How queer comics are making their mark in America
June 8, 2018 8:28 AM Subscribe
Today’s generation of queer comics, having stormed through the doors left ajar by DeLaria and company, are no longer the butt of the joke. And standup comedy, for so long the preserve of straight white men, is being refashioned in their image.
“My generation is the first that’s able to talk about our lives in a way that’s normative but also accessible,” says Cameron Esposito, a standup whose first special, Rape Jokes, debuts later this month. “Ten years ago when I was starting I was always able to be out, but only because a bunch of folks did it before I got there.”
Queer comics have assembled their own Mount Everest of standups, a small coterie of comedians who dared to speak to gay audiences when mainstream comedy still pretended such an audience didn’t exist. “When I watched Joan Rivers for the first time,” says Matteo Lane, a Brooklyn-based standup, “I felt like I was being spoken to. Or when Kathy Griffin said: ‘I watch the award shows with my gays,’ I couldn’t believe someone was speaking about us and we weren’t just part of the joke.”
Queer comics have assembled their own Mount Everest of standups, a small coterie of comedians who dared to speak to gay audiences when mainstream comedy still pretended such an audience didn’t exist. “When I watched Joan Rivers for the first time,” says Matteo Lane, a Brooklyn-based standup, “I felt like I was being spoken to. Or when Kathy Griffin said: ‘I watch the award shows with my gays,’ I couldn’t believe someone was speaking about us and we weren’t just part of the joke.”
I remember Esposito working her ass off eight or nine years ago. Hell of a comedian.
posted by wotsac at 6:24 PM on June 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by wotsac at 6:24 PM on June 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
You can listen to Cameron Esposito interview Lea DeLaria on Cameron's podcast, Queery. Lots of great talk about how far we have (and haven't) come. Also hilarious, great talk about fisting and favorite dildos and additional open talk about queer lady sex things, so FYI if that's not your thing.
posted by komlord at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by komlord at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
« Older Anthony Bourdain has died. | After you die....surprise! Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
If, today, gay people are less frequently targeted in mainstream comedy, gay sex is still regularly ridiculed, as when Jimmy Kimmel mocked Sean Hannity for being Donald Trump’s “bottom” and Stephen Colbert called the president’s mouth Vladimir Putin’s “cock holster”. Besides being reductive and not terribly funny, the “jokes” prove that lazy, anti-gay material is still low-hanging fruit for plenty of straight comics.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:31 AM on June 8, 2018 [8 favorites]