You may not know who Dane Cook is. But if you know any teenagers, ask them. I guarantee you that they know everything about him. To them, Dane Cook is a rock star. To them, Dane Cook is one of the hottest people in the country.
Dane Cook is the number one standup comedian in America right now. He's been on the cover of Rolling Stone. His MySpace page is pratically melting down from his fans. His documentary series, "Tourgasm," just finished up a run on HBO and last monday night saw the debut of his 90 minute comedy special on HBO, "Viscious Circle."
But I'm not just here to comment on Dane Cook's comedy quality, although he is about as vacuous, generic, unfunny, Wonder Bread level hack comedian as they come.
I'm here to comment on what Cook's brand of awareness-free unthreatening Frat Boy stylings really represent. The pathetic realization that stand-up comedy and pop culture icons in general continue to lack the balls, vision and aspirations for greatness that have come before, and we so desperately need today. Follow me on the flip:
Dane Cook doesn't fail because his comedy is bland, boring and, worst of all, safe. He fails because Dane Cook holds something rare and profoundly powerful. He holds the attention and focus of an enormous section of the next generation of American kids.
Cook is an icon.
His words carry the inordinate power that any successful comedian at the top of their craft carries. His catch-phrases enter the lexicon. His mannerisms are copied. Boys want to be his friend. Girls want to jump him.
And with all this focus, all this enormous fame, Dane Cook stood on a stage for 90 minutes on HBO on Monday night and said... absofreakinglutely nothing.
Dick jokes. Ass jokes. Fratboy jokes. Shallow pop commentary on relationships.
Cook offers nothing and that is the key to his success. By venturing nowhere real, by avoiding all controversy, all reality, all opinion and point of view, Cook embraces the detached, drifting, above-it-all dreamstate of a detached and disinterested electorate.
Dane Cook is popular because he's nothing.
Dane Cook is successful because he's empty.
The pathetic irony of calling his show "Viscious Circle" when his harshest line wouldn't threaten puppy dogs and ice-cream is simply the icing on the cake of Cook's reality-free shallowness and genericism masquerading as edginess and humor.
So why am I so angry about this boring performance artist who's perfected the hot best-friend with the perfect haircut persona and delivers it to college audiences around the world?
Why don't I just say, "Hey, he's not my cup of tea." and be done with it?
I'll tell you why.
Because standup comedians can change the world.
They have the power to influence politics across an entire generation. The revolutionary comedy of Lenny Bruce, the cutting edge satire of The Smothers Brothers, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor shaking up racial issues and confronting American hypocrisy, the list goes on and on.
Even in the 1980s, the Reagan mocking hipsterism of Richard Belzer forced me, at age 13, to not only engage in questioning my government (I was raised in a republican household) but an even more powerful idea:
Mocking politicans and ranting about hypocrisy and injustice can be COOL.
Let us not forget Bill Hicks. I had every one of his albums in college. His rants on advertising and religious nutbaggery changed the way I saw the world at 19 years old.
Comedians are more than just entertainers. Comedians are rock stars of intellect. They can alter and change the way kids think through the sheer force of their charisma. They can challenge an entire way of thinking with simply a microphone and a spot-light. Comedians merge two powerful notions into one: charisma and intellect. They don't get by because they are good looking or can play guitar. They get by because of what they THINK.
Dane Cook is disinterest personified. He paces around the stage like a panther, like he's revealing some great truths, like he's fully embracing some powerful observations, yet he is all image. Cook is the harmless, vacuous pablum of wonder bread comedy. A castrated, anaesthetized fraud pretending to be a real comedian.
With a world gone crazy where Fox News is considered "news" and where wingnut pundit blowhards shout on every radio station with their war and economy collapsing around them, there is enormous material to work with. All it takes is one charismatic comedian to make that leap, to go down the path of engagement and daring that Hicks, Pryor, Belzer, Foxx, Bruce, even Denis Leary and Sam Kinison brought forth the primal and genuine rage of confrontation and debate.
To challenge convention. To confront orthodoxy. To mock and ridicule authority.
There is no greater media weapon than the laser-like mind of a comedian in their prime. But in a corporate environment where Sinclair Media can smear John Kerry and ABC can rewrite the history of 9/11 to hurt democrats, comedians fear for their lives that challenging the machine will result in media isolation and banishment.
And so they become Dane Cooks.
Afraid to say anything real, they become Wonder Bread shells of comedy.
What would Bill Hicks have done? Lenny Bruce? Richard Pryor? Would they have sanitized and scrubbed all real thought, all real invective and polarized, potentially "offensive" comments from their show so they could host the "Teen Choice Awards"?
Where are our comedians in the 21st Century to lead us out of this pop-culture abyss? To challenge and awake young minds with the simple notion that being smart, thinking independently and raging against injustice are not depressing political activities but can also be deliriously funny, irreverant, rebellious and fucking cool as shit?
We need these types of leaders to wake up the minds of the kids and change the way they view their world.
Instead we have Dane Cook.