Leslie Jones: "You're Not Letting Comedians Do Their Jobs & You're Miserable"
This week on ‘The View’ (do I know this audience or what) Joy Behar brought up an article highlighting the current trend of calling comedians out for offensive posts from their pasts. She laments to guest Leslie Jones, an SNL writer & cast member, that people find inappropriate jokes ‘from 20 years ago’ & want accountability today.
I’ve seen Jones’s response liked & retweeted by a wide array of top comedians who she seems to have struck a chord with on the heels of recent news like James Gunn getting cut from Disney. Some excerpts from her reply:
I think that’s so stupid. It’s just so dumb. Do you know how long I’ve been doing comedy? I’ve been doing comedy since 1986. If ya’ll go back, ya’ll gonna see so much inappropriate… Ya’ll gonna see so much stuff…. you can’t hold me accountable for what I did in 1986. I mean, I wasn’t smart. I’m so happy social media wasn’t going on in my twenties, because I would be… ::shakes head::
Stop holding comedians to this standard. Stop doing that. Our job is to make the ugliest stuff funny. That’s our job. We are court jesters, we are clowns, that’s what we do. We come out and make the terrible situations laughable… unless you wanna cry for the rest of your life.
The best way to conquer pain is laughter. So let comedians do their jobs. Let me explain something to you – you’re not letting comedians do their jobs – and you’re MISERABLE.
Stop walking around so offended. You’re not gonna be able to survive life if you walk around offended.
In an essay on this topic on Medium, Comedian Jason Chatfield wrote,
Every joke is now up for analysis. No longer can a comedian write something with the intention of getting an innocent laugh without someone mistaking the topic of the joke with the target of the joke.
Sure not everything is black & white & there’s a line, but comedians need room to cross it now & then. Comedy is experimentation; testing things out, learning what works & what doesn’t… and they usually have to learn it in a hard, public way. Those with talent who can grasp the changing times, update the material, & evolve will keep moving forward. It’s part of the process. So why dig back in an attempt to find weird and/or offensive moments & discredit them in the present?
The only time that sort of thing is enjoyable for me is politics.