Does Matt Rife: Natural Selection live up to the hype?

For this week's wrap panel, film critics Sarah-Tai Black, Rad Simonpillai and Hanna Flint join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to chat about how Hollywood is holding up post-strike, Ridley Scott's unique press tour for his new film Napoleon, and what happened when TikTok's favourite comedian Matt Rife put out a Netflix special.

In the excerpt below, Flint and Black share their thoughts on Matt Rife: Natural Selection, whether comedians can be both conventionally attractive and funny, and the difference between Rife and Bo Burnham.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: We've got to talk about Matt Rife, who is a comedian, allegedly and ostensibly. He's getting a lot of attention. He went viral on TikTok for all these videos that he does; on stage, he does all this crowd work. And then he comes out with a Netflix special. Hanna, I'm going to go to you first on this. I watched the Netflix special. He's finally made it. This is his biggest thing. And there's just so much defensiveness in the special. What did you think?

Hanna: I watched 10 minutes of the special, turned it off, and only watched it again because I was coming on this show and I was like, "Well, I guess I'm going to have to finish it."... You'd think someone who is a comedian would have thicker skin, especially this many years he's been in the business. It felt [like] punching down, to me, and I suppose just really kind of dissing his audience. There's a bit where it's like, "Oh, just testing the waters to see if you're going to be fun or not." That really reminds me of that person who makes a joke, and you don't find it funny, and they're like, "It was a joke!" But was it, though?

Elamin: It was not.

Hanna: And that's how I felt throughout it. I really struggled to laugh — the blaccent, I don't know where that's coming from. He's from Ohio. I find that really odd coming out of his mouth. I think there was one joke that I laughed at, and it was mainly because TikTok people thought that his John Lennon tattoo was a Harry Potter tattoo. I just thought that was hilarious because he was so defensive about it! He was so angry about it.

I think if you're kind of coming up and you've got this attention, you've got to accept … it's all subjective. Not everyone's going to laugh. And I think if people are criticizing you because you open with a domestic violence joke, take it on the chin, or don't do it, or be like the people that you emulate. Do you think Dave Chappelle cares about what people say? But then to be honest, even as much as you agree or disagree, they are far superior comedians than Matt Rife will ever be.

Elamin: This is my problem, Sarah-Tai. I watched that special and I was waiting for a joke. Just a single joke to show up somewhere in the special, and it just did not show up. I should say, there was so much conversation when the special dropped about whether comedians can be funny and hot, because people talk all the time about Matt Rife being attractive. He says people don't take him seriously because of it. Sarah-Tai, what do you think of this?

Sarah-Tai: I think that he's being punished for being annoying and not funny. It's been a great week for me in terms of seeing people's rise and fall in a very short amount of time. Of course, he's been working TikTok, he's been doing his specials, and very much directed towards women audiences. And if there's one thing that all of us should always remember, it's that women, theys and gays own the Internet. So, his downfall has been just stellar to watch in that I was introduced to this person and then heard this self-proclaimed narrative that they're too pretty to be funny, and then finally saw a picture of him wherein I was like, "Are we sure? If you and two other people who look like you were walking toward me on the street, I would cross."

Elamin: Sarah-Tai Black!

Hanna: Shots fired!

Sarah-Tai: I just think it's extremely funny to self-narrativise this new crutch, which many people speculate has been self-done via lots of cosmetic procedures, to then be like, "I'm too pretty" — especially when a hallmark of comedy is authenticity and integrity. And especially when we live in a world where beautiful people like James Marsden are extremely funny. It's like, do you think this has not happened before? Do you think you're the first person to approach conventional attractiveness and purportedly be funny?

Elamin: But can I just say, there is something about watching the special where he's actually trying to say, "I don't think I want all these women fans anymore." Or … there is almost a pushback of, "This feels like a burden to me, that these are the only fans that end up showing up." What did you make of that?

Sarah-Tai: I think that is the most interesting, non-jokey part of it: to see the way in which he's painted himself into a corner, in terms of the way that he weaponized desirability and now is like, "Oh, this isn't actually meeting my expectations. Now maybe men, who are my true fan base, resent me," which is not true. You're just not funny. It's fascinating to watch, especially for a white man to navigate this "newfound desirability" and be like, "This is not all that I was promised."

Hanna: Can I throw in Bo Burnham? Bo Burnham got a lot of female attention. What did he do? He made Eighth Grade. Matt Rife gets a lot of female attention. What does he do? Domestic violence jokes and punches down on his female fans. So.

Elamin: Oof, what a perfect place to leave it. Thank you so much, everybody.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Nikky Manfredi.