came out as a news report,
and when it was written it caused a frenzy.
It was through the news article, a report on Rolling Stones magazine
that used that joke.
And it wasn't used in a negative way.
The article on Rolling Stones was actually positive,
it was written by a friend of mine.
I laughed at the joke.
I'm not going to lie, to be a hypocrite and pretend I didn't laugh.
But it's a joke I would avoid because I don't like the controversy.
I don't think it's a bad joke, no. I think it's a funny joke.
I think he isn't that. His life isn't just that.
He's just kidding.
The same way we kid about ugly people,
we mess with every kind of prejudice, with fat people, with everything.
I don't see any fun in it. I don't think it counts as a joke, get it?
It's pub talk, sexist and misguided pub talk...
I am a woman, I am ugly and I panic even to hear to word 'rape'.
So I said : "Fuck! That's it?!".
But afterwards, talking, I realized it wasn't exactly like that,
that it had a different context.
The biggest problem is that it was written.
And when you read it you can interpret it in many different ways.
Of course, when you read that you say "This is absurd!".
It's not funny.
If I read it I'd say "Fuck, it's crazy that the guy said that!".
But when you learn it was a comedian saying it,
you think "Well, what was the context in which he said it?"
Rape is not a theme. Before being a theme, it is a reality,
something that happens very often in Brazil.
I don't like that formulation.
Because the amount of people who have suffered
with the experience of rape is very large.
I don't think that joke is funny, but on the other hand
I don't think it urges rape, which it was accused of.
It's not like someone will go around raping others,
but you defend all ideologies underneath rape on these jokes,
all of them.
He is giving back something that some jerk actually believes in.
I have seen taxi drivers say that:
"These women, ugly as hell, I tried to hit on one and she didn't like it."
"She should be happy that I hit on her."
So, you give back to the guy a prejudice that he already has, get it?
When a guy is allowed to do that on national TV, or in his theatre,
like the Comedians, without causing any kind of embarrassment,
it means this practice doesn't cause embarrassment on society, right?
When I realized women were getting annoyed,
there was some agitation in front of my bar,
I actually thought it was interesting.
It is great that women are getting together to fight for their rights,
to fight against a cause!
And it's cool that me, as a comedian, can touch these people.
Unfortunately, it is for the wrong reason, they believe I really think that.
I don't think he actually wants to hug a raper.
But he is saying that ugly women don't have sex,
that it is an opportunity for an ugly women to be raped,
because it is at least a change to fuck.
He is saying that sex and rape are equivalent,
when we, feminists, relate rape to violence,
much more than to sex.
With domination, with demonstration of power.
Clearly that is not my opinion on this subject.
I don't want ugly women to get raped.
Although many of them deserve it...
That's not it, I'm lying! It's humor, man.
"You need to know which side of this joke are you on"- HUGO POSSOLO
WHAT SEPARATES MEN FROM BOYS?
Just destroy the house, you're not old enough to rape anyone.
You can make jokes with horrible subjects, including nazism.
Woody Allen has, in one of his films there's a joke,
he's talking of his grandparents who were very unhappy in Poland,
Poland was a horrible country for jews to live in, so horrible that
when Hitler came his grandparents said: "Wow! Finally things will get a bit better!".
He is making a joke out of a tragedy.
But he isn't laughing at his ancestors' suffering.
He is, in some way, getting closer to these ancestors
and laughing with them of life's misfortunes.
He is complaining about that which is bad in life,
instead of saying: "Hahaha! Look at them get screwed!"
Look, I believe, at first, that no theme should be forbidden.
It's more about the form.
The way you work with the theme that can be offensive or not.
Every theme, with some effort,
you can create a joke that is appropriate for that theme.
But I also don't believe every theme is immune, that every joke suits.
I think with some themes you will need to sweat a little bit more.
And it doesn't have to be controversial, for instance, cement.
