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I'm in the process of moving this blog here from another platform. Bear with me -- it's may be messy for a while.
Hot in Cleveland has had some ups and downs; we loved the Huey Lewis sex episode, but the Wayne Knight/oh-no-what-have-I-said episode was just to unapologetically…sitcom-y. But last night’s episode went above the call of sitcom duty, and went on to do a nice little deconstruction of romantic comedies.
If there’s one thing I’ve brought with me from academia, it’s a love for the “meta.” Meta, to me, just means addressing more than just the issue at hand, but the whole mess of issues underlying and overlying it — playing with theme and variation by breaking the fourth wall but also having the tropes play out in an ironic, semi-ironic, or not at all ironic way. The zen of meta is doing it just enough — too much is too clever by half, to little and you’re not being ironic at all.
So, last night, when the characters in Hot In Cleveland explicitly dissed rom-com stereotypes, but also lived them, the show went meta — thus proving it’s more on board with the Zeitgeist of “young” shows like Community than I would have guessed.
Also, I just love Jane Leeves’ character and I want all her clothes too.
You know, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my rant on The Daily Show/sexism fiasco, but I’ve only just realized what was bothering me.
Last night, the Show returned and took on the Sherrod scandal with a very funny bit where Wyatt Cenac and Jon Stewart argued about why we can’t have discussions about racism. It was, as usual, a well-written reminder of why race is still an issue that needs to be talked about. But as I watched, I kept thinking, Why on earth couldn’t they have done this with the sexism thing? Why can’t we have a funny skit about why we can’t talk about sexism?
No, really, why? Edgy race jokes, playing on the show’s own correspondents, are par for the course, but the one time sexism becomes a real issue, they trot out every female employee in an earnest and defensive display that might as well have said,”That’s not funny!” Why was there one lame joke in response to the ordeal (“Jezebel thinks I’m sexist pig!”) while skits about race are a staple of the show?
Obviously, the writers had more time to deal with the Sherrod scandal, but I don’t think that the entirety of the situation. Erasing racism and sexism means equal opportunity joking. By treating sexism as, paradoxically, too serious to joke about, The Daily Show is actually hurting the cause. Its exellent and edgy jokes about race treat the meta-issue, namely that no matter how much we’d like to think we’re past racism, we’re not, and we need to keep talking about it until we are. But, apart from a few excellent Sam Bee skits during the Clinton candidacy, there aren’t many skits that treat sexism qua sexism.
Until we can joke about race and gender in the same way, we’re stuck in vicious little holding pattern: sexism, unlike racism, is never a four-alarm issue in the “serious” news, but now it’s also too serious to joke about in the funny news. We lose on all counts.
As frustrating as it is, last night’s clip was still funny, so here it is — but seriously, imagine how much cooler the Show would have looked if it had done this for the sexism thing!!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Lost in Race | ||||
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Advertisers for men’s products are finally getting that guys don’t buy masculine ideal — or maybe it’s just that the twentysomethings of Gen-Y can’t understand communication without irony. That’s been my experience anyway.
But it’s still fun to watch all these commercials parodying “manly” behavior (like the Dove ad that encourages men to feel “comfortable” with themselves) and this Gillette ad that makes fun of the Dove ad:
The above ad is doing an impressive balancing act, mocking “manly” activities by means of exaggeration but still insisting on the validity of its own masculine product. Simple exaggeration is an approach that Axe also employed — all those chicks throwing themselves at you is funny but still desirable — throwing in the occasional absurdity (that chocolate guy creeps me out).
The next step in advertising was to make fun not just of the ideal, but of the form itself. So now commercials are parodying commercials by imitating their stereotypes from an ironic distance. Which is awesome, and fits right in with the current preference for ironic communication.
Old Spice, despite being your dad’s line of product, was at always at the forefront of this kind advertising. It started with those brilliant Bruce Campbell commercials, where he’s playing the ultimate manly man, surrounded by all sorts of “masculine” objects, talking nonsensically about the masculine mystique:
That was followed by that weird commercial where Campbell did a sleazy lounge version of “Hungry Like the Wolf” surrounded by babes.
Now we’ve got the latest line of Old Spice commercials, which take the over-masculine metaphor to its logical limit.
In the first place, Isaiah Mustafa, better known as “that Old Spice” guy, has become his own comic brand — the latest videos have nothing to do with the product and simply a celebrate the betoweled Mustafa proposing on behalf of a fan, reading Tweets, and generally hamming it up.
