In case the title of
today's post confuses you, I am including this handy reference article:
I have not watched Saturday Night Live regularly since October 1993. It just kept
becoming less funny after that, and I gave up on it. The only reason I watched "sheet
caking" is because it became a thing, and I saw a lot of people whom I
respect criticizing it, basically for these reasons:
Many people have defended
the sketch. They have been overwhelmingly white, which reinforces that this is
a white privilege problem. "Privilege" is having the ability to not
feel the problem, which gets exacerbated when the first response is
defensiveness instead of thinking again.
I want to be very clear
here that no one was horrible to me for posting the article. Two or three
people commented, I replied, and it was all cordial. I would still like to
spend a little more time on the topic, especially because of some things that
have happened since.
The first thing I thought
while watching was that it was sad. Humor tends to come from dark places. The
brilliance of comedy is making something better out of that darkness, but when
it isn't done well you can really have a mess, and that's what I saw.
I also get it. This
ugliness in the world isn't new -- there's certainly nothing new about racism
-- but seeing it so empowered, and knowing how it has been empowered, and that
none of the revelations that come out seem to have any impact so that the
hideousness of that line of succession doesn't matter... Got it! I get despair,
and hopeless rage, and stress eating.
It's also been done
before. I saw a video not long after the election of a crying, depressed white
girl in a Hillary sweatshirt, and a Black woman came and put her through a boot
camp style training where she would be ready to shut down her Trump-voting
relatives at Thanksgiving.
I can't find it now. I
don't think I even shared it back then because I thought there were some flaws
in the execution there too. However, at least it ended with some sense of empowerment.
In that way this video was infinitely superior.
I believe Tina Fey means
well. She gets some things right, and she gets race wrong often enough that she
might not be the best person to look to for answers, but hey, she's white. And
that's the thing: she is white, has assets through her celebrity, and may not
be super-rich but she does okay. The pain of feeling bad about this is real,
but she is not under immediate threat. Yes, racist authoritarianism -- whether Socialist or
Fascist -- keeps casting a wider net, so everyone ends up endangered
eventually, but she is not in danger now. That is an excellent reason for her
to not tell everyone else to shut out the world.
Self-care is a real
thing, and sometimes you do have to shut down. You may need to take time to
cry, or catch up on sleep, or just to find a way to feel good. If that involves
comfort food, so be it. But in the same way that it is wrong to push people to
go out and fight when they need recovery time, it is also wrong to try and use
self-care as a way of shutting other people down.
That happens surprisingly
often. "I need help with-- " "Self-care!" "No, I just
need someone to--" "Self-care!" I believe it's a form of denial
for when someone is not able to offer what is actually needed, so having
similar base motivations with "Not all" (and probably mansplaining
too). Sometimes it is okay that you can't contribute; just don't make so much
extraneous noise that you are drowning out the people who can.
This segment felt like
taking the shame of not knowing what to do and trying to justify it by making
that the answer. Shades of W, the answer becomes consumption, yes by supporting
minority-owned businesses, but still, literally conspicuous consumption and
absolutely not by putting your body and
voice out there.
Except for this:
The counter-protests
remind the white supremacists that while the president and his cabinet and way
too much of the legislative and judicial branches have their backs, that there
are still more people who know they are despicable. It horrifies you to have a
bunch of mediocre young white men chanting Nazi slogans while dressed in the
president's golfing clothes and carrying tiki torches; it should. You still
need to recognize it as an attempt to assert power that will feel successful
without resistance.
The post-election United
States are exhausting. There is always something horrible and new, but a lot of
what fails happens because of the phone calls and protests. Those actions have
mattered for health care and the travel ban and they matter with racism.
It sucks. It would be
worse without action, and it is worse than it was. There are many who are suffering
now because they are vulnerable in ways that you are not yet. It's nice that
you care, especially if you do not yet need to. I am sorry for how much that
hurts. I would hug and feed and listen to everyone if I could, believe me.
But don't get in the way
of those who are willing and able to do the work. Some of them are probably
hanging on by a thread too; do not throw your crap at them. Even comedy can be
used as a force for good.
That's not what happened
here.
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