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Jerry Seinfeld thinks that kids are too sensitive and don't know what the words racism and sexism mean, won't perform on college campuses anymore. 

 

 

At least no one has ever accused the Seinfeld TV show of being one of the more racist sitcoms ever made...oh wait.  Or you know that time when people suggested that his web series spent several seasons ignoring non-white comics, and he blew up about it.

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Well, that article (from the same site) calling the Seinfeld show racist because it didn't have many black characters is kind of proving his point that people use the word incorrectly...

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I'm not honestly sure which article you're talking about (one straight up labels the sit-com as racist, the other is talking about Seinfeld's prickly reaction to a question about race).  There are some great essays I've read over the years analyzing both Seinfeld and Friends and the relationship those shows had with the racial diversity of New York City.  It's an interesting question to ask at what point does erasure of diversity (combined with extremely selective, often stereotyped bit parts) in real life locales become a kind of racism itself, and there's an argument to be made that those shows cross that line eventually. 

 

The example with his daughter that he gave was really not clear.  Telling a young woman she ought to be spending more time trying to meet boys, I don't think there's enough context there to know why his daughter reacted the way she did.  Even if it wasn't straight up sexist, at fourteen, she might have been trying to convey a discomfort or problem with what was said, and lacked a full enough vocabulary to explain the nuance of what she was feeling.  His reaction speaks volumes though.  He thinks she's wrong, and he used her as an example in front of a national audience to show that she doesn't understand what sexism is, and by extension neither do her peers.  Plus he didn't bother to try to understand what she was trying communicate.  That's kind of a "fuck you" right at his daughter.

 

As for his web series, he's got a show that's really celebrating current and historical comedians through one-on-one interviews, and through three seasons he appeared to have completely ignored huge swaths of comedy.  It's his show, he can do what he wants, but other people can also ask why there's a ton of really talented comics, who all happen to be not white, who weren't getting invited onto his show, even after it had been around for three years (I looked at the lineup in the following couple of seasons and it was much less white). 

 

Add on that as a rich, old white guy (Jewish, sure, but also incredibly rich and privileged), he's in part telling young women and people of color that they don't know what sexism and racism is (including his daughter!).  That's...shitty. 

 

Layer on the whole Michael Richard's racist outburst thing, which Seinfeld defended his friend for years (a perfectly reasonable thing for a friend to do).  He defends his friend who stood on a stage and yelled racial slurs at customers as "not a racist", but then tells young people they don't really know what racism is.  It's the kind of thing that might make young people tell Jerry he can go fuck himself.  People who have experienced racism first hand don't know what it is, but the guy who defends someone who had a public, racist outburst does.

 

Issues related to race in comedy and television have been floating around Seinfeld for upwards of 30 years, and it obviously makes him angry.  But that doesn't mean his critics are wrong, or even ignorant.

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There is maybe a sliver of what Jerry Seinfeld is getting at with regards to polytycal correctness in comedy that I somewhat agree with. But the real problem with his position is Bee Movie. Any credibility he had went right out the window when we were served that turd.

 

Also, he definitely comes across as a major douche in the things Bjorn linked.

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There is maybe a sliver of what Jerry Seinfeld is getting at with regards to polytycal correctness in comedy that I somewhat agree with.

 

We've got a relatively new friend whose a PhD student writing her dissertation about the intersection of modern feminism and comedy.  She freely admits to liking a lot of things that other feminists would label "problematic".  Comedy often requires pushing against boundaries or social norms, which will inevitably result in pissing people off.  Her attitude boils down that she thinks most of the borderline stuff can just be ignored or forgiven (there are some obvious racist or sexist material that shouldn't).  Her big problem with comedy is that often female comics aren't given the same leeway that male comics are, stuff like male comics can make dick jokes all day long, but a woman cracking jokes about her genitals can make some audiences and club owners super uncomfortable.  She's got whole lists of shit like that.

 

Other than watching the occasional comedy special now and again, I haven't known much in-depth about comedy.  Hanging out with her over the last few months has taught me that there are some fascinating politics and arguments going on inside the world of comedy that I didn't know existed.

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There are some great essays I've read over the years analyzing both Seinfeld and Friends and the relationship those shows had with the racial diversity of New York City.

