reading comprehension

[piranha]

so the onion took on chris brown once again in an article titled Heartbroken Chris Brown Always Thought Rihanna Was Woman He’d Beat To Death. cue scores of tweeting feminists who are upset at the onion because "violence against women isn't funny".

like, duh.

hanna rosin in slate at least doesn't misunderstand the onion, but to me her piece still misses the mark. what's most interesting me here is that people are arguing about whether or not the fictional violence was "funny". why? that's not the only way to assess the article.

i never once thought the article was making fun of violence, or was using violence against women to score a cheap laugh. i didn't think that the fictional violence was funny either (though i think that sometimes it can be; i usually appreciate it when it is turned against a bully). instead the article is completely unsubtle satire, directed at chris brown and his enablers, media and fans alike. i can actually appreciate the lack of subtlety, because really, chris brown doesn't deserve any. any laughs this got from me were in appreciation of the satire itself, of it pointing a huge, shaming arrow at entertainment news and gossip, at chris brown's fans who think he's hot, at a culture which raises women to blame themselves and stay with men who abuse them, at the fact that this man is not in jail where he should be, but instead continues to be treated as if he were a person we should empathize with while he jerks out some tears over his most recent breakup with the woman he abused.

i didn't laugh out loud because my funnybone was tickled (it wasn't), i guffawed at the perfect skewering, and i sort of snorted at the irony that some of the best analysis and insight we get is from comedic outlets like the onion and jon stewart, who're skewering mainstream media mercilessly, and pointing out exactly how wrong our culture is to venerate this shite. that's neither misogynistic nor racist.

i'm not sure what is up with the offended feminists. i don't subscribe to the dumb idea that feminists don't have a sense of humour, and it annoys me when people talk down to those who don't laugh at the same things; one size does definitely not fit all when it comes to humour. there are many allegedly funny things that don't amuse me, and i don't think my sense of humour is impaired; a lot of humour out there is stupid, thoughtless, or cruel. i also think satire overlaps with humour instead of being a pure subset, and it's highly context-driven, so it's all too easy to miss. but i thought this was not subtle at all, and yet a number of feminists really do seem to completely miss the point in this case. or is it something i am not seeing?

Comments

[wild_irises]

I think a significant subset of feminists (to some extent including me) have gotten so emotionally protective of Rihanna (who gets criticized whatever she does, and gets hyper-analyzed) that there's a kind of knee-jerk "leave Rihanna out of your criticisms of Chris Brown." Of course, this doesn't work, especially with satire, but I do get the warm place it's coming from.

[piranha]

ah, that would make some sense. i don't generally follow celebrity news (i am on principle opposed to exploiting famous people that way), so i didn't know there was an undertone of protectiveness. it wouldn't surprise me if rihanna had gotten it from all sides because she stayed with the jerk. *sigh*.

now i am wishing the onion had pointed an even bigger finger at the gossip industry.

[desh]

I agree with you. I was also apparently the only one who thought that their tweet during the Oscars was actually a clever satire about how the entertainment media and consumers of that media portray women who are public figures. Because no one would actually use that language to talk about any 9-year-old...but it's no more appropriate to use it to talk about anyone of any age. But people do.

[piranha]

ah, i wasn't aware of that one.

*gah*. yes, that was ... well, maybe not clever so much as biting, since it relied on pure shock value. i agree it was meant satirically, instead of as an insult. but i don't appreciate it, unlike the chris brown thing, and am glad they apologized probably because it did involve a 9-year-old, who was unlikely to be able to appreciate the satire, and i bet it ruined her day. that's seriously not worth it.

i guess this points out that rihanna probably also didn't appreciate the latest chris brown bit. hm. maybe this is why there is so much upset, because it drags her into it, and she has done nothing to deserve getting dragged into it. hm. difficult dilemma for the onion, i think. not sure what i would do.

[matthewdaly]

Yeah, the Quvenzhane Wallis event was when The Onion entered the Dennis Miller zone for me, meaning that I currently feel uncomfortable acknowledging that the site was ever excellent because that feels like an endorsement of what it has become.