Mustafa is a great physical comedian, and the humor of his character is that he’s a straight-up unaware buffoon, like Zapp Brannigan with a little Colbert thrown in — why else does the heading at the top of his Old Spice channel say “I’m on an internet”? Unlike most buffoons, though, Mustafa’s actually handsome. Which is part of the appeal, obviously.
The commercials rely on the same overkill of manly tropes (horses, power tools, motorcycles) that previous ones did, and throw in quite a bit of visual humor as well (shirts flying on and off, scenery being yanked around).
It’s also interesting that this line of ads is addressed to women even though it’s a male product. I think this ads to the meta- element of the humor; it’s not just men talking to men, it’s a man talking to women on behalf of men, telling them their expectations (diamonds, cakes, tickets to “that thing you love”) are ridiculous. I like this gender equality; both men and women are portrayed as ridiculous in the Old Spice world. And hey, there may even be a little fear-based humor (men being afraid of guys like Mustafa) or general relief that someone is pointing out how ridiculous all these fantasies are.
In short, the reason these commercials are so successful is the same reason Airplane is so successful: lots of different kinds of humor, going on all at once. By my count (and yes, I did count once), Airplane averaged about 5 jokes per minutes. Given that each of these ads is about 30 seconds, I think Old Spice has doubled that. Wow.
And rhe franchise is big enough to have inspired its own parody/pastiche, this guy shilling the BYU library:
Not bad. Not bad at all.
It’s the small instances of comic sexism that annoy me most. As when, in Yahoo’s latest best/worst list, Jennifer Aniston gets voted worst actress for The Bounty Hunter, while Ben Stiller gets voted best actor for Greenberg.
Um, they’re both playing themselves, so I’m not sure what the deal is here — oh, wait, I forgot that Greenberg is a neurotic indie dramedy, so it’s automatically good, but The Bounty Hunter is a screwball rom-com, so it’s automatically bad. And that it’s OK for Ben Stiller to play himself, because he’s Ben Stiller, while Jennifer Aniston is never going to do anything right. And women just aren’t funny anyway.
Neither one is a great actor, but they’re equally passable. Is that really too much to admit?
I’ve been thinking a lot about people’s responses to the viral video of a family dancing at concentration camps. Some people just freaked right out; others just waited for permission to laugh, wondering if it might be OK because the people doing it are Jewish.
Believe it or not, this isn’t the only time that levity has happened at a concentration camp. There’s absolutely no question that concentration camp prisoners told jokes and made fun of the guards — this is documented oral history. Hitler was morbidly afraid of being laughed at, and Jewish periodicals took their revenge by making fun of him. And of course loads and loads of gallows humor, both in and out of the camps.
Below is a video about the video, which features Jane Korman explaining her reasons for making it in the first place. In her view, everything relating to the Holocaust has become “numb and numbing”, and she wanted to get people thinking about it again. She chose the right medium; there’s a fine line between provoking laughter and provoking shock.
If you do find this offensive, you still can’t legislate people’s reactions. No, really, you simply cannot tell someone whether to be amused or offended. It’s not going to work. But it seems like people who are opposed to the video are doing just that; their “worry” about how people will take the video is just another way of trying to tell people how they should take it.
I agree with Jane Korman; whenever you say the word “Holocaust”, people have this pre-prescribed reaction that’s hardly their own. And it’s as though we somehow want every aspect of the story to be tragic — but this is simply not true.
As I’ve written before, joy and playfulness are part of what it means to be human. By insisting the story be “serious” according to our own narrow dictates, we dehumanize the people who had enough spirit to laugh and joke even while imprisoned in a concentration camp. The maker’s father, a survivor, talks about “rising from the ashes” and finding joy in horror is part of this.
I’m ending with what I think is one of the most beautiful triumphs of humanity there is: Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler.” I wonder if the video’s critics would be as outraged by this? Or is it just the fact that the latest video isn’t fictional??
All right, buckaroos, I’ve given in and I’m changing over to a WordPress template so I can have better archives and comments and all that cool stuff. I wonder why I didn’t do this sooner? Oh, yeah, because I knew this — i.e. everything going wrong when computers talk to each other — would happen.
So there’s not much time to obsess about comedy, but…
Vince Vaughn (40) and Craig Ferguson are both expecting babies.
And I’m geeked about seeing Betty White on my beloved Community, meh on Joe Jonas guesting on Hot in Cleveland.
Betty White is my hero.
All right. So now I just have to get this thing hooked up to the old site, get some archives going…Someday it will work. Someday.
