Adapt or Die: Maybe YOU Have Daddy Issues
There’s no shortage of great comedy in Los Angeles. As a (non-native) Angeleno, I try to take advantage of living in this cultural epicenter whenever possible. So last night, a few friends and I hit up the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard to see some stand-ups in action: Bobby Lee, Iliza Schleisinger, Theo Von, to name a few. Midway through evening, the Store called up a surprise set from a big name, as they are known to do - this time it was Chris Rock. Unsurprisingly, the place went wild. A long-time comedy fan, I was pumped, as well.
He joked for a few minutes about how he didn’t really have any material, which was still funny, because he’s Chris Rock. But my enthusiasm for the surprise comedy star waned quickly as he delved into a bit about how women didn’t really hate Trump until he talked about banning abortion, and only THEN did they plan the biggest march in American history. Which, if you know anything about women or the news or the Women’s March, you know is not true. Regrettably, this started a trend that carried into the rest of the night: low-key sexism. I say low-key not because it’s not important but because it’s not as blatant as it might have been, say ten or twenty years ago, but the “differences” between women and men - differences based in a lot of sweeping generalizations - are a common topic.
And it’s not just the male comedians; both women and men who get up on that stage seem to find easy laughs in simple misogyny. Their go-to shtick goes something like this: men are like this, women are like that. There is a clear value in their eyes, in the difference – one inevitably comes out higher than the other; in most cases, the premise of the joke will indicate men are more logical, women are more emotional, and we all har har har at those crazy ladies’ inherent silliness.
What I loved about Hannah Gadsby’s groundbreaking show, Nanette, was her focus on the point that actually, the genders (and let us be reminded, there are not just two) are not all that different! Blanket statements about either are rarely true, or if they are for most, they’re still not true for every single person in the world. Sometimes, in real life, when you know, talk to real people, you find out that in some relationships, it’s the man who wants kids and not the woman. Sometimes it’s the dude who has weird dad issues (they’re only called “daddy issues” when they’re applied to a woman, huh?). Sometimes it’s a woman who knows things about sports (my old roommate could bore me to tears with her facts about the UCONN Basketball Team). And sometimes (don’t freak out now), it’s two women in a relationship! Or two men, and shockingly, neither of them *snap* sassily every time they talk. You wouldn’t know any of this watching stand-up comedy in a mainstream comedy club.
I want to be clear: I don’t think this kind of comedy is necessarily making people any more racist, or more sexist, or more homophobic (however, I can’t prove that). I get it - the audience is there to laugh. It’s supposed to be fun. I want to turn off my brain and laugh just as much as anyone, but every once in a while, I get stuck on agreeing to the base reality. All jokes have premises, and premises are based in truth - truth about how the world works as we know it. Setting up jokes that don’t describe reality, but describe stereotypes, reinforce those stereotypes. They tell the audience, subliminally, it’s okay. You’re right, when you joke with your all-white friends that Asian are bad drivers. It’s okay for you to think that. It’s okay for you to make that joke, out in the world, because I, a person who’s paid to make jokes, did.
Getting up on a hallowed comedy stage and saying “women do ____,” followed by “and men be like ____” allow men to continue thinking that every single man in the world is out there to get pussy, and every single woman in the world is out there to marry rich. There’s a reason lesbians don’t laugh at jokes (you know, the stereotype); because lesbian women know that it’s possible to be a fully functioning human woman, and not identify with 99% of what’s coming out of a comedian’s mouth about “all women”. Jokes are usually only funny when they’re relatable to your life experience.
When, for example, the highly-respected comic Neal Brennan, gets up there and asks women why they “force men to get married when you know none of us want to,” it doesn’t make me laugh, because it just confuses me, for the following reasons:
1. I don’t even want to get married, ew.
2. I’ve never met any woman who would want to marry someone that was being “forced” into it, and,
3. If you don’t want to get married, don’t? If you’re with someone who wants to get married and you never do, dump them? You very clearly don’t have the same goals or values. And that sounds like a personal problem.
It’s just confusing. Women are told that if we’re being sexually harassed, we should say no, fight it off, report it immediately, etc. Apparently men all over the country are being force-married, and they cannot physically or emotionally handle just saying “no, I don’t want to do that.” (I won’t even get into the fact that child marriage IS STILL LEGAL IN SEVERAL U.S. STATES – and I know we all know it’s usually girls who are the ones being forced into child marriage.)
A small tip: don’t get married if you don’t wanna get married. It’s actually not even that hard. You won’t have to make those uncomfortable jokes at your bachelor party about the ball and chain and how your “life is over.” You could just not even enter into a relationship with someone who is into the idea of marriage. You could be honest with yourself, and communicate with your partner from the get go, and then, ideally? Stop complaining about it as if it’s women’s fault you don’t want to get hitched.
