I do not see why some asshole should write about one of the greatest comedians of our times, Louis C.K. and we read all this garbage about mewtoo movement
This is worth a watch with regard to this article, especially in relation to your statement that he has not admitted in no uncertain terms that what he did was wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-L001RGw0g&pp=ygUQbG91aXMgY2t0aGVvIHZvbg%3D%3D Obviously, it's still up to the audience whether or not they would like to support him, but there is something to be said for his deliberately not wanting to go on the public apology tour and instead going through twelve-step recovery mostly in private.
I very deliberately said I had not seen him offer a public apology. I did not say he hadn't admitted it somewhere publicly. The bottom line about all of this, is that he ensured critics like me would have to demand public action from him, because he spent so many years hiding how he was victimizing women. Now we're all in a position of having to decide whether he's going to resume his predatory ways. And that requires public displays of recovery and explanation.
Up until very very recently comedy was zone in which transgressive behavior was expected and lavishly rewarded. It was encouraged for comedy people to say (and do) the most outrageous things imaginable, things civilians didn’t have license to say (and do). This material made the audience laugh HARD. It was very often a guilty laugh, but also a strong laugh of recognition because so many of us shared this comedian’s same naughty impulses and now enjoyed that wonderful feeling of relief when our common humanity has been exposed and purged. I think Louis CK’s bad behavior has to considered in this context, a context largely unfamiliar to some of the younger people who are now so condemning of him and comedians like him. For those of us who remember: this guy was a massive comedy star for ten or twenty years — probably the biggest through all of the 2010s. And like many artists of his caliber his “edginess,” his “pushing the envelope,” wasn’t a nine-to-five thing. He wasn’t some guy in an insurance office and subject to office hours and the protocols of good comportment. He lived his comedy and his transgressiveness. He was always examining it, turning it around in his head, in preparation for the next show, the next script, the next hosting gig on SNL. He lived his outrageousness, got massive and lucrative reinforcement for it, and he clearly struggled in his off-stage life to distinguish where the behavioral boundaries might be for someone in his position of privilege and where he was crossing a line into cruelty. The stories are endless of comedians, and actors, celebrities and politicians who lose track of what the rules for decent behavior are after living so long in a rarified space where the rules have seemingly stopped applying. CK fucked up. He hurt people. He has apologized (somewhat) but probably hasn’t done enough (or anything?) to make amends with the specific people he mistreated. He flew too high and our culture loves to bring such people down, the exalted ones who have disappointed us. We chase these monsters with our pitchforks and torches. But I don’t believe Louis CK to be a monster, unworthy of reconsideration and redemption. The comedy he created has been undeniably excellent. It was often at the extreme edge of taste, but it was also thoughtful and strangely moralistic. CK is a great artist who I believe still has much to offer us in terms of illuminating our common humanity, and I’ll be very interested in examining whatever he next presents.
Louis CK isn't being criticized for his comedy. He's being criticized for his private behavior. If a successful business executive was pressuring young women starting out in the industry to watch him masturbate, we wouldn't be expending energy looking at whether the sales they bring to the company justify forgiving them for an ugly and toxic harassment of young women. So the first step toward judging the Louis CK situation is to be clear about what he did. Everyone who does terrible things is also human. And I laid out in my piece the questions which remain about Louis CK and whether it feels right that a mainstream Tv outlet like Netflix is doing business with him again.
And my entire point is that for most of human history being a comedian hasn’t been regarded as comparable to being a successful business executive. We understood that comedians might behave in “nutty” ways in their private lives as part of their “process” in developing their work and identities — much in the way a rock star might trash a hotel room or take a lot of drugs. Your suggestion that comedians need to act like successful business executives tells me you know very little about the cauldron in which comedy has often been forged.
These modern comedians are gigantic businesses which generate many millions of dollars a year. They create TV specials, series and movies which employ hundreds of people and earn billions for companies like Netflix. When Louis CK was exposed and his deals with FX were canceled, he was running his own show, had a movie about to debut, was executive producer on two other shows that were airing and was executive producer on a third show that hadn't debuted yet. These high-level comics are MORE than major corporate executives. They ARE gigantic, multi-million dollar profit engines. And when you employ people, with the power to affect many more people's employment in companies you don't even control, then you have a responsibility to treat them ethically and not sexually harass them. And, by the way, even back in the day when rock stars trashed hotel rooms, they were acting like toxic assholes who wound up hurting innocent people.
