Monday, August 28, 2017

The problem with sheet caking


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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