by Andrew Doyle
There is very little point in attempting to explain a
joke. A sense of humour isn’t a universal quality, and in any case is
wholly dependent on subjective taste. Those who find themselves unamused
are unlikely to change their minds once a routine has been
systematically deconstructed. It’s all about the timing.
A
recording of Louis CK’s work-in-progress show
at the Governor’s Comedy Club in New York was leaked last week, and has
been subject to the sort of moralistic scrutiny that now passes for
comedy
criticism. ‘Louis CK condemned after leaked audio shows him ranting
about gender pronouns and school shooting survivors’, ran a headline in
the
Independent. ‘Louis CK’s rant shows abusers are still casting themselves as victims’, railed the
Guardian, characterising him as a man ‘bubbling with wrath’. According to the
Daily Mail, he ‘attacked Asians’ with his ‘racist stand-up set’.
Then there was the predictable pearl-clutching on social media. ‘You
know what’s the worst, most boring kind of comedy?’, wrote comedian
Andy Richter.
‘The kind where older white men are angry that older white men can’t do
or say whatever the fuck they want any more.’ According to filmmaker
and amateur psychologist
Judd Apatow, ‘Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward.’ Nuance was jettisoned wholesale by actor
Ellen Barkin, who stated that ‘Louis CK is a sociopath and serial predator’ who she hopes ‘gets raped’ and ‘shot at’.
It goes without saying that CK’s critics are entitled to their
opinions, however unhinged. He is likewise within his right to ignore or
ridicule the backlash. As
Ricky Gervais
has pointed out, the reactionary response of ‘You can’t joke about
anything anymore’ is simply untrue. The controversy over CK’s set is
evidence enough that some comedians still refuse to self-censor,
although there is little doubt that a less established performer would
risk career suicide for a similar routine.
Those who have defended CK have, inevitably, been accused of being
‘outraged by the outrage’, but this strikes me as an unconvincing
assessment of the situation, one possibly adopted in an effort to
undermine an alternative point of view through the imputation of
hypocrisy. If anything, CK’s defenders seem genuinely weary at having to
reiterate what we all know already: he is a comedian who was telling
jokes. Such an excruciatingly obvious statement wouldn’t be necessary at
all were it not for the fact that the overwhelming majority of our news
outlets appear to have ignored this reality, wilfully or otherwise.
To my mind, this is the most significant aspect of this story. I may
not be outraged by the outrage, but I am fascinated by the way in which
the mainstream press seems determined to promote a narrative that very
few will find convincing. Even those of us who didn’t consider the
routine funny are likely to understand why others might, because only
the irredeemably solipsistic believe that their own sense of humour is
the benchmark against which all comedy should be measured.
The other curious aspect of the media coverage is the insistence that
comedy should be taken at face value. Few who listen to the recording
will believe that CK is tickled by the notion of mass murder, yet this
is how his set has been perceived by the vocal minority. ‘I would call
it a comedy set’, writes Fiona Sturges in the Guardian, ‘but
that would give it a credence it doesn’t deserve’. Note the assumption
of bad faith in this interpretation. Sturges presumes the worst of CK,
and so feels confident in denying that a comedy routine performed in a
comedy club to gales of laughter can even be classified as comedy at
all.
It would seem that some no longer trust CK as a performer, following a number of women
accusing him of sexual misconduct in 2017. Although the accounts suggest that the acts were consensual, CK’s status as a villain of the
#MeToo
era now means that his material is being reassessed through a process
of cod-psychological guesswork. ‘It is possible that this is a
calculated career move’, writes Sturges, ‘to restyle himself as a
right-wing hatemonger expostulating about snowflakes, virtue-signallers
and ethnic minorities… A more likely story is that this is just a howl
of self-pity.’ But anyone with the slightest familiarity with CK will
know that this new set is entirely consistent with his previous work.
Writer
Jesse Singal
made the point by quoting one of CK’s lines from 2008: ‘I would happily
blow 20 guys in an alley with bleeding dicks so I could get AIDS and
then fuck a deer and kill it with my AIDS.’
CK has always tested the limits of his audience’s tolerance, and from
listening to the leaked audio it is clear that even when his material
is still in the developmental stage, his timing, turn of phrase and
impeccable stagecraft provoke many of us to laughter in spite of our
sensibilities. This is also why when his jokes are reported in the
press, divorced from the context of performance, they can seem
needlessly cruel. His style hasn’t changed, it’s just that his critics
have decided to presuppose a malicious underlying motive. If Louis CK
does have a motive, it is surely the standard one that drives all
comedy. Simply put, he wants to make us laugh.
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