| How Britain was robbed of Bernie Mac |
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| Entertainment - Entertainment News | |
| Wednesday, 13 August 2008 00:54 | |
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Here, he's far better known as a screen actor, as seen in films including Ocean's Eleven, but that was really just an adjunct of his art. Mac was a key player in a group of black comics who transformed stand-up in the States, and inspired a small but significant renaissance of black comedy in Britain. He got his first big break on Def Comedy Jam, an immensely influential TV series that showcased a new generation of African American comics, comics who came from the same sort of background as black rappers, and shared their attitudes and inspirations. Yet though Def Comedy Jam was a smash hit in the States, here you had to hunt it down on imported DVDs. It was the same story when Mac teamed up with three other Def Jam stars, and set off on a national tour which revolutionised black comedy in America. Performing alongside Steve Harvey, DL Hughley and Cedric the Entertainer, The Original Kings of Comedy tour broke all sorts of box office records as it packed out gigantic stadiums all across the USA. America finally realised the power and popularity of black comedy (Bernie Mac's eponymous sitcom, for Fox, was directly drawn from one of his gutsy stand-up routines). Yet if Spike Lee hadn't made a film of it, The Original Kings of Comedy would have passed Britain by. Until Lee put that show on the big screen, it was left to small scale black British promoters such as Birmingham-based outfit Upfront to bring a few Def Jam comics over here, to show some of us what we'd been missing. So why does British television (and the British media in general) give black American comedy such short shrift - especially the sort of comedy personified by Bernie Mac? It's not really racism, more a sort of cultural arrogance and disinterest, a refusal to engage with any artform outside our domestic comfort zone. Mac and his fellow Def Jam comics spoke with energy and raw candour about topics that make white British liberals uneasy: the nitty gritty of racial and sexual politics. It was an unsentimental vision, and while British punters would have lapped it up, British TV usually opts for something more safe. Personally speaking, Bernie Mac wasn't my favourite US comic. I didn't always agree with what he said, and I didn't always find him funny. But his humour was about his world, another world which I knew next to nothing of, and that was what made him such a fascinating and important entertainer. By: William Cook
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Bernie Mac, who has died from pneumonia aged just 50, was one of the most popular American comics of the past 20 years. But if the only place you see comedy is on British television, your could be forgiven if your first response was: "Bernie who?" Mac was a huge 