I'm all for freedom of expression, and I confess that I just don't have a sufficient understanding of the epistemology of satire. I do know that satire is not intrinsically humorous, that is is not intrinsically entertaining, and that it does not intrinsically bring about positive social awareness or change. *Effective* satire does one or more of these things depending on the purpose of the writer, but writing a crass article and defending it as satirical is like building a wobbly table and saying that it's okay because you used a router when building it. Uh, maybe, but it's still your fault for doing your job badly no matter what tools you used.

[piranha]

dennis miller is consistently an ass. or, i presume he still is. i've long since stopped listening to him. but i'm not giving up on a generally good publication because of one misstep. first off, it was a tweet, not a regularly scheduled article. the same quality control just isn't there for tweets, or at least it clearly wasn't then, and i won't blame a whole organization for the mistake of a single person likely not in a position of authority. secondly, they apologized, and it wasn't a fauxpology a la "we're sorry you people without a sense of humour were offended". they don't usually apologize (which i am ok with), but they did then, and they sounded like they really meant it. that doesn't make it all better (i still shudder for the poor kid and what this must have done), but it mitigates it. if you write stuff that consistently has to skate on the edge to be effective, it is not surprising that you make mistakes occasionally. from what i can tell, the onion makes outright mistakes like that rarely.

thirdly, i have now read some more background on this, and it was apparently not an out of the blue shocker, but happened in direct response to seth macfarlane's little rhyming game. in actuality, seth macfarlane called anne hathaway a cunt, except he didn't say the word; he implied it by rhyming it with helen hunt.

here's what he said:

"Amy Adams, Jacki Weaver, Sally Field and Helen Hunt,
Hathaway took away your Oscars, don't you think that girl's a ... dorable?"

and people laughed. ha ha ha. seth macfarlane is so funny. calling a grown woman and accomplished actor a girl and a cunt because it rhymes is just hilarious humour.

and then the onion riffed directly off his spiel and called an actual girl a cunt.

context. i still think the onion staff member who did it was wrong, but i see much more clearly now how that tweet came about, and what it was meant to do. and yet the onion gets excoriated and every article i've seen doing so completely leaves out the context.

and now i wish i hadn't searched for seth macfarlane's sexist jokes at the oscars. because the comments to the articles that took offense are seriously depressing. every single sexism bingo card point gets hit over and over.

[(Anonymous)]

First, the Onion was not livestreaming the Oscars by accident. It was an officially sponsored product, and not the first. If they don't know how to field editorial control over something they are publishing, then they should save their jokes for a fake Hollywood insider column in their next issue. Come on, piranha, I've never known you to defend shock jock asshattery just because live radio is unforgiving. The Onion deserves every bit of the same accountability for dereliction of judgment over who is speaking on their Twitter feed.

Third, If Seth McFarlane tells a joke tells a joke comparing Anne Hathaway to a part of the female reproductive system, then the socially just act of humor is a two-line poem pointing out that Seth McFarlane is a dick. That's using the power of humor to highlight and criticize the abusive power of the privileged. Deciding that you're going to use your soapbox instead to verbally savage an even more innocent woman is bullying. It's sucking up to the patriarchy. It should not be excused lightly. Entertaining such a thing for long enough to type it out is inexcusable.

Going back to second, you're satisfied with the apology they made a few months ago, and maybe even a little proud of them for making this one of the few issues where they would acknowledge their inappropriate excess. And yet, here we are ten weeks later visualizing Rhianna being abused by her next lover in the same name of edgy humor. I'm not even a feminist, but what the fuck?

