17
votes
Trans comedians on transphobia and cancel culture: While 'cancelled' comedians continue to succeed after transphobic jokes, their trans peers are still finding it an often unwelcome industry
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- 'It gets to you': trans comedians on transphobia and cancel culture
- Published
- Jan 23 2021
- Word count
- 1897 words
I loved that quote. I’m not in any way a comedian, but this is absolutely how I feel about comedy. This whole article is just chock full of good and nuanced takes about “calling in”, the distinction between “cancelling” and just “calling out”, and the other side of cancel culture; where it has been used basically forever to mark minority comedians as “dirty” or simply refuse them jobs outright. I have felt all of these things, but I have never seen them laid out all in one place so well.
Maybe because he is genuinely hilarious? Laughing at something wrong doesn't make you a bad person. Laughter is a visceral response that you can't control.
He also makes a lot of important observations and makes you think about culture in different ways. Like in his latest special Sincerely (2020), which I highly recommend.
Opinions on Louis CK's comedy aside, I agree that laughing at something wrong doesn't make you a bad person. But laughing at something that is "wrong" because you happened to come across it is very different than going out of your way to see (and give money to) someone who has abused their power in the past and done very little to make up for it.
I know it's a matter of opinion, but I also don't personally think Louis (or many comedians for that matter) make actually important or thoughtful observations on society. I also kind of feel that comedy's self-proclaimed importance as a cultural mirror or as a font of self-reflection for society butts up against its defense of "it's just a joke" whenever something damaging is said about a group. That is, comedians can't both claim to be offering serious or important commentary on society and then fall back on their status as a "lowly comedian" whenever they say something that offends a group of people. This isn't really directed at you in particular, but I thought it worth mentioning since you bring up the role comedy might play in critiquing society.