Category Archives: dark comedy

dark comedy, Netflix, Standup comedy

Adrienne Iapalucci on Netflix: What Does Dark Comedy Tell Us About Society?

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Adrienne Iapalucci
Adrienne Iapalucci The Dark Queen

In her Netflix special The Dark Queen, Adrienne Iapalucci lives up to her moniker. She begins by saying, “I’m not a good person,” and nothing that follows gives us any reason to doubt this. I have no idea if her misanthropic persona is her true self. But if not, she does a great job of making us believe.

Standup comedy is one of the hardest forms of entertainment to pull off. More so now, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s gotten so mainstream that the competition is fierce, and being original is nearly impossible. Even the best of them start to sound like they’re regurgitating the same stuff after you’ve seen them a few times. The other reason is that it’s hard to know what you can joke about nowadays. The amount of backlash comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais get for their un-PC jokes probably discourages others from stepping out of line. That is not remotely the case with Adrienne Iapalucci.

Nothing is off limits it seems, as she jokes about 9/11, Muslims, disliking Puerto Ricans, and victims of school shootings, for starters. Nor does she do it playfully, like Russell Peters who specializes in roasting every ethnic group. She unleashes one inappropriate line after another without any backpedaling.

Unlike left-leaning bluish comics like Sarah Silverman or right-leaning ones like Gervais, Iapalucci seems like an equal opportunity misanthrope. I can appreciate this about her, as she doesn’t push any particular agenda, apart from pure nihilism.

I find her more entertaining than your usual standup routine, but then I’ve never been the genre’s biggest fan. At least you never know what kind of unhinged, inappropriate thing she’ll say next. Her deadpan delivery adds to the effect.

Maybe cancel culture is already moving into the rearview mirror. People are finally realizing the futility of trying to quell opinions (and jokes) that offend them. After all, the controversy attached to Chapelle and Gervais has profited more than harmed them. They’ve turned their most objectionable jokes, regarding trans people, into branding tools. I’m not sure if that makes them funnier -I’d put them both into the large category of comics whose material has gotten overly predictable. But attempts to “cancel” them have surely failed.

I searched for reviews of the Dark Queen show and didn’t see much in the way of outrage or demands to silence her. I’m talking about “professional” reviews now as I didn’t scour the web for every Rotten Tomatoes review. It seems to be sinking in that calling attention to a message you don’t like is only fueling it.

What Does the Dark Queen Say About Us?

I’m a little torn when contemplating the societal implications of someone like Iapalucci, along with Anthony Jeselnik and others whose style of comedy is pure darkness. On the one hand, I wonder if such blatant misanthropy isn’t part of an overall desensitizing, contributing to a world where empathy is an anachronism and utter self-centeredness is the norm.

On the other hand, her utter disregard for limits serves to undermine the overly sensitive tendencies of cancel culture. As Kat Timpf points out in You Can’t Joke About That, society has become unsettlingly humorless in recent years.

In a better, saner world, comics like Adrienne Iapalucci wouldn’t exist, at least in their current form. The conditions and atrocities they chuckle at shouldn’t be part of reality. But given that they are, we have a choice. We can approach them with grim seriousness, allowing only pundits, experts, and leaders to address them. Or we can let the dark comics do their thing, for better and for worse.

Broadly speaking, Adrienne Iapalucci is part of a lineage that includes Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and George Carlin (to name a few). They often cross the boundary into the offensive and tasteless. But they also hold a mirror to society, revealing uncomfortable truths that are present whether we look at them or not.

 

 

dark comedy, Netflix

When You Finish Saving the World: Gen Z vs Boomer

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Movie poster: When You Finish Saving the World

When You Finish Saving the World, Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut and based on his own novel, stars Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard as a mother and son with serious social and communication issues, both with each other and the rest of the world. This is an insightful, sometimes funny, sometimes cringeworthy depiction of a conflict between two generational stereotypes: self-satisfied, affluent liberal Boomers and self-absorbed Gen-Zers who are more comfortable interacting online than in person. To its credit, the film doesn’t really take a side as both generations are lampooned.

Julianne Moore plays Evelyn, the director of a woman’s shelter in Indiana. Her teenage son, Ziggy, spends all his free time live streaming a music program that is broadcast globally to, he can’t stop announcing to everyone, 20,000 fans. Jay O. Sanders takes a back seat as Ziggy’s father, whose low key presence mainly consists of drinking wine, retreating with a book to his bedroom, and avoiding conflict as much as possible.