I'll tell you what I think you're missing (with the aforementioned caveat that I'm not speaking for feminists). Women who have been abused by their boyfriends are going to feel the echos of that atrocity for nigh all of their life. I can't imagine how much courage it would have to take to trust the next man who comes into your life, knowing that the trust you had in that previous boyfriend was just as seemingly deserved at the start. We, you and I, COULD strive to build a culture that enables that healing and promotes that love. Or we, you and I, could be satisfied with the current culture that thinks that it's wry humor to contemplate and instantiate the evil thoughts of men who by all rights should be marginalized instead of commemorated. You seem to get that on the surface, but what you miss is that Chris Brown did not ever say, "It’s hard knowing that there’s some other guy out there who gets to beat her senseless. In fact, for all I know, there might be someone out there assaulting her right now. And let me tell you, that guy is the luckiest guy in the world." The person who wrote those words is a writer for The Onion, and the person who published those words is an editor for The Onion. And therefore, the painful flashback that comes to Rhianna and every woman who has been victimized by a shit boyfriend was perpetrated by The Onion. I don't think that any amount of the pleasure of "perfect skewering" satire is going to measure against the worldsuck that comes from the fact that The Onion isn't sorry at all that they don't mind harassing women. No doubt they're grateful for the fans who are happy to play the Can't You Take A Joke card on their behalf.

(posted anonymously because I'm a little too angry to process any replies and don't want to be emailed if they come. My apologies for that -- feel free to delete this if you feel it appropriate.)

[piranha]

i see no reason to delete it, though i prefer that people not yell at me while refusing a response. now i am not sure whether i'm gonna write the following into thin air, but since i think this deserves a response, i'll write it, and if you never see it, oh well. it's useful for me to think through anyway.

1) i didn't defend the onion for the cunt tweet. see up there where i said "i still think the onion staff member who did it was wrong"? i just don't put them on the "unforgivable" level, because i see mitigating circumstances. i am not even a little "proud" of them for apologizing. but again, i consider it a mitigating factor -- doing something wrong and then wholeheartedly apologizing is better than ignoring the issue or fauxpologizing. acknowledging that does not an excuse or defense make. i also think that taking the tweet out of context paints the onion in a worse light than it deserves (though that's a minor point, but finding out it was a direct reaction to macfarlane has affected how i feel about it). still wrong though!

2) if you don't make a distinction between a fully vetted article and a tweet, then you don't. i do. i say a lot of things when i am just talking that i would reword if i were to write them, and would seriously work over if i were to publish them in something more "official" than a journal. i expect that other humans have similar shortcomings, even if they are employed by a commercial entity that possibly should have tighter editorial control. i dunno. i don't actually like the idea of tight control on twitter feeds, but that's for another rant.

3) sure, it'd be nice if everyone could think up brilliant satire of macfarlane on a moment's notice, but if the tweet hadn't been about a young girl, i would have thought it bitingly clever, much harder hitting than writing a two-liner about macfarlane being a dick. the word "cunt" delivers such a visceral punch, that anything responding with "dick" isn't socially just. i think the tweeter had great instincts in that regard -- which then totally failed zir when it came time to sit on it this time.

4) the onion was wrong in regard to the cunt tweet. i see the chris brown bit as different. i don't actually view either as humour at all. they're not funny. i am not laughing. they point harshly at cultural problems. that can be triggering. if i understand you correctly, you believe that because it can be triggering, it shouldn't be done.

that's an interesting point, and is possibly part of what i didn't get in those feminist responses -- maybe that is what they are thinking. thanks for making me think about that.

some aspects of this are difficult for me to analyze. i have been abused, seriously so (causing irreparable physical damage, nevermind the long-term emotional trauma, and resulting in suicidal thoughts). i am triggered by certain things. however, my pain is mostly private, though i talk about aspects of it occasionally, including here. i have never been the subject of intense public scrutiny like rihanna. i find that scrutiny distasteful -- as i said to wild irises, i don't usually follow celebrity gossip because i am opposed to it on principle. i can't really imagine what it must feel to be in rihanna's shoes. and i've never said anything publicly (or privately, actually) about what rihanna should or shouldn't do -- in my eyes she is the victim, and doesn't deserve to be further abused by busybody gossip mongers. from that standpoint i can see why any new material that refers to her, even if it doesn't focus on her, might be seen as a bad thing by feminists (or really, anyone who cares about victim's rights).

