2019 7th period reaction to Anthony Griffith

In life as you grow old life starts to change, and as life starts to change it is known that you have to grow with it and grow through the obstacles that come up along the way. But, sometimes it feels like the obstacles can be too big to just go past and act like everything is ok and like nothing happened. What that man had to go through I hope no one has to go through. Being forced to put on a happy face just so he can go out and make people laugh and not be able to tell everyone what he is going through. This man had to go on stage while going through the grief of losing his 2 year old daughter. This story was so heartbreaking because when you watch the first video it seems the guys is living his best life, it looked like nothing could stand in his way. But in reality this man was really being forced to hide behind sadness and grief. My question is did the people who put him on stage care to know what he was going through or were they to worried about other things.

It is very hard to change your opinions of someone else, and normally, it’s not for the better. That is why Anthony didn’t feel like he had the ability or the right to open up about his struggles. He knew the risk of him not getting enough money or losing audience, and he didn’t feel like it was a risk he could afford to take. He had to sacrifice his pain and mourning for the public, which is very admirable, especially since that sacrifice didn’t pay off in the end. Overall, losses hurt. They can tear apart families, friends, and even relationships with yourself. I think that the video really helps show what can happen if those relationships aren’t properly taken care of. After so long, you get tired of holding up the mask and you drop it. That is what happened here. It’s a very unfortunate thing to happen, but, at the end of the day, it was out of everyone’s control. Realizing that is the hardest part of suffering through losses.

When working for something big you have to push through it strong. When Griffith was in the first tonight show things were going great. When he was talking you could see that things were just fine but he wanted to be better in what he did. When he got the call back for the 2^nd night show you see that he had the little things in has way. With what was in his way with his daughter you can see that he just wanted to keep pushing and make things better. With going onto the second show you could tell by what he was saying that he wanted to keep pushing. With getting the 3^rd call back for the night show. Griffith was in a rough place his daughter had just passed away. You can see that he was trying to man up throughout all the things that came up.  I really feel that these videos were showing to push through the rough times in life.

In the first video, there is a comedian named Anthony Griffith. He is on a TV show and he is a very funny man and he is making everyone laugh. He seems to be very happy. The humor was racist, but he was being racist against his own kind so it wasn’t too bad. That was what funny meant back then. I do not believe that would ever be allowed today and that would be looked down upon. He got a lot of applause breaks. He did very well. In the second video, Anthony was on a different TV show. The name of it was “The best of times, the worst of times.” This was a very appropriate title for his talk. This was not a comedy talk, like the first video. He talks about the time he spent on a very popular comedy TV show. He told his story of his daughter who had cancer. He had to go through pain through the day and then hide his pain at night when he was working on his comedy sets. He described it as “bucking up,” which means becoming tougher. He had to do this because people do not want to see his pain because that is not funny. His daughter had beat cancer once already, but it came back. She had been diagnosed with cancer again by the second time he was on the show.  She had died by the time he was on the third show. This is very sad because he had to hide his feelings and he had to tell lies and act happy. He really wanted to talk about his life. This is not fair because he had to do what the people wanted and ignore what he wanted. This story teaches that some things aren’t always as they seem. You never know what someone is going through.

I was surprised by the racism in the first video, but I think it shows how much society has changed and evolved even in two or three decades. I thought that he was very funny and he seemed like an upbeat, happy man. I liked his skit and I found his jokes interesting. I thought the second video was very sad and depressing. To know what he went through and was going through during the filming of the first video, it is impressive that he was even able to get on stage at all. I feel really sorry for Anthony and wish that he wouldn’t have lost his daughter at such a young age. I think it is a very different tone from the first video as the first video was man to entertain and bring happiness and the second video was more of Anthony sharing his story and telling about his hardships. I have heard before that sometimes the funniest people are hiding the most pain and I think this videos show how true that statement can be. Hiding the pain over the loss of his daughter it is amazing how he brought humor and joy to so many people. I was also surprised by his choice to continue his comedic career while his daughter was fighting cancer, but I understand that he needed the money to support his family. I think most people would get smaller easier jobs and lose focus on everything but their loved one. I also think his career helped him keep a positive attitude. At one point in the video he mentioned that life is good, they had beat cancer before and he was getting his first appearance on the tonight show. This shows that he had high hopes and was not letting his daughter’s cancer drag him down. I think that it was very hard for him to go onstage and share his story, but I think it shows how hard his situation was and it gives insight to what the lives of people with a sick family member go through and feel.

When you get older there are more and more obstacles you have to overcome and life’s not always easy. When you get older you have to realize things change and there won’t be a happy ending to everything because there are a lot of awful things that happened to people but it only makes the person stronger and prepared if there is a next time. I think Cancer is the scariest thing to be diagnosed with because you know if the cancer is serious you don’t have much time to live your life. If my daughter had cancer I would have been exactly like the man in the video and to perform as a comedian in front of hundreds of people would be impossible for me. I feel awful for the man because he had so much stuff going on in his life and he had to act like nothing was wrong with him when he was on stage. He had to act happy and like nothing was phasing him. It’s very sad seeing someone be in so much pain over something they can’t possibly do anything about and to lose someone that you’re looking forward to your whole life with is heartbreaking.