Monday, October 16, 2017

James Corden's Harvey Weinstein scandal jokes

This Vulture article contains the softest of not OK sexual violence jokes:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/james-corden-apologizes-harvey-weinstein-jokes.html

I like James Corden a lot and have always felt comforted by his show precisely because the jokes tend to be comforting and friendly as opposed to biting and edgy.  When I read his jokes in this article, they almost didn’t register to me as rape jokes because I am used to his style in a show that is never about that topic.  But then, that’s exactly why I think it was right for him to apologize and totally understandable that Rose McGowan and Asia Argento had trigger reactions.  Especially to the bath joke.  He isn’t predatory himself certainly, but I agree with Rose McGowan that these jokes make it sound like he is normalizing the actions of a monster and could even be thought friends with him.

I of course do not set Mr. Corden’s brand or think I thoroughly understand his comic persona.  But he has seemed fairly clean and safe overall.   So it saddens me to hear him being old-fashioned chauvinistic, even in a save British flavor of that.  After tuning in for cross walk musicals where he plays Belle or Mary Poppins and so many great party music games that creative a fun atmosphere of friendship, it feels a bit like a betrayal of female audience members when he flips over to the "show business is callous and you have to be tough to succeed amongst all these tacky, attention-starved people" side of the coin. 

Yet, I still see it as more an accidental normalization of rape culture than an intentional dismissal of the victims.  Unlike Woody Allen’s pre-emptive defensive comments that no one asked him for  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/16/harvey-weinstein-woody-allen-sad-comment-sexual-abuse-allegations. 

(Sidebar: I highly recommend a click through to Allen’s son Ronan Farrow’s Hollywood Reporter piece on the difficulties faced by reporters in coverage allegations of sexual misconduct.  TLDR: because there’s not a solid conviction to begin with, it’s a minefield of he-said-she-said with few facts and intense pressure from publicists and agent hype machines that reporters fear could cost them access to interview subjects with any degree of fame or power.  I’m nobody he would want to interview, but I think Ronan Farrow is amazing and I hope he is making it a personal life mission to expose instances when media spin is protecting monsters or otherwise enabling emotional damage to anyone.  I intend to follow his writing.)

The softest of sexual violence jokes are still sexual violence jokes. Should a late night show or gala event speech post a trigger warning and encourage Rose McGowan to change the channel before easing the ick for those of us able to handle jokes on this topic? I believe there's a duty of reportage with rape jokes, and if we don't agree on a right perspective we (and by we I mean anyone who tells a joke or broadcasts punditry) are adding to the emotional trauma faced by victims. But even if these jokes were more aggressively trying to take the monster down, the victims would still not want to hear this topic any more than is necessary for a courtroom verdict.  It's hard to demand tact on this topic because discussing it at all can hurt people, but not broaching it lets the monsters win.


So, I’m conflicted.  I like this comedian.  I believe in freedom of speech and that no topic is forbidden in comedy, which is why I started this fledgling blog with its single good rape joke and single bad rape joke thus far.  (I've thought about this since the criticisms of Daniel Tosh and the Kamau Bell episode with a debate on rape jokes between Lindy West and Jim Norton, and I had to wait a while to calm down so I could blog in a more polite tone less likely to come off as one of those "angry feminist social justice warriors" the men refuse to listen to.  

I have to admit, I find Mr. Corden's jokes funny personally until I look at the disservice they do to a cause I believe in fighting for.  (I have personally been sexually harrassed at a past job but I don't personally feel comfortable posting the #MeToo hashtag because I have never been assaulted, just made rather uncomfortable and dreamed of a rape but don't have the actual experience.  So I still have room in my emotional reserves for jokes to make the topic easier to look at and relieve rather than increase the pain.) The gala jokes have the wrong social perspective on an issue that I believe has a correct perspective to have for the reason that they bring emotional pain to more than one innocent person when they are brought up.   

BUT.  I always thought the answer was to give a trigger warning and advise the audience to opt out of buying a ticket or tuning in if they wish to avoid commentary on this topic.  I don’t see how James Corden could have given a trigger warning given that it was a gala speech and I don’t know if it was all pre-written or if he improvised at all.  He could maybe adopt a personal self censorship rule for gala speeches to steer clear of the topic and restrict it to scripted material that could have a trigger warning attached.  But I still think it is fair to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept the apology if he improvised at all in the gala speech.

He apologized, and I believe him that his goal wasn’t really to side with the monster.  It’s a misfire, but one I wish more men could be more conscious of and get better at steering away from.  It would be nice to see more jokes promoting legal consequences for assaults, understanding that it is painful for victims to report to attempt to get consequences, and advocation of systematized approach to this act that should not be.

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