I’ll be honest again: I’m not a Jim Breuer fan. He’s one of those comics who just rubs me the wrong way. A big part of it is his hyper-masculine “suck it up, sensitive snowflake” act. My common thought in watching him is “Maybe you should try to not be such an asshole.”
Insensitivity
His insensitivity is on display in his interview with Ali Lerman of OCWeekly.com (7/17/2017); in fact, she joins in – it’s a hate-fest for a moment or two. But what should interest us here is what they imply about the power of words. Here’s the first (of two) relevant bits.
I know that you try not to curse on stage anymore but, what is your favorite curse word?
Oh f-bomb! When I’m really going at it I drop the f-bomb a lot! I’m also very politically incorrect when it comes to using certain words and it really drives me nuts because they’re all different terms now. People get so sensitive now. But when I’m really angry, I’ll drop a couple words. Thank god people know me though so they’re not all, oh my god he’s this phobic and that phobic. [Laughs.] No. It’s not what you want to define it as.
Yeah the world is batshit. I hate that it was fine to say certain words back in the day and if you use them now, you’re a monster. Like retard. Everything is retarded and I’m not talking special needs.
Yes!! That’s exactly one of the words I’m talking about! I’ve been so angry and yelled out, are you retarded? Or, god, that’s so retarded! Now they have rallies and conversations about what you should say. Please.
The best thing about rallies to me is that they’re marching against something “offensive” while carrying signs that are offensive.
[Laughs.] Exactly. It’s really all so stupid.
This discussion is about the power of words. First off, what counts as taboo? Is a “politically incorrect” word on the same level as a “curse word”? Breuer and Lerman seem to think they’re not. Breuer won’t even say the “F-bomb,” but neither of them has a problem with dropping the “R-bomb.” I agree that the two words are not on par, but for quite different reasons.
The power of words
I’ve argued before about the power of words as coming from their ability to change over time. As I said,
[W]hy does the [N-]word necessarily carry baggage at all? Shouldn’t we be looking at the usage?
Perhaps this is a deeper discussion than we need to get into here, and I and many others have addressed some of it elsewhere (for perhaps the best example, see Judith Butler, Excitable Speech, 1997). Suffice it to say that I’m one of those who argues that we give words power, and making a word taboo only increases that power and limits what it can do. In the immortal words of Hermione Granger:
Instead, we should allow the word to change meanings with use; basically that writing the word when talking about it is not the same as calling someone one. However, Michael Eric Dyson might be changing my mind on this, so I’ll not drop it again.
Phobic
Does using a word indicate that you’re “phobic” (homo-, trans-, xeno-)? Only if you use the word to demean people, which is essentially what Breuer’s (and Lerman’s) uses do.
They’re not re-purposing the word, saying “What’s up, my R-bomb?” They’re trying to say, “By using the word, I’m not referencing people with special needs, I’m saying that something or someone is stupid.” But they’re still using the word at someone or something, to demean them. They’re still using it in a way consistent with how it has been used before. Like Bill Maher’s usage of the N-word, they’re using it as the punch line to what becomes a dick joke.
That’s the difference between “F-bombs” and “R-bombs,” we use fuck in a number of different and creative ways, and not every joke that includes the word fuck is a dick joke or an attack – Gerald Nachman characterizes Lenny Bruce as not trying to show off, but simply using the expressions of his day that came naturally to him. To a lot of people, this puts “fuck” on a different (lesser) level from the “R-bomb.”
Another problem is that the R-word does refer to a specific type of special need. Used clinically, it describes a particular mental condition, and that is the only time it can be safely used without danger of blow-back. Even saying, “I used my extinguisher to retard the fire,” will get you odd looks, though that’s technically correct as well.
It’s this idea of retard as to delay or hold something back that gets translated into stupid. But to use it to describe a person who is acting dumb (or a thing that is idiotic) is to degrade people with special needs.
Your intention doesn’t matter, when that’s how everyone else understands what you just said – or perhaps, just the people who don’t know you well, because that’s a small group. You can’t single-handedly change a word’s meaning; you can’t “Make fetch happen.”
As to this notion that “it was fine to say certain words back in the day and if you use them now, you’re a monster,” I say:
Dueling offenses
In the first part of the discussion, Breuer’s failure to drop an F-bomb, but willingness to drop the R-bomb multiple times shows that he thinks there’s a hierarchy of offense, and the F-bomb is worse. In the latter part of the quote, he doubles down on this idea, essentially saying that people who are offended by ableism, sexism, homophobia and the like, that walk around with signs that say “Fuck Ableists!” are hypocrites.
And maybe they are – the idea that a sex act is used as an attack to some extent supports rape culture. And here’s where Breuer gets me – because he actually does have a line, and it is rape.
Breuer’s sensitive side
Later in the interview, Lerman asks,
When it comes to jokes, is there anything that is not funny to you?
Ummm… rape. It’s not that I cringe but, well, I used to do a thing, which is a true story, with Will Farrell and Tracy Morgan back on SNL. Will would be in costume and stay in character for hours. One of these characters would just degrade me, Tracy, and Colin Quinn. We then went into character as thugs and we took his character, which was this over the top flamboyant artist, and we dragged him out of the office repeatedly and would do fake horrible things to him. [Laughs.] It was very funny. We did it like three times over the night and everyone got in on it. I told that story on stage a couple of times and then I had a woman come up to me, and she didn’t lecture me but, I could tell by the trauma in her eyes that just that word disturbed her. It was that moment I was like, even though we didn’t really do that and it was fake, if I traumatized this one woman at my show with that, it’s not worth for me to do it. I started thinking about how horrifying and dark that is and you know, there are plenty of other areas to find funny.
WTF [a usage that is commonly understood not as an attack, but as surprise!]?!? Breuer dropped a bit he (STILL) thinks is funny – he describes it as “very funny” and laughed at the mere memory of it! – just because of one audience member’s “traumatized” reaction? Is Breuer going soft on us? Shouldn’t he have just told her to “suck it up” and kept telling that joke?
Summary
I’m not generally in favor of banning words. However, I think uses can be more or less problematic, more or less insensitive, and I see both Breuer and Lerman as crossing that line.
But maybe there’s hope for him after all. Maybe his insight about rape jokes will splash over into other areas. Maybe one day he’ll come to see the other people he traumatizes when he drops R-bombs and other “politically incorrect” words. Then again, I won’t hold my breath.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Nachman, Gerald. Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950’s and 1960’s. New York: Pantheon, 2003.