Ziggy is the kind of part Eisenberg himself would have played 20 or so years ago. In fact, this film vaguely evokes a 90s film in which he appeared, The Squid and the Whale, as both depict highly dysfunctional upper middle class families. Wolfhard is very effective in this role as a character who is often less than sympathetic. He’s both awkward and self-centered, oblivious of how off-putting his behavior often is.

Despite his apparent popularity online, Ziggy is socially awkward with his peers. He becomes infatuated with Lila (Alisha Boe), a politically active classmate who reads poetry at a local radical community center. Ziggy makes some ill-planned attempts to impress her. He turns one of her poems about oppressed people into a song and then brags how much money he made online with it. Ziggy suffers from the delusion that social media posturing is the equivalent of making a real difference in the world.

Evelyn is equally uncomfortable to watch. One of Julianne Moore’s strengths is playing characters who try to put on a brave front while barely hanging on emotionally. We saw this recently in May December, where she plays a woman living in the aftermath of a scandal. Here, she is equally off balance at home with Ziggy and her uncommunicative husband and at work, where she awkwardly tries to balance her role as supervisor with her egalitarian values. In one scene, her efforts to get friendly with a receptionist results in the other woman asking if Evelyn is planning to fire her.

Evelyn becomes obsessed with Kyle (Billy Bryk), a teen who goes to school with Ziggy (though the two are not acquainted) who is staying at the shelter with his mother. At first, she appears to take a maternal interest in Kyle, who seems more grounded and easier to communicate with than her own son. However, it starts to go in a queasier direction when she takes him out to dinner and gets giggly and flirty with him.

We need to look beyond Ziggy and his parents to find characters who are relatively normal and well adjusted. We see their foibles through the eyes of Lila and Kyle. The film’s major weakness is probably that the nearly perfect symmetry between Ziggy and Evelyn’s awkward interactions stretches credibility.

What I liked best about the film were some of the casual and offhanded observations. For example, we see Evelyn and Ziggy squeezing into an ostentatiously tiny Smart car, which is parked in one of the neighborhood’s larger and more ornate homes. This perfectly captures Evelyn’s need to be seen as a socially conscious activist while living a comfortable life in an upscale suburb. Then there’s the everyday hostility between Ziggy and his parents, who casually hurl obscenities at one another. This might be shocking to anyone not familiar with the norms of many liberal middle class families. Ziggy is especially territorial about no one disturbing him while he’s vlogging.

When You Finish Saving the World reveals how difficult communication can be in the modern world. . But overall, Eisenberg and the actors do an admirable job of sending up people whose self-importance and grandiosity can overshadow good intentions.

 

dark comedy, Indie film directors, indie films, Netflix

May December -Complex Handling of a Tabloid Topic

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May December deals with the kind of tabloid-type topic you’d expect to see in a Lifetime movie or, going further back,  a TV movie of the week. The kind of movie that superficially condemns the scandalous behavior of its characters while titillating the audience.

Now imagine such a topic as handled by a director known for his insightful and complex approach such as Todd Haynes, and you have May December, a made for Netflix production. To be clear, May December does titillate the audience, but in a way that’s intended to make you feel guilty or at least uncomfortable for this.

May December is loosely based on a real incident of a teacher’s affair with a student.

Gracie (Julianne Moore) is a woman whose life has been defined by a scandal. When she was in her thirties, she seduced a 7th grade kid named Joe (Charles Melton), for which she went to prison. However, after she was released, Grace and Joe married and had kids. As the setting is a respectable suburb in Savannah, Grace’s standing in the community is ambiguous at best.

A strange detail to note is that the family, apparently supported by modest local jobs, somehow live in a grand home that could be called a mansion on a scenic lake. Perhaps Grace inherited it or had family money? Characters living above their realistic means is a common trope of movies and television but doesn’t really fit into  this otherwise more sophisticated film.

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is an actress who is playing Grace in a movie. She arranges a visit, staying in town, so she can get to know the family and learn more about the character.

May December is all about the troubled and ambivalent interactions between characters, especially between Grace and Elizabeth but also between Grace and Joe and between Joe and Elizabeth. There are also the nuanced interactions between Grace and Joe and their just-grown children.

In some ways, Grace still treats Joe like a child, even while insisting he was “in charge” in their earlier relationship. Considering his reticent and basically passive nature, this interpretation seems unlikely. Joe retreats to his hobby of raising monarch butterflies, which no doubt has symbolism as he seems trapped in a situation he fell into while still a child.

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is a strange case herself. She seems more fascinated and turned on than shocked by Grace and Joe’s history. In one scene, she visits the back room of the pet shop where the couple used to meet and re-enacts a seduction scene.