Try to make a joke about cement. It's hard,
you have to really think about it,
in the same way you have to think to make a joke about AIDS or racism.
You can either make people laugh talking about your mother in law
or you can make them laugh talking about death of terminal babies.
If I can get laughter out of that, I am a genius, right?
And maybe I have to try.
You need to know in which side of this joke you are.
Are you pro or against it?
If you make a joke about disabled people,
but in which you stand up for the disabled and his difficulties,
than this joke is transforming.
Why do mutes try to speak?
I've never seen a blind trying to read, have you?
I've never seen a deaf person trying to hear, have you?
There's always a mute trying to speak...
When I made this joke about deaf people there was no reaction,
'cause there was a deaf man on the audience,
but he didn't hear what I said.
The problem is that most humorists are status quo humorists,
they don't want to transform anything,
they only take advantage of these kind of jokes.
And they are the most used-up jokes,
jokes that bring no kind of innovation what so ever.
You're going to watch swimming, César Cielo.
Fuck, César Cielo is huge, gigantic, he looks like a greek god.
The man rocks. He has to win the fucking competition.
Now, when you watch the paralympics, it's a bunch of crazy,
armless and legless people throwing themselves in the water.
They're not crazy about winning medals.
They are crazy about not dying, you know?
COMEDIANS Cruel to minorities.
The nigger there, behind the crippled!
Indifferent to talent.
Bernard Shaw? Is there a link to his stand-up?
Chickens before the powerful.
You will apologize to the sponsor now!
When you offend someone that cannot be offended because of his/her power,
that humor is grand.
It's like feeling a police officer up.
Which is an old image that represents that person who is a libertarian,
who goes there and feels the officer up.
This joke can be offensive to the officer, to his mother, to his wife,
but the officer has a gun and a nightstick.
If you feel him up and he has a gun
that is funny because you are taking a chance.
But to feel up a beggar...
"Who can't say what? - ANTÔNIO PRATA
We live a very complicated moment.
We are running on fumes with the politically correct, right?
It's very annoying because there are things you do for humor,
to laugh, really.
And if the person goes out, and goes there to say
"I don't like what she said, she offended me because she said that,
because I'm in this group..." Dude! That's so annoying!
The person who wants to challenge all that,
she/he is seen today as someone who is uptight, conservative.
While it's really the other way around.
I think we should reconsider this inversion of meaning
which was applied in these two expressions,
the politically correct and the politically incorrect.
So when you make a joke that is politically incorrect, when you are racist,
you are not doing anything transgressive. It's not transgressive at all,
you are signing under reality, you're saying :
"the world is unequal and I'm laughing at that."
Fat!
Midget!
Hahaha, I love being politically incorrect!
Crippled! Ugly! Fagot! Nigger!
It's the consolation of the prisoner.
For me, who are wrong are those who insist on prejudices,
not those who fight against them.
So, I don't mind being called politically correct.
I think it's like defending causes that don't exist, you know?
Politically correct is a person who defends the other
even though the other doesn't need that defense.
We live in a racist world, in a sexist world, in a classist world.
Brazil is still one of the most unequal countries in the world.
We live a situation of brutal inequality
in which small accomplishments by historically excluded groups
cannot be presented as a sort of new dictatorship or new orthodoxy.
The dictatorship of the politically correct, you can't say anything anymore,
sometimes there is a babble about that, but where?
Who? What can't be said anymore? Who can't say what?
The term politically correct was forged by the right.
It was used to criticize left wing people
who started to worry about that.
It's an expression that designates a phantasmic relationship
of a dominant social layer with a supposed oppression coming from underneath
which, in fact, never actually existed.
Never comment on Facebook about how you beat up the homeless.
Why not, daddy?
The world is very intolerant.
It is hard to reach people and to make them think
when you are being gagged and you are afraid of speaking.
Sometimes we are scared.
We are living a moment of a intense policing.
I think there really is that patrol.
What is most common in twitter is a patrol of the politically correct.
