Trump And The Comedy Of Sexual Assault

[sheshe2]

In the month since Trump’s election, I have heard friends and acquaintances wonder how so many Americans could have voted for a sexual aggressor. They have attributed his victory largely to the economic struggles of white Americans and the anti-establishment vote. But little attention has been given to how media coverage of his sexual aggression passed quickly from outrage to comedy, or how that comedy might have served Trump’s candidacy.

On October 7, the Access Hollywood recording revealed Trump bragging about “grabbing” women’s genitals (an act legally considered sexual assault in much of the United States). But what should have marked the beginning of a precipitous dive initiated a month of raucous mainstream comedy. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert featured jokes about Trump grabbing women by the “Billy Bush.” As these jokes were followed by laughter and applause, I found myself wondering whether we were laughing at Trump or laughing at sexual assault. In her essay, “If Rape Jokes Are Finally Funny It’s Because They’re Targeting Rape Culture,” Rebecca Solnit discusses the potential effectiveness of jokes about rape culture, made, for instance, by Amy Schumer (who has used comedy to point out men’s ignorance about rape and their general acceptance of it). However, on The Late Show, Colbert seemed less intent on shedding light on rape culture than on using sexual assault as fodder.

Humor, while a tonic for the most stressful election in living memory, can have a powerful normalizing effect. Numerous studies have shown that discrimination and sexism are more easily accepted when conveyed through humor. But by laughing at a sexual aggressor who got away with it, we might actually be becoming accustomed to him as a fixture of our political landscape rather than reaffirming our outrage. Colbert even staged the appearance of Lincoln’s ghost, who sided with Trump and gave an “unabridged” version of the Gettysburg Address which included grabbing women by the “petticoats.” Had something similar been done at a frat party, with a person dressed as Lincoln and speaking like Trump at his worst, I could easily imagine the audience cheering. Just as the French filmmaker François Truffaut argued that “there’s no such thing as an anti-war film,” I tend to disagree with Solnit and Schumer, and would argue that there’s no such thing as anti-rape humor, at least not for the men in the audience. The humor makes the act seem to be more one of comedic idiocy than of willful brutality. It almost always distances us (men) from the horror and trauma of the violence.



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More Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-and-the-comedy-of-sexual-assault_us_5845de51e4b0e0184289eff6?section=us_women

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This hurts.

[Angry Dragon]

1. kick

[yallerdawg]

2. There is nothing humorous about this racist, piece-of-shit pig...

these idiots gave the key to the car back to.

Ditch dead ahead.

I hope we survive.

Oh - by the way - sexism and misogyny are just aspects of income inequality.

[sheshe2]

3. hey honey, how are you.

this is bad.

[yallerdawg]

4. Hey, she.

I'm doing good, just still in shock.

Not feeling very much like making nice with Corrupt Trump enablers.

I thought Bush 2.0 was unprepared and a dullard - but this...

Stay true to who you are! Some of us appreciate that!