Unit One Post - Using Humor to Make People Listen

In her intro to They Used to Call Me Snow White... But I Drifted, Regina Barreca discusses a lot of the ways that women use and interact with humor. In one section, "Clearing Space" (21), she describes how Pamela West used humor to get men to listen to her. While that was just one example, it's true that all of us use humor to talk about subjects we'd rather avoid.

In this day and age, one of the biggest "subjects to avoid" that people can't stop talking about is politics. With an increasingly divisive political climate, news stories have become harder and harder to digest. The sheer ridiculousness of some stories from all over the political spectrum are enough to make me want to throw my phone in disgust. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except it’s not just one train anymore, it’s a line of trains crashing into one another, piling up in a smoldering mountain of wreckage and garbage, with the majority of people feeling helpless to do anything except stand on the sidelines, take pictures, and vow to vote for a better train conductor next time around.

Maybe as a result of this helplessness and frustration, people have been turning more and more to comedy to get their daily fix of news. It’s easier to process hearing that yet another train has crashed when the person delivering the news at least throws in a few laugh lines to soften the blow. As a result, comedic news shows have flourished in the last couple of years, with shows like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and Saturday Night Live gaining popularity on T.V. networks and other streaming platforms.

One of the most contentious topics gaining attention in the last few months is the topic of reproductive rights. Despite the fact that one would think the topic disproportionately affects one gender over the other, polls show gender isn’t the defining factor in determining which side a person is on, with political ideology being a much more significant factor. All the same, it's pretty disheartening when legislation affecting woman's bodies is in the hands of people who clearly know nothing about it at all.

In light of that fact, Samantha Bee from Full Frontal decided it might be a good idea to try and educate the senators on the subject a bit.

Bee takes a sensitive topic and discusses it in a funny way, while also providing some important inaccuracies that surround the debate. More than that, when she does take hits at people with her humor, she punches up. She uses her comedy to directly challenge the people who are controlling, saying of one senator, "If you're not smart enough to be pregnant, you're definitely not smart enough to legislate it" (00:42). Unfortunately, since these uneducated senators still hold legislative power, at least for now, Bee decided to use her platform to give these senators a lesson they've likely never had before—a lesson in sex education. Aside from being a funny concept (spoon feeding aging senators information about female anatomy), at a time when senators have demonstrated again and again that they're clueless about the female body, and yet are trying their hardest to control it all the same, Bee's lecture carries a note of urgency about it. The idea that senators are building bills based on medical practices that actual doctors have termed "science fiction," while at the same time attempting to limit access to birth control shows how ignorant they are about women's bodies. And should our bodies really be left in the hands of people that clueless?

Since we have to live with them for now, though, it's important that people like Bee are making an effort to educate people on the facts of the situation. And if comedy is what makes people listen, then it's all the better. Beyond the facts, the only thing left at the core of this debate is a difference of opinions—and as for dealing with that, I'll take another line from Bee: "I don't give a shit about your personal opinions" (07:58). At the end of the day, at least let the people who decide be the people who are affected by the legislation: women. This is the one debate where men can take their turns as the ones with their mouths shut.