I am not trying to defend CK, so much as to put him in a context which makes him a bit more forgivable. Of course he can be read as just another over-privileged jerk who got too full of himself and decided that the rules of decency didn’t apply to him. I don’t actually think CK would argue much with that description. But I take issue with the suggestion that a comedian, no matter how successful, is the same thing as a business executive and expected to behave accordingly. On a rare and lucky occasion one may end up with the titles, money and responsibilities of an executive but these folks are not trained for it and it’s not how their minds operate. They are artists, creative organisms. I’ve known literally hundreds of comedy writers and performers. They didn’t go to business school. (Okay, some might have, but very few and not the good ones.) They didn’t lie in their cribs as babies dreaming up ways to commodify comedy on multiple platforms and one day oversee dozens/hundreds of reverential subordinates. These people just wanted to be funny, and perhaps one day make a living with it. And in the 1980s and 1990s the hottest way to be funny was to be outrageous. That more transgressive style may have somewhat fallen from favor but it predominated in comedy for decades and is still arguably its most compelling approach. You suggest that a line might be drawn between the smirking transgressive character Louis CK played onstage and your expectation that he’d be a more responsible guy offstage where he was viewed as an important industry figure. I doubt CK made that distinction. Most comics I know are always “on” to some extent — even offstage, even in a business context, and especially when they’re palling around after a performance with other comedians of any gender or preference — the creative mechanisms in their head are at all times spinning with outrageous impulses. Sometimes these impulses evolve into something useful in their work delighting an audience and other times unfortunately their impulses hurt others and get them into trouble.
You can take issue with it all you want. But the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and other unions which regulate workplace conduct have specific guidelines. Beyond that, FX is owned by Disney. An executive producer on a show owned by FX is actually an executive working for and with one of the largest corporations on earth. Maybe you don’t understand the business forces at play here.
Why are you building excuses for entitled white male privilege Louis CK? You want to forgive him because you liked his raw and edgy sense of humor. You’re kind of missing the picture of what Eric is talking about though. Atonement? Amends? Or just we waited long enough and we
want him to entertain us again and who cares what he did with his power and might. And by the way executives and businessmen may have gone to college but your line about being taught morals and morality is humorous to me. Men really need to be taught right from wrong as adults? They aren’t children.
That’s fine. I haven’t persuaded you. You defer to the moral authority of the Disney Company and Hollywood trade unions to decide if CK deserves any understanding and forgiveness when it seems clear you just don’t like the guy and resent that he’s doing well. It often happens with extremely talented performers that they are able to succeed despite the ongoing antipathy of critics in the media.
I think men like Louis CK are the rule, not the exception in the entertainment industry. When one of them is shot down, I'm left wondering how many more offenders will never, ever be exposed.
I do not see why some asshole should write about one of the greatest comedians of our times, Louis C.K. and we read all this garbage about mewtoo movement
This is worth a watch with regard to this article, especially in relation to your statement that he has not admitted in no uncertain terms that what he did was wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-L001RGw0g&pp=ygUQbG91aXMgY2t0aGVvIHZvbg%3D%3D Obviously, it's still up to the audience whether or not they would like to support him, but there is something to be said for his deliberately not wanting to go on the public apology tour and instead going through twelve-step recovery mostly in private.
I very deliberately said I had not seen him offer a public apology. I did not say he hadn't admitted it somewhere publicly. The bottom line about all of this, is that he ensured critics like me would have to demand public action from him, because he spent so many years hiding how he was victimizing women. Now we're all in a position of having to decide whether he's going to resume his predatory ways. And that requires public displays of recovery and explanation.
Up until very very recently comedy was zone in which transgressive behavior was expected and lavishly rewarded. It was encouraged for comedy people to say (and do) the most outrageous things imaginable, things civilians didn’t have license to say (and do). This material made the audience laugh HARD. It was very often a guilty laugh, but also a strong laugh of recognition because so many of us shared this comedian’s same naughty impulses and now enjoyed that wonderful feeling of relief when our common humanity has been exposed and purged. I think Louis CK’s bad behavior has to considered in this context, a context largely unfamiliar to some of the younger people who are now so condemning of him and comedians like him. For those of us who remember: this guy was a massive comedy star for ten or twenty years — probably the biggest through all of the 2010s. And like many artists of his caliber his “edginess,” his “pushing the envelope,” wasn’t a nine-to-five thing. He wasn’t some guy in an insurance office and subject to office hours and the protocols of good comportment. He lived his comedy and his transgressiveness. He was always examining it, turning it around in his head, in preparation for the next show, the next script, the next hosting gig on SNL. He lived his outrageousness, got massive and lucrative reinforcement for it, and he clearly struggled in his off-stage life to distinguish where the behavioral boundaries might be for someone in his position of privilege and where he was crossing a line into cruelty. The stories are endless of comedians, and actors, celebrities and politicians who lose track of what the rules for decent behavior are after living so long in a rarified space where the rules have seemingly stopped applying. CK fucked up. He hurt people. He has apologized (somewhat) but probably hasn’t done enough (or anything?) to make amends with the specific people he mistreated. He flew too high and our culture loves to bring such people down, the exalted ones who have disappointed us. We chase these monsters with our pitchforks and torches. But I don’t believe Louis CK to be a monster, unworthy of reconsideration and redemption. The comedy he created has been undeniably excellent. It was often at the extreme edge of taste, but it was also thoughtful and strangely moralistic. CK is a great artist who I believe still has much to offer us in terms of illuminating our common humanity, and I’ll be very interested in examining whatever he next presents.