 

isn't that monkey in more episodes of friends than any single black person

 

do you really need to analyze friends that deeply to get to the racism

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We've got a relatively new friend whose a PhD student writing her dissertation about the intersection of modern feminism and comedy.  She freely admits to liking a lot of things that other feminists would label "problematic".  Comedy often requires pushing against boundaries or social norms, which will inevitably result in pissing people off.  Her attitude boils down that she thinks most of the borderline stuff can just be ignored or forgiven (there are some obvious racist or sexist material that shouldn't).  Her big problem with comedy is that often female comics aren't given the same leeway that male comics are, stuff like male comics can make dick jokes all day long, but a woman cracking jokes about her genitals can make some audiences and club owners super uncomfortable.  She's got whole lists of shit like that.

 

Other than watching the occasional comedy special now and again, I haven't known much in-depth about comedy.  Hanging out with her over the last few months has taught me that there are some fascinating politics and arguments going on inside the world of comedy that I didn't know existed.

 

I think that's a good perspective and I'd say that's pretty much where I fall as well. It's gotta be really tough to be 'funny' for a living and I think comedians generally deserve a little bit of leeway if they sometimes cross the line. If their whole schtick is to just be offensive though, then fuck that. That's just boring and unfunny.

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I think that's a good perspective and I'd say that's pretty much where I fall as well. It's gotta be really tough to be 'funny' for a living and I think comedians generally deserve a little bit of leeway if they sometimes cross the line. If their whole schtick is to just be offensive though, then fuck that. That's just boring and unfunny.

 

Yeah, she's brought me around to thinking that comedy should have more forgiveness built into it than some other creative forms. 

 

But even thinking that, I think Seinfeld's a tool.  Like, how many comedians' careers have been actually affected by pushback from college students?  Maybe they get some feedback or criticism they don't like, but I can't really think of having heard of any examples of real backlashes against comics specifically for shows in college towns.  Maybe there are, and I don't know about them, but it seems like a bit of a dog-whistle.

 

The whole thing also strikes me as the old man yelling about "kids these days."  Like I'm sure that comedians in the 50s thought that college kids of the 60s/70s were also ruining comedy forever with all their worries about protests, and civil rights, and hippies and everything. 

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If their whole schtick is to just be offensive though, then fuck that. That's just boring and unfunny.

 

Well, even with comedy, that's a fine line. Like, I think Sarah Silverman's very funny, and she's definitely offensive, but her shtick is that she's an expert at working out where the line is and crossing it just enough, then milking her audacity for jokes.

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Is she an expert?! I've seen every episode of the Sarah Silverman Program and there's a lot (A LOT) of fucked up shit going on in that show that sort of bugged me on many levels. Although maybe more than anything just bothered that the poop jokes weren't all that interesting 80% of the time.

 

Watched it for the Rob Schrab directed episodes, not the biggest fan otherwise.

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I think that's the thing with building your career around offensive humour: even if you're good at it, your strike rate's not going to be 100% - you're counting on getting a high enough strike rate that people will give you a pass for the rest.

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As both a humourless feminist and also a lover of stand-up comedy, I think the problem is the comedians really live by the credo that anything can be turned into a joke, without really thinking sometimes about how comedy works at promoting the status quo. I think comedy, much like satire, is best wielded with that in mind. You can't "kick down" in satire and have it really work, all you're doing is picking on already oppressed people in doing so. I think there's ways of being clever without being offensive or reproducing this stuff, but heaven forbid you tell a comedian they can't joke about something, they lose their shit. 

 

I mean, the reason racist jokes are funny predicate on the idea that we think less of people of color. That's the whole reason that joke works, it's not because the comedian is dazzlingly brilliant. 

 

I think we can be funny as people without relying on oppressive shit to accomplish this. 

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Yeah, but what counts as kicking down or punching up gets real hazy, real quick, thanks to your friend and mine, intersectionality. Like, is mocking the Westboro Baptist Church punching up (because they're the pointy end of homophobia and the logical endpoint of a particular strain of Christianity) or kicking down (because they're poor, badly educated, and are trapped in an abusive environment)?

 

Similarly, there's lot of comics who skirt the boundaries because they want to satirise soft bigotry. For all of Dame Edna's faults, the act has, at its heart, an attempt to highlight the soft bigotry of the middle class by just making it a little too obvious that there's something nasty at the bottom of these nice-sounding sentiments. But that dragging it kicking and screaming into the light also means that you're reinforcing it.

