Salon.com > Patton Oswalt

The rape-joke double standard

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:57:00 +0000

There’s something of a general cultural consensus that sensitivity and empathy be shown in the wake of tragedy or violence; after a mass shooting or a terrorist attack, many comedians explicitly avoid making jokes. But, it turns out, there are exemptions to the rule.

A conversation about misogyny in comedy sprang up this week after feminist journalist Sady Doyle wrote a critical response to jokes performed by male comedian Sam Morril. Doyle's impression of Morril's material that night, as well as his Twitter feed, was that it disproportionately relied on jokes about nonconsensual sex, violence and the degradation of women. Her piece was a good-faith effort to bypass the usual debate about “rape jokes,” which often gets stuck around concepts like the importance of dark humor and freedom of speech, to explore issues at hand: the number of women who experience sexual violence, and the merit (or lack thereof) of making those women the target of jokes. An Onion article this week about Chris Brown and Rihanna also functions as a helpful distillation of how violence against women can act as a punch line; many feminists, notably women of color, felt that a domestic violence victim became collateral damage in service of a joke.

10 good things about a horrifying week

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:54:00 +0000

The nightmare in Boston -- which shows no signs of lifting anytime soon -- makes this a week worth ruing. But there was also a massive fertilizer plant in West, Texas, that killed at least 12. There were ricin-laced letters reportedly sent to DC, targeting the President and a Senator. For those big majority of Americans who supported background checks for gun owners, a crushing defeat. And there were more sinkholes.

So here's a look at events from the past week to reaffirm your hope in human nature (or at least get you through another day).

1). It’s been a good week for LGBT rights. The Boy Scouts removed their ban on gay members (if not gay scoutmasters), and New Zealand passed gay marriage. National Party MP Maurice Williamson gave an epic speech in favor of marriage equality:

Patton Oswalt improvises 8-minute “Star Wars” rant on “Parks and Recreation”

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:15:00 +0000

Comedian Patton Oswalt has been all over TV lately, playing cameos in "Portlandia" and "The Simpsons," and, tomorrow, he'll make an appearance on NBC's "Parks and Recreation" as an angry Pawneean who wants to block Leslie Knope's proposal to amend the outdated laws in the town charter. Using his public platform at a town hall, Oswalt's character launches into a filibuster to prevent the vote.

On set, the producers asked Oswalt to "ramble a bit about whatever subject he wanted." The result: an improvised, impassioned and totally bizarre 8-minute proposal for the plot of "Star Wars: Epsipode 7," which somehow merges Marvel comics and a pantheon of gods into the Jedi world.

Only a few parts of the monologue made it into the episode, "Article Two," which will premiere on Thursday night, but NBC has released the full clip below:

Patton Oswalt helps save the day

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:08:00 +0000

We crave catharsis after trauma — think of the Onion’s brilliant 9/11 issue, or its weary, pitch-perfect “Fuck Everything, Nation Reports” response to the horrific Newtown shootings last year. Feelings of helplessness can pile up only so far before despair sets in, and despair is a formidable enemy. Sometimes we need to be shocked out of it, and comedians are our best public friends in those times, unfettered by the ties of propriety and message that bind political and religious leaders.

The old chestnut “comedy is tragedy, plus time” still holds true — really, there is such a thing as “too soon” — but in dark times, we still need comedians to tell the truth. Patton Oswalt’s Facebook post in response to the Boston Marathon bombing shows us why comedians can offer the best response to tragedy, even when they’re not being funny.

How should “30 Rock” end?

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:24:00 +0000

For the past four months, we've grappled with our grief as "30 Rock's" series finale was drawing closer and closer, by reaching out to kindred spirits, and asking — teary-eyed, in earnest — "How does it all end?"

And now that dreaded night has arrived: The last episode airs tonight, and before it does, we'd like to share the hilarious fantasies of how our favorite TV sitcom wraps up:

Patton Oswalt, stand-up comedian, actor and author of "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland."

What happens in the last episode of "30 Rock"? Easy. Jack and Liz get together. That’s what it says here in the script they sent me. I play the minister who marries them in the final scene. Wait, am I not supposed to be revealing this?

Rachel Shukert, author of the forthcoming novel "Starstruck":

My fantasy is that Tina Fey will break the fourth wall during the "30 Rock" series finale and tell us that the last year has been a total fake-out and the show isn’t ending at all. But this seems unlikely. Still, it feels only appropriate for a show so unabashedly about the glories (and failures) of television itself to take inspiration from the great series finales of the past. So here goes.

“Liz & Dick”: An instant camp classic

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Only once every several years does a piece of pop culture come along that's so eminently quotable, so brilliantly miscast, so beautifully unself-aware, that it attains instant cult status the moment it is released, kraken-like, upon a camp-hungry populace. So scooch over a little in the pantheon today, "Showgirls" and "Battlefield Earth" and "The Room." Make some space in there for "Liz and Dick," the greatest terrible thing to come along in years.

From the beginning, the Lifetime movie, casting reliable train wreck Lindsay Lohan as the scandalous Elizabeth Taylor in her Richard Burton–marrying heyday, was dubiously touted as LiLo's big comeback vehicle. That she had made it through the shooting of an entire project without getting fired seemed sufficient, in at least the minds of Lohan and her publicists, to signal a triumph, the beginning of Lohan being known again as an actress and not just that lady who keeps fighting with her parents and driving on sidewalks. Lifetime eagerly — and with all apparent seriousness — promoted Sunday's "world premiere event" with a heavy rotation of television ads and billboards featuring a violet-eyed Lohan groaning under the weight of the world's largest ring pop. Yet even when the early reviews faintly praised Lohan's "almost decent" performance and debated how calculated its "pure genius … for belly laughs" was, who could have predicted it would become quite the glorious collective bonding moment it was?

Must-see morning clip

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:10:00 +0000

As you might expect, Oswalt's advice is not helpful at all, but it's amusing:

via TBS

Male comics: Stop enabling rape culture

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Rape jokes are pervasive in comedy. And this is the problem.

Daniel Tosh's controversial response to a woman in a comedy club last weekend has forced stand-up comedy to talk about rape culture. It is an emotional topic, and a conversation my fellow comedians are not used to having. And it has led to many other controversies and conversations -- about who is defending whom, who is laughing at what, and whether some things are ever funny in the first place.

As a woman, I'm surprised to see such a widespread conversation about how we talk about rape. But as a comedian, I'm even more surprised. One of the crazier things about the shock surrounding the Tosh story is that, as a comedian, what he said is not all that shocking. It's the reaction itself that comedians are reacting to. And the conversations that have come out of the reaction will inform how we talk about rape culture in the comedy community.