Daniel Tosh, Louis CK, and comedy and advocacy locked in an eternal struggle

On the Daniel Tosh incident: I'm perfectly comfortable with the standard, rational interpretation of these events, which takes all of the following for granted:

First, Tosh made a cheap joke whose punchline was simply a provocative subject. As annoying as that might be, it's got many precedents in comedy.

Second, the lady blurted out an opinion, which can be rude, but also has precedents in the world of comedy. When Tosh is saying intentionally offensive things, he will occasionally have to deal with people being offended. Nobody denied anybody else's right to speak. Nobody was censored.

Third, Tosh was a dick to the woman in his response. He had all the power in the room... a microphone, a sympathetic audience. His response showed him to be a clumsy, flat-footed entertainer playing to the stupidest common denominator of his audience. It's this insane, overheated response that got Tosh the monumental backlash from the rest of the Internet. Again, he deserves it. Nobody is being censored. If people are calling you out for being an idiot and an asshole, then obviously, in a certain person's world, that's exactly what you are. I'm glad he at least apologized, but he has to realize that won't close the discursive floodgates he opened, or entirely absolve him of purveying some ridiculous bullshit.

I agree, on a philosophical level, with this piece in Jezebel, which is pretty straight-up with ya'll on the issue. If you and I already understand each other, you don't need to read it (or you've probably already read it anyway), but if you still find yourself fuming with hate at the humorless lady in Tosh's audience, then maybe check it out as a bit of reinforcement.

Louis CK addressed it on The Daily Show later.



I dig Louis CK; I trust him that he wasn't really supporting Tosh's RJ when he tweeted about him, so much as tweeting a general fan message that got stuck in the wrong context. Louis CK has, after all, taken on an insane challenge: he's tried to be true to his comedic art and impulses, while also being conscientious and respectful of his audience... and since he's now a massive international phenomenon, that audience includes everybody, from frat-boys to minorities. His success at navigating those complex waters is a testament to his genius and audacity as an entertainer.

Look at what he's trying to do here. First, he's engaging with everybody at once, inhabiting a gray area of diplomacy where he's both funny and critical. This involves holding a few things in his head at once: first, the feminist perspective of, "Why the fuck would you say that? Why should we let it slide?"  Second, the comedic perspective of, "We're in it to make people laugh, and sometimes offensive stuff gets the LULZ," and more abstractly, "We are doing our jobs, and we won't be bullied by people who have no investment in our success."

When he says feminists and comedians are natural enemies, he is making a broad generalization. It's far from universal, and the defenders of feminism are quick to jump on the exceptions. However, it's not a total deception. There is a sense in which advocacy of any kind (racial, gender, etc) is at odds with comedy. After all, comedy is almost entirely about pushing boundaries. Even the most benign jokes are premised on the need to break, overturn, or subvert our expectations, with the punchline usually breaking out of the boundaries of the original question ("Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side!" "Hey! You tricked me into thinking there was a real reason! Jerk!") Advocates, on the other hand, are at least partly responsible for sculpting the boundaries of speech. Make no mistake -- when you're telling people not to use the terms "faggot" or "retarded," you're erecting (lol) a very justified boundary within the game of language. You're pushing back against the uncritical, offensive, intentionally demeaning uses of those words.

So in this very abstract way, these two impulses are opposed to each other. Of course, they can work together... Louis CK never said they can't, and he's one of the greatest exemplars of ways to make this work. It requires a sort of judo... a kind of humor that calls attention to some boundaries while breaking others... in order to shape the discourse in a positive way. And, in the opposite side, a kind of advocacy (feminism, for instance) that is willing -- through humor -- to puncture some interpersonal boundaries and acknowledge some stereotypes in order to shed more light on the whole edifice.

That's what the great self-aware comedians do... Margaret Cho, Bo Burnham, Dave Chappelle, Richard Pryor, and of course, Louis CK, among many others.

Then there's a somewhat passive-aggressive reaction piece, questioning Louis CK's Daily Show discussion, on The Daily Beast.

It's nice that this piece presents a range of opinions from people who identify with both feminism and comedy, but I think it's a little uncharitable toward CK. It never bothers to actually ask: what did Louis CK mean when he said comedians and feminists are natural enemies? How does it jive with his persona as an actual comic? Does it make sense, in the larger context, for me to get offended by it?

Luckily, this is mostly dying down at this point, and I think most people feel that justice was served. And by this time, the trickle of remaining opinions (like, for instance, this one!) aren't going to change the landscape of civil rights or humor or anything like that. I just wanted to get this perspective out there, to make sure I had contributed a few words to the balance of the larger consensus.

