Question about Dave Chapelle keeping it real

In Dave Chapelle’s show on Comedy Central he has, or had, an on-going set of sketches titled “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong.” The idea is that “keeping it real” can lead to disasterous (and comic) consequences. Of course, many of you already know this.

In the first installment, Dave played a guy who was at a party with his (überhot) girlfriend. When leaving, another gentleman said to his girlfriend, “It was good seeing 'ya.” Upon hearing that, he says something to the effect of, “Good seeing 'ya? Good seeing 'ya?! I ain’t playing that nigga,” and grabs the other gentleman. The other gentleman then beats the hell out of Chapelle’s character with the help of Chapelle’s girlfriend.

When I see this, I think that he deserved a beating for starting a fight with someone who merely offered an innocuous pleasantry to his girlfriend. Indeed, I’d think that he’d be happy that people are nice to his girlfriend.

Apparently, not everybody sees it that way, since it turns out that the other gentleman was a tenth-degree black belt who picked fights just to practice street fighting. This would imply that the the pleasant farewell could reasonably be construed as being fight-provoking speech. Of course, it could be part of what makes it funny, because of the sudden, suprising role reversal between the men.

So, I’m confused by this. Chapelle seems to portray himself as having come from a rough background fraught with violence and peril, e.g. when he got a job at McDonalds and was mugged for his pay. Then again, he does tell a good joke. So what’s the scoop? If one were at a party in Dave’s neighborhood, would “Nice seeing 'ya” really be grounds for a fight?

If you said that to someone’s girlfriend right in front of their boyfriend, who just happens to feel obligated to keep it real, then yes.

Maybe I just don’t understand the question?

This is where you lost me. What’s the McD sketch got to do with the WKIRGW sketch? I don’t remember the fight-picking part of that sketch that you refer to, either…

I was going to start a thread asking this very same question. I asked our mailroom guys (they’re my source for all things 'hood related, you see) and they said they’d both be mighty peeved if someone said that to their respective girlfriends right in front of them.

I don’t get it. All he said was 'It was nice seeing you again, Tamika" or something along those lines. I don’t get it

In fact, I’m on the telephone with one of the mailroom dudes now. Here’s what he said, almost verbatim: “How you gonna tell MY girl right in FRONT of ME it was nice seeing her? That ain’t right!” In other words, he agrees with Dave but he’s not telling me why. Now he’s all exasperated with me as this is like the fifteenth time I’ve broached this subject with me. Oh, wait. He hung up on me after telling me I’m never going to get it and to stop asking me.

I think I love him.

Please count me with the people who are DYING to hear the explanation for this one.

Stupid machismo?

(Yes, it’s redundant… :wink: )

I haven’t seen this skit, but if your descriptions are accurate the explanation is plain.

Dude crossed the line by (1) being familiar with Chappelle’s girlfriend and (2)disrespecting him by not even speaking to him, as he was standing right there. Put it another way, for Pulp Fiction fans: it was bad as giving her a foot massage.

It also’s some subtle, relationship-poisoning, cock-blocking, creeping, keeping it on the down low kind of move, especially if you’re prone to being paranoid about possible infidelity-- which you ALWAYS are, if you’re “keeping it real.”

Look at it from Chappelle’s POV. You KNOW your woman is fine. You KNOW other niggas gonna have their eye on her. You KNOW they just waiting for an excuse to move in on her, like Biggie Smalls rapping to the girlies in “Roll Wit Me” and “Big Poppa”. REAL NIGGAS ain’t nice to fine-ass women just to be NICE. REAL NIGGAS are nice to get some pussy.

And then, as you’re leaving WITH your woman, some punk-ass nigga feels compelled to walk across the room and say to HER, while you’re standing RIGHT THERE, “It was good seeing ya.” What. the. HELL. What’s he looking at her for? Why’s it making him feel good for? Why the FUCK is my girl smiling at this nigga? Have they done this shit BEFORE??? Are they planning some shit LATER???

etc.

