Lampanelli’s rise to prominence as a top-tier insult comic came in 2002 when she showcased her crass style at the Friars Club Roast honoring Chevy Chase. She has since become a fixture at those events, skewering everyone from President Trump to David Hasselhoff. While she plans to remain a member of the Friars Club, she said comedy “doesn’t feel right anymore” and she’s glad to leave the jokes to other comics.Here she is talking to Stern and saying her "message of including people through insults is getting lost, and now maybe, God forbid, I'm being misunderstood by different races, transgender people, gay people, even though I have love in my heart":
“I’m not going to lie, I’d get off stage and I’d go ‘I hope that guy I made fun of was OK’ or ‘I hope that guy doesn’t feel like he didn’t know what he was in for,’” she confessed.
She wants to do something that has a "clear message to make people feel better about themselves." Her new routine has a big weight-loss theme (which, I don't know, does that deliver a clear message and help you feel better?):
“Do you spend much of your day obsessing about what you’re eating and how you’re eating it,” Lampanelli said. “Do you feel guilty about eating, hate yourself for eating what you enjoy, and cram down foods that are ‘good for you’?”For old time's sake, here she is roasting Donald Trump, and you can see him laughing at her insults:
Well, she has too, Lampanelli said, and the workshop will provide participants with the tools they need to get them on a path to inner peace when it comes to food and body image. The workshop will use storytelling, sharing, meditation, journaling, brainstorming, deep listening and self-reflection.
Those were the days... before The Era of That's Not Funny kicked in.
I imagine that Lampanelli's move is influenced by the critical acclaim bestowed on Hannah Gadsby's show "Nanette." Here's the NYT last May:
Her self-mocking nebbish is a familiar persona, but there comes a moment when she drops and deconstructs it.... “Do you know what self-deprecation means coming from somebody who exists on the margins?” she asks. “It is not humility; it is humiliation.”...
[S]he explains that good stories have three parts (beginning, middle and end) while jokes require two (setup and punch line), which means that to end on a laugh, comics often need to cut off the most important and constructive element, where hindsight, perspective and catharsis exist.
“A joke is a question, artificially inseminated with tension,” she says, before explaining the mechanics of her job. “I make you all tense and then I cure it with a laugh. And you say: ‘Thanks for that, I was feeling a bit tense.’” Then in one of many tonal shifts, she raises her voice, irritated at the audience’s hypothetic gratitude: “But I made you tense!”
Then she points to the audience and back at her and quips, darkly: “This is an abusive relationship.”...
Posts
41 comments:
Lisa, “After I had sex with Donald, I was still a virgin.” Trump laughed. Big guy.
I always enjoy self-defecating humor.
After a certain age, the only way to maintain a proper weight is by dieting, That's not funny. Much of the joy and laughter goes out of life when you're on a diet. Slow starvation is no joke.
Remember, these are the people who now call Trump vulgar.
You may try to ioutlaw dark comedy but it is just being driven underground. Once the tattle tales all ide tify themselves the speakeasies will flourish.
Comedy is (or should be) the stuff of butterfly wings. An off-the-cuff quip from a co-worker that can ease the stress, or show that life is more than beating a dead horse forward. It is of the moment, and doesn't necessarily age well, because the context of its telling is lost to time. Some comedy can age, but I wonder if it is because it is seen through nostalgic eyes by its audience.
We have serious people in this world who are hopefully very very good at staying focused at being serious at the right time. Engineers. Pilots. Judges. I do not include stand up comics in the list.
Part of the problem is that the internet has allowed for people who can be very funny to make comments to a wider audience while they carry on being serious people during most of the day.
It must be hard to be a professional comedian and have to "explain" what is comedy to your paying audience when the auto mechanic or the cashier can dash out funny lines on the internet three times a short fast as you.
After viewing that Friars Club video I strongly suspect Lampanelli's "doesn't feel right" explanation is more self-serving than self-denying.
Comedy must have been a third choice career move for Lampanelli. I mean, how does someone in the business squander such an opportunity to roast a major celeb like DJT with such jejune material? You pick a caricature Jewish name and pin it on a caricature Catholic image, then you use that composite stereotype as a vehicle for dirty jokes well-suited for an audience of 14-year-old suburban virgins.
Wow. Like wow, man. Makes you think there must be a significant diversity hire element at work in the showbiz career of this woman. I've seen much better work on open mic night at The Comedy Store done by aspiring prop comics into watermelon smashing. Seriously, I kid you not.
Nothing in the world is funny. Droll but lofty planet. - Lautreamont
did she ever make fun of anyone on the Left?
"then I cure it . . . But I made you tense."
No one must be made tense: the prog triumph of the therapeutic is complete.
Then I cure it: humor depends on the affirmation of a common culture, but progs mean to tear it down.
In the era of that's not funny, only deploring the deplorables is funny. Can't have too much humiliation of them.
Tim said... did she ever make fun of anyone on the Left?
THAT'S NOT FUNNY! :(
Lampanelli must not have been investing much time in cultural awareness, the meat and drink of the successful comic. Sally Field sucked all the life out of nun comedy ages ago like the ravening flying vampire she is.
Trump wasn't laughing with her.
He was laughing at her.
Howard Stern still has a show??
Comics now suffer from their own self importance. They're not philosophers or prophets. I don't think Jack Benny ever took it upon himself to ruminate on the tragedy of the human condition or to tell politicians on the correct moral choices. There's something awry with the world when you have to tell comedians to lighten up. That should be their job.
Quitter. You don’t see Hillary giving up.
Has a person with blue hair ever been funny?
I want to re-visit my comment. Serious is not the right word perhaps. A good comic might need to be "serious" in carrying out their 20min routine - you can't just wing it, all night, every night, and expect it to work on a whim.
So perhaps a better word is sanctimonious. That what is being done is some elevated sermon that peasants can take a lesson from.
So perhaps a better word is sanctimonious.
Spot on. There's hardly a serious comedian working today.
Her hair is funny, so she's got that going for her, which is nice.
Then she points to the audience and back at her and quips, darkly: “This is an abusive relationship.”...
Sounds like Trump and the press at one of his rallies.
It's almost as if the entertainment industry doesn't realize that they are destroying one of the Dems most effective propaganda tools.
I've seen one of her shows live. She had us all in stitches. Even the security guards that were standing at either end in front of the stage were having a hard time containing themselves.
But her style of humor, making fun of every race, every sexual preference, cannot survive in the era of "that's not funny!"
This is at the core of the Democrats problem.
They used to be a part of the country. Democrats and Republicans used to be two parties with the same goals but different ways to reach the goal.
Now the leftists have no other goal but power.
They can’t be honest about what they want to do.
Because it is harmful to the people who vote.
"he made me wear a mirror on my stomach"
That's some funny shit...
Thanks, Ann for posting this. It sadly reminds me that his routine could not be done today.
It's funny because I used to wonder how the Victorian age of prudishness came about. And now I see that it is a process that sneaks up on you. I also see it doesn't mean people really bought into it then, either.
did she ever make fun of anyone on the Left?
If by Left you mean blacks, Jews, Asians et al, the answer is yes: Her act was an hour of unreconstructed racial humor.
Not to mention the swishiest of gay jokes directed at various audience members. It was the single most politically incorrect thing I've ever seen, apart from the Nuremberg Rally.
In my lifetime I've gone from consuming black market cannabis to legal cannabis. Now it appears I may go from consuming legal comedy to going underground to some 'illegal' comedy club to see the 'real stuff' or will have go to the dark web.
MayBee: what you said. Feminism has been prudish and all about 'eek a penis' for some time.
she said comedy “doesn’t feel right anymore” and she’s glad to leave the jokes to other comics.
Which translates into LL was starting to suspect that one day the Lefty Thought Police were going to come knocking on her door for her to begin her trip to the Obscurity & Unemployment Gulag.
God: "take my bride....please!"
Like a Congressman retiring "to spend more time with family," Lampanelli paraphrases Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith: My appeal has become more selective. -wsw
Those were the days... before The Era of That's Not Funny kicked in.
It's only Not Funny if liberals are being made fun of...you can still make fun of Trump and conservatives. (You can also punch them in the face, because Nazis.)
Here’s Lisa Lampanelli’s 2005 special Take It Like A Man. You should watch it now, since Google may soon declare this brand of humor hate speech.
Earnest Prole said...
did she ever make fun of anyone on the Left?
If by Left you mean blacks, Jews, Asians et al, the answer is yes: Her act was an hour of unreconstructed racial humor.
11/4/18, 12:15 PM
No, because blacks Jews Asians et al are not necessarily on the left. Did she ever pick out Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown, Noam Chomsky, anybody like that, and light them up?
Did she ever pick out Noam Chomsky, anybody like that, and light them up?
"You know, Lisa, your politically incorrect act is pretty funny, but I'm just not hearing enough Noam Chomsky jokes."
"We live in a post-joke world."--SJW on FAMILY GUY.
@Althouse, thanks for clarifying who Lisa Lampanelli is. Frankly, I didn't know. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn what she does with her life from this point forward.
It was only a matter of time. Her act was a throwback (but that's no reason to make it disappear). Her act was loved and consumed with abandon by man people. It was rude, crude and vicious and it played on numerous, tired stereotypes, but it was also viewed -- and rightfully so-- as "dangerous." It was, ultimately, harmless. But its rudeness held a certain appeal for many. Rudeness is a big seller. We need a certain number of people who can do "rude." Her shows were attended, by all reports, by a diverse crowd, so they weren't Klan meetings or sponsored by Storm Front. It could be argued that the people who sought her out and enjoyed her were more tolerant or open-minded or open to experiment than the people who hounded her out of the business. They all understood that it was all in fun. I believe them, I believe her. Not my cup of tea, though. But it must have been a full-time job for her and her management to continue to explain that it was all a joke. That can be wearying. Low-hanging fruit for the SJW crowd. They should take no joy in this "victory."
Post a Comment