It’s much easier, though painful, to fault myself for opening the door to my bedroom than to try to understand how someone can steal what they find inside after comfortably resting on my pillows. I lent comfort to them. I twisted my body so they could sleep in this bed too. It’s not my house; it’s just a preparation center for who needs it next, for however long, then their departure. Jet fuel from their eventual take-off lingers and morphs into smoky ghosts. I’m choking and coughing on the embers. Cinderella, but boys don’t like me and they are sadly mistaken when they briefly decide they love me, so the balls aren’t coming. 😛
I am so sorry if you think this is a show, and a poorly performed one at that. I thought I should hide and only tell the — my truth in the appropriate settings. But if I am alive and silent, why not be dead? What is real these days, anyway? Reminds me of when people say, “astrology is fake!” As if they’ll be giving me a wake-up call. Don’t they know everything in this world is based on belief? Everything is a social construct? That if one person wants to believe the world is flat, their world will be flat? If they want to believe God is a giant man with a beard of cloud who gives America the divine right to murder, that is who they will send their thoughts and prayers to? If they can’t help but believe their lover is their savior and their toxic relationship is the only home possible, they will accept radioactive kisses for the entirety of their lives? Belief is stronger than knowledge – that’s what I’m guessing these days. I do not know what’s real. My admission of not knowing anything for certain seems to enable others to trample on my thoughts with assertions of knowledge. I’m trying to see more and more how they are a little more stuck than me. I’m trying to spend more of the time with people who see my dot dot dot question mark’s as invitations to engage in the vulnerability of endless possibility. I know we all have to adopt beliefs as knowledge to keep moving. But I like it when someone slows down to wonder with me.
Sometimes, a break-up is harder to get over after the rush of the end. The crying, the questions, the drama of it all. Once the show is over, and you’re meant to move on. And you find yourself sitting in silence with the memories of it, but more so, the persistent quiet of the present. Nothing left to unpack, nothing left to examine, to analyze, to fume over. It is what it was, it is what it is. It’s not been enough time for the relationship to grow into something new, different. So it’s just an empty garden, traces in the dirt of last year’s harvest.
In modern comedy, stand-up comedy in particular, many argue there’s an implicit understanding that the content is not serious, it’s just a joke. This argument is almost always used in defense of jokes which are met with some degree of outrage. More recently, the argument continues on to assert comedy should be exempt from the repressive, too-sensitive, politically correct who try placing rigid limitations on a world that should be boundary-pushing, thought-provoking, and risky.
You know, like when a white guy makes a caricature of all servers in Chinatown and laments their English language skills. If this doesn’t ring any bells, feel free to give “Shane Gillis” and maybe “fired from SNL” a quick Google search.
This, however, is taken out of context. Ellen is referring to everyday conversation. Years later, she held a conversation with Kevin Hart on her talk show, excused the homophobic jokes he made in his past, and entreated him to make a formal apology as requested by the higher-ups at the Academy Awards so he could reclaim his hosting job. Kevin’s argument was not the one just described, but that he had apologized in the past so he shouldn’t have to again, but the question still applies – What makes his joke about smashing a doll house on his son’s head and asserting the behavior to be gay any less insulting than the person who adds, “Just kidding”?
It’s as though contemporary comedy audiences are supposed to “suspend our belief” now. In the past, mainstream forms of entertainment asked us to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy something like a fantasy novel or violent action movie. But our popular culture has taken strides to more “real” entertainment, therefore asking us to accept something “real” is exempt for real-world consequences. Reality TV has people doing horrible things to each other, but “it’s staged.” Pornography depicts more aggressive and less-consensual acts, but because it’s being recorded, it is somehow not actually happening, not “real.” Stand-up comedy is one person speaking amplified words, listened to by a silent crowd. Furthermore, with mainstream platforms like SNL or a Netflix special, there is an inherent difference between 5 minutes at a comedy club and recorded, widely-distributed sets. The latter has great power and it is where the argument of “but it’s comedy!” is being applied.
