PsychoCinematic: Antiracist Accountability and TYSG Mash-Up: Comedy Edition

Hi team!

Today I bring to you a post that in support of this year's resolutions around wellness, protecting space for enjoyment, and writing regular antiracist posts, PLUS another entry in our Terrible Year Survival Guide series. I'm so efficient!

I've written before about how much I value humor as a coping strategy during dark times. In an effort to consistently translate my love of humor into my everyday life, standup comedy has become a routine self-care strategy for me ever since I discovered several years ago that a streaming service I subscribe to has comedy stations. I particularly listen to the stations that purportedly played the "comics of today," wanting to hear comics whose work I hadn't been exposed to before.

I quickly noticed as I first started listening to these stations, to my deep irritation and confusion, that the vast majority of the comedians the station was playing were straight white men. In fact, after months of listening to this particular station, I only heard the work of 2-3 Black men, and literally ZERO women. ZERO.

I'm not here to argue that straight white men aren't funny. I acknowledge and affirm that funny straight white dudes do exist. However, as I listened to very nearly nothing but straight white dudes, it definitely bummed me out how repetitively the content overall trended toward the toxic.

In comedy, there's this concept of punching up or punching down. If you're punching up, you're using comedy to lampoon or take down people, institutions, or forces more powerful than you--you're David, and your target is Goliath. If you're punching down, you're doing the opposite: you're bullying people, poking fun at those with less power than you. In antiracist terms, you're using your privilege to uphold systems of oppression that harm others while shoring up your own social standing. It's a really shitty, harmful, and tired way to do comedy.

As occupiers of the top of the racist, heteronormative, and sexist food chain we all live in, straight white male comics often find it all too easy to punch down. Those jokes essentially write themselves, because they're the script we're all used to reading from. Punching down is an easy, lazy way to get laughs from people who are just as invested in upholding the status quo as you are, just as it's easy and lazy to then claim that anyone who isn't laughing is just trying to take away your free speech rights. (Because GOD FORBID anyone tell you your bullshit hackery posing as comedy is problematic as you're actively working to maintain systems of oppression that harm everyone more than you, right?!)

As a result, like literally every corner of American society, standup comedy has a notoriously long-running problem with misogyny, homophobia (and transphobia), and racism that continues to this day. One of the best ways to counteract that history is to turn our attentions to women, people of color, disabled people, and members of the LGBTQIA community for our comedy.

All this led to me channeling my indignant white lady powers by sending the following annoyed and stern "I want to speak to a manager"-esque email to customer service:

I love listening to comedy, among other content, through Pandora. I am nevertheless really disconcerted that, after listening to the station for hours, not one single female comic has been included in Pandora's "Today's Comedy Radio" station. In fact, the vast majority of the comics on this station are white heterosexual men. The station occasionally includes bits from Hannibal Buress or Donald Glover, who are great! They also identify in their comedy as straight men.
It goes without saying that there are tons of talented lady comics (not to mention comics of color and LGBTQ comics). The "Today's Comedy Radio" station desperately needs a more diverse representation of "today's comedy," because as it stands it does not actually come close to representing the true diversity of comedy today. Can you please address this lack of diversity and work to add content from a broader array of comics in this and other comedy stations on Pandora?
Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Weeks passed. To my deepening consternation, nothing changed on my little corner of the streamable internet. I therefore decided to double down on the Karen-but-hopefully-Karening-for-good energy with a second email, this time taking a slightly more irreverent (but still seriously exasperated) tone and focusing more pointedly on the lack of gender diversity in the service's content:

Hi Pandora,
I have been listening to your Today's Comedy Radio station for months. I really love being able to listen to standup on Pandora, and I've enjoyed being introduced to comics I haven't heard of before. However, it is REALLY disturbing and confusing to me that, in literally hours and hours of listening to this station, I have NEVER heard a woman comic's work. Seriously? Not one lady comic?
There are so many lady comics. ESPECIALLY in "today's comedy."
Could you please address this weird oversight as promptly as possible?
Thanks so much!

And here's the thing: it worked! I don't know if the internet radio bots actually listened to my scolding and pleading or if something else coincidentally shifted to finally add some seasoning to the comedy mix, but shortly after that second message, the content I was hearing dramatically diversified.

In the years since, I've been introduced to some of my new favorite comics--almost all of whom, with only one or two exceptions, would not have been featured if that streaming service had stuck to its absurdly narrow and repetitive demographic of performers. I'm so excited to share some of their work with you!

The videos and links below are of some of my favorite bits from each of the following comics. Clicking their names will take you to their websites, where you can learn more about their upcoming shows, their past albums, and in most cases see more of their excellent, extremely entertaining work.

Without further ado!: