Matt Rife walks on stage to a crowd of hundreds of people. To start his Netflix comedy show, Natural Selection, he opens with a joke about domestic violence. Everybody laughs. People clap. Some whistle, some cheer.
If you read that and were expecting a punchline, there is none. But I really wish I was joking.
On November 15, the 28-year-old comedian, who rose to fame via TikTok, launched his very first comedy special on the streaming platform Netflix.
Prior to the premier, Rife did an interview with Variety, discussing the show, his jokes and his fan base, which on TikTok are “predominantly female”, according to Rife.
But the comedian assured Variety readers that this Netflix show is “for the boys”.
i rather hear nails on a chalkboard than hear matt rife trying to appeal to men pic.twitter.com/uZ0KPFSpnd
— kacy(taylor’s version) (@chiateaaddict) November 21, 2023
Unsurprisingly, then, did he open the show making light of the global epidemic that kills women every day (in Australia, domestic violence has already killed 51 women this year, according to statistics from Destroy the Joint).
He began by retelling a story when he and a male friend went to a restaurant and were served by a waitress with a black eye.
“It was pretty obvious what happened,” Rife said, “but we couldn’t get over, like, this is the face of the company? This is who you have greeting people?”
“And my boy, who I was with, was like, ‘Yeah, I feel bad for her, man, I feel like they should put her in the kitchen or something where nobody has to see her face’,” he continued, as the audience laughed.
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.'”
Get it? Because women are supposed to cook and we deserve violence if we can’t! Hilarious! Two jokes in one!
Honestly, it wasn’t even the joke itself that was the most sickening part for me. It was the laughter. The claps. The whistles. The cheers.
Most of the laughter wasn’t even uncomfortable laughter. You can hear people in the audience genuinely thought that was a cracking joke. Do people actually find this funny?
“Testing the water, seeing if y’all are going to be fun or not,” Rife continued.
“I figured we start the show with domestic violence, the rest of the show should be pretty smooth sailing.”
At that moment, Rife defined the audience’s level of “fun” based on whether or not they laughed at something that, in Australia alone, has affected at least one in six women from the age of 15.
And people wonder why domestic violence is rife in society. No pun intended.
Cancel Culture
A lot of Matt Rife’s bit is about cancel culture on social media, which of course, is a real problem that determines the rise and fall of celebrities in the digital world. But it’s not the same game for a straight cis white male as it is for people from marginalised groups. The more privilege you have, the harder it is to get canceled.
Take the Tate brothers, who despite literally being arrested and going to jail, appeared in the news cycle yesterday after an interview with Piers Morgan.
You may be wondering: what do these men have to say to get them cancelled?
The answer is there is no answer – firstly, because they exist in a world that props up their platform purely based on their identity, and secondly, because people love to hate these men. Example – I’ve just written 700+ words about Matt Rife’s inappropriate “joke”, and you’ve just read 700+ words about Matt Rife’s inappropriate “joke”.
Stand up, speak out
But can you imagine how different this story would be if the audience didn’t laugh at Rife’s joke? What if his “punch line” was met with dead silence instead? Maybe the show wouldn’t have even made it on Netflix.
This is how domestic violence is normalised. People laughing at dangerous stereotypes and threats to life perpetuates dangerous stereotypes and threats to life.
And we are human beings. We are social beings. So in an audience where offensive, inappropriate and frankly shit jokes are told, I imagine people would rather play the part and laugh along than sticking out from the crowd, i.e. being labeled “not fun”.
This has to change. And not just in the setting of a comedy show – at the pub, at the gym, picking kids up from school – we need to be unafraid to not laugh uncomfortably, but speak out instead.
One of my favourite things to do when someone tells me a misogynistic “joke” is to ask them what they mean.
“I don’t get the joke – can you explain it to me?”
Watching them squirm and babble and eventually mumble “it was just a joke, can’t you just take a joke” is really, really fun.
(FOOTNOTE: To those who are offended by Matt Rife’s latest joke (which I hope you are) – don’t worry, he has a solution for you! Yesterday, in an Instagram story, he provided a link to a website that sells helmets. Haha, good one mate!)