the Amy Schumer thread

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/06/dont-believe-her-defenders-amy-schumers-jokes-are-racist/?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b

not a great piece or anything but nice to see her being called on her shit

America’s soil of racism is fed by jokes and incendiary speeches, by stereotypical images and symbols like the Confederate flag. Just as Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump and other members of the Republican Party regularly disparage people of color and claim they are simply telling the truth, Schumer can use comedy as a protective shroud to deny the harm and hurt caused by her jokes. A joke is considered benign especially when told by a supposed white liberal feminist. We can distance ourselves from the anger, from the harm, from the ideology, and from the hatred of the “extreme,” but also find comfort in the same anger, ideology and hatred that is “just a joke.”

This rhetoric isn’t just ugly. It contributes to a worldview that justifies a broken immigration system, mass incarceration, divestment from inner city communities, that rationalizes inequality and buttresses persistent segregation and violence. Yet nobody wants to take responsibility for spewing rhetoric that breeds the fear that results in soaring gun purchases, that “inspires” monsters like Dylann Roof to craft a manifesto with deadly consequences.

I am no one's Amy Schumer expert but the one standup bit I saw that was being passed around as super racist seemed to me to pretty obviously point towards her as the avatar making the racist statement as the butt of the joke. Everything else I've seen has been funny feminist stuff.

which bit was that

one of these?

for all things Comedy Central

ftr i have't worked out a clear response to the argument i quoted above

yeah there's a billion examples of shitty racism covered up with "but it's a joke"

lots of great comedy (or just art in general) done by inhabiting loathsome characters or amplifying the worst aspects of the self

and there are a whooole lot of audiences out there who are looking for the former who will happily enjoy the latter, without "getting it," your old archie bunker problem

She wrote this response on the 'used to date hispanics, now I prefer consensual' joke:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJQN2ijWsAAenRu.jpg

much better answer, imo.

Shakey, I think it was one of those links but none of them are ringing any bells. It seems pretty unambiguous to me though that she as the joketeller is supposed to come across as a terrible person, though?

that is a much better answer/apology yes

xp

isnt this basically the Sarah Silverman persona all over again? haven't heard enough Schumer yet to tell firsthand.

went over that comparison on the Comedy Central thread but I think Sarah was much less ambiguous about racists/racism being the butt of her jokes. That may just come down to her being better at writing jokes though. I don't really see how some of the Mexican jokes like "nothing works all the time, except Mexicans!" etc. are on the speaker and not the minority.

struggling to think of an instance where Silverman used such a lazy cliched setup as "utters generic racial stereotype" and tried to pass it off as being on her and not the race being stereotyped. Her material always circled around to implicating the ridiculousness of the stereotype itself.

I don't see how the "I used to date Hispanic men but now I prefer consensual" makes any sense as a self-aware dig on a "dumb white girl character".

i was hoping that was just an anomaly

it's not the bulk of her material but it is in there, primarily about latinos and asians

this sounds considerably less sophisticated than Archie Bunker... i don't know how much old Lenny Bruce y'all have heard, but his bit "How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties," along with eg All in the Family, are clearly meant to roast the bigot. That yutzes willfully don't 'get it' is not the comic/writer's responsibility.

it's an ~interesting~ question whose responsibility it is

I don't see how the "I used to date Hispanic men but now I prefer consensual" makes any sense as a self-aware dig on a "dumb white girl character".

As a standalone joke, it doesn't. As part of a set where a dumb white girl character has been built up, yes I can absolutely see it.

You could similarly take Chris Rock's "A book is like kryptonite to a nigger!" joke out of the context of his "black people vs niggers" piece and claim he is saying that black people are afraid of reading, which wouldn't strictly be true.

I don't think Amy Schumer is operating on Chris Rock's level of sophistication when she talks about race and I'm certain she has jokes that don't work because I'm not familiar with all of her material. I just want to know what the context behind these jokes was because that does actually matter.

the "can't compete with an asian girl" thing seems like a self-contained bit, I don't see how context could really salvage that one

yeah i think it's a little both... many of her jokes are effectively jokes at the expense of the persona she's inhabiting. but other of her jokes don't make much sense in that context; it's just a riff on a negative stereotype. i'm guessing that like a lot of comedians she was benefiting from, and is now sort-of suffering for, the slippage that makes both of those things possible.

that said, sometimes i think the people who spend a lot of time 'calling out' comedians for their racist/sexist/whatever jokes maybe have a kind of low opinion of people in general/audiences. is it not possible to find a racist joke funny--because of the structure of the joke, the way it inverts a cliche or plays with language or whatever--but still recognize it is racist and not subscribe to the worldview it plays on?