An epic seriousness fail from Fred (of Portlandia fame)

Watch this video from Fred of Portlandia and see if you like the idea or not:

Comedy and seriousness can certainly coexist. This is part of why I love Nabakov, and part of why Rules of the Game is one of the great works of art (hi Evan!). There are crucial moments in each of those where the comedy and the drama reinforce each other endlessly, in a positive feedback loop, and create staggering emotional effects. But it's also worth noting that comedy and seriousness can be further broken down, and when you look at the different types, you find much more complicated dynamics between them.

For instance, seriousness can be broken down into POMP (i.e. the seriousness of politics, outrage, and theory), HIGH DRAMA (i.e. the seriousness of opera, epic poetry, etc), and REALISM (i.e. the seriousness of documentary, cynicism, etc). Likewise, comedy can be broken into any number of sub-forms... if Aristotle had really written a second volume of the Poetics devoted to comedy (as hypothesized in The Name of the Rose), it would have broken that shit down for us, and I'd have something to cite. As it is, I'll only bother commenting on one particular type of humor: SARCASM.

SARCASM, as a type of humor, doesn't seem to coexist with seriousness very well. Or, at least, it doesn't in this video... there such an intense ironic framework that it cannibalizes the seriousness, breaking down the concept right after the premise. Of course, this is further reinforced by the alleged "rules" of seriousness, which have a smarmy meta-serious tone to them.

I actually have a great love for seriousness. This should be obvious from this post itself, which is just as intolerant of levity as sarcasm is of seriousness. So it rather pains me that in the pop-cultural sphere, irony has become such a powerful force. It's a self-defense mechanism, a knee-jerk response, a permanent filter of perception, and a totalizing framework. Though there are some VERY SERIOUS ARTISTS (I'm well aware), and I understand how lots of people might find them pretentious and annoying, it seems like there's very little space left at the amateur level to experiment with real gravity and seriousness in art. It falls directly into the paper-shredder of judgment and gets laughed out of the cultural record. Just listen to random conversations at art museums, especially during tourism season, to see this in action.

Anyway, to beef up this post a little, I'll include a thing I wrote a while back, and never published, because it's painfully incomplete (it was originally written as a sort of meditation on why I dislike Entourage and Gossip Girl, despite their being fairly intelligent and well-acted).

FROM SOME TIME IN 2011:

I can relate to characters in fiction in two ways -- as caricatures (comedy), or as characters (drama). For the first type, I see their actions as absurdist, non-sequitors, as having no consequences except those of the scene, the immediate scenario, my immediate reaction, etc. For the second type, I form a moral understanding of their behavior. I evaluate their choices as either good or bad, and I anticipate a certain outcome. If they're well-intentioned, relatable, etc., I hope it works out well for them. If they're assholes, antagonistic, etc., I hope they get redeemed or punished in some way. I also try to understand their evolution, their "narrative arc," and when they change, I feel it's a serious change to the dynamic of the world they're a part of.

I'm happy laughing at the clowns, the caricatures. Laughing at them distances me from them. That kind of character is the kind you find in traditional cartoons (The Boss in Dilbert, all the characters in It's Always Sunny, Hagar the Horrible, etc). I feel no need to relate them to real world cause-and-effect or consequences. The second type of character is the type you encounter in anything dramatic, and in a certain way, I judge them... or, you might say, I evaluate their actions. I try to make sense of them and their world. If I don't like that kind of show, it's because I can't make sense of the world it takes place in. This often happens in shows where ill-intentioned characters are rewarded, or the virtue of selfishness or malice is implied. I just don't fit into those worlds, so I don't like those shows. Gossip Girl and Entourage are good examples.

Do I never like shows if I don't agree with the moral alignments of the protagonists? Not quite... the fact is, I just don't like these shows because their moral universe is so different from mine. Maybe the shows frustrate me because they don't validate my own values.

I don't like Entourage because it's all about a frat-boy universe. Even moreso than Friday Night Lights, which is more a family and social community universe. I don't like it because it's all about a flock of men, being the kind of man I was aggressively socialized not to be -- the shit-talking, alpha male, sexually aggressive, massively heteronormative male -- the kind of universe where I would get shit on, and would have to walk away out of shame and frustration. This is a world that I was socialized to reject, and apparently this instinct carries over, even to watching TV shows.

I don't like Gossip Girl because it's about a high school universe I was taught to resist and stay out of, a universe I was taught was unrewarding, even contemptible. The high school universe of cliques and social climbing and talking about people behind their backs and being part of a Machiavellian social battleground. The kind of place where high drama is the order of the day, where you see your immediate social relationships as the most important thing in the universe (I was always taught to try to enjoy myself, but look to the future, be focused on college and on making choices and being independent blah blah blah).

Is it true that aesthetic judgments are so often just our own projections and perceptions of ourselves, displaced onto the things we're critiquing? If so, is that okay?