The Artistocrats is the dirtiest joke ever told
However, if you’re at all curious about comedy and the role it can play in understanding ourselves in terms of our taboos, boundaries, and limitations, then The Aristocrats is a must-see. Even a joke as sick as this has the power to force us to examine our values, where they come from, and also has the rare ability to bring healing laughter to a nation so thirsty for it.
The Aristocrats is a joke that has circulated in the world of stand-up comedy and acts as the secret handshake in the brotherhood of comedians. The premise of the joke is simple and only two parts, the introduction and the punchline, are required. It begins with a man who walks in a talent agency and says he’s discovered a great family act for a vaudevillian show, and the agent asks for a description.
What follows is entirely left up to the comedian, and it plays like a musician giving his own interpretation of well-known jazz tune. Completely open for improvisation, each comedian describes scenes so disgusting that none of it is suitable for print.
It doesn’t seem like much a story and, in fact, it isn’t a story at all. Instead, like all good films, The Aristocrats becomes an exploration of the human psyche, a comic Rorschach test aimed at determining our balance between tolerance and taste. With each new telling of the joke, and over 100 sources contribute their thoughts on the topic, the audience will divide itself into two camps: those who are in hysterics from the implausibly grotesque joke and wanting more, or those whose capacity for disgust have been exceeded and their sense of good taste is moving them toward the exit.
In either case, we learn whether we can truly laugh at the world in which we live and the irony of this joke which acts as a reflection of our lives, or are so serious and bound by puritanical propriety that we won’t allow ourselves to hear anything that affronts these learned behaviors.
George Carlin, Paul Reiser, Andy Dick, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Lewis, and Phyllis Diller are just a few who provide their insights, but the biggest laughs come from some unexpected sources. Bob Saget, host of the unfathomably tame America’s Funniest Home Videos and father of youngsters in Full House, tells the most graphic version.
This is part of what makes the film so hilarious. We take our preconceived notions of a comedian from his previous work and tend to apply it to who they are as stand-ups. When the two don’t match up, it leaves us with mouths agape in disbelief, looking at our neighbors for confirmation of what we just heard.
Comedy is also tricky because it can provide healing, despite the raunchy delivery, from the most unlikely character. I’ve found Gilbert Gottfried to be an annoying, parrot-squawk voiced chump ever since his days of commenting on some trashy B-movie between commercials on the USA Network. His style hasn’t changed, but he performs the most touching and poignant (if such terms can be used for this film) telling of the joke at a roast of Hugh Hefner.
Humor presents itself in a myriad of techniques and styles. It’s elusive and tough to define, but you know when you get it. Director Paul Provenza has made a movie in which the telling of a dirty joke is also part of the joke on the audience. Those who choose not to accept the gift based on its ugly wrapping are marked as those attempting to be too aristocratic in life. Thus, the comedian, in a brilliant role reversal, is now laughing at the audience.
Grade: B+
