What is Matt Rife domestic violence joke?
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The opening joke of Matt Rife’s Netflix special, Natural Selection, is set at a restaurant in Baltimore, a city Rife describes as “ratchet.”
He says, “I’ve only been to Baltimore one time. I ate lunch there, and the hostess, who seats you at the restaurant, had a black eye. It was pretty obvious what happened. We couldn’t get over the fact, ‘This is the face of the company.’ Like, ‘This is… This is who you have greeting people?’ And my boy, who I was with was like, ‘Yeah, I feel bad for her. I feel like they should, you know, put her in the kitchen or something where nobody has to see her face, you know.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.'”
“Testing the water, seeing if y’all are gonna be fun or not. Just wanted to see.”
The opening joke of Matt Rife’s Netflix special, “Natural Selection,” uses shock value and subversion of expectations as its primary humor device. Set in Baltimore, which Rife describes as “ratchet,” the joke begins with a seemingly ordinary observation: a hostess at a restaurant with a black eye. The expectation is that the joke might revolve around the hostess’s appearance being an odd choice for a welcoming face of a company. However, Rife takes a dark turn by suggesting, through his friend’s comment and his own response, that domestic violence could be the reason behind her black eye.
The punchline, “Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye,” is a jarring and controversial comment implying that domestic violence could be avoided if the victim had better domestic skills. This is a form of dark humor, which finds comedy in topics that are generally considered serious, distressing, or taboo.
Rife’s follow-up, “Testing the water, seeing if y’all are gonna be fun or not. Just wanted to see,” acknowledges the edginess of the joke and serves as a gauge for the audience’s reaction to controversial humor. It suggests an understanding that such humor can be divisive and is being used to test the boundaries of the audience’s sensibilities.