Holy shit this just made me SO freaking happy!!!! Patton Oswalt admits he was wrong about rape jokes!! I love him again!!
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/06/patton_oswalt_on_rape_jokes_joke_stealing_and_heckling.html
Here's is the part pertaining to rape jokes:
3. Rape Jokes
In 1992 I was in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.
Out of a field of 40 competitors, I think I came in 38. Maybe.
One of the comedians I competed against was named Vince Champ.
Handsome, friendly, 100% clean material. He would gently – but not in a
shrill or scolding way – chide some of the other comedians about their
“blue” language, or “angry” subject material, or general, dark
demeanor. But nice to hang out with. Polite.
Later that same year Vince won
Star Search. $100,000 grand prize. A career launched. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
He’s now sitting in prison in Nebraska, serving a 55 to 70 year
sentence for a string of rapes he committed at college campuses where he
toured as a comedian. College bookers loved him because his material
was squeaky-clean and non-controversial. I guess the
Star Search producers agreed.
Vince is one example – there are others, believe me – where some of the
friendliest, most harmless-seeming, and non-offensive comedians carry
around some pretty horrific mental plumbing. The comedians I’ve known
who joke about rape – and genocide, racism, serial killers, drug
addiction and everything else in the Dark Subjects Suitcase – tend to
be, internally and in action, anti-violence, anti-bigotry, and
decidedly anti-rape. It’s their way – at least, it’s definitely
my
way – of dealing with the fact that all of this shittiness exists in
the world. It’s one of the ways I try to reduce the power and horror
those subjects hold for me. And since I’ve been a comedian longer than
any of the people who blogged or wrote essays or argued about this, I
was secure in thinking my point of view was right. That “rape culture”
was an illusion, that the examples of comedians telling “rape jokes” in
which the victim was the punchline were exceptions that proved the
rule.
I’ve never wanted to rape anyone. No one I know has ever expressed a
desire to rape anyone. My viewpoint must be right. Right?
I had that same knee-jerk reaction when the whole Daniel Tosh incident went down. Again,
only
looking at it from my experience. And my experience, as a comedian,
made me instantly defend him. I still do, up to a point. Here’s why:
he was at an open mike. Trying out a new joke. A joke about rape. A
horrible subject but, like with all horrible subjects, the first thing a
comedian will subconsciously think is, “Does a funny approach exist
with which to approach this topic?” He tried, and it didn’t go well.
I’ve done the same thing, with all sorts of topics.
Can I examine something that horrifies me and reduce the horror of it with humor? It’s a foolish reflex and all comedians have it.
And, again, it was at an open mike. Which created
another knee-jerk reaction in me. Open mikes are where, as a comedian, you’re
supposed
to be allowed to fuck up. Like a flight simulator where you can create
the sensation of spiking the nose of the plane into the tarmac without
killing anyone (or yourself). Open mikes are crucial for any working
comedian who wants to keep developing new material, stretching what he
or she does, and keeping themselves from burrowing into a creative rut.
Even Daniel admitted, in his apology, that the joke wasn’t going well,
that when the girl interrupted him (well, heckled, really) he reacted
badly. The same way I reacted badly when an audience member started
taping one of my newer, more nebulous bits with her camera phone a few
months earlier. Daniel’s bad
reaction I don’t defend. His
attempting to find humor in the subject of rape – again, a horrifying
reality that, like other horrifying realities, can sometimes be attacked
with humor? I defend that. Still defend. Will always defend.
What it came down to, for me, was this:
let a comedian get to the end of his joke.
If it’s not funny then? Fine. Blast away. In person, on the
internet, anywhere. It’s an open mike. Comedians can take it. We bomb
all the time. We go too far all the time. It’s in our nature.
And don’t interrupt a comedian during the set-up. A lot of times, a set-up is
deliberately
meant to shock, to reverse your normal valences, to kick you a few
points off your axis. If you heard the beginning of Lenny Bruce’s joke
where he blurts out, “How many niggers do we have here tonight?”, and
then stood up and motherfucked him into silence and stormed out? You’d
be correct –
based solely on what you saw and heard – that Lenny was a virulent racist. But if you rode the shockwave, and listened until the
end of the bit, you’d see he was attacking something – racism – that he found abhorrent and was, in fact,
so horrified by it that he was willing to risk alienating an audience to make his point.