Any twit today becomes a reason for analyses.
I really don't know what is happening. It's a wave of patrol that is a bit dangerous.
It's curious how often the term 'patrol'
is used to designate an opposing point of view.
Nowadays for every action there is a reaction.
So, if you want to name that patrol, you can.
For me, there's a much bigger normality patrol.
You can't impose your way of life on us, normals!
Am I not normal?
NO!
They've discovered us, guys...
"To call a black person an ape is not and has never been funny" - MARIANNA ARMELLINI
For people to access a mentality,
be it a racist, sexist, homophobic or classist,
that mentality has to be materialized in language or in action.
Maybe some people haven't noticed yet, people sitting at the back,
but Brown here is black. Right, Brown?
Worst, he was born this way.
Well, now I think I can sue everyone who laughed and who said it.
-Come on, it's just a joke! -No, no, I can sue you.
And your faces are on film.
Now you can't call your pals niggers or blacks anymore.
-Now you are obliged to call me... -Son of a bitch!
-No! Now you are obliged to call me... -Afro descent.
Yes, exactly. This law has changed my life!
It really has!
Respect. I've conquered respect.
I walk pass the street and people say: "Afro-descent! Stop doing shit, man!"
If I drop juice on the table, "It could only be an afro-descent".
Language is not something that reacts to decrees,
it reacts to social conditions.
So, if you want to eliminate prejudiced words
you must eliminate prejudice, not the words.
It's just not how it works.
It's not the word in itself, but what it carries.
If a word has always been used to disqualify,
if you use it you know that word is charged.
The only way of knowing if a person is racist is if I hear him or her say
at an airport or at the bank,
a joke like...
"a white man running is an athlete, a black man running is a thief."
Underneath the pressure for certain terms to be replaced,
to call someone nigger, or nig-nog,
there is a whole social practice, which is racist,
where white man are in power,
where white man are above and exclude blacks.
Whoever denies that is a fucking liar.
To call a black person ape is not and never was funny.
They locked up Brown. Fuck!
He got to Europe, he was totally jammed.
Holy shit! Right, Brown? He bursted his moorings,
ran away, climbed a building,
grabbed a plane with his bare hands, right Brown?
He was fired up.
Hey twerp! What you laughing at, fucking nigger?
Stop! Let him laugh!
To call someone ape is to call someone of a lower phase of evolution.
It's not any animal, chosen by it's color. It's not.
Not to call blacks apes is just basic human decency.
It has nothing to do with a supposably linguistic oppression.
"Freedoms have limits" - JEAN WYLLYS
I think humorists and comedians have to be free to make any jokes they like.
However, they cannot believe that they are not to be challenged, that's the problem.
It is wanting to make jokes without being questioned.
It is to make a joke, to offend a group and not want that group to react.
Look, I'm sorry dear. But it can't be a one-way road.
It's a bidirectional road : you have all the right to make your jokes,
now, pay the price of being called jerk, racist, homophobic, sexist.
Defend yourself, explain yourself, react, rethink your humor.
I know explaining a joke means killing the joke, but who said jokes are God?
That jokes are like a religion that is above good and evil
and therefore shall not be criticized? It should be criticized.
STAND UP POLITICALLY INCORRECT
Shut up, shit head!
What we preach, because someone already asked me...
"Do you humorists now think that only politically incorrect counts?"
No. I think if a humorist wants to be politically correct, so be it.
And if he wants to be politically incorrect, so be it.
What counts is freedom of speech.
It's curious when people evoke freedom of speech as if it were without limit.
No. Freedoms have limits.
And my freedom ends at someone else's rights, at the recognition of others.
That's where my freedom ends. That is why I am not free to kill.
Freedom of speech is not being threatened.
But I think there is something complicated
which is to make a humorist think four times before he says anything.
Freedom of speech is there, but whatever you say
you might be forbidden of saying the same thing again.
To sue me I think is fair. To win is a bit disturbing.