The absolute laziest part of this whole thing was Brennan setting this joke up by talking about “power.” He said, of course, #MeToo is an issue of men taking advantage of their power, but actually, he claimed, women have power too—their power resides in relationships. Oh?
Intriguing. Yes, he acknowledged, men have the power of being bigger/stronger/scarier, but women have the power to force you to marry them, I guess?
I have trouble with this concept of power. Because even when men are not physically more powerful than their female partner (which they often are), a key component of power is privilege. No matter what, he will still hold the privilege of being born into a patriarchal wasteland (America/the universe). That’s why domestic abuse is such a big problem, and happens more often at the hands of the husband/boyfriend. Women have power in relationships? It doesn’t hold any weight to Brennan that men could legally rape their wives till like, twenty years ago? That’s not “power?”
As a deeply annoying liberal arts graduate, I wanted to dig into this: why do men think that women hold power in relationships? (I say men – yes it was just one comedian who said this, but it’s the premise of the entire joke – the truth we all “agree” to). I think it’s because men see relationships as “women’s arena.” If women are socially accepted to be more sensitive, intuitive, and emotional, then we as women will also, in this stereotype-land, be more “into relationships.” The thing is, mentally healthy people invest in their relationships (family, friends, and romance), they put time and effort into them, and see them as a vital and integral part of their lives. But because of #toxicmasculinity, some men struggle with this idea. If feelings are for pussies, then caring about relationships as a whole can be thrown off as girl stuff. Is this “power?” Women being more invested and caring a great deal about their interpersonal and romantic lives? It doesn’t seem like a power if it’s being read by men, as it often is, as weakness.
But, here’s the part we don’t get to in the joke: the thing about power is that if you don’t do what the person in power wants, there are usually consequences. What happens if the man in a heterosexual relationship says no to getting married? The woman might be sad and angry, probably hurt. Maybe the woman breaks up with him. But wait—the whole premise of the joke is that NO MAN wants to be married, and this hypothetical woman wants to be married. If they break up, he is free from having to get married. So… he gets what he wants. Where does her power come from, if there are no consequences when he doesn’t do what she wants? Sex? Lots of other women can give him sex. Access to being in a loving, caring relationship? If that were true, wouldn’t he want to stay in it, too?
Maybe the joke needs to be fleshed out more—that’s cool. Maybe just do a different joke, one that’s NOT vaguely sexist for no reason. I think about this constantly when watching stand-up: in this big wide world of experiences and adventures, you can make jokes about anything. Especially a comedian with the influence and status of Brennan - he can literally talk about anything he wants, and yet for some reason he sees value in doing the 2018 version of WOMEN BE SHOPPIN’.
More and more, it seems like male comedians are mad that it’s 2018 and it’s not as cool/funny to be sexist anymore. Chris Rock even mentioned in his brief set, he’s not performing at college campuses anymore, because of the PC culture. Not to mention Eric Griffin, another Comedy Store comedian I’ve seen recently, who loves to rant about how feminism is just for women wanting “special treatment.” When the starting point is bitter, it’s hard to get the audience on their side.
Infomercial voice: Are you a comedian who’s vengeful against an audience that isn’t exactly the same as the audience they had twenty years ago? Here’s a thought: adapt.
It’s what pretty much everyone in any job ever has done, when the world changes, which it tends to do. Think about it: does a career path exist that hasn’t been updated, advanced, altered, or wiped out entirely by technology/social reforms/government regulations? I don’t see why stand-up would be any different. Or why stand-ups think getting mad at their changing audience for not laughing at their outdated jokes is a good strategy.
Disappointingly, sexist jokes often work. In the comedy clubs, I hear and see full tables of people around me laughing and identifying with these lazy jokes. Of course, it’s understandable: stereotypes don’t come out of nowhere, and as humans, we love when our dark, bad thoughts are validated. But should comedy validate them? Does comedy need to in order to be funny? I would argue Mike Birbiglia, Hannah Gadsby, Aparna Nancherla, and so many other successful, unproblematic comics prove the answer is no.
Stand-up, when it’s great, can push back against those easy-to-fall-back-on tropes, and (!) it can be just as, if not more humorous. I know (or maybe I just want to believe) that Neal Brennan, co-creator of The Chapelle’s Show, is smarter than dunking on women just for the laugh. And I think eventually, the audience will be smarter than that as well - or at the very least, get tired of the old tried-and-true generalizations. Great comedy of the past (and present) has made the audience think, and confronted the status quo in a way that makes us look at our lives from a wholly different perspective. It is undoubtedly more difficult to write/perform outside the typical stand-up comfort zone, but I also believe it’s that much more rewarding. My #SJP wish-on-a-star for future stand-ups: challenge society’s ills, don’t reflect them back to us.
