Did you hear what Pete Davidson said to Aretha Franklin’s family at her wedding? Did you know he was high? If you watched his latest special, Turbo Fonzarelli, you sure do. It’s the first chunk.
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In the opening minutes of Fonzarelli, Davidson tells the crowd at the Count Basie Theatre in beautiful Red Bank, NJ, that he not only attended Aretha Franklin’s funeral but did so high. This a shocking admission, as numerous news outlets reported. But after the Hasan Minhaj debacle, we must ask, why are we covering this at all?
Comedy, as many learned for the first time during Minhaj’s trial in the court of public opinion, is built on truth. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is the truth. Yet, that didn’t stop the New Yorker from fact-checking the hell out of his stand-up routine to poke holes in the stories he told on stage. Regarding Davidson, we’re doing essentially the same thing: taking a comedian’s work and accepting it as fact. We just aren’t wagging our finger at it.
There is no doubt that some of Davidson’s material is true. His struggles with drugs and alcohol are well documented, and in the special, he opens with a chunk about giving up hard drugs in his 20s. “I was on a magical drug for the last two-and-a-half three years called Ketamine,” he says. “It was amazing. What a time!” Davidson says that he even went to Franklin’s funeral on the drug, which is shocking but not exactly surprising for someone with Davidson’s past. He says he even made a joke to Franklin’s family while on the drug. “I just came to pay my R-E-S-P-E-C-T-S.”
To be clear, this is a solid joke. But did it happen? He definitely went to Franklin’s funeral because then-girlfriend Ariana Grande was performing. Should we treat Davidson’s joke as an admission or as a fictional version of a true-life event? Should we apply it to the rest of the special? If so, there are far more shocking revelations in Turbo Fonzarelli. For instance, during a chunk about his work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, he jokes about how spending time with sick kids is inherently pedophilic. “Why would you hang out with a kid for three hours? That’s weird. You’d be a pedophile, actually,” he says. “Ironically, for a pedophile, that would be their Make-a-Wish. Hang out with a dying, weak one.” While certainly better than Ricky Gervais’ Make-a-Wish material from weeks ago, Davidson’s joke elicits some modest groans that he was prepared for. After standing in the discomfort for a beat, he responds, “Yeah, I don’t give a fuck. I was molested, so I can make those jokes.” That’s certainly a riskier admission than the Franklin one because if he is just joking, lying about being the victim of sexual abuse would rightfully offend actual victims. If he’s telling the truth, shouldn’t a celebrity opening up about their traumatic experience be worthy of investigation?
Davidson fills his hour with kernels of truths about his Crohn’s disease, fame, and family. Does Pete Davidson actually want to have a sexual relationship with his mother? Does he have a friend named “Tasty”? Did he offend a realtor by using the phrase “master bedroom”? Did his stalker really send him 20 pairs of soiled underwear? (Davidson fact-checks himself there, saying it was only two.) That he feels the need to do so seemingly recalls the Minhaj of it all. Comedians mine their lives for comedy all the time. They shouldn’t feel the need to also fact-check themselves.
How do we know when a comedian is telling the truth, and when does it matter? It certainly seems more shocking that Davidson is willfully admitting to being a survivor of sexual assault than a person with substance abuse disorder abusing substances. We know it’s true when it’s funny. Not because the described incident actually happened but because we recognize the feelings surrounding it, e.g. his anxiety, humiliation, and confusion. Except when he describes his stalker blowing out a candle with a fart. True or not, that’s just funny.