This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Henry Ryeder. Find him on Instagram at @henryryeder. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
Yes.
In case anyone is wondering, “Did Matt Rife get plastic surgery?”, the answer is an unequivocal “Yes.” “Where’s the evidence?” You might ask, given that shock jock comedian Matt Rife, the same one whose jaw resembles a Terminator with an extra layer of skin attached, has been vociferously denying said allegations. And you might ask why I’m being so hard on Matt Rife or why I’m making light of his physical appearance.
As you’re about to find, Matt Rife isn’t particularly kind to anyone, least of all survivors of assault, women, people of color, and just about anyone who doesn’t hold Matt Rife’s privilege. So I’m not going to take the high road when discussing Mr. Rife’s appearance, nor will I be anything short of thorough in my investigation of his comic persona, informed by a preternatural ability to combine florid insults with exhibitionism. In other words, what Jordan Peterson dreams of whenever he puts himself in medically-induced coma.
As he likes to express, Matt Rife has inarguably been “working” for a long time. In an interview with effeminate beta incel Jordan Peterson (sorry, DR. Jordan Peterson, doctor of what I couldn’t tell you), Rife explained his early days gigging as a comedian at Open Mic’s. He was a 15-year-old whipper snapper, his mother and stepfather acting as chaperones at 21+ clubs. Rife was no stranger to hardship: his father committed suicide when he was an infant, an incident that Rife has been open about.
Yet if you’re wondering if this experience has translated into a deeply compassionate understanding of human fragility, think again. Matt Rife’s comedy has always been marked by cultural appropriations (both overt and implicit) and the relentless punching down onto people less fortunate than he. I’m not conjecturing here; in the aforementioned interview with Peterson, Rife expressly admits that he makes his jokes as offensive to marginalized groups as possible. Where he’d disagree with my analysis is how his comedy affects those groups. Rife argues in his interview with Peterson that he has no problem with the targets of his jokes: women, mentally impaired people, people of color, and the survivors of assault. He argues that the stage of standup comedy is sacrosanct; that standup can and should be an area completely devoid of censorship, and that if people don’t like him, they should just ignore him.
As we’re about to discover, Matt Rife’s philosophy about his art doesn’t seem to extend to those who criticize that art. Despite his many protestations that critics should simply look the other way, Matt Rife can’t stand his own critics. Rather than looking the other way, Matt Rife takes every opportunity he can to destroy the credibility of people who throw a shred of his meanness back at him. But enough talking in the abstract. Let’s take a look at Matt Rife’s brief career, the moments that landed him in the boiling waters of cancellation, and how his attempts to fight back at his critics have ended in embarrassment and humiliation.
Between 2015 and 2017, Matt Rife guest-starred as himself on seven episodes of (then) Nick Cannon’s game show Wild ‘N Out on VH1. For those unfamiliar, the show employs a familiar variety show setup: teams of celebrities and comedians battle each other in a series of ridiculous games in front of a live audience. In one of these episodes, superstar Zendaya was a featured guest, spending a good deal of airtime trying to keep water in her mouth as part of a contest to see which (male) comedian could make her laugh (doesn’t this sound great?)
In an oft-shared clip, Rife, speaking into a microphone tells Zendaya, “You’re mixed, I want to be Black.” Before walking up to Zendaya, grabbing her face and saying, “Spit that water out so I can get your number.” That Matt Rife, a relatively unknown comedian, felt that he had the right to violate one of the world’s most high-profile young women, speaks to his character and warped sense of self. This moment might have been the first well-documented moment of overt misogyny in Rife’s career, but it certainly wasn’t the last.
https://giphy.com/gifs/nbc-bring-the-funny-nbc-UVTMN7ZlOmry3iPdgZIn November of last year, Matt Rife released his comedy special Natural Selection. Fresh off an exploding TikTok following and national tour, Matt Rife’s Netflix stamp of approval seemed to be a gleaming example of Rife’s unstoppable influence. White, good-looking, and social media-savvy, only he could get in his own way. And get in his own way he did.
“Natural Selection” opens with Rife recounting a moment he had with a friend in Baltimore, during which he spotted a restaurant hostess with a black eye. After his friend remarked that they should keep the hostess in the kitchen so that the restaurant so that customers don’t have to see her condition, Rife jokes that if “She knew how to cook, I don’t think she’d have that black eye.” This is the opening bit from Rife’s special, and Rife knew what he was doing. He immediately follows the joke with a nod to the audience that he’s conditioning them for the rest of the set, that Rife’s standup is going to be full of these jokes and that they should get used to it.