So that’s how I saw the whole “rape joke” controversy. And, again, my
view was based on my experience as a comedian. 25 years experience, you
know? This was about censorship, and the limits of comedy, and the
freedom to create and fuck up while you hone what you create.
But remember what I was talking about, in the first two sections of
this? In the “Thievery” section and then the “Heckling” section? About
how people
only bring their own perceptions and experiences to
bear when reacting to something? And, since they’re speaking honestly
from their experience, they truly think they’re correct? Dismissive,
even? See if any of these sound familiar:
There’s no “evidence” of a “rape culture” in this country. I’ve
never wanted to rape anyone, so why am I being lumped in as the enemy?
If these bloggers and feminists make “rape jokes” taboo, or “rape” as a
subject off-limits no matter what the approach, then it’ll just lead to
more censorship.
They sure sound familiar to me because I, at various points, was saying
them. Either out loud, or to myself, or to other comedian and
non-comedian friends when we would argue about this. I had my
viewpoint, and it was based on solid experience, and
it…was…fucking…wrong.
Let’s go backwards through those bullshit conclusions, shall we? First off:
no one is trying to make rape, as a subject, off-limits.
No one is talking about censorship.
In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment
threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t
once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under
any circumstance, regardless of context. Not one example of this.
In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this,
especially from
feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is
the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim.
Why, after all of my years of striving to write original material (and,
at times, becoming annoyingly self-righteous about it) and struggling
find new viewpoints or untried approaches to any subject, did I suddenly
balk and protest when an articulate, intelligent and, at times, angry
contingent of people were asking my to apply the same principles to the
subject of rape? Any edgy or taboo subject can become just as hackneyed
as an acceptable or non-controversial one if the
exact same approach is made every time. But I wasn’t willing to hear that.
And let’s go back even
further. I’ve never wanted to rape
anyone. Never had the impulse. So why was I feeling like I was being
lumped in with those who were, or who took a cavalier attitude about
rape, or even made rape jokes to begin with? Why did I feel some
massive, undeserved sense of injustice about my place in this whole
controversy?
The answer to that is in the first inc
orrect assumption. The one that
says there’s no a “rape culture” in this country. How can there be?
I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.
Do you see the illogic in that leap? I didn’t at first. Missed it completely. So let’s look at some similar examples:
Just because you 100% believe that comedians
don’t write their
own jokes doesn’t make it so. And making the leap from your
evidence-free belief to dismissing comedians who complain about joke
theft is willful ignorance on your part, invoked for your own comfort.
Same way with heckling. Just because you
100% feel that a show wherein a heckler disrupted the evening was better than one that
didn’t
have that disruption does not make it the truth. And to make the leap
from your own personal memory to insisting that comedians feel the same
way that you do is indefensible horseshit.
And just because I find rape disgusting, and have never had that
impulse, doesn’t mean I can make a leap into the minds of women and
dismiss how they feel day to day, moment to moment, in ways both blatant
and subtle, from other men, and the way the media represents the world
they live in, and from what they hear in songs, see in movies, and
witness on stage in a comedy club.
There is a collective consciousness that can detect the presence (and
approach) of something good or bad, in society or the world, before any
hard “evidence” exists. It’s happening now with the concept of “rape
culture.” Which, by the way, isn’t a concept. It’s a reality. I’m
just not the one who’s going to bring it into focus. But I’ve read
enough viewpoints, and spoken to enough of my female friends (comedians
and non-comedians) to know it isn’t some vaporous hysteria, some false
meme or convenient catch-phrase.
I’m a comedian. I value and love what I do. And I value and love the
fact that this sort of furious debate is going on about the art form
I’ve decided to spend my life pursuing. If it wasn’t, it would mean all
of the joke thief defenders and heckler supporters are right, that
stand-up comedy is some low, disposable form of carnival distraction, a
party trick anyone can do. It’s obviously not. This debate proves it.
And I don’t want to be on the side of the debate that only argues from
its own limited experience. And I don’t need the sense memory of an
actor, or a degree from Columbia, or a moody, desert god to tell me
that.
I’m a man. I get to be wrong. And I get to change