Apologies made by comedians in similar scenarios often mimic the function of the, “Just kidding!” There is almost always a tone of insincerity, of smugness. They reek of a grade-school student whose teacher forces them to apologize to the kid they were bullying, only so the teacher can say they did their job all while knowing the bullying will continue when they turn their back. It’s checking off a box, one that the offending comedian doesn’t think should exist in the first place. Again, Shane Gillis provides a perfect example. His Notes App screenshot (the current popular method of addressing a public scandal) read, “I apologize to anyone who was actually offended.” The subtext being, I’m not really sorry because I don’t really have anything to apologize for.
Just because someone feels like an outsider does not mean they are actually an outsider. Just because someone feels they are being repressed does not mean they are actually being repressed. Children have long asserted, “This is so unfair!” to protest punishment, but that doesn’t mean it is. Many people enter the world of stand-up comedy as a way to grapple with their perception of themselves as societal misfits or outcasts. But having a realistic understanding of one’s power is essential, otherwise punching-down jokes run rampant. And beyond these types of jokes — someone demeaning a group generally less-powerful than them — being offensive and reinforcing dangerous power dynamics, they’re just lazy.
In a recent LA Times interview, Sarah Silverman defended Dave Chappelle’s recent comedy by saying, “That’s comedy: You overstep. You say things you might not even believe by the time it comes out. You’re always changing. It’s art. It’s not politics.”
In the same interview, she later addresses opponents of her comedy who make memes of her on Twitter taking jokes out of context by warning, “People are going to get people killed.”
Besides the assumption that we should suspend our belief, what makes a racist meme any different from a racist joke? What is the difference between reinforcing any kind of xenophobic stereotype with a “Just kidding” and without one? Those who have often been the butt of jokes by more-privileged comedians are now being listened to, finding platforms which allow them to be eye-to-eye with the person on stage. Both parties now get a platform, and that’s scary to those who have always been accustomed to looking down on others. But it’s a necessary change. We should both be laughing.
The end of the world. What does that even really mean? The slow death of the literal world, planet Earth, by climate change? Its growing inability to support the survival of its species anymore?
Or does it mean our world? How we understand the function of our governments, our economic systems, our social contracts of human decency and general public safety?
Whether you want to pick one or none of these as your definition, they’re all struggling for to stay afloat right now. (Because of the rising water… pun was not intended but now that it’s here, I’m keeping it!)
I find myself thinking, “We are living in the end of the world,” a lot more than I would like to. Reading a news article (or the headline of a news article on my Twitter feed), or being hit with a gust of sideways rain in August, or talking with friends about having kids someday, or reading another Twitter headline (the article would be too depressing to read in full, I’m sure), and then the next thing I’m thinking is, “the world is ending.” The thing is, people around me don’t even think I’m being that paranoid or pessimistic, like they did when I expressed worry about the Mayan Calendar coming to an end in the last few months of 2012. Now, a lot of the people I talk about the impending ending agree. I know this because I have the tendency to talk about this existential judgement, especially after I’ve been drinking. No, I’m not that fun at parties. But yes, I have found a whole lot of people who don’t think I’m crazy. Well, they don’t think I’m crazy because of this specific statement. I can’t speak for their greater opinion of me.
We hear about technological advancements, and it seems like they will ultimately supporting the ending process. Have you ever seen a good robot, besides the one from the Jetsons? Haven’t you seen Black Mirror? There are only 3 episodes with arguably happy endings. Truth be told, my understanding of a lot of this tech that concerns me so much is even less-developed than the fake inventions on Black Mirror. That’s often how it’s reported in mainstream news. The Face App, that shows you what you might look like with wrinkles, is apparently owned by a Russian company. But what does that really entail? And when it’s explained, can I trust the explainer? Are they being too pessimistic or too optimistic? Is it even possible to just be realistic anymore? And now, I’m panicked and confused. So, I tend to cut off my research right there.