This moment of urban paranoia brought to you by Da Ghetto Boy, Ice Cole 'Ski. Word.

You really don’t get it? On the street, women are mostly viewed as the property of the man. So if another man tries to talk to the woman, there’s going to be trouble. There are usually no casual friends on the street. If you’re friends with a guy on the street, you’ve probably had sex. Also, there’s the point of the guy saying “again,” as if something had already happened between the two of them. That makes the situation even worse. If you don’t get it now, you’re never going to get it.

Remember in Pulp Fiction when they were discussing whether a foot massage to a man’s wife warranted throwing the guy giving the massage off a balcony? The one character ended the argument by asking for a foot massage from the character who was saying that it was no big deal.

This seems like the opposite case. “It’s good to see you,” is pretty common in both business and personal life, and expressed to people of both sexes by both people of both sexes.

It’s also been my experience that being friendly, and by friendly I don’t mean “hit on,” with women in front of their boyfriends is both common and accepted, even expected. That’s not to say that one wouldn’t get an agressive “hey that’s my woman” handshake and curt introduction from the boyfriend; however, it is quite normal for one to give a greeting or friendly word to an attached woman whether the boyfriend is there or not.

Of course, by my common experience may not reflect the common experience of others. My background is one where people don’t get mugged; if there are craps games, they aren’t being robbed with people getting shot; and crack-heads are unheard of. Dave seems to portray himself as coming from a background where these sorts of things are part-and-parcel of daily life, or at least not uncommon. (That’s why the illustrative example of the guys deciding to mug him for his pay from McD’s.)

With that in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if his response to some guy saying hey to his girlfriend wasn’t so out of line from his perspective, and that saying hey to someone’s girlfriend wasn’t such a comically understated way to start a fight. You know, different culture sort of thing.

I finally got ahold of the other mailroom dude and conferenced him in with the first mailroom dude (yes, I have work to do. why do you ask?). They thought the bolded text was EXTREMELY relevent. In fact, I’ve never heard the word ‘disrespect’ used so much in one conversation.

So I presented the following scenario: So suppose you and your girlfriend are attending a black tie affair. You’re across the room, chatting up Mr. Franklin. While your girlfriend’s sitting alone at your table, a guy she once knew from college recognizes her, stops by and says hi. A brief conversation ensues and, after a few minutes he leaves, never having met you. Later, when you’re leaving, the guy sees her, says it was nice seeing her again and waves.

They both said, in such a scenario, an explanation from their girlfriend/wife had better be presented in no less than two seconds. If this was the case, I asked why they wouldn’t be mad at her. Furthermore, he doesn’t know you, he knows her. In fact, he’s never even met you! Why on earth would his actions, or lack thereof, draw such ire? Faced with this, they both said something about respect and, of course, disrespect and told me to just stop trying and go back to eating my cheese sandwich.

I think I love them both.

:snort: Yeah, waving at a woman from across the room in a fleeting farewell is exactly as severe as intimately rubbing her bare feet for an extended period of time. :wink:

It’s clear you didn’t see the skit because this was a throwaway line by a guy as they were working their way through the crowd–Dave wasn’t ignored or treated as if he wasn’t there (except possibly in his own mind).

As for the rest of your post, I’ll take your word for it that there are actually guys out there so insecure about themselves that even the slightest friendly gesture is an automatic, ego-brusing sign of “disrespect.” Pretty pathetic.

There’s a difference between being unfamiliar with a foreign social custom and being thick.

So why are women in the street chattel? Are they cool with being chattel? Is that a recent phenomenon? Are the urban underpriveledged (sp?) as backward as the rural underpriveledged? What’s the scoop?

Comedy has come a long way from “Take my wife…PLEASE!” (ba-da-boom, chee!)

