Blue Room | Dangerous Words
Comedians have been on the frontlines of America’s long and volatile debates about the First Amendment. Comedy has historically been a vehicle for inciting difficult (and vital) cultural conversations about politics, race, religion, human rights, and social justice – and for mounting challenges to the status quo. Three comedy legends – Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin – led this charge in the twentieth century, and their examples charted a course for the evolution of stand-up as a potent sociopolitical forum in America – and around the world. Their work was at turns furious, ferocious, passionate, intelligent, courageous, and vulnerable – and it sparked cultural controversy that sent shockwaves across the nation.
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Bruce
Contains Explicit and Uncensored Content.
A fierce iconoclast, Lenny Bruce revolutionized stand-up in the 1950s. At the time, most comics were still reciting tame routines and generic jokes. By contrast, Bruce’s sets were wild acts of self-expression, full of personal confession, improvised rant...
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Pryor
Contains Explicit and Uncensored Content.
Pryor’s work dealt powerful blows to the white establishment and traversed the racial divide at a moment when audience segregation was still a reality in the United States. His irreverent, progressive voice charted a new course for stand-up comedy, which...
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Carlin
Contains Explicit and Uncensored Content.
George Carlin was a comedic renegade whose art ranged from philosophical reflection to political outrage. As the indignant voice of the counterculture, he reinvented stand-up comedy as a form of social criticism, using his platform to counteract the plat...
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Carlin's 7 Dirty Words
George Carlin’s landmark 1972 album Class Clown contained a controversial routine about censorship called “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” While performing the routine live before an audience of 35,000 on July 21, 1972, at Summerfest in Milwaukee, Carlin was surrounded by police and...
