Puff, puff, laugh: Weed Comedy is at a crossroads
With legalization taking the novelty out of baking, stoner comedy just doesn’t catch on like it used to.
In the opening scene of Seth Rogen’s 2007 masterpiece Pineapple Express, his character Dale Denton is on the phone and smoking a joint while driving. “If marijuana isn’t legal within the next five years, I have no faith in humanity, period. Everyone likes to smoke weed. They have been for thousands of years, they are not going to stop anytime soon.”
Five years later, Colorado and Washington led the way in legalizing adult-use cannabis. Rogen now has his own cannabis company and dozens of other projects under his belt. And federal legalization seems just as inevitable, as Dale Denton said in 2007. Not only are people smoking more weed than ever before, they’re also talking without the typical old taboos. Normalization means more representation for cannabis lovers, but it also means some elements of pot culture are watered down for mainstream tastes.
2022 releases like Good Mourning, starring Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly), Megan Fox, Pete Davidson, and pot influencer Boo Johnson, all rely on weed as a plot device. But the rom-com doesn’t quite come like Half Baked or How High over two decades after those films took the real creative risks.
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As a San Francisco born in 1995, most of my sentient life has been around legal weed. Prop 215 passed thanks to activists in my hometown and I entered the industry when I was 20. So I’ve watched a lot of weed comedy, heard a lot of weed jokes, and consumed more than my fair share of Weedia (that’s weed media). Even that painfully swollen pharmacy show by Kathy Bates. When it comes to weed, I watch. But with few exceptions, canna-comedy often feels like hitting the ceiling.
The circumstances for movies like Pineapple Express or Up In Smoke just don’t exist anymore. Perhaps the makers of these movies helped destigmatize weed so well that it’s no longer an interesting plot device. The drama, excitement and fun of Spicoli showing up to class in Dazed in Confused or Craig worrying about how weed will affect his job on Friday quickly fades. Luckily, there are a few brave souls fighting to keep the tradition alive with new perspectives on lifting.
High hopes for the new generation
Stand-up comedian Ralph Barbosa seems to have found a new twist on stoner humor through stand-up. He moves brilliantly between jokes about open carry laws and stories about letting his friend sell hard drugs so he can take you out to fancier dinners.
His most recent set as part of a Don’t Tell comedy show in San Diego began with a familiar line of misfits coming to the Golden State: “The weed is amazing.” Granted, Barbosa’s 10 minutes didn’t literally make me laugh, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at his approach. The white people in the audience loved it. Much like Gras himself, his jokes transcend cultural differences and unite his diverse audience around universal truths about life.
Barbosa’s set is less about weed and more about the dissonance in state policy regarding the plant between California and his home state of Texas (He doesn’t do a good job of selling me in the Lone Star State at the end of the video). many live in constitutional states, the law means security; and room for innovation, progress and pride. But from Barbosa’s point of view, legalization is all a product of gentrification.
Does legalization really gentrify the plant?
“You people weeded out what the white people did to hip-hop — you gentrified it and got rich from it,” Barbosa tells his audience. “There was even a warning label on the packaging. It said, “Use with extreme caution.” Dude, I’m from a state where people still go to jail for weed. Trust me I used it with extreme caution. I came here not to exercise caution.”
Personally, this is weird for me because I’ve never used weed with extreme or even mild caution. Even before Prop 64 I smoked in public, I ate untested edibles; I even got a mention in an MG Magazine article about how much I loved it. I forget that millions of people still have to flee to light their meager joints, get in cars with strangers for 25 grams or risk having their children taken from them. Tens of thousands of people are still in prison for this. If you like dark comedy, there are some dystopian laughs out there somewhere.
After some fresh puffs on modern bud culture, Barbosa delves into the not-so-fun reality of California’s ailing cannabis industry. Thanks to a crippling tax structure and a thriving illegal market, even the Texas native sees things need to change fast: “The only thing we Americans hate more than drug dealers is paying taxes.”