Let me clarify something. Regardless of intent or effect on survivors, I don’t think this is a funny joke. This rote, antiquated understanding of domestic violence victims as deserving their punishment for failing to adequately perform gender roles is nothing new. As far back as the mid-1950’s, working class domestic violence was glamorized on television, with comic stalwart Jackie Gleason telling Audrey Meadows that he’d hit her, “To the moon, Alice!” on The Honeymooners. This became so baked into American cultural lore that twenty years later, Jack Klugman would use the same refrain on his divorcée roommate, played by Tony Randall, on The Odd Couple for comic effect. I watched this as a kid (yes, I watched 1970’s sitcoms like all popular kids did) and remember the crowd bursting out laughing at this “joke.” What was the joke? That working class American men were that brutish and violent? That women really did deserve the abuse that so often happened (and continues to happen) to women? Either option seems less like a joke than a twisted, chauvinistic version of the feeling you get when reading the Morning Newsletter of the New York Times: things really are ok, and you really are ok for not being that angry about them.
Matt Rife aims to be the latest comedian providing those with power the reassurance that they deserve that power, but he’s certainly not the first. 1980’s comedian Andrew “Dice” Clay became a celebrity for his outwardly misogynist stage act, eventually ending in a disastrous SNL appearance. In essence, Matt Rife isn’t edgy, his act isn’t new, and his misogyny isn’t interesting. I haven’t gotten to his racism yet, which is (arguably) more subtle. Rife, a Columbus, Ohio native, employs a put-on accent in his stage act in an attempt to “sound” Black. I’m not going to provide any evidence here because I don’t need to, the guy said as much to Zendaya.
Yet like Andrew “Dice” Clay, Rife’s brand has been tarnished by his unforgiving provocations. Amidst the controversy surrounding Natural Selection, commentators online were quick to mock Matt Rife’s jawline, a gargantuan heap of bone that seemed a far cry from his appearances on Wild ‘N Out. The rumors that Rife had plastic surgery were supercharged when a Chicago plastic surgeon posted a video implying that he created Rife’s jawline…”Me after creating the perfect jawline ever seen just for my patient to get cancelled right after.” In the video’s description, the surgeon added, “He shall not be named… #cancelled #jawlinecheck #comedian #standup #celeb” The video went viral, and one Matt Rife took the opportunity to respond, “Lying about medical history is illegal, FYI.”
Why Matt Rife thought that responding via the comment section would make his use of plastic surgery any less suspicious is beyond me, my personal belief is that Matt Rife is an incredibly insecure individual. There are plenty of male comics with personal issues whose poor life decisions in light of their power make headline news: one only need to turn to Pete Davidson and John Mulaney to draw that connection. Yet Matt Rife ratchets up a few hundred degrees by employing the embittered cancel culture vitriol of the far right to make himself the victim. I know this goes against everything that Rife and people like him like to claim, that they’re fighting a blue-haired consortium of snowflakes who themselves like to play “the victim card.”
Yet no one plays the victim card as well as people like Rife and Jordan Peterson, who revel in their woman-bashing, homophobic, racist provocations and then get mad when they’re socially ostracized. It’s really difficult to come to grips with the fact that the world is something you don’t recognize, I think this is a good deal of Peterson’s conundrum. In Rife’s case, I believe he’s an aspiring culture war profiteer who wants to take what he sees as the masculine empowerment of Blackness and imbue it with his privilege as a good-looking white man. He clearly wants to be good-looking; he wouldn’t mention it nearly as much as he does if he didn’t want to be, not to mention receive radical plastic surgery. Yet he’s also pigeon-holed himself into a corner of culture that doesn’t really allow heartthrobs: that of angry, disenfranchised conservatives.
The next few years will probably be very difficult for Rife. His ticket prices are plummeting and his cultural cache is essentially in ruins. The once unencumbered road to success now looks more like a mud-drenched backslide toward the hamlet of self-pity, one that Peterson and Clay have walked. Yet the good news for Matt Rife is that he’ll probably always have an audience. They might be less the sorority girl fans he was expecting and more the 8-Chan scanning-incels he might have wanted to avoid, but they’ll pay to see him no less, content with Rife’s affirmation of their toxic white male masculinity.
The good news for us is that we’ll probably never have to hear that much from Matt Rife ever again. He’ll be on the fringes of the mainstream conversation (the worth of which is a can of worms for another article), and we’ll be treated to much more comfortable topics of discussion. Yet people like Rife will never stop appearing as long as we keep rewarding the same lecherous, power-affirming attitudes that make them famous. Maybe it’s time for us to ask ourselves, do we want to give the perfect jawline to someone we’re willing to cancel?
What do you think of the Matt Rife controversy? Do you think he received plastic surgery? Leave a comment below!
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