As with most Todd Haynes films, May December doesn’t answer many questions definitively. All of the characters are troubled and we can’t necessarily trust any of their motives. Elizabeth may have designs on Joe, but to what end remains unclear. Is she an actor who is obsessively dedicated to her craft or more of a voyeur reveling in other people’s scandals? Or perhaps the film is suggesting that these two are not mutually exclusive.

Grace may have been sexually assaulted by a brother growing up, which may partly explain her own behavior. She denies this ever happened and we are left wondering.

The film is alternately dramatic, tragic, and comedic, not giving us a chance to fall into a predictable mood. Haynes directed one of my favorite films, Safe, which came out in 1995 and also starred Julianne Moore.  Like May December, it deals with some heavy issues -in this case, health and how the world can make some people ill- in a disturbing and ambiguous manner. May December is a similarly complex exploration of issues that tend to get oversimplified.

See my review of Safe

1970s films, dark comedy

The Joker as Dark Trickster

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Joker (2019), directed by Todd Phillips, is an example of how a movie can be highly flawed and highly derivative in some ways and still be significant. Though the story is uneven and ambiguous and the Joker himself (Joaquin Phoenix) isn’t a very coherently constructed character, the film manages to tap into the nihilistic zeitgeist of contemporary life. The strong reactions it provoked are proof of this.

A more “serious” filmmaker than Phillips, best known for popular comedies such as The Hangover (parts one, two, and three, sigh), might have created a more fully developed joker -perhaps one who was more politically correct and sympathetic or, conversely, one who was a pure villain. Phillips was content to let the character stray all over the map and leave us with a perplexing, ambiguous character and film that may be, after all, appropriate for the Joker.

The Joker’s Heavy-handed “Influences”

I was never a huge fan of Batman (or any comic/superhero franchise) and missed most of the movies. I do have childhood recollections of the original TV series, though, so references such as Gotham City and Bruce Wayne are familiar enough to me. That said, Phillips’ Joker borrows (or outright steals) more from 70s Scorcese films than from the Batman universe.

Set approximately in a gritty 1970s Gotham City, which is essentially New York, many scenes depict a Times Square-like neighborhood that immediately evokes Taxi Driver. The Joker, née Arthur Fleck, does have similarities with Travis Bickle after he transforms from an anonymous misfit loner to a violent vigilante. Yet he’s equally Rupert Pupkin, from The King of Comedy, another entry in the Scorcese-DeNiro partnership, the character who becomes obsessed with and eventually kidnaps a TV host played by Jerry Lewis.

In Joker, Robert DeNiro is the one playing the TV host, Murray Franklin (who evokes a TV radio host named Joe Franklin). Fleck, like Pupkin, has imaginary conversations with the TV host and visualizes himself as a star.

There’s a dubious assumption that if you blatantly refer to other works while winking at the audience, you’re doing a high-minded tribute rather than simply copying. The fact that DeNiro gave his blessing to the project with his participation doesn’t say much, as many of his later roles can be seen as essentially cashing out on his earlier, far greater roles.

Joker, of course, “borrows” from other films as well, especially A Clockwork Orange, which gave us one of the first truly disturbing depictions of modern society collapsing into violent chaos.

The Joker as Trickster

The Joker is part of an archetype that transcends modern cinema, comic books, and Batman. As a playing card, the Joker is wild, a close relation to The Fool in the tarot, also known as the Jester, a character who dates back at least as far as the Middle Ages in Western culture, and quite a bit further in others. Tricksters such as Loki in Northern Europe, Hermes in Greece, and Coyote in North America have always played an important role in mythology and storytelling.

Tricksters are, by nature, morally ambiguous. They can be fun and playful, but also deceptive and self-serving. It’s revealing just how dark so many tricksters have become in our modern myths. Aside from the Joker, the evil clown, a staple of so many horror movies, is probably the best example.

Modern audiences are split on how they respond to these dark tricksters. In an age when faith in traditional institutions such as government, religion, and even science is collapsing, the anarchic spirit of the trickster is appealing. Yet an amoral clown like the Joker can easily lead to random violence and total societal collapse.

Joker Triggers Many Critics

Joker triggered strong responses from many critics, well beyond the usual elitist vitriol often unleashed on popular movies.  For example, the New Yorker published a near-hysterical review that missed the mark in multiple ways, choosing to fixate on racial issues.

Somehow Fleck being assaulted by a multiethnic group of kids while waving a store’s sale sign equates to the infamous Central Park Five case and his being assaulted by a group of wealthy white guys on the subway makes him Bernie Goetz.

