No Sense of Schumer
The comedy censors return
SO, after having the hottest show on Comedy Central, a much buzzed about movie opening next week and Chris Rock directing her upcoming HBO special, Amy Schumer has fallen afoul of the modernday Calvinists.
You know, those PC loving censors who are furious that someone somewhere is laughing at something they deem inappropriate.
I’d hoped there might be some other Catholic, West Indian, black Republican editorial writer who moonlights as a comic rushing to Schumer’s aid. But, no, it looks like it’s going to be me.
The backlash has been growing for some time.
The UK Guardian went after the native New Yorker’s “blind spot on race” last month, citing standup jokes like, “Nothing works 100 percent of the time, except Mexicans,” and “I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual.”
It reached a fever pitch Tuesday. In The Washington Post, Stacey Patton and David Leonard called Schumer a racist on par with Donald Trump. They closed with this haymaker:
“While black families are burying their dead, churches are burning, black women church pastors are receiving death threats and the KKK is planning rallies in South Carolina, Schumer is ‘ playing’ with race. While Latinos are being deported in record numbers, while ‘ 80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped,’ while children are languishing in camps in the Southwest, Schumer has got jokes, and only white America is laughing.”
Isn’t that just a bit . . . dramatic?
Schumer’s comedy can hardly be called conservative.
Her onstage persona is decidedly New York urban: Fbombs are dropped on a regular basis; she happily extols — often in graphic detail— the highlights of her sex life.
Like her generational cohort Lena Dunham, Schumer is edgy, sometimes just to be edgy — but also to make serious points.
Indeed, even the Washington Post writers admit that her sketches skewering “rape culture” or “fat shaming” are excellent examples of social satire.
Patton and Leonard have their own handy rule: “[ T] he motivation of the joke teller and what compels laughter is not at issue. What matters is the costs and consequences of these ‘ jokes’ to those being objectified.”
Call this the “disparate impact” theory of joke writing. Intent doesn’t matter, only effect.
Aside from demanding ideological intent in humor, this completely ignores a major point — how jokes are actually written: They’re perpetual works in progress.
Classic bits like George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” or Chris Rock’s “N*** as vs. Black People” didn’t just pop up out of thin air. They were the end point of years of working and refining.
An awkward “offensive” joke Amy Schumer delivers onstage today might be part of an extended, stunning, satirical monologue or sketch next week, next month or next year.
So, liberal Comedy Censors: What are the rules? Using the WaPo authors’ own examples about the troubles Latinos currently face, is it OK for a white comic to note the absurd irony of a black president ( whose polyglot background has been the target of political and comedic musings) holding the “record” for deporting the most illegal immigrants— er, “undocumented workers”?
Possible non PC “punchline: “Damn! We should have elected one of them a long time ago!”
What observations are people of color “allowed” to make? Can black comics make jokes about Hispanics taking jobs? Can Latino comics joke about blacks being on welfare — while they’re working “100 percent”? Are such comics borderline racist ( so to speak) if white people happen to tune in and start laughing?
Comedy Censors want separate ( but unequal?) silos where only blacks can mock blacks ( and whites and Latinos), only women can mock women ( and men), but not the other way around.
Now that gays have “won” on marriage— is it OK to make jokes about them, since they’re slightly less “oppressed”? Or do we still have to wait until the Employment Non Discrimination Act becomes law? ( Apparently, there’s no ENDA this navelgazing!)
Memo to the censors: if you believe there shouldn’t be jokes as long as there’s something bad happening to someone somewhere, well, enjoy your mirthless existence. Just don’t steal everyone else’s joy in the process.
Robert George performs with the Electoral Dysfunction troupe every Saturday night at the People’s Improv Theater.