I'm going to write about the Daniel Tosh rape joke controversy today.
If you don't know about the controversy, I think this article gives a pretty good, un-biased overview: http://www.avclub.com/articles/daniel-tosh-was-just-asking-for-it-by-joking-about,82351/
If you're not interested in my opinions, or if you're afraid that you're going to like me less after reading this blog article, feel free to go to a different blog entry, like this one. Don't worry -- I'm not going to condone rape, or even the notion that "joking about rape is always okay" or that "comedians are above criticism."
I'm going to talk more the way this story has been covered, and my continued annoyance with the rise of "blog journalism" (that's a phrase I just coined...OR DID I?!?!).
Anyone still with me? Okay. Good. Let's get started.
First off, full disclosure, I think Daniel Tosh is a very funny comedian. I saw his special "Daniel Tosh: Completely Serious" shortly before he got his show on Comedy Central, and I thought it was one of the best specials I'd ever seen.
I watched his show for its first two seasons, but recently the clips he plays are getting a little bit too gross (too many bodily fluids), so I haven't watched in a while.
Anyhow, that's my relationship with Mr. Tosh.
Now, on to the incident.
Here is the woman's account of the joke:
So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have. So I didnt appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”
...
After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there.
Actual journalists (such as this CNN article) recounted the incident thusly:
When the comedian Daniel Tosh reportedly singled out a woman in his audience and suggested, according to a blog post that recounted the incident, it would be "funny" if she "got raped by, like, five guys, right now," the online reaction was swift, heated and often split down gender lines.
Do you notice anything? They use the caveats "reportedly" and "according to a blog post" in the lead of the article. This is very important for a journalist, since they are relying entirely upon this one person's account of the night, and one of the basics of journalism is to get multiple sources (you should use at least three to five sources for any article) before moving forward with a story. Unfortunately the article then goes on:
A comedian who shoots down an audience member who objects to his rape jokes by joking about her being gang-raped on the spot isn't being funny.
See what happened there? They were being all careful at the beginning, hedging their bets with journalistic language, but then they pretty much attribute that quote to him. It's a bait-and-switch.
Now I want to show how most tabloid rags have covered this story. For instance, here's an article from that bastion of journalistic integrity, The Daily Mail:
A female heckler at a comedy show was told by comedian Daniel Tosh that it would be funny if she was gang raped.
And from the blog boingboing.net:
Now, proposing that an audience member sitting right in front of you in a crowd of mostly men "get raped by, like, 5 guys right now" is in my opinion a whole lot heavier than letting a few random rape jokes drop in your lame standup act. Not that rape jokes are lulzy. But, Christ, what an asshole.
You get the idea. We have a number of blogs, opinion columnists, commentators, and "guest writers" coming in to educate their audience about why Daniel Tosh's joke was not funny. And they're all using a single source -- the woman's account.
Consider this, though -- what if the blogger didn't recount the "joke" exactly as it was told? What if there was something lost in the translation? What if Daniel Tosh was actually being careful in context, but the woman (still smarting from embarrassment and anger that night) recounted the joke in a way that would make Daniel appear in the worst-possible light?
Now please, please don't equate this with a kind of he said / she said issue, where (much like in many real-life rape cases) the account of the incident is wildly different depending on who you asked. For instance, the accused rapist might say "it was consensual" while the woman says "it was rape." My argument is not similar to that at all. There were over 200 people at the comedy club that night so there are multiple accounts available, but strangely, none of those audience members has given a neutral account...at least not that I have seen.
So, until a neutral, 3rd party account of the incident is reported, everyone should be exercising caution as to the wording of the "joke." In it's alleged form, yes...it's pretty offensive. To joke about a woman being gang raped in a theater doesn't sound funny at all -- in or out of the context of a "comedy club."
The closest we have to a neutral account is Jamie Masada's, who disputes how the incident went down. Using Mr. Masada's recollection (he was there that night) the woman's blog should have read like this:
Tosh asked the audience, "So...what would you like to talk about?" Some guy in the front row shouted "RAPE!"