Louis CK isn't being criticized for his comedy. He's being criticized for his private behavior. If a successful business executive was pressuring young women starting out in the industry to watch him masturbate, we wouldn't be expending energy looking at whether the sales they bring to the company justify forgiving them for an ugly and toxic harassment of young women. So the first step toward judging the Louis CK situation is to be clear about what he did. Everyone who does terrible things is also human. And I laid out in my piece the questions which remain about Louis CK and whether it feels right that a mainstream Tv outlet like Netflix is doing business with him again.
And my entire point is that for most of human history being a comedian hasn’t been regarded as comparable to being a successful business executive. We understood that comedians might behave in “nutty” ways in their private lives as part of their “process” in developing their work and identities — much in the way a rock star might trash a hotel room or take a lot of drugs. Your suggestion that comedians need to act like successful business executives tells me you know very little about the cauldron in which comedy has often been forged.
These modern comedians are gigantic businesses which generate many millions of dollars a year. They create TV specials, series and movies which employ hundreds of people and earn billions for companies like Netflix. When Louis CK was exposed and his deals with FX were canceled, he was running his own show, had a movie about to debut, was executive producer on two other shows that were airing and was executive producer on a third show that hadn't debuted yet. These high-level comics are MORE than major corporate executives. They ARE gigantic, multi-million dollar profit engines. And when you employ people, with the power to affect many more people's employment in companies you don't even control, then you have a responsibility to treat them ethically and not sexually harass them. And, by the way, even back in the day when rock stars trashed hotel rooms, they were acting like toxic assholes who wound up hurting innocent people.
I am not trying to defend CK, so much as to put him in a context which makes him a bit more forgivable. Of course he can be read as just another over-privileged jerk who got too full of himself and decided that the rules of decency didn’t apply to him. I don’t actually think CK would argue much with that description. But I take issue with the suggestion that a comedian, no matter how successful, is the same thing as a business executive and expected to behave accordingly. On a rare and lucky occasion one may end up with the titles, money and responsibilities of an executive but these folks are not trained for it and it’s not how their minds operate. They are artists, creative organisms. I’ve known literally hundreds of comedy writers and performers. They didn’t go to business school. (Okay, some might have, but very few and not the good ones.) They didn’t lie in their cribs as babies dreaming up ways to commodify comedy on multiple platforms and one day oversee dozens/hundreds of reverential subordinates. These people just wanted to be funny, and perhaps one day make a living with it. And in the 1980s and 1990s the hottest way to be funny was to be outrageous. That more transgressive style may have somewhat fallen from favor but it predominated in comedy for decades and is still arguably its most compelling approach. You suggest that a line might be drawn between the smirking transgressive character Louis CK played onstage and your expectation that he’d be a more responsible guy offstage where he was viewed as an important industry figure. I doubt CK made that distinction. Most comics I know are always “on” to some extent — even offstage, even in a business context, and especially when they’re palling around after a performance with other comedians of any gender or preference — the creative mechanisms in their head are at all times spinning with outrageous impulses. Sometimes these impulses evolve into something useful in their work delighting an audience and other times unfortunately their impulses hurt others and get them into trouble.
You can take issue with it all you want. But the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and other unions which regulate workplace conduct have specific guidelines. Beyond that, FX is owned by Disney. An executive producer on a show owned by FX is actually an executive working for and with one of the largest corporations on earth. Maybe you don’t understand the business forces at play here.
Why are you building excuses for entitled white male privilege Louis CK? You want to forgive him because you liked his raw and edgy sense of humor. You’re kind of missing the picture of what Eric is talking about though. Atonement? Amends? Or just we waited long enough and we
want him to entertain us again and who cares what he did with his power and might. And by the way executives and businessmen may have gone to college but your line about being taught morals and morality is humorous to me. Men really need to be taught right from wrong as adults? They aren’t children.
That’s fine. I haven’t persuaded you. You defer to the moral authority of the Disney Company and Hollywood trade unions to decide if CK deserves any understanding and forgiveness when it seems clear you just don’t like the guy and resent that he’s doing well. It often happens with extremely talented performers that they are able to succeed despite the ongoing antipathy of critics in the media.
This is a lot of words to say “I don’t care if a comedian abuses and harasses women bc I personally find him funny” 🧐
I think men like Louis CK are the rule, not the exception in the entertainment industry. When one of them is shot down, I'm left wondering how many more offenders will never, ever be exposed.