Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman(41)

In a 1991 interview with People magazine, Molly Ivins put it perfectly: “There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity—like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule—that’s what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel—it’s vulgar.”

Punching up versus punching down isn’t a mandate or a hard-and-fast rule or a universal taxonomy—I’m sure any contrarian worth his salt could list exceptions all day—it’s simply a reminder that systems of power are always relevant, a helpful thought exercise for people who have trouble grasping why “bitch” is worse than “asshole.” It doesn’t mean that white people are better than black people, it means that we live in a society that treats white people better than black people, and to pretend that we don’t is an act of violence.

Here’s the reason I bring this up: I’ve always been told that “punching up” was a concept coined by Chris Rock. That attribution might be apocryphal—I can’t find a direct quote from Rock himself—but my enduring comedy hero Stewart Lee said it with some authority in a New Statesman column about why right-wingers make terrible comedians:

“The African-American stand-up Chris Rock maintained that stand-up comedy should always be punching upwards. It’s a heroic little struggle. You can’t be a right-wing clown without some character caveat, some vulnerability, some obvious flaw. You’re on the right. You’ve already won. You have no tragedy. You’re punching down… Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? That’s not a stand-up comedian. That’s just a cunt.”

Are rape jokes so sacred—and misogyny so invisible—that the dude who literally invented the model for social responsibility in comedy can’t imagine a world without them? I never got an answer. Rock didn’t come to the taping after all.

Backstage, before we got started, I met Jim for the first time—he told me he loved my “How to Make a Rape Joke” piece, said we agreed more than we disagreed. “Duh,” I joked. “I’m right.” We had a good rapport. I felt jumpy but righteous.

When we got onstage, my heart sank quickly. In my intro, to an audience that largely had never heard of me, Kamau explained, “She’s a staff writer for Jezebel [who’s] called out everyone from Louis CK to Daniel Tosh, and now she’s ready to put Jim on blast.” The majority of Totally Biased viewers would have no idea who I was, and they heard no mention of my lifelong comedy obsession, the fact that I’ve done comedy, that I write about comedy, that (at least at the time) I was most widely known in my career for writing humor. They had no reason to assume I had any standing to critique comedy at all.

Before the debate had even started, I was framed as combative, bitchy, shrill. I wasn’t there to have a constructive discussion, I was there to put Jim “on blast.” “Call-out culture” and putting people “on blast” are both loaded terms that the anti-social-justice right loves to throw scornfully back at activists. To unfriendly ears—of which, I’d soon learn, there were many pairs listening—the terms connote overreaction, hysteria, stridence. “Comedian vs. feminist.” I felt uneasy.

Kamau addressed his first question to Jim. “Jim, do you think comedians should be able to say anything they want to say without any repercussions?”

Silently, I thanked Kamau. Whether intentional or not, the question was framed in a way that forced Jim to concede a few points right off the bat. Everything has repercussions, obviously. The audience laughs, or they don’t. They come see you again, or they don’t. They buy your album, or they don’t. You get booked again, or you don’t. He couldn’t possibly deny that with a straight face.

Jim nodded enthusiastically, eyes wide. “If you’re trying to be funny, I think! Everybody knows the difference—Michael Richards said something in anger. Reasonable people can sense when you’re trying to be funny and when you’re trying to be angry. I think, like Matt and Trey said on South Park, it’s either all okay or none of it’s okay.”

He referenced a joke about Hitler that Kamau had made in an earlier segment, then added: “If we go down the road of ‘Hey, don’t make fun of this, don’t make fun of that,’ well, then people have a very legitimate argument to go, ‘Well, don’t mention Hitler in any context, because it’s never humorous!’ So I’m just not comfortable going down that road. I just think as long as you’re trying to be funny, you’re okay.”

“Everybody knows the difference,” he said. “Reasonable people can sense when you’re trying to be funny.” There’s a nasty implication there. The entire rape joke debate can be boiled down to women saying, “These are not just jokes. These bleed into the world and validate our abusers and reinforce our silence. These are rooted in misogyny, not humor. These are not funny.” Therefore, Jim implied, women are not “reasonable people.” “Everybody knows the difference” except feminists, apparently.

Kamau threw the question to me. I breathed sharply through my nose, trying to slow my heart. I wanted to establish myself as someone who wasn’t there to equivocate, to bow and scrape, to cede ground to an older, more famous man who talks for a living. I know what I’m talking about, and I mean it. Don’t fuck with me. I also wanted to open with a laugh. “I think that question is dumb,” I said.