Justice forbidding to speak, justice obliging to pay indemnification.
On Rafinha Bastos'case we saw that clearly.
So, censorship exists, and it is official in Brazil.
It just doesn't have that name.
I was sued because I made a joke about APAE (NGO for the disabled),
a stupid joke, that I've been telling for over ten years,
the prosecution said :
if I say, if I even mention someone's deficiency again
I will have to pay a fine of thirty five thousand reais.
The judge wrote that.
Well, if that's not censorship
then I no longer know what characterizes censorship.
I don't think it's wrong for people not to like what I say,
to express that they don't think I'm funny, and that I'm a jerk.
People have all the right in the world to think I'm a jerk,
but she/he cannot want me to stop saying what I want to say.
There will always be someone who got offended.
How to negotiate that offense is something that depends on the historical moment.
In some historical moments, certain offenses are liable for prosecution.
If the government doesn't have public policies,
if the legislative doesn't legislate,
doesn't guarantee in laws
the protection of these persons' dignity and rights,
then it is up to us to call upon the judiciary.
I don't see the judicialization as a problem.
In fact, to say there is a judicialization, is a way to try
and keep you in your place.
It's just a joke. Don't sue me, ok? Alright.
"It's just a joke" - RAFINHA BASTOS
It's just a joke, ok?
It would be worth thinking a bit more about this phrase,
what do people mean when they say "it's just a joke".
People have to stop interpreting jokes as opinions all the time, get it?
It's a joke.
It's a joke.
It's an insult and I think it's a demonstration of someone's ignorance
to say that it's just a joke, just a word.
It's not! Everything in life is a representation.
Humor is always a disguised content.
So he cannot say that it was just a joke.
I don't believe in just jokes, because I take jokes very seriously.
Jokes don't just have an underlining truth, jokes are the truth.
It's truth with a clown's nose.
I think an artist cannot be alienated.
A comedian cannot defend himself under the pretext of a joke.
You don't mean to take what I say seriously, right?.
But it is serious!
I mean, that's what I was talking about,
the humorous speech is also a ideological speech.
It says things... even if the intention
is to amuse people while they eat french fries.
The artist has that role of amusing, entertaining and making people think.
My role is to go on stage and to be funny. That's it.
To theorize about the social role of the comedian...
I find the questioning beautiful, I read, it's cool,
but I'm not the one that has to answer these types of questions.
I don't think so, we are not opinion leaders,
it doesn't have to have that responsibility,
I think it has to amuse people.
My pretension with comedy never is to denounce,
it's nothing, just to destroy really.
I remember that during her campaign president Dilma used to say :
I will be the mother of brazilians.
I used to say : Fuck off, Dilma! I have a mother.
You don't even look like my mother.
Maybe like my father.
If Dilma was my mother I wouldn't be here today.
With six months old I would have died
because I wouldn't want to suck that teat.
Suckle, No!.
Any artistic manifestation has the possibility to express itself
through a transforming or through a conservative manner.
Therefore every piece of art is, in one way or another, political.
When you make a joke you are putting an idea in the market of ideas.
You are helping create that mass culture.
You are helping create the way people think.
That is totally political.
He might try to defend himself by saying I'm not engaging in politics,
because he has a very poor comprehension of what politics is.
He thinks carrying out politics is for professional politicians.
The elected representatives and social movements.
No, dear! Coke engages in politics.
When coke sells a life style, that's politics.
I'm sorry, but you need to learn to expand your concept of politics,
so you don't make the mistake of saying you're not engaging in politics.
Of course you are! You might not be engaging in politics in a traditional way,
in institutional politics, but you are engaging in politics.
And when you recognize your humor as political, as something that interferes in the polis,
in the organization of the collective, in collective space,
then you have to handle the consequences of that humor.
It has to be transforming. Even the fun.
Even because all speech has to be humorous to be relevant.
Theatre has the power to transform. Look at me...