I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find rape funny and never have, so I shouted out "No! Rape is never funny!" Tosh paused for a moment and joked with the guy in the front row, "That girl's probably been raped by, like, five guys."
Now, is it a funny joke? Not really. But is it as offensive as telling a woman "that it would be funny if she was gang raped" in a comedy club? No. Not at all. Not even close. It's a snide comment postulating as to why the woman hates rape comedy so much -- he's not threatening her with actual gang rape.
Of course, I don't think either account is accurate, and I wish someone else would come forward, or that Tosh would give his own account. All he's done is apologize, and say that he was misquoted out of context. I wish he'd just release his tax returns already!!!
I mean...um...sorry. That was a different...never mind.
Personally, I do not believe that Daniel Tosh delivered the joke as the woman remembers, and it annoys me that people are taking this anonymous woman's retelling of the comedian's joke as Gospel.
The joke just does not really even sound like Tosh. Compare the alleged "gang rape" joke to this one, from an earlier special, that also touches on the subject of rape:
Here, Tosh takes the horror of rape and turns it into an absurd story involving silly string. It's a careful recounting, and it's obviously made-up...though it still uses "rape" as a punchline. See how carefully he tiptoes around the subject -- even giving a kind of disclaimer that he works "a little blue." He's covering his bases...because if he didn't, it would be less funny.
The woman's account plays on the perception that Daniel Tosh is a kind of frat boy comedian, and the cadence of the alleged joke: "got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her" sounds nothing like his actual cadence. It sounds like a frat guy's really bad impression of Daniel Tosh...and personally, I don't buy it.
The woman's account plays on the perception that Daniel Tosh is a kind of frat boy comedian, and the cadence of the alleged joke: "got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her" sounds nothing like his actual cadence. It sounds like a frat guy's really bad impression of Daniel Tosh...and personally, I don't buy it.
As a final note I'll address the issue...can rape jokes ever be funny?
I think so, if they're done right. I've laughed at many rape jokes, and other jokes about horrible things (racism, 9/11, AIDS, child abuse, et cetera). Anything, including rape, can be targeted successfully for a joke.
If you don't believe me, ask Mr. George Carlin -- a well-respected stand-up who knew a thing or two about what is and isn't funny:
If you don't believe me, ask Mr. George Carlin -- a well-respected stand-up who knew a thing or two about what is and isn't funny:
Posts
What a tough subject to respond to. It is probably in the top 10, maybe 5, of pc taboos. Once I actually wandered in that door while espousing one of my nonspecific un-researched musings that resulted in me naming my blog, itsmy theorythat. It goes something like this:
ReplyDeleteAny behavior that persists for a long time (at least hundreds of thousands of years) must inure (be of some benefit) to the survival of the specie. Take war, for instance. Been around a long time. OK, I'm aware that some professors have constructed a definition of war so specific that only humans can satisfy the definition. I have a definition of those professors that is so satisfying because only they can fit it, but I digress.
So, I was holding forth on this verbal path one day and launched the observation that war, while a generally reprehensible activity, to which everyone agrees, and nods their head, yes, war, ain't it awful. Yet we still do it. Every day, there is war somewhere. If my theory is correct then, war must be doing some good. What could it be?
Then I really started to get into trouble without realizing it because, one of Itsmy's other theories is that humans are a lot more pre-programmed than we realize. That is, we like to think we're thinking, but really, we're just following a mental template built in some million years ago. Oh, we have words to explain the behavior, but none of them function to alter it. It's what's called ratiocination. Or just rationalizing if you like.
So how does war help us? Here it comes. It helps (or, used to help) by stirring up the gene pool. Primarily in two ways I explained. First, it gets a large number of people up and moving, quickly, and I mean covering long distances in large numbers. Second, a lot of sex occurs, much of it the subtle influence of anxiety seeking comfort, a lot of it not so subtle as large groups of males begin to rape large groups of females.
Well, I had no sooner expressed that idea then I was under attack by a couple of women for advocating rape. There was scant time to review my statements to be sure I had not advocated rape. And they would not listen to any argument that I wasn't advocating rape. These former friends were now indignant and up and moving, away from me.
