Tag: inside amy schumer

comedy, Uncategorized

Best of 2015 comedy: Amy Schumer, of course

Posted on by Beau Dure

I don’t quite agree with looking at the best and worst of 2015 U.S. comedy strictly through the lens of gender, but it’s tough to argue with this Guardian piece hailing Amy Schumer’s brilliance this year.

I’d also subscribe to a YouTube channel of clips from an as-yet-uncreated Aisha Tyler late-night show.

And I have to admit — on Pandora and Spotify, I’m finding the female stand-ups are generally a bit ahead of the male comics. Iliza Shlesinger runs a terrific podcast. I’ve given a thumbs-up to nearly every bit I’ve heard from Jackie Kashian. I’m also enjoying some well-established male comics like Patton Oswalt and Demetri Martin, and John Mulaney’s stand-up is far better than his short-lived sitcom. But I also hear a lot of men who just … don’t get it. They’re as stuck in past gender roles as Beetle Bailey.

So the dearth of women on late-night TV is something I’d like to change. But when Amy Schumer turns it down because she has better prospects elsewhere, that’s a nice sign of progress.

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comedy

Amy Schumer and the best season of comedy ever

Posted on by Beau Dure

I once saw a really creepy guy approach an attractive young woman on the Metro. She responded as politely as she could a couple of times, then lost herself back in her headphones as he oozed slimy lust.

When it became clear the young woman wasn’t going to walk off with a creepy dude maybe twice her age once we pulled into Dunn Loring, he responded the way men so often do. “You ain’t all that.”

That’s what men do. Women’s looks are threatening. Men (OK, not all men) put themselves back in control by reducing them to body parts and facial features that are either there for men’s pleasure (if they’re great) or a slap against women’s worth (if they’re supposedly not).

So that’s one reason I’ve appreciated this season of Inside Amy Schumer, which has featured not only some side-splitting humor but some of the most provocative satire of masculinity ever aired. Last night, the entire episode was a parody of 12 Angry Men in which the men discuss whether Schumer is hot enough for basic cable.

Here’s Salon on why it’s great:

Because it’s comedy, it never loses the joke in all of its probing of toxic masculinity. It’s a masterful little trick to pull off. It goes crude and hilarious as the men trade insults about Schumer’s appearance (a “potato face,” who looks like an “uncut weiner” with an ass that makes Giamatti “furious”) and then pivots to quiet commentary on the brokenness of these men.

As the sketch progresses, men who moments before were railing against the insult of having to look at Schumer’s body, reveal the psychosexual pain that makes them hate women — and makes them believe that their attraction matters.

via Amy Schumer’s subtle brilliance: “12 Angry Men” isn’t feel-good feminism, it’s crushingly dark satire – Salon.com.

And it’s sweet revenge for Schumer on people like this idiot critic who found her film Trainwreck implausible because there’s “no way she’d be an object of heated romantic interest in the real world.”

No, in the real world, guys would fall all over themselves for her, no matter what they told their bros.

If you want a shorter dose of Schumer, try this terrific take on Friday Night Lights that turns into a jab at deeply ingrained rape culture. Yes, it’s much, much funnier than the description.

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