"The key is what the comedian does with that power"- GABRIEL GROSVALD
When a comedian has a microphone in his hands,
the opportunity to say things, he has a lot of power.
The key is what the comedian will do with that power.
How have we grown as a society that I say I'm a lesbian and people applaud me.
Another thing that happens when people find out your a homosexual
is that they want to introduce you to another homosexual friend.
Are you homosexual? Are you heterosexual?
I have a heterosexual friend? Do you want me to introduce you guys?
It happens to me all the time.
I have a gay friend, should I introduce you?, "No!".
I need something more besides that coincidence.
Humor should generate a shift in behavior,
in the way people see the world.
When that is accomplished, that's art.
I always make jokes like You're heterosexual. I have a straight friend.
Do you want me to introduce you?
because it happens to me all the time. It happens to me!
So it's a way of saying Don't do that anymore!.
But people do it over and over.
Surprising moments that really weren't supposed to surprise.
You're shocked, but if you see it from outside,
you so couldn't be shocked.
For instance, my dad when he realized I liked women

he was shocked.
But come on, just look at me...
The type of humor I like the most
is the one that doesn't laugh of the victim but of the hangman.
It doesn't interest me to perpetuate stereotypes, or misunderstandings,
or discriminatory figures.
It's a process, a work of the comedian
that has to do with the ideology of the comedian.
I see comedians laughing, for example, at the poor, and it's not something I like.
Because laughing at the poor doesn't seen fair.
When I say I don't drink I also have to clarify that I use drugs.
Very well...
What audience picks the right moments to applaud?
when I say I'm a lesbian, when I say I use drugs :
Bravo! Great!.
A stand-up is always a conversation between two people.
It's a dialog, not a monolog.
It's not just one person talking.
And to be able to laugh together there must be a maturation,
which is a simultaneous process.
The comedian grows and the audience grows.
"Those who bend to much to the audience end up on their hands and knees"- HUGO POSSOLO
On a normal day, at this time, there wouldn't be enough drugs at Sé Square.
I think it's fucking awesome, really!
Your judgement is the audience. Either the audience laughs or they don't.
We'll never keep on doing something if the audience isn't laughing.
If they laugh we will continue.
And if they laugh is because they also agree with what we are saying.
It's an opinion.
I am always trying to say things that will make people laugh.
If you didn't laugh, I wouldn't tell jokes.
The laughter...
It's either the result of a harmony with the humorist's lack of capacity
for a more elaborate thought,
or it's that matter of public opinion.
Everyone's laughing so I will also laugh,
'cause otherwise I will be different,
I will be the minority who is the target of this kind of jokes.
We have to criticize everything, including the common sense that laughs at the jokes.
Because it's not a separate thing, you can't put prejudice,
discrimination, stereotypes, jokes on one side.
For me a man who's a man, a real macho,
won't notice if a woman comes without an arm.
If the teats are there, that's cool!
Is he being a good humorist or are people who laughed being too little demanding?
The audience is not dissociated from society,
in the same way the artist also isn't.
We are all living the same historic moment.
Dude! It's a lot of people getting felt up at buses.
People say : If you want to fuck a girl on the first date
open the car door for her. No!
Take her on a bus so you can fuck her on the way.
They seek a sort of consensus with the audience.
And that consensus points a way,
a sight in which true transgression has no room!
The humorist cannot simply rely on the audience's reaction and laughter...
He/she needs to have a critical stance.
Those who bend to much to the public end up on their hands and knees.
And they never rise back.
People say if you meditate a lot you can open your third eye.
That must hurt, right? I see no advantage in that.
Look there a third eye. Is it your third eye that is like that, pal?
The dude went like this, look. Oh my God...
It seems that it isn't possible to do anything better.
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Is it a stupid humor because it gives more audience
or does it give more audience because it's a stupid humor?
Whats' up everyone?!
Cool!
Keep laughing!
THE LAUGHTER OF OTHERS