 

Honestly, I'm not equipped to work out where the line is, and I still believe that good satire can change people's minds (especially not after "Bill Shorten's zingers" has become a thing) so I'm not willing to say that comedy should stay away from topics where it might do harm.

 

Like, Bill Cosby's become a pariah (although somehow not actually arrested yet) because of being outed as a serial rapist, and it took a comedian for people to take it seriously. But people should have been listening, and it shouldn't have needed to be a man saying it.

 

I don't know.

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I don't know.

 

And this encapsulates everything I think about comedy and controversial subjects!

I'm also leaning towards this whole thing is just old men being grumpy. Chris Rock (now 50) said the same thing last year, claimed he'd been feeling that way for most of a decade, and said that George Carlin was saying the same thing at least a decade ago. 

 

I wonder if this is just that young audiences haven't found these men as funny or engaging, because their material just doesn't land as well with 20-year-olds as it does with 50-year-olds.  And instead of thinking, "Hmm, maybe I'm just too old to be as relevant to the current youth generation" they think "These fucking humorless kids wouldn't know a good joke if it slapped them in the face."

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My rule with comedy is "I know it when I hear it" and yes, I know there's a lot of factors at play but most of the time? Comedians fuck up over some really objectionable shit and get salty when called out on it. I'm not so dense as to presume that there's an ultimate hard-and-fast rule. But, to me, it's not that hazy.

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The comedy of Richard Pryor still finds an audience in 20 year olds, and it can be on the offensive side -- but it's never just used for shock value, that I can remember. It's got a purpose. A lot of other comedians slip in some stuff for shock value -- especially Chris Rock, and especially from the time where he was staggeringly prolific -- and that just doesn't age as well. What was shocking 5 years ago won't get the same reaction now. Either it's old news and people roll their eyes or sensibilities have changed and people get offended.

Stand-up comedy is at its strongest when the comedian is speaking to their personal experience in a unique way. That someone whose most famous stand-up bit is something as moronic and banal as "how bout that airport food, haha!" is mad that college campuses don't "get it" anymore shows that he's just super out of touch. His audience is ultra-rich aging white men, because that's what he knows now. Probably goes over great in pitch meetings with other rich, aging white men. Not so much around college kids.

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Stand-up comedy is at its strongest when the comedian is speaking to their personal experience in a unique way. That someone whose most famous stand-up bit is something as moronic and banal as "how bout that airport food, haha!" is mad that college campuses don't "get it" anymore shows that he's just super out of touch. His audience is ultra-rich aging white men, because that's what he knows now. Probably goes over great in pitch meetings with other rich, aging white men. Not so much around college kids.

 

Side note: Jim Breuer is a fantastic stand up comedian and a great example of what you are talking about. My wife and I went to see him recently and we noticed a stark contrast between him and his opening act. The opening act went for cheap offensive humor that amounted to little more than making fun of Jewish people (he was Jewish himself), Mexicans, and Blacks. He had a few funny lines but just trotting out the same old stereotypes made for some pretty weak comedy. Then Jim Breuer came out and told the most amazingly hilarious personal anecdotes in his unique style and had the whole audience in stitches for over an hour. He never uttered a single profane word and none of his material involved really making fun of anyone other than his dad. He even gave my wife and I a hug after the show, thanked us for coming, and took a selfie with us (I need to get around to posting that).

 

I'm not sure what the point of this post really is. I just really like Jim Breuer and in the context of this discussion, I think he is a great example of how to do excellent comedy without resorting to cheap insults.

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Side note: Jim Breuer is a fantastic stand up comedian and a great example of what you are talking about. My wife and I went to see him recently and we noticed a stark contrast between him and his opening act. The opening act went for cheap offensive humor that amounted to little more than making fun of Jewish people (he was Jewish himself), Mexicans, and Blacks. He had a few funny lines but just trotting out the same old stereotypes made for some pretty weak comedy. Then Jim Breuer came out and told the most amazingly hilarious personal anecdotes in his unique style and had the whole audience in stitches for over an hour. He never uttered a single profane word and none of his material involved really making fun of anyone other than his dad. He even gave my wife and I a hug after the show, thanked us for coming, and took a selfie with us (I need to get around to posting that).

 

I'm not sure what the point of this post really is. I just really like Jim Breuer and in the context of this discussion, I think he is a great example of how to do excellent comedy without resorting to cheap insults.

