The late comedian helped move stand-up beyond the realm of the merely observational and create space for the absurd.
Gilbert Gottfried, who died yesterday at 67 of complications from muscular dystrophy, was probably best known as the voice of Iago the parrot in Disney’s Aladdin, as the Aflac-commercial duck, or for any number of projects that put his brazen, just-shy-of-whiny voice front and center. As a comedian, he was often characterized as “offensive,” given that a lot of his most high-profile (and, at times, infamous) work involved insulting celebrities on TV. But his legacy is more complicated than these two aspects. He was a comic who bridged the “roast” style of comedians such as Don Rickles and the wave of alternative comedy that began emerging in the ’80s and ’90s. Gottfried began doing stand-up at the age of 15 and eventually established himself as an absurdist, conceptual comedian whose act split the difference between Andy Kaufman and the observational wit of Gottfried’s peers such as Jerry Seinfeld. In the early ’80s, when he was a cast member on Season 6 of Saturday Night Live, Gottfried tended to speak with a deeper, more melodic voice. He made the most of a subdued, near-deadpan way of talking as he stared out into the audience from beneath a pile of curly hair.
