Chris Rock is a thrilling comic provocateur

18/01/2022

Chris Rock remains a comedic and family-friendly actor with proven box office appeal, despite the controversies.

☞ by Benjamin Daniels in Videomatic

From the point in his career when Chris Rock was a brash, caustic, pertinent and very funny stand-up comedian, pushing boundaries and buttons in the process.

He would go on to establish himself as a successful movie actor, moving more to the mainstream and big box office (that's his voice as the uptight zebra in the Madagascar animated franchise).

Today Chris Rock is a comedic and family-friendly actor with proven box office appeal, despite the controversies (and violence) that come his way. Back then, in the late 1990s and early noughties, Rock's was the voice of the urban black male experience, the frustrated black middle class, and critics and fans loved him for it.

Pointedly, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he was a leading (comedic) voice, defending the President and calling out the hypocrisy of commentators (what we would characterise today as Mainstream Media) in their hysterical and unbalanced coverage of the scandal.

Where the politics of men and women are concerned Chris Rock was (and is) a thrilling comedy provocateur, as can be seen, and heard in this very funny clip.

You probably couldn't perform this kind of material today, unfortunately.