End Part One
Part 2 of 2
ReplyDeleteOf course in order to understand the problem with an un-stirred gene pool one needs to have a little more background in biology to realize what happens to a specie that starts to breed too closely with other family members. And this isn't the place to do that. You can research that easily now on the internet.
There was no opportunity to advance my closing theory that, apparently, as awful as we all seem to think war is, our approach to preventing it these past few thousands of years has to be admitted to be, at the least, ineffectual. This discussion could have, but didn't, lead into discussions about how, even though human populations are now huge compared to prehistorical times when people clustered much more closely together for mutual support and therefore were much more at risk for diseases and disorders brought about about inter-breeding, and even though the movement of large numbers of humans over great distances is now relatively easy compared to thousands of years ago, and that these two modern changes to human behavior should have but have not changed the behavior called war, suggests to me that as much as most humans state that we are "agin it", we are not doing anything useful to prevent it.
I was hoping someone would come up with a good idea, but, instead, there are, fortunately a few I hope, people who think I am an advocate of rape. It is to say the least, discouraging, and tends to put me off from saying anything that even contains the word. But here another opportunity has arisen, and though I am once again exposing my theories to obloquy, I suspect there is not a lot of risk. And, I am anticipating at least one smart ass comment to the effect, "So, wait, are you advocating rape?" But, seriously, short of genetic re-engineering by robots we build and design to perform that function, (a novel idea I've toyed with at least 20 years) I'm running a little short on ideas, and time.
Some background to explain the length and depth of this posting. After two months this year in Europe, travelling a broad arc from Amsterdam, south east through Luxembourg, Germany, Austria then north east through the Czech Republic, Slovakia,and Hungary, I began to notice a frequent repetition of the family name, Habsburg,(often spelled, incorrectly, Hapsburg in this country, such that even this blogs spellchecker is wrong). I became curious, and have been buying and reading books and crosschecking on the internet. Depending upon a lot of debatable factors this one family played a dominant role in European history; they were kings, queens, noble persons of every ilk, even a few emperors for roughly 600 years. That is a long haul my friends, and, yes, somewhere during that time, for altogether too long they did dabble, deliberately, in inter-family crossbreeding, and the results were not good. And, of course, there were lots of wars, but aren't there always.
So, where am I, as regards Mr. Tosh's alleged statement and response by the critics, official, professional, objective, and otherwise. He has my deepest sympathy, and I hope he can continue his career, but I fear he has stuck a body part in the obloquy fan and may not be able to yank it out in time. Andrew Dice Clay certainly couldn't, and, just so you know, I never thought much of his "Lout" humor, and was never a fan of Don "hey it's all in good fun" Rickles insult humor. But I would never support any attempt to restrain or prohibit their performance. Did you know that in Germany it is illegal for a person to deny the holocaust? As stupid as that is, whatever possessed an apparently rational people to think that such a regulation would actually be of any use? Or that it will not provoke the opposite behavior whose inculcation is being attempted. Will we never learn? Apparently not. Time for another Ice Age, the planet it seems is infested with carbon based life forms. Long live Veegya. I'm outta gas.
Well, it's an interesting idea -- not necessarily "defending" the practice of rape, but just putting it into a historical and biological context. As with every human behavior, evolution is the rule. Certainly rape is fairly common in the animal kingdom (being far more common than the "consensual sex in a committed, loving, monogamous relationship" that is expected of humankind)...which brings to mind a certain uncle's popular "out of the trees" idiom.
ReplyDeleteI certainly wouldn't construe your comments as a "defense" of rape, per se...more of an examination as to the evolution and survival of rape, in spite of its moral atrociousness. Other once-commonplace things that could be framed as giving a biological advantage (human sacrifice, polygamy, slavery) are now fairly uncommon in the developed world. Yet things like "violence targeting women" remains an issue.
Even though we're only recently non-arboreal, we've evolved...and humanity is still evolving year by year.
Of course, this is a broader discussion than a comedian allegedly making a rape joke that was in poor taste, but I get the point you're making.