I can almost suspect that Phillips put in a few racially charged scenes to provoke such oversimplified reactions from old-school liberals. It’s easy enough to shove the Joker into the neat category of an angry white male, along the lines of Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down. But Joker is considerably more complex. In a tense urban environment, it’s not shocking that an unstable person such as Fleck would be triggered by racially charged incidents. But the film is clearly dealing with wider issues concerning society, mental illness, anomie, and violence.

Does Joker Celebrate Nihilism?

“I don’t believe in anything.” -Arthur Fleck in Joker.

Perhaps the central question about Joker is whether the film is a celebration of Fleck’s nihilism or a cautionary tale. It can be interpreted either way. Fleck is portrayed as a troubled man suffering from mental health issues. The system clearly lets him down when the program that provides him with medication is shut down. This, indeed, is when he starts to unravel. On the other hand, Fleck can just as easily be seen as a sociopath who doesn’t take responsibility for his own actions.

The final scenes, showing mobs of rioters celebrating the Joker as their antihero reminded me of another 70s movie, the cult classic The Warriors, in which street gangs took over the city.

While Joker is by no means a great film, it’s worth seeing and discussing because it portrays a character who is, unfortunately, relatable in a society where alienation and mental illness run rampant (as Taxi Driver was 50 years earlier).

Joker is also a kind of Rorschach test, revealing your attitudes towards complex issues like social unrest, race, anarchy, freedom, and creative expression. Your reactions may very well change over time and even through different scenes of the film. This makes Joker a film that’s always interesting despite its flaws.

 

 

dark comedy, Netflix

Beef: Road Rage Leads to Chaos

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Beef, a 10-part miniseries on Netflix, was created by Lee Sung Jin, with Jin along with Hikari, and Jake Schreier alternately directing. Beef has been called a dark comedy but it would probably be more accurate to call it a drama-thriller with some dark humor in the background. It also has elements of Greek tragedy and soap operas.

The premise is deceptively simple, leading to absurdly complex consequences. Set in Laguna Beach and nearby areas of Orange County,  the events are sparked by a seemingly trivial road rage incident.  Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) is a struggling contractor who is alternately depressed (to the point of contemplating suicide) and ambitious, while his soon-to-be nemesis Amy Lau (Ali Wong) is an affluent entrepreneur, wife, and mother who is feeling the pressures of balancing her increasingly stressful responsibilities.

Danny follows Amy home and later tricks his way into her house only to urinate on the bathroom floor. Amy retaliates by giving Danny’s contracting business a series of one-star reviews on Yelp. She escalates things further by catfishing Danny’s brother Paul (Young Mazino). Danny and Amy collide when both are at emotional breaking points. The road rage incident proves to be the last straw for both, as they cast the other as the cause of all the misery in their lives.

Danny and Amy get caught up in forces that seem beyond their control. While neither displays exemplary or even rational behavior, neither is purely evil or sociopathic. Danny is committed to helping his parents move into a new house. While his relationship with his brother is tense and fraught with mutual hostility and envy, he still feels responsible for his brother and experiences guilt over past betrayals. Amy, meanwhile, loves her daughter above everything and also feels guilt when she doesn’t live up to her own standards as a wife or mother.

Other characters contribute to Danny and Amy’s malaise. The closest thing to a pure villain is Danny’s cousin Issac (David Choe), an ex-con perpetually hatching schemes that range from marginally legal to blatant felonies. Amy’s boss Jordan (Maria Bello) is possibly the closest thing to a pure stereotype in the show, an affluent and thoughtlessly condescending entrepreneur/art collector/socialite who reveals the everyday subtle racism Asian Americans often face. Edwin (Justin Min) is a preacher at a Korean evangelical church with passive-aggressive tendencies.

What really drives the series of catastrophes are the seemingly small bad decisions both Danny and Amy constantly continually make. Both act out of rage and despair against their better judgment.

While Beef features a mostly Asian-American cast and cultural themes are certainly present, the story is really much more about the stress of modern life with some heavy doses of class conflict thrown in. For an insightful look at some of the details on Asian culture that most people will miss, see Asian Rage in Netflix’s Beef, by YJ Jun.

If there’s any single message to take away from Beef, it’s that every action can set off unpredictable, and possibly horrific, reactions in other people and the wider world. It has some elements in common with the 2004 Academy Award-winning film Crash, though Beef is far more insightful and nuanced than that heavy-handed and mostly overrated movie.

Beef is one of the best shows Netflix has shown recently. It’s an appropriately bizarre reflection of a world where everyone seems on the brink of disaster.