Misogyny at the Oscars

So, I'm real late to this party by internet standards, but I got involved in a facebook argument about this, and this morning I wrote this as a salvo in that argument (don't judge me for getting into facebook arguments, ok? Thanks.) and I decided I might as well just put it up here no matter how late to the party I am. 

Seth MacFarlane at the Oscars did not, as Victoria Brownworth and a lot of other people claim, “rip the status quo a new one.” And if you think he did, you probably grossly misunderstand both the status quo and the concept of satire. Ironic hipster racism is still racist, and ironic juvenile misogyny is still misogynist. Let’s start with the boob song, since that’s pretty simple to understand as it’s really just straight-up misogyny, as opposed to discussing dear Miss Wallis, which is a horrific intersection of racism and misogyny.

So, like, Seth MacFarlane sang a song about seeing women’s boobs, and you want me to believe that his point was that we strip female nudity of context and simply gawk at it. How did he do this? He did this by… stripping female nudity of context and simply gawking at it. Oh, wow, that’s some real clever satire there. I mean, the edginess of taking the status quo and just… regurgitating it. God, someone please explain to me how edgy and awesome it is to use the status quo on a billion-person platform, and how it’s so subversive to the status quo. My poor, feeble female brain must just be not getting it.

No, really, I’m waiting. Explain to me how vomiting up the status quo of a misogynist culture that objectifies women’s breasts regardless of context is subverted by replaying the trope of objectifying women’s breasts regardless of context.

See, the thing about satire is that it’s supposed to do that: subvert the status quo. So, whatever MacFarlane did, it wasn’t satire.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the boob song, for two very distinct reasons. One was the inclusion of Jennifer Lawrence.  Setting up a dichotomy, a competition, if you will, between those whorish actresses that have done nudity and those awesome pure ones that haven’t is part of misogyny 101: divide and conquer. Get women to police their own behavior, and each other’s behavior. Get them to think they are each other’s enemies. Then they’re a lot easier to exploit.

BUT THE REALLY BIG PROBLEM WAS SCARLETT JOHANSSON. The inclusion of Ms. Johansson in that  song basically wipes out any attempt at saying MacFarlane had any sort of point about double standards for women in film. Wanna know why? Scarlett Johansson has NEVER (I repeat, never!!) bared her breasts on film. She’s never done it. MacFarlane’s seen her breasts because someone hacked into her phone and stole and then published private pictures she took of herself.

Please, go ahead and tell me that she shouldn’t have taken the pictures. That the existence of the pictures means she’s a slut that deserves whatever happens to her. I will laugh and then I will put you on my private mental list of probable rapists, because if you can honestly say with a straight face that anyone deserves such an invasion, you probably think women that wear mini skirts deserve whatever happens to them, too.

But let’s talk about Quvenzhane Wallis now. MacFarlane turned a nine-year-old black girl into a sexualized object to make a joke about George Clooney’s dating habits. I don’t give a fuck what you think about her, or Clooney, or his dating habits. HE TURNED A NINE YEAR OLD GIRL INTO A SEXUALIZED OBJECT TO MAKE A JOKE ABOUT A VERY POWERFUL MAN. Worse than that. He turned a nine-year-old black girl into a sexualized object to make a joke about a white man.

Is there a better way to telegraph to someone that they don’t matter? Again, honestly asking. We’re going to just completely ignore the fact that you’re a person and reduce you to a thing so we can make a joke about this other guy, who is immensely powerful and is the one we actually care about. You, you mean nothing. You’re less than nothing. You, nine-year-old black girl, can be ridiculed globally for all we care. That white man over there is the one that matters.

The thing about comedy is, if you’re going to claim it’s socially conscious and progressive and edgy and groundbreaking, is that it has to reverse power relationships. MacFarlane objectified the person who was probably the most powerless in that entire theater to make a “joke” (and I use that term loosely) about one of the most powerful. Miss Wallis is going to spend her entire life being turned into an object and being sexualized so that *someone else* can do something to her, both in real life and on film. MacFarlane does not get “props” for kicking off that process way ahead of schedule and on such a big stage.

You can claim all you want that everything MacFarlane has done has been done before by other people. What you don’t get to do is follow that up with, “So why be mad at him?” Because that IS, in and of itself, why people that don’t like to see other people objectified are mad at him. We’re mad at him in EXACTLY the same way we’re mad at ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE that do it. Because whether you’re the first person to do it or the last, doing it at all is still wrong.  It’s not funny. It’s not cute. And the fact that he was using jokes that have all been made before by other people in other ways proves that MacFarlane is not edgy or original or even a good comedian.

He’s not satirical. He’s not subverting the status quo. He’s supporting it. As evidenced by the fact that all those tired, clichéd, trite jokes resulted in a big boost in the target demographic: 18-45 year old white men. The ones with the power. The ones that "really matter."