By Hannah Onstad Sarah Cooper is a keen observer of the artifice that passes for knowledge in our culture. As a comedian, she’s provided a besieged country with much needed comic relief by posting Trump parodies which simultaneously expose the vapidness of his speech, his white-male entitlement, and the country's systemic racism and sexism. Plus, she’s managed to do all that and hit more than 10M views on YouTube, while shooting a low-budget production at home—at a time when much of late night television struggles to stay fresh during lockdown. Inspired by and delivered first on TikTok, Cooper lip syncs to Trump speaking, which works viscerally by showing us how we would normally judge Trump’s statements coming out of any other person's mouth. The comic impact of the joke is in the disconnect between hearing the supposed leader of the free world’s bewildering speech while watching a woman deliver the words with false bravado—like he often does. Cooper manages to amplify how ridiculous Trump sounds—something traditional reporting and transcribing has tried and failed to do, instead only amplifying his message. Reporters have written about the challenge of reporting on Trump’s speech and have certainly detailed how linguistically challenged he is. Yet, as a comedian, Cooper helps us hear Trump's incoherence by stripping away his carefully crafted image, supplanting it with her own, and thereby creating just enough distance to force us to scrutinize his words in a fresh new way, exposing them as thoughtless and even dangerous. With a country facing a pandemic, widespread systemic racial injustice, and economic uncertainty, Cooper proves that Trump is as fit for the presidency as a cymbal-banging monkey. Through watching Cooper’s clips, we also learn more about how Trump maintains his illusion of authority—through gesture, posturing, and self-aggrandisement. She emphasizes, rather poetically, how he masks his empty words with the gumption of his delivery. It is through her imitation of this hubris that the facade of Trump’s leadership-schtick cracks and falls away completely. This is not Cooper’s first parody and she has honed a keen eye for calling bullshit in the corporate world, (she is a former Google employee), pairing searing insights with inspired graphics as in 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings which turned into a bestselling book 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. In a recent appearance on The Ellen Show, Cooper said in reference to Trump, “The stuff he gets away with saying, I could never get away with saying.” And she’s right: Trump couldn’t make it past HR in most corporate settings. He’s so isolated from reality, so insular, he hasn’t been able to adapt to the changes and advancements society has made. Increasingly, as more voices speak out—black people, immigrants, women—they are forcing Americans to reckon with how white males often get away with doing things the rest of us could never get away with doing. Trump’s sloppy elocution shows just how devoid of ideas he is, yet his racism and sexism comes through loud and clear. From his creepy comment about being able to assault women to his even more disturbing rumination about being able to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, to his cavalier use of force against peaceful protestors. Without white male entitlement to prop him up on Trump would just be an angry, creepy Grandpa shouting at a television. From the horrific murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and so many others, to the sexual predation of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and scores of Roman Catholic priests, to the wave of young disaffected men who have committed mass murder in their schools with guns, Americans know and have seen “a male-dominated culture that presents dominance as a natural right” as Gloria Steinem famously wrote in her 1999 essay titled “Supremacy Crimes.” The concept of Supremacy Crimes shows what happens when white male entitlement to dominance is not checked. It is only within the context of deep racism and sexism within our country, that we understand how some white males have taken their privilege and used it to dominate and exploit others. It is also within this context where we see how white males have historically protected other white males from consequences for their behavior. Trump simulated this act of dominance while playing a role in his reality TV show, The Apprentice, using symbols and signs to construct his authority over others. Cooper’s parodies of Trump wind up being a meta-reflection on white male power and authority, a simulacrum of the same acting. Through that lens, we see the natural injustice of who we allow to speak, and who we are forced to listen to in our society—blowing the myth of American meritocracy up. Trump has gotten away with being incompetent. We as a country have resigned ourselves to the insult of his speech, partly because we’re primed to do so, having already endured and accepted so much white male entitlement in our culture already. That is, until others speak up. This is why I love Sarah Cooper—her humor is the sharpest political tool we have. She’s earned a mic drop.
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This week, on June 1st specifically, I felt more than just uneasy. I began to feel downright panicked. My son and I surveyed our neighborhood and more businesses have closed or boarded up their windows. Escalation between protesters and some police continued. Helicopters flew overhead each day. COVID-19, already an unprecedented pandemic that has left more than 100,000 Americans dead, is now overshadowed by political unrest. The evidence of the senseless killing of people of color in police custody without immediate justice made the weight of these times practically unbearable. Among the worrisome new developments: - Peaceful protesters were attacked, including dispersed by tear gas and shot at with rubber bullets in D.C. to make way for a pointless photo-op. - The so-called "commander-in-chief" issued a directive to "dominate" the protestors, followed by a call to occupy the "battlespace" from his military top brass. This aggressive and militaristic language is inappropriate to the situation and the constitutionally-protected right to peaceful protest. - Then then the unpopular president called "antifa" is a terrorist organization (antifa literally means "anti-fascist" and the alternative must be what the president embraces...fascism). - Finally, a bill to condemn lynching failed to pass the Senate in 2020 in the United States of America. More than 20 years ago, Gloria Steinem wrote an essay titled "Supremacy Crimes" and what she wrote then is as, if not more, important today. Steinem's essay focuses on the fact that most “impersonal, resentment-driven, mass killings” are committed by white, non-poor, heterosexual men. Steinem's prescient essay gets to the heart of the brutal treatment of people of color, the deaf ears to cries for justice, and the stubborn fact that white males are raised to feel entitled. Writing in 1999, Steinem said: “White males—usually intelligent, middle class, and heterosexual, or trying desperately to appear so—also account for virtually all the serial, sexually motivated, sadistic killings, those characterized by stalking, imprisoning, torturing, and “owning” victims in death.” She names the concept of "supremacy "as the culprit that routinely allows these sorts of crimes to occur stating it's a “drug pushed by a male-dominant culture that presents dominance as a natural right; a racist hierarchy that falsely elevates whiteness; a materialist society that equates superiority with possessions, and a homophobic one that empowers only one form of sexuality.” In the midst of a chaotic week of racial tension, I watched a a video clip of Senator Kