Tom Labaff, Amy Schumer: Sadlarious, 2016
(June 14) Overall, I really liked it… I laughed out loud or at least guffawed out loud quite a few times. But when I look at my notes, they’re all complaints… and this is often what I do with a book I do like… I start going, “it was great but …” and enumerating all my issues with flaws.But in truth, although I liked this book and laughed along with Schumer in the same way I did with Kathy Griffin or Miranda July, there was just something a little… (the word for when you’re gross and insulting and ignorant in order to make people laugh but you are trying to be meta about it so that everyone knows that what you really value are tastefulness, kindness and sensitivity… you’re not really that gross girl, you just know what makes people laugh and deep down you are the angel girl).
So that was very palpable… she is very careful to show how much she cares about the girls who were killed at a showing of her movie, for example, and to emphasize that while she can do a cheap joke she supports all the right causes and understands political correctness…
What it amounts to, though, is an undercutting of her humour… she isn’t that proud of herself.
She makes all the right noises -- she claims to be body-positive and not to care that people might think she’s overweight… but she mentions this so often that it becomes “the lady doth protest too much”...
And she gets very serious and repetitive about all the right causes -- the need to make women equal, the need to reduce domestic violence, the need to keep children safe, etc., etc. -- they’re all good causes but it’s like she invented them… it’s like she really really really needs to make us see she is a fine upstanding woman.
I mean, I like that she is using her platform to support good causes… I just don’t need the constant reminders that she is someone who supports good causes. “I’m a good girl.”
Anyway -- I just want to quote “Uptown Funk” to her: “If you freaky then own it.”
Also -- she gets gross and she can get really gross… sometimes it’s too much for me… and in one particular case (actually more than one -- two similar stories) I wonder at her taste AND ethics… this is related to the artist’s rendering above… he thought Amy’s stories of her dad shitting in public were “sad and hilarious” at the same time… I didn’t see the humour, and I think it really should be her dad’s prerogative to get laughs from talking about shitting his pants… they’re not her stories.
Also, she “cancels” her mother -- probably for very good reasons -- but with all of these elements it’s like you can feel this river of molten lava flowing aggressively under the charming surface landscape and it’s a little distracting..
But I’m focusing unfairly on weaknesses -- I loved reading the book overall.