(IMO schumer is extremely hit-and-miss and i think the way she slips between the-joke's-on-this-racist-persona and this-joke-is-just-racist is symptomatic of the laziness of her writing)

i mean (speaking as a jew) i find some anti-semitic jokes funny and it's only in certain contexts that i'm actually troubled by them

sometimes i think the people who spend a lot of time 'calling out' comedians for their racist/sexist/whatever jokes maybe have a kind of low opinion of people in general/audiences

Yep. This type of horseshit always comes from a perspective of "let me explain to you why that thing you like is loathsome and wrong and you should be ashamed of liking it." (It also almost always comes from the pen of someone I've never seen praise anything, but the whole find-a-thing-to-get-mad-about-for-800-words/$100 life plan is a separate issue.)

ooh strawmanning well done

really? there's a big market for outrage online.

I'm of "Hispanic" descent and I don't like white people making Hispanic men are rapist jokes. And "she's making this joke on this dumb racist character that she's doing" is a shitty excuse. Old fashioned earnest racist comedy is less reprehensible to me than contemporary "oh I know better this is just a joke" cop-out bullshit.

I have caught like 2 episodes of this show and both had some sort of egregious "edgy" bit of ironic racism.

i find some anti-semitic jokes funny

the only time I've ever found these funny is when it's a bunch of Jews sitting around telling them to each other, which places them in a context of both reveling in our own foibles/failures but also a bit of "can you believe this shit other people think about us".

Which is completely different from hearing them from, say, a cheery fresh-faced German girl.

xxp

the way she slips between the-joke's-on-this-racist-persona and this-joke-is-just-racist is symptomatic of the laziness of her writing

I agree this is the real problem: poor writing. If she was a sharper writer she would know that making jokes about race/racism require more than simply repeating or reinforcing tired stereotypes.

I sort of wish Eddie Murphy were still doing stand-up so we could see if he's moved past all the horrible gay jokes in his routine when he was young. (At the same time, I'm glad we can't because I don't think Eddie Murphy would be all the funny anymore.) Some comics work past this stuff or, if they're determined to stick with it, frame it in better and more intelligent ways. Others don't. Schumer is still a comedy baby, and everything she says when she's called out on some of this stuff makes me think she's on her way to a better understanding of why.

I'm of "Hispanic" descent and I don't like white people making Hispanic men are rapist jokes. And "she's making this joke on this dumb racist character that she's doing" is a shitty excuse. Old fashioned earnest racist comedy is less reprehensible to me than contemporary "oh I know better this is just a joke" cop-out bullshit.

― Rave Van Donk (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, July 7, 2015 6:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have caught like 2 episodes of this show and both had some sort of egregious "edgy" bit of ironic racism.

― Rave Van Donk (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, July 7, 2015 6:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw i basically agree w/ this. but i still get tired of the outrage-machine-that-must-be-fed. i should probably just stay off the internet for a few years.

OK I watched the "can't compete with an asian" clip and it was just so absurdly terrible. Like, literally, there is an "asians like math" joke, or not even really a joke, just "i will refer to the conventional wisdom that asians like math and you will laugh."

I've liked the pieces of her show that I've seen, but if I'd never heard of her and watched this piece of standup I would never feel the need to see her again.

Jokes need to be funny, she isn't funny.

she's pretty funny

That's what she said.

i think she's not funny and as far as i can tell also not racist

re Murphy, I heard Chris Rock tell Terry Gross about 6 months ago "I'm the only black comedian who's never gaybashed. Ever."

maybe of his generation, but there are certainly younger comics who haven't

Hard to believe Trainwreck still hasn't opened yet.

Was Chris Rock including Cosby?

You mean the pervert who slept with his brother Russell?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xEpSdy99vg
Cosby in 1969, a good four minutes of homophobic bullshit starts at 2.38

Thanks - I'd never heard that.

she's usually very funny. she's had some jokes that are definitely racist in nature and they are her less funny material and I think she's aware of that now.

http://www.gq.com/gallery/amy-schumer-photos-star-wars-trainwreck

reviews for the movie are p good, Zacharek a dissenter.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/the-taming-of-amy-schumer-trainwreck-has-laughs-but-at-what-cost-7353708

a certain ilxor's pan p convincing

... you could have just linked it without mentioning that