 

I had the same experience going to see Mick Foley of WWE Wrestling fame. He's a great guy that has a lot of interesting stories, but man his two openers were targeted straight at the typical wrestling audience and didn't make me very happy. I'm glad my wife decided not to go that night.

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My underlying point about Seinfeld was that "lack of racial diversity" =/= "racist" and I also thought a lot of stuff was getting inferred from very little context, but I won't drag the conversation back there. All I want to say is that I really enjoyed Bee Movie.

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I just found out that "military sexual trauma" is so common that it has a name. 26,000 reported cases in the U.S. Military in 2011-2012.

Sounds like a problem.

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I'd like to ask about cultural appropriation. I've heard a decent amount about it, and I have a clear picture of what it describes, but I completely fail to understand why the actions described as cultural appropriation are considered bad.

 

I understand the principle that society frowns on nonwhite people expressing their culture in ways that it does not frown on white people appropriating that culture, and that's bad. But the problem there is clearly society's double standard, not white people using elements of other cultures. How is anyone harmed by a white person wearing dreadlocks, getting a tattoo of a Chinese character, or putting a Buddha statue in their room because "it looks cool"?

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I also struggle with understanding when cultural appropriation is harmful and when it is inclusive.

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The most baffling thing to me is that I see it a lot in reference to music. Like I've seen it said about random no-name Youtubers making rap song covers (sometimes in different genres), but I feel like people wouldn't make these covers if they didn't love the music they were covering? That's a lot of work to go to just to say "Yeah, I did it and made it better, fuck you."

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Cultural mis-appropriation that leads to desecration of something sacred or mis-appropriation leading to mis-representation are such an obvious far off example but yeah beyond those I too am having difficult time seeing the problem when it comes to more mundane stuff, like everyday fashion, etc.

 

The most baffling thing to me is that I see it a lot in reference to music. Like I've seen it said about random no-name Youtubers making rap song covers (sometimes in different genres), but I feel like people wouldn't make these covers if they didn't love the music they were covering? That's a lot of work to go to just to say "Yeah, I did it and made it better, fuck you."

 

Saw something 'similar'... this youtube cover singer I follow got some hate (being called racist, etc.) for changing lyrics of Japanese anime songs originally written in English cause some of them had lot of engrish in the lyrics.  For example, that song "Before My Body Is Dry" from "Kill La Kill".  Kinda sad to see her getting trolled when she is one of most anime loving person I follow.  Double sad to see her being called out for supposed racism by randos because she's black (not that marginalized groups are incapable of racism, I don't see it here so that's why it enhances the irony).

 

Or when this American artist I follow on twitter got called out for using Chinese character on her name because that was deemed offensive to Chinese people.  

The catch?  She's Chinese-American and she just literally wrote her last name.  But tmblr anon of course jumped to conclusion that it had to be a cultural appropriation of the wrong kind...

 

These are kinda very trollish stuff though (second one isn't even cultural appropriation... but I mentioned because it was accused as such when ethnicity of the accused wasn't clear to the accuser) so I'm wondering what are some more in-between stuff.

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Cultural appropriation, to my mind, becomes a problem when it's combined with power structures and commodification. Random YouTubers singing rap songs isn't a huge deal - the Chicago Blackhawks, Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians selling brands based around images and actions associated with Aboriginal peoples is something different. Essentially, the questions to ask around appropriation are "what did this thing mean in its original context?", "what does it mean in its new context?" and "who is this new context helping or hurting?"

 

The other thing about appropriation is that it tends toward essentializing cultures. It's usually about snatching bits and pieces of other cultures that are aesthetically pleasing or saleable and ignoring anything complicated or difficult about them. It's easy to wear smoke pot and wear dreadlocks and listen to Bob Marley; it's harder to understand the Rastafari movement and its tenets and its relationship with colonialism. It's easy to wear a Che Guevara shirt; it's hard to engage with Che Guevara's ideas and actions.

 

Of course, the other side of discussions about appropriation can tend toward essentializing as well. The tendency to shout "appropriation" at any moment of mixing can end up freezing cultures in place, which ends up hurting those more disadvantaged groups, since our collective vision of "Western" culture defaults to "dynamic and ever-changing," while Other groups are made up of a handful of more specific stereotypes. If all cultural dynamism is deemed appropriation, then the only people who are allowed to be dynamic are Westerners. That's why power is an important component - considering power lets us distinguish between people trying to break out of their boxes and people who are trying to steal and sell somebody else's box.

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