Having just seen The Aristocrats and Hustle and Flow within a 24-hour period, I can say definitively that I’ve reached a new plateau of incoming profanity. If you don’t want anything spoiled, go see them and don’t read anymore.

The Aristocrats was a funny movie. Not as funny as some reviews suggest. I didn’t laugh my ass off. To indulge the “comedy as jazz improvisation” conceit that Penn Jillette really wants to convey in the movie, if I heard 1 minute of “My Funny Valentine” 75 times in a 90-minute movie, it would start to lose its charm. But it had its moments. If I heard someone slip a quote of “She’ll be comin’ ‘round the mountain” into the 48th solo of the jazz standard, I’d still crack a smile. Seeing a mime doing truly obscene acting on a public street is nearly priceless. But deconstructing a joke is not easy, and it took 75 tries to get to the bottom of it. And for a movie about a dick joke,it’s a lot more subtle than I would have expected. This shit’s actually pretty serious. Unfortunately, I think it’s been marketed as less of a documentary than as 75 comedians telling a dick joke. Most of the audience that saw it with me were 20-ish guys that seemed to really be looking forward to hearing about poo and watching people push the limits of profanity. And so I fit right in. But I think, in the worst possible fit of evangelizing after the fact, that it is exactly the people that would least enjoy the profanity that could stand to benefit the most from the experience, it it were framed in a different way. Oh well. Go see it with an open mind. If you do, I think you’ll be rewarded. And not just because you’ll get to see a magic trick where a deck of cards simulates a young girl’s vagina.

Which segues nicely to Hustle and Flow. Also challenging. I watched this movie, that has some of the deepest black hood-rat stereotypes in it, in a room full of exclusively white people at the Hollywood Theatre, of all places. Backed by MTV Productions, I’m still not completely sure who the joke was on. I’m certainly not qualified to judge the authenticity of depicting a black pimp on the streets of Memphis, but I could definitely believe such people do exist. And if they do, this movie tells their story very well.

It’s refreshing to have a main character that is sympathetic but not likable. And for all the chrome wheels, drug deals, bitches and ho’s, I think this movie too is subtle. There’s real tragedy in a man realizing his life is half gone, creating an expression of what is meaningful and difficult in it, and facing rejection only to be redeemed by the notoriety of violence when his attempt at human voice is literally flushed down a toilet. It’s painful to watch on a personal level and painful to consider at a social level. Do all those white suburban kids watching MTV and buying all those records that it takes to actually have a platinum album like 50-cent because they relate? Did they hear about him because he had a great story about dealing dope and getting shot 9 times? Does a black man have to shoot somebody to get on MTV?

What does it take to get famous? That’s the inside joke of The Aristocrats - that even a shit-streaked incestuous orgy can’t impress a talent scout. That’s what really makes all those comedians laugh. And it’s the real story in Hustle and Flow of race in America buried under all the stereotypes playing to the worst fears about black men. And which one is really more obscene?

I guess if I’m worried that the important things these movies say will get missed, then they’re probably worth recommending.