So much of life is wasted worrying about what other people think. This is true because so many people judge their life and other people's lives as being good or bad based on societal benchmarks of beauty and success, instead of living it on their own terms. And the funny thing is we don't realize how crazy some of it is unless one takes a step back and thinks about it for a little bit.
For example, I think every woman I know spends a small fortune buying makeup. But all of those women have told me they don't actually like doing their makeup. Think about all of the time and money spent choosing the right shade of concealer or the correct tint of mascara just to fulfill an "obligation" of looking good for the collection of assholes one might run into during an average day. Millions of men wake up every morning and choose a constricting piece of cloth to go around their neck that serves absolutely no purpose. We do this because someone somewhere decided it should be this way, and the world buys into it. Just like we buy into judgments of what it means if someone isn't married by 30, or doesn't have children, or isn't the model of what society thinks "normal" should be.
One of the foundations of comedy is finding ways to laugh at absurd truths. Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer and FX's Louie are very different TV shows, but they both deconstruct male and female perspectives about regrettable sexual encounters, crises of confidence, body-image issues, and the nature of life in funny, interesting, and honest ways.
Continue below the fold for more.
I feel strong and beautiful. I walk proudly down the streets of Manhattan. The people I love, love me. I make the funniest people in the country laugh, and they are my friends. I am a great friend and an even better sister. I have fought my way through harsh criticism and death threats for speaking my mind. I am alive, like the strong women in this room before me. I am a hot-blooded fighter and I am fearless. But I did morning radio last week, and a DJ asked, "Have you gained weight? You seem chunkier to me. You should strike while the iron is hot, Amy." And it's all gone. In an instant, it's all stripped away. I wrote an article for Men's Health and was so proud, until I saw instead of using my photo, they used one of a 16-year-old model wearing a clown nose, to show that she's hilarious. But those are my words. What about who I am, and what I have to say? ... I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story — I will. I will speak and share and fuck and love and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it. I stand here and I am amazing, for you. Not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself.
—Amy Schumer, speech at the 2014 Gloria Awards and Gala, hosted by the Ms. Foundation for Women
Both Schumer and her show have seen popularity and distinction, including a
Peabody award, over its three seasons. But the current run seems to have hit a nerve and been the subject of much discussion. Each episode has produced videos that have almost instantly gone viral, garnering millions of views and shares. Most critics see comparisons to Dave Chappelle and
Chappelle's Show, with Chappelle exploring the absurdities of race and Schumer finding socially relevant humor in the inequities of gender.
Among the most talked about of this season's bits:
- Milk Milk Lemonade: Schumer does her own twerk video and skewers the ridiculousness of objectifying women’s very human body parts. In this case, the pop-music love of big booties, getting Amber Rose to spit rhymes about her "fudge maker" and Method Man to say "it's where poop comes out."
- Last F**kable Day: There's a story about the making of An Officer and a Gentleman, which starred Richard Gere and Debra Winger. Allegedly, when Winger auditioned for her part, she was at first rejected by producer Don Simpson, who told the actress "you're not fuckable enough.” Winger would later take part in Rosanna Arquette's documentary Searching for Debra Winger, where Winger and other actresses discussed how the industry treats them in the types of available roles after they hit a certain age. Schumer's sketch mines that reality for comedy, with Arquette and Tina Fey celebrating Julia Louis-Dreyfus's last fuckable day. As noted by Schumer and the group, men like Jack Nicholson don't reach a fuckability breaking point, since Hollywood producers have no problem finding it believable that a hot young actress half a man's age is ready to sleep with them.
- Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup: It's both a parody of every One Direction and Bruno Mars pop song about natural beauty, while also pointing out the absurdity painting up one's face to look "girlier." Schumer took to Twitter before the sketch aired and invited fans to post their own makeup-free selfies with the hashtag #girlyoudontneedmakeup.
- Football Town Nights: Schumer and Josh Charles spoof NBC's Friday Night Lights, with the "joke" within the sketch being the absurd lengths people go to find excuses, loopholes and knee-jerk defenses for athletes who rape.