In a previous week, Chappelle’s Show had a skit where a white guy was grouped with an all-black cast of The Real World. His visiting father is accosted by the black roommates for looking at them wrong. His confused protestation is silenced by a walk-by shivving.

Apparently, Chappelle’s world is populated by drop-of-the-hat violence.

Controvert, I believe when Chapelle was setting up the sketch he said something about it being not just blacks, but the craziest blacks one could find. Something like that.

As I remember the skit, it wasn’t just a tossed-off, casual, nonchalant line. The guy said it like he’d been hanging out with the girl all night and wanted to hang out with her until the next morning, if you get me. And yeah, Chapelle overreacted, but that’s the whole point of the skit. That’s why it’s funny. And I don’t think that most guys would do something like that, whether they’re from the hood or from suburbia, but I think many guys have thought of doing something like that, even if only for a second. Everyone gets jealous, sometimes with good cause, sometimes with no cause.

Of course, I’m even further removed from the streets than africanus, so I could just be talking out my bum here.

Didn’t mean you were thick, just that it’s more of a “had to be there” situation. “There” in this case is having grown up in a street environment.

Anyway, as to your question, it’s more of a mindset that the males carry. If you read Code of the Street by [some guy whose name I forgot], it explains it pretty well. The book is pretty short, so it’s an easy read. Of course, it’s not usually as exaggerated as it is in the book, but it’s pretty informative.

I really don’t think it’s as complicated as all this. The point of “keeping it real” in the sketch was that Chapelle wasn’t going to hide anything or take any crap from anybody, no matter how small the slight. “Good seeing you” isn’t that much of a diss, but it’s a guy talking to your girlfriend right in front of your face, which to the typical guy is a little shot to his pride. It’s the sort of thing that you keep in the back of your mind for the ride home, and then forget about. But in the sketch, Chapelle wasn’t doing that anymore. If he had a problem, he was fixing it. The point is, it wasn’t that big a deal. Normally you just shake it off, think to yourself, that guy’s a dick, and move on. But not when you’re keeping it real.

Then he got his ass kicked, because it’s funnier that way.

Isn’t the entire point of the skits (and much of Chapelle’s humor) that things can go wrong with taking reactions and thoughtlessness too far? It seems that a lot of Dave’s skits have black people doing stereotypical things in really bad situations, like the black guy (Dave) who works his butt off in college and in the firm to become the first black VP (or whatever), then chooses a board meeting to take enormous offense at essentially nothing and make an enormous scene with the most hip-hop/street/black/whatever slang he can think of.

Ah, but, Cardinal, I can totally dig the other keeping it real skit. I hate it when people, especially in a professional environment, talk to me using stereotypical black slang. It pisses me off to no end. You wouldn’t do it to your white colleagues. Don’t do it with me.

Unlike Dave, however, I don’t keep it real. I just continue to speak as I normally would and gloss over the slang usage. If I’m in a particularly pissy mood, however, I may glare at the person for a few seconds before moving on.

That’s what bugs me about the other keeping it real sketch. I get the other one. I don’t get the one in the OP.

ArchiveGuy – it couldn’t have been too throwaway a line if the OP included it in his query. As to the rest of your post, I’ll take your word that you actually needed me to explain to you that there are guys out there who will take the slightest friendly gesture directed at their girlfriend as a sign of disrespect to them, and that you think jealousy, insecurity or a bruised male ego has a damned thing to do with it. Yeah, some of these guys MIGHT be wounded little boys on the inside. Who gives a shit? A lot of them pull this just because they can.

Other posters. This aspect of male machismo is not regulated only to the street. I’m friends with plenty of guys from rural areas, military families and middle-class 'burbs who act just like this.

Jimmy Chitwood. EXAAaaAAAaactly. Except most REAL NIGGAS will mull that over and just forget about it. Richard Pryor had this joke about waking up his wife in the middle of the night, “Hey. What was that shit you said last February?”

JuanitaTech Damn, babygirl – you just love the thugs, huh? LOL.