I found this article bringing up Seth MacFarlane's 2013 Harvey Weinstein joke at the Academy Awards saying the supporting actress nominees would "no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/seth-macfarlane-harvey-weinstein-oscars_us_59df3449e4b00abf36466ea1

My personal reaction is an eyeroll, and I'm classifying it as a bad joke.  The literal content feels like an enabling and normalization of the dangerously hypersexualized atmosphere that I believe should change in the entertainment industry.  I believe the quote from MacFarlane that his castmate was assaulted.  The poor taste part is that he relied on sarcastic tone alone and also that in combination with his comedic voice it sounds extra chauvinistic because his persona is so very fond of old patriarchal Hollywood.

I also think maybe MacFarlane was taking a risk by broaching the subject at all, though as a gay male with wildly popular projects he was probably in a uniquely secure place to do so.   I also just read this article about an editor at Variety protecting and enabling Weinstein's predation, which illustrates the degree to which he had power and influence and what sort of a social spin machine he had on his side.

:/ I find it hard to be angry, excepting that this same comedian sang the "I Saw Your Boobs" song which I believe also normalizes and enables the rape culture with its literal content.  I'm actually more contemptuous of that as an audience member than of any one joke.  But he certainly pointed out the elephant in the room, and that hopefully led to a lot of conversations that maybe led to the 30+ charges of sexual harrassment all coming out at once.  Surely it took some organizing to take down a media mogul.

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.

Bridget Christie : Stand Up For Her Contains One of My Favorite Sexual Violence Jokes Ever

And it goes something like:

First Post

My mother taught me to be a feminist, and I'm not sure where I got the idea that I should be funny, but as I've come of age in parallel to the rise of internet culture I've continually revisited feminism as this cause my mom taught me that everyone in the South is doing wrong and everyone in second, third and even some first world countries are doing wrong, and now EVERYONE ON THE WHOLE INTERNET IS DOING FEMINISM WRONG.  Probably.  Who has time to talk to all of them and find the ones who are doing it right?  I tend to just remember the ones who rubbed me the wrong way, and therefore, I also am doing it wrong.

Particularly irksome was the guy who insinuated he considered himself a feminist and then told me, "Your argument is invalid" when I expressed an opinion on the latest Metroid video game giving Samus Aran a cutesy Japanese schoolgirl look that aesthetically looked more stereotypical to me than her appearance in Super Metroid.  There are probably a lot of things I don't know about feminism, and a whole essay on the psychic residue that gets attached to visual patterns in pop culture doesn't fit into a tweet, BUT I said something that was missing details and he answered with confrontational language that made me feel excluded from the movement that is supposed to empower women like me just so he could win an internet for being The Best Progressive Feminist Male Game Industry Person to draw someone into a confrontational debate they did not ask to enter while expressing an opinion on a video game character in a friendly tone.

I may yell at the guys who are trying to do it right some more later.  For now, let me also say THANK YOU for doing it right.  It's a step in the right direction that you're trying.  But I am starting this blog to discourage the employment of confrontational language in discussions about civil rights.

Similarly, last year I saw a W. Kamau Bell episode on jokes about sexual violence wherein the topic was framed as a debate but both sides were trying so hard to be funny in a biting and cynical way because one function of comedy is to bite an idea and make people look at it whether they wanted to or had to be tied down and waterboarded with it.  In the end, no one on that show looked very good and the audience took to the Twitterfeeds and blogosphere and feminists attacked male comic Jim Norton and male comics attacked Jezebell blogger Lindy West.  The sad thing is that both sides were making salient points about emotional safety and the importance of freedom of speech, but the audience wouldn't listen because they heard a buzz phrase from whichever side that closed their ears.

I am of the not-new opinion that both the game industry and the world of comedy have gender equality problems.  While researching the sexual violence debate and tangentially also Daniel Tosh's audience member confrontation about his routine the year before, I found it nearly impossible to get everything that needed to be said out in one article.  But the message of the need for civil discourse ESPECIALLY on the internet toward the pursuit of social equality bears repeating. I also need practice staying on one topic long enough to become an expert as I aspire to a career in comedy writing for television moreso than but also film.  So, blogging.

I will try NOT to be funny when discussing the serious issues, because trying to be funny intentionally often leads to overgeneralizations and assumptions spewed like daggers into a fire of long-held but repressed fears.  But I realize I have already broken that rule in this starting post unless cryptomnesia saved me from being surprising enough to laugh at.   Let's just say I intend to publish slowly as I process what I read and consider both sides, and I will respond to criticism by editing what has been published and also apologizing.

Other topics I've been exploring lately:
* The #Solidarityisforwhitewomen and #YesAllWomen hashtags (race and gender relations on Twitter)
* The history of female comedians and the book We Killed (I'm thinking there is a better one out there and I just haven't found it yet)
*  Japanese comedy and what gender relations felt like the year I was there (may not be explored; I may not be the best person to do this because my Japan Studies endeavors are on hiatus while I'm writing scripts and trying standup)
*  Disability as explored in comedy by comics disabled but more often able bodied (I have another blog for this.  I already have too many blogs to be buzzworthy and will update when I process something I've read for any of them till I figure out which blogs are sticking.)

So there's that!  We'll see where this goes and if I can employ some sweet, sweet Westernized Buddhism to avoid the hate mail and trolling.  I welcome invitations to educate myself if you'll first peacefully count to ten and try to imagine why I said what I did before you comment.

Welcome, all farcenschauspielers and la(d)ypersons who do not salute Hitler or name him at the end of web fighting. Does the German word for comedian exclude the female ones like some languages do with gendered nouns? Oh I must meditate out of this tedious search for perfect social correctness already!

Also, FIRST!  (At the blog title.  Oh crap, now I have to prove I'm worthy.)