- 12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer: The latest episode of the series devoted an entire hour to debating whether or not Schumer is "fuckable." Parodying Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men, an all-star cast (Jeff Goldblum, Paul Giamatti, John Hawkes, Kumail Nanjiani, Chris Gethard, Vincent Kartheiser among them) get into a heated discussion of whether Schumer is hot enough to be on TV. And the reaction to the episode usually proves the point of the bit. The internet comments usually run with the idea in the sketch, and start breaking down into debating whether or not Schumer is worthy of their penis instead of realizing the sexism behind a woman having to hit a level of attractiveness in order to be on television.
From Julie Miller at
Vanity Fair:
“It’s the first idea I had for writing the third season,” Schumer told us by phone on Friday. “It’s a theme that has been kind of ever-present on the show—women constantly being evaluated and the sort of rage men have for anyone who is not a ‘10.’ People were so mad about Lena [Dunham] taking her clothes off [on Girls] ... there is like this weird anger towards women who feel comfortable in their own skin and aren’t afraid to show it. And these conversations are coming from men who are so far from being in a league where they would be attractive enough to be considered [on par].”
The inspiration for Tuesday’s episode, however, stemmed from one particular conversation she overheard.
“I was at a party and these guys were talking about Michelle Williams, and they were like, ‘Yeah I don’t think she is hot actually.’ First of all, these guys like don’t have jobs and are physically nothing to write home about. Michelle Williams is obviously fucking gorgeous and an incredible actress. These guys would be so lucky to even get to have a conversation with her but they were like really deliberating over whether or not they would fuck her. And I was like, ‘You know what, that scenario is never going to present itself, you guys.’ But that word ‘deliberation’ is what made me think, ‘What is the ultimate deliberation? An actual jury deliberating. And I love the movie 12 Angry Men.”
When I first started writing this week's piece, I originally was going to devote the entirety to Schumer. But then it hit me that Louis C.K. covers a lot of the same ground with his show,
Louie, just from a male perspective instead. On appearances,
Louie and
Inside Amy Schumer couldn't be more different. One is a sketch show, while
Louie is a sometimes odd and surreal dramedy, in the style of a '70s-era Woody Allen film, generally about the self-doubts and
failures of a schlubby, middle-aged man with two daughters.
The episodes are largely loosely connected vignettes that often don't concern themselves with serialization and continuity to experiment and explore by observations about anything from religion, masturbation, double-standards, body image to masculinity. It's a show that can switch from funny to serious in a heartbeat, can cover any issue from week to week, and finally clicked for me when I thought of it as a variation of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, except instead of the awkward moments being funny, they're instead played as how those moments would be in real-life: painful. Louie is also a show where many times there isn't resolution to the problem central to the episode. That can make things feel incomplete. But it also feels more honest and true to how there isn't always resolution in life.
For example, the difference between how a fat man looking for love is treated and looked at compared to a fat woman.
And, more often than not, the connective tissue of
Louie involves stories about vulnerability usually only designated to women and how the ideas associated with masculinity are a mess of contradictions. The disconnect of the series is largely that Louie is a man and isn't able to fully inhabit what we think a man should be, so he fails again and again in hitting an artificial threshold. Masculinity is often judged as being strength above empathy and leads to situations where exertion of power comes before understanding. When you mix those notions with the relationships men have with women, whether it be a girlfriend or a mother, the ideas of what being a man is within a larger society becomes a messy space of emotional baggage and self-destructive behavior. Louie is unable to fulfill those aspects as the protagonist for the audience and lacks agency and action. So the world happens to him.
The current season's most controversial episode involves makeup, submission role-playing that goes too far, and Louie getting his ass kicked by a girl. One of the biggest themes of the show is how our relationships and past shape our outlook on the world and future, with genetics and a desire for companionship keeping people tied to some fundamentally loathsome human beings under the concepts of "love" and "family."
Pamela Adlon and Louis C.K.
From Lili Loofbourow at
Slate:
Louis C.K.’s stand-up has long been dedicated in large part to the ugly self-loathing that sometimes attends masculine desire, and the ways women are subjected to it. “A woman saying yes to a date to a man is literally insane and ill-advised,” C.K. says in his stand-up. “Imagine you could only date a half-bear, half-lion.” “I’ll get into your car with you with my little shoulders,” he says, ventriloquizing a woman. “ ‘Hi, where are we going?’ ‘To your death, statistically.’ ” He talks about how women use kindness as a weapon—hugging a man they don’t want to kiss. “Men think this is affection but what this is is a boxing maneuver. Don’t kiss me, you piece of shit!”