but. how does one get at chris brown without mentioning rihanna? how does one get at my mother and my uncle without mentioning me? the stories can't be told without the victims being involved, even distantly. one could leave the victims' names out of it, but when you do that, it can make the victims invisible, and that's also not a good thing (besides which it's not like victims won't recognize themselves and get triggered). similar stories can't be told without being triggering to somebody somewhere. i don't think avoiding all triggers is a good solution. if anything, i've worked on disabling my triggers, and exposure is useful for that (controlled exposure). if the onion satirizes abusive mothers and pedophile uncles who are excused by society under a variety of guises, i'm ok with that, even if parts might trigger me. which is not saying that everyone else should be ok with that, just that i don't think it's an either or proposition, bettering the world or skewering the failures. i better my own personal world because that's what i can control. i leave it to the onion and others to emit scathing commentary towards the world at large. i appreciate it, even if it is triggering. it's ever so much better than the actual abuse, to have it acknowledged and attacked. i believe that it is misguided to point at the onion as a perpetrator. i point at those supporting abuse instead.

since we don't have an ideal world yet where are the lines? serious stories are ok, even if triggering? only potentially triggering humour should be avoided? i can't even imagine humans developing to the point where this could happen, we are so, so far from it. and -- i like humour. i use humour a lot to desensitize myself. i agree it shouldn't be forced on anyone, but reading the onion is a voluntary act. well, for me it is. i have no solution for rihanna, because it's not just the onion, it's every damn place that picks up the story. any story dealing with chris brown, really, since this latest bit was caused by him being all tearful about their latest breakup in an interview. for all we know she gets triggered when he weeps -- i have some weird-ass triggers. where do you start and stop the moratorium for potentially triggering articles?

i don't like gratuitous jokes at other people's expense. i mean tosh's rape "joke" in response to a feminist heckler was disgusting; there is nothing mitigating or excusing it. is the onion's article the same thing? i don't think so. is it gratuitous? i find it profoundly offensive that chris brown still gets interviews asking him anything about his relationship with rihanna. as long as those happen, i don't think i am opposed to satirizing him and his fans and the entertainment industry that enables him. i dunno. if we had no celebrity news (beyond who is doing what project) i wouldn't miss a thing. i'd be happy if the onion only skewered politicians.

hoping everyone will stop writing about a celebrity's relationship isn't going to happen. i hope rihanna has a good counselor.

[treesahquiche]

I think even blatant satire gets misinterpreted, and even people who do have a clue can react in ways that indicate otherwise because of their own personal connection to what's being commented on. I mean, I find it hard to believe that anyone thought Johnathan Swift was being serious when he wrote "A Modest Proposal," but they were offended and unamused anyway.

[piranha]

good point. yeah, there is definitely something to reacting badly because one has a personal connection. i am less likely to do so to satire because to me that has a meta purpose i generally support. but i do have it with regular humour not infrequently, because i don't think "getting a laugh" is a sufficiently strong purpose to justify hurting people.

[outlier_lynn]

People perceive the world through their beliefs and opinions about the world. That means the "mark" you want will be entirely missed by some portion of the exposed to the satire. And many others will not see the satire at all.

How many people see an onion piece re-posted and assume it is a real story? It is not an insignificant number!

How many people have their identities so invested in some position or another and cannot stand it when any form of satire is aimed at their position? The Gun Nuts, Wing-nut Christians, PETA, etc. Even when the satire is meant to invoke supportive feelings, the "this is my life" crowd will shake their fists.

We are an interesting species. :)

[piranha]

i am reminded that i bit the paramour's new-to-soc-singles ass for a piece of parody where i had only seen a quote leaving off the last sentence (which established the true context). so context definitely matters, and is not always apparent. in fact those are probably the best pieces of satire/parody, the ones that seem entirely plausible out of context.

in the case of the onion, knowing what the onion is, i'd think people are clued in sufficiently to the context though. they could sill think it inappropriate, of course (i think the "cunt" thing desh linked to was definiitely inappropriate).