Sometimes I wonder if being a humor theorist makes me a bad spectator. Because I’ve aleady read countless comedian autobiographies, it didn’t surprise me much to learn that Joan Rivers was a savvy businesswoman, tough-as-nails workaholic, and tremendously vulnerable person. So I think I missed out on some of the poignant moments that surprised the rest of the audience. But I was still majorly impressed. This week’s Daily Show fiasco reminds me how hard it is to be a female standup today — today, and Joan Rivers started forty years ago.
For that reason, I wished they’d included more footage of her early stuff. It’s understandable tha this wasn’t the focus, since this was intended to be “a year in the life,” documentary. But it was the historical clips that really made me respect how edgy she was, telling abortion jokes before that was OK, writing her own material, etc. There were plenty of clips from her current standup act, too, which still she performs most nights in New York. I thought these were hilarious, and so did the rest of audience — this was weird, this was an arthouse thater, and here were all these granola liberals laughing their asses off at Joan’s raunchiest jokes
Mostly, though, we see Joan hustling to get gigs, and boy does that lady know how to hustle. She’s always looking for work, and she never turns down a paying gig. Like when we see her agree to do the Comedy Central Roast for the money even though she’s not really looking forward to it. She correctly predicts that there will be nothing but plastic surgery jokes –and after that, it’s heartbreaking to watch mediocre young standups, who don’t know her from Adam, making fun of her at all. Another very striking moment was when she was about to perform at the George Carlin memorial, and she nervously laments that everyone else has teams of writers.
Joan Rivers now and then -- seriously, you shoulda heard some of the stuff she used to say!
We also get to see some of her family life, such as her stint on Celebrity Apprentice with her daughter Melissa, some moments with her grandson. The interior of her apartment is another high point, hafl French boudoir and half business, including an enormous cabinet full of meticulously-filed jokes.
There’s no doubt that this documentary is both entertaining and enlightening, and you certainly don’t need to like Joan Rivers to enjoy it. She, like most comedians, is pretty self-aware; she makes no bones about who she is, and she works damned hard to keep up the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed. So my guess is that, even if this movie doesn’t convince you she’s funny, it will convince you to respect her a lot more than you thought you could.
I always joked that, given my inability to take my PhD seriously, I wanted to be the Education Correspondent for The Daily Show. I guess that’s not such a great idea now that Jezebel has accused the show of being sexist.
I’m sure it is. As the original article points out, pretty much every workplace is sexist. Sexism today doesn’t mean that your boss calls you a bitch. It means that your ideas get taken less seriously than your male co-workers’, that any project considered “female” is automatically less relevant/interesting/funny than average (which is, of course, male), and that your behavior, when classified as “feminine”, is taken as a sign of irrational weakness. (Thanks a lot, Aristotle.)
Women trotted out, check.
This happens everywhere, and I’ve never heard any woman deny it — in private, anyway. The Daily Show workers who are denying it in public (see above) simply want to keep their jobs. Who can blame them? But also, how many of them are actual writers or performers of comedy? I’m seeing a lot of wardrobe and research here. Also, if this picture is anything to go by, there are a lot of twentysomethings who don’t actually understand how dramatically sexism is going to affect them. (I’m not being patronizing. Unconscious bias means a buildup of very subtle moments; I really do think it takes a while to get what’s going on. I wouldn’t have believed me when I was twenty-two.)
Everybody has unconscious bias (cf. Malcolm Gladwell and Tamar Szabo Gendler*, if you want), and therefore everybody is sexist. There’s no argument to be had here. Let’s all just admit it, eh?
Throw comedy into the equation, though, and you’ve got bigger obstacles. Comedy is about transgression, and it’s proven that female transgression is automatically higher-impact than male transgression. So the same joke told by a man and a woman will provoke vastly different reactions, and there’s a good chance that a woman telling a joke will instantly get a more hostile response. Which is why people think that women, in general, are less funny than men — not only are women socialized not to dick around or be the center of attention, we’re all socialized to respond negatively when they do. The same went for black people, by the way, until Richard Pryor came along and blew that socialization to smithereens. (Not that we’re over subconscious racism by any means.)
And writers’ rooms? Nobody denies that they’re shark tanks. You need to be utterly confident when pitching jokes, and women, socialized to be demure, are obviously at a disadvantage. To be funny, you’ve got to fearless. QED. But yet another reason why it’s qualitatively harder for women to succeed in comedy. As I’ve observed elsewhere, it’s the ones who just say “fuck it” who are the most hilarious. Nevertheless, a nervous producer of any gender, worrying about “what people will think”, is going to be biased against them.
So, is Jon Stewart a sexist prick? As much as it pains me to admit it, the answer is probably yes. But I’m betting he’s an unconsciously sexist prick. And he’s still damned funny, and I’d probably still marry him if he weren’t married already. Or maybe I’d go for Colbert. After all, he did have Gloria Steinem on his show — now she’s funny and fearless.