Barbosa understands there’s so much to poke fun at in the legal industry: the desirable impotence of stock programs, Chad, the whole CBD side of things. The Karen who took too many Kiva Petra Mints and passed out. It just requires comedians to dig a little deeper for new content while shedding the low-hanging weed humor that helped pave the way.
Larry David buying weed on the corner to help his father’s glaucoma is no longer a real scenario as he can just walk to a medical pharmacy. But hilarity can still arise when a budtender tries to guide Larry through product names like Cat Piss and Coochie Runtz, right?
Weighing the comedic costs of legalization
The legalization of weed has robbed it of much of its once-illicit comedic excitement. With two-thirds of the country now living in states with some form of legal marijuana, the comedian-at-arms no longer lets her in on an inside joke. The best they can do is poke fun at the fact that they can’t hold their weed.
I’ll admit it’s hard to make fun of microdosing or terpene talk with your budtender Brandon – it’s all too mundane without the specter of legal ramifications. Even the awful concerns of being called burnout or smoking laced weed go up in smoke.
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Ralph’s home state of Texas still bans weed and also has laws banning discussions about the country’s systemic racism in classrooms. Another talking point in his set is a permitless carry law that allows people to walk around armed, “no license required.” It’s funny because it’s a reality that sounds like a nightmare even in California.
My favorite joke is one he probably wouldn’t have made a few weeks later. This set was filmed in April, before the Uvalde school shooting and before the Supreme Court ruled that the uterus was federal property. It’s about the dissonance of the agendas that politicians are pushing versus what the people want. Most people want legal, safe access to weed. You don’t want AR-15s in grocery stores or schools.
“I like the Californian style better. You guys were like, ‘Let’s make it easier for people to smoke weed.’ And Texas said, ‘No. Let’s make it easier for people to smoke other people.’”
Ralph Barbosa
We have to laugh to keep ourselves from crying.
Stoner comedy helped pave the way for legalization
Lauren Feldman, associate professor at Rutgers University and co-author of A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, said in an interview that “Comedy can contribute to social change through its impact on audiences by attracting attention, disarming audiences, reducing resistance to persuasion, breaking down social barriers, and stimulating exchange and discussion.”
I know Ralph isn’t making soapbox cannabis reform here. But by addressing even the most mundane aspects of smoking weed in 2022, he’s driving the conversation forward.
As a longtime weed lover and journalist, I don’t need to be persuaded. But hopefully someone who’s clicked on Ralph’s Youtube clip or watched his show is thinking about these things. Why are legislators denigrating cannabis? And how could it be related to all the other terrible things that are going on while this country is imploding?
To paraphrase Dale’s opening rant on “Sam” in Pineapple Express, weed makes many things in life exponentially better, brighter, tastier, and funnier. But weed itself isn’t that interesting if it’s something you can do any old Tuesday while using Seth Rogen’s own personal Gloopy Ashtray.
We’ve all smoked and watched the train of thought leave the train station, or thought we were going to die because we forgot we ate that edible two hours ago. But it’s no longer exotic enough to create the tension that can lead to roaring laughter. And stoner superheroes like Big Lebowski don’t seem so extraordinary when every John Doe can blow weed smoke onto the streets of New York City with impunity.
Like any good comedy, weed humor is funny when you use the plant as a gateway to tell other jokes. But it should never be the easy way to a babbling brook from Zingern. It is a mirror of how we see the world and all that governs it. For this reason, weed has become entangled in human societies across all content because it clearly makes us better. It has cured our ailments and helped us imagine a better version of ourselves for generations.
This is about finding new levels of joy and insight through the magic leaf. And to share the stories that make us want to huff, huff and laugh for eternity.
Amelia Williams
New York-based freelance cannabis journalist Amelia Williams is a graduate of San Francisco State University’s journalism program and a former budtender. Williams has contributed to GreenState, MG Magazine, Culture Magazine and Cannabis Now, Kirkus Reviews and The Bold Italic of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Check out Amelia Williams’ articles
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