No one’s laughing now
Louis C.K. has admitted he’s a pig, can we keep him? The answer is no
The end of Louis C.K. — who, at 50, is alive, but in a sense dead to us now — is a difficult but necessary loss. Accounts of his perversions and abhorrent behaviour toward women who were his peers and admirers (including the stories of how he exposed himself and masturbated in front of them) have been rumoured for years and solidified last week with the New York Times’s bombshell, on-the-record story of sexual misconduct.
C.K. released a long and passively remorseful statement confirming the stories are true. “I have spent my career talking and saying anything I want,” he said. “I will now step back and take a long time to listen.”
No glitzy première of his ickylooking new movie (I Love You, Daddy) that has now also lost its distributor, no appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His television home, FX, is reviewing its past and present relationship with him; HBO scrubbed his past work from its on-demand archive; Netflix, already neck-deep in a Kevin Spacey problem, has cancelled plans for C.K.’s next comedy special.
Will we be haunted by the idea that FX’s Emmy-winning dramedy Louie was — despite those sharply executed moments that explored gender, sex, mortality and the human condition — merely a gigantic work of overcompensation by a guy who wanted to be seen as an enlightened satirist, even as he knew, that he was behaving like a pig?
A certain piggishness was always part of his act. It was seen as a feature rather than a fault, part of his miserable schlub humour, a man giving voice to some of the darkest and sickest thoughts a person can have. What was also there, especially in Louie, was a river of self-loathing, an essential tool for today’s comedy.
When a guy keeps telling you, even in jest, what a piece of crap he is, it’s interesting how willing we are to accept this as a keen and self-aware attribute. How can he be a true jerk if he’s so hilarious and so open about being a jerk?
Onstage, he articulated all this in a way that turned such subjects (pedophilia, necrophilia, chronic onanism; but also marital strife, loss of libido, body-image issues) into a kind of perverted, guy-centric gold.
As Louie gathered raves and awards, there were other comedians, fans and members of the pop-culture cognoscenti who kept having frustrating debates over questions that shouldn’t be that hard to answer, such as: Are women as funny as men?
Can a rape joke can ever be funny? (I dare you to attempt any answer but “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second.) C.K.’s answer to those questions, as he became more successful, was to collaborate with women; to sing their praises and coproduce their shows (Pamela Adlon’s Better Things on FX; Tig Notaro’s One Mississippi on Amazon).
These sincere efforts are contradicted by new information. To experience almost any form of popular culture is to be continuously and often painfully reminded there’s a real person behind the famous performer.
In Louie it was always apparent the show was about a man grappling with the ways that the world is good and bad. Louie makes progress in his understanding of women by sharing the duties of raising his two young daughters as a single dad. Which, in hindsight, puts him in league with those politicians who express disgust at harassment and gender inequality by pointing out that they are the fathers of daughters, as if that’s the only way such matters could possibly get through to a man.