*Thanks to Christotechne for bringing this to my attention.
An Argument Against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”
Not much happening this week, but here’s one big thing: soldiers dancing in a remake of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”
This is important. No, really. It’s not just about a bunch of tough guys camping it up, it’s about the preservation of the soul.
The urge to play, i.e. to do something fun for no good reason, is an essential part of being human. It’s easy enough to forget that in the everyday world of grown-up responsibilities. I can’t imagine what being in the Army, far from home, and alternately bored off your ass and scared shitless, would do to you.
But if you forget to play, that’s a one-way ticket to becoming inhuman. People in horrible circumstances tell jokes (as those at Auschwitz did). People surrounded by daily tedium find ways to be creative (as Jim did when he created the Office Olympics). These soldiers are stuck in what has to be a no-fun situation, and yet they’ve taken the initiative to put something crazy together, just for the hell of it. That’s creativity. That’s play. That’s a triumph of the human spirit, and I for one feel much better about our troops now. These guys still have souls, and this lessens the chance that they’ll do something horrible while they’re over there.
My mamma always told me, “Hon, it isn’t censorship unless the federal government is doing it. So don’t be one of those ignorant fools who screams ‘censorship’ at every little thing.”
Boy, did her advice come in handy this week. First, Apple’s flipflopping on cartoonist Mark Fiore has inspired sarcasm everywhere, as well as accusations not only of censorship, but of inconsistent censorship — even worse!! Apple originally rejected Fiore’s app because it made fun of public figures — he’s a satirist, after all — but reversed its decision once Fiore won a Pulitzer. “I feel kind of guilty,” Fiore admitted to the Wall Street Journal. “I’m getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer.” Well, yes, but it’s still not censorship, kids, because Apple, not the government, is doing it
When Comedy Central declined to show parts of the latest South Park, many cried censorship. But it really wasn’t. Comedy Central is allowed to edit for content — and it does every time it bleeps out a word in a movie or stand-up special, unless you’re watching “Secret Stash.” It’s true that this decision was religiously motivated, more or less, but it’s the same damned thing, and it isn’t censorship.
I love you, Jon, but it’s not censorship.
People can still be upset about it, and Jon Stewart’s rant at Comedy Central and death-threat-issuers is fair enough – I mean, I totally agree that those are the real jackasses — however, his statement that the “censorship” was “Comedy Central’s decision” is exactly wrong. The Muslim group, Trey Parker, and Matt Stone still have the right to free speech; it’s just that Parker and Stone rely on Comedy Central to distribute their product — until they post on their own site, South Park Studios, anyway.
YouTube’s removal of Hitler parodies, based on the movie Downfall, has (unsurprisingly) spawned a more law-savvy discussion. BoingBoing reports that Hitler is pissed about “parodies of the bunker scene from Downfall [being removed] without regard to the fair use provisions of US copyright law.” Ooo, the specificity of the argument is enough to give me chills. And the discussion is quite good too, pointing out that while you can make fun of something as satire, many of these videos used the original product to make fun of other things, which means they are not protected. Still, this response video is good parody in that it takes on the meta-issues of fair use vs. free publicity; public domain vs. copyright; and most importantly, the primitive state of modern law regarding digital media. Check it out for yourselves above.
The whole censorship thing was only part of this week’s comedy explosion. Which I liked, don’t get me wrong, but things moved so fast it was hard to catch up. I’m still grooving on this very silly typeface humor from CollegeHumor — c’mon, don’t you want to know what happens when the fonts get together for a conference? (I’d show it to you, but apparently they don’t want us to embed their videos. Their loss.)
Go Mel! If I can't have Jon, I'll marry you!
Archie Comics proved Keven Smith downright prophetic by introducing a gay character to Riverdale High this week (remember the conversation from Chasing Amy?) Mel Brooks finally got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It’s about freaking time! Finally, a double win for comedians of color everywhere: not only will Aziz Ansari host the 19th MTV Video Music Awards, Entertainment Weekly just announced that Mindy Kaling will write a book of comic essays entitled The Contents of My Purse.
TV-wise, I’ve been watching Comedy Central again, and I lurrved Monday’s report on how those lame-ass Brits do their elections. Community was back and in good form. I ♥ Goodfellas, I ♥ Community, but a combination of the two!!?? ♥♥♥♥♥!!!!! (Translation: Be still my beating heart!) And okay, it didn’t hurt that AMC had been running Goodfellas all week, so I could really appreciate the perfection of the synched-up music.
