And it goes something like:
“I do apologize for that last joke. I understand you didn’t all technically consent to hearing a rape joke tonight. The problem for me is, you all came out here dressed like you wanted to hear one.”
The brilliance of this rape joke is her reversal of perspective such that she who looks like a potential victim of rape is using the tone assumed to be used by men blinded by their own societal privilege who suggest that victims of sexual violence were justifying the act by inviting sexual targeting via their wardrobes. Men have almost stopped using that defense in the United States, I think, but they also find the all female Ghostbusters movie to be an inferior Ghostbusters movie so they clearly did not pay attention to the scene when Erin (Kristen Wiig) has her wardrobe criticized by her boss even in an academic setting. This topic is not dead. It still stings, and anyone who thinks wardrobe choices permit sexual harrassment probably didn't realize that the Ghostbusters' sexual harassment of Chris Hemsworth's character in his job interview isn't OK either.
I enjoy the rape jokes in this routine for two reasons. One, she acknowledges audience perspectives and addresses them within a context of consent issues which are not often enough discussed. (I wish there had been more jokes with the keyword of consent in, but she does come back to it when she gets to a relatively recent yogurt ad and its issues of the man in the fridge holding yogurt possibly being a home intruder.) Secondly, she has a clear perspective that rape is an act that should never occur. She may use an ironic tone about women not being funny at the beginning, but then she is with an audience who already paid money so she knows she is preaching to the choir on the subject of women being funny at all. On the more upsetting subjects she lives up to what I feel is a duty of reportage when telling jokes about subjects that still have fresh pain attached. My only critique is that I also wish there were a trigger warning and value trigger warnings as self censorship, but Christie's entire point is that victims right to consent is ignored by the perpetrators of sexual crime. There is still breaking news, and only monsters would say rape is OK in tones that would allow an audience to make light of the issue.
I enjoy the rape jokes in this routine for two reasons. One, she acknowledges audience perspectives and addresses them within a context of consent issues which are not often enough discussed. (I wish there had been more jokes with the keyword of consent in, but she does come back to it when she gets to a relatively recent yogurt ad and its issues of the man in the fridge holding yogurt possibly being a home intruder.) Secondly, she has a clear perspective that rape is an act that should never occur. She may use an ironic tone about women not being funny at the beginning, but then she is with an audience who already paid money so she knows she is preaching to the choir on the subject of women being funny at all. On the more upsetting subjects she lives up to what I feel is a duty of reportage when telling jokes about subjects that still have fresh pain attached. My only critique is that I also wish there were a trigger warning and value trigger warnings as self censorship, but Christie's entire point is that victims right to consent is ignored by the perpetrators of sexual crime. There is still breaking news, and only monsters would say rape is OK in tones that would allow an audience to make light of the issue.
The bit started out sounding stale to me because I have been reading Slate and Bustle and Jezebel for nearly a decade now. It wasn't till halfway through the special that I realized, these publications are not the mainstream press and people in positions of privilege or political power are not reading them. These topics are not dead at all. There is a duty of airing such subjects out until they are as tired for people in positions of privilege as they are for those who feel victimized or disadvantaged, and Bridget Christie fulfills that duty admirably.
Least of all dead are the subjects of abortion and rape, which Bridget Christie handles with great aplomb in Stand Up For Her. My favorite parts of the routine are when she shows how inept product designers must think women are with pens or that we had to write with menstrual blood until someone made a pink pen we could write our lists of chocolate and abortions among the things women want, and the part about rape fantasies of which hers is "more prosecutions and longer sentences."
Why aren’t these subjects stale and done? There’s a lot of evidence in the news that they’re not, with Planned Parenthood funding now a choice made by state governments.
This is sort of the sort of funny I would like to be. Initially, I thought she was too literally repeating the perspective of male privilege that I don't agree with, but by the end I realized she was maybe drawing them in so they would listen to her more clever bits that are completely foreign to her perspective. Or at least to throw the whole audience off and not let them be confident that they know what her perspective is just because they see a woman in pink shorts on stage.
Sidebar: I am still not sure whether her hecklers were real, planted, or entirely made up, but Bridget Christie demonstrated the best way to handle hecklers. She acknowledges the criticism and says they've thrown her off and she's getting to the thing they were talking about but not at this point in the routine. She gives them a minute of attention then gets right back into her bit. Or did she build imaginary hecklers to build suspense and foreshadow the later deeper subject matter of her routine?
Also, the Bic for ladies pen bit is most hilarious bit of physical comedy I have seen in a long time. Freakish lady hands! And the drawn out dropping of the pen, request for help retrieving it, and repeated failures to get it back under her control are just too wonderful as physical gestures.
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