And seriously, the climate change thing! Or more so, all the countless climate change things. The Amazon forest is on fire, glaciers in Greenland are melting, and after just Google-ing “what’s up with the bees” I can assure you, the world’s bees are still dying. The United Nations estimate by 2050, there won’t be enough food to feed the global population. I can estimate our governing powers won’t be able to partition dwindling resources fairly, or provide sufficient energetic replacements. Haven’t you seen Years and Years? (Maybe not, because a lot more people have Netflix access than HBO access. I guess a lot of people do have BBC access, but I’m writing this in America so I wasn’t really thinking about them.)
In some ways, my fear of the end of the world reveals just how deeply American and “first-world” I am. There’s been political unrest and domestic terrorism and drastic wealth inequality around the globe long before it caught my attention because it showed up in my country.
But it’s dangerously easy to catch my attention. Through the course of writing this essay, I’ve checked my Twitter and Instagram and iMessages and even my dreaded, anxiety-provoking e-mail more times than I can count because I can’t focus for long enough to count! Whatever you may call it – the internet, social media, smartphones, etc. – you’re familiar with the Fatal Distraction cycle. It’s like acetaminophen for our minds. Any slight pain or discomfort can be numbed (I first typed hat as dumbed, which feels like a Freudian Typo) with something else. It doesn’t even have to be “new and shiny” information. It can be, and often is, absolutely terrible. A politician’s sexual abuse of women who work for him is revealed. We’re running out of clean water in the next 20 years. It’s been 5 years since tiny purses became an ironic trend, let’s commemorate it. A young black man is shot by a police officer who is claiming self-defense. Netflix is canceling — or worse, rebooting — your favorite TV show or movie. The President is racist, or is it sexist, or is it homophobic, or is it classist, or – oh, he’s now hosting a rally and showing off how he can be them all in just one speech! Oh, now Taylor Swift was on the Ellen Show, and I don’t know what it is but, just can’t stand her. Oh, it turns out Taylor Swift got a lot of death threats. I feel kinda bad about it. I still just can’t stand her though.
Why did I pick up my phone? Wait, what was the issue again? There are so many problems requiring our effort to even make a dent in a solution, and there are even more things begging for our attention instead. We’re asked to pick one path to follow down striving to make a teeny-tiny impact in a seemingly overwhelming, massive threat to the world. Or, we can have endless, half-baked opinions and illusions of some kind of superior taste-level. It’s such an easy choice, it barely even feels like one.
Until it involves us directly.
I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I was thinking about the world ending before it was popular. Before the 2016 election, which is when I would say visions of a dystopian future became mainstream. Not because I’m Jewish, but because I’m anxious. Because I’m a generally scared and hesitant person. Because, despite the mistakes and slip-ups I make all too often, I am constantly assessing risks too.
A couple weeks before the 2016 election, I experienced what I hope will be the most traumatic night of my life. And despite making you immediately want the gossip on it, I won’t go into it because what happened isn’t the point. The point is how it made me feel, especially after a few weeks passed and Trump did win the presidency. I felt like the world was ending.
And then more weeks went by. And then months. And I realized something — the world was ending. And staying in bed, letting everything pass me by was becoming the biggest risk of all.
We focus so much on the second half of “We are living in the end of the world” that we lose sign of the most important parts of it – the noun and the verb.
We are living.
So even though, yes, you probably don’t need any more arguing on my part about the world ending, I do want to encourage this.
We should live!
Or everything ends a whole lot sooner, and everything feels a whole lot worse. Doing nothing only makes it harder when you suddenly realize how much you could have moved while idle. Saying nothing only makes it harder when you can’t help but speak up again and realize how much you could have said when you were muting your own voice.
It might be the end times, and it might suck, and it might eventually kill us! … But there’s always an and. Let life be a ramble. And add on to the story when it seems like it’s hopelessly over. And feel what it feels like to be awake, and present, and here, in the end of the world, and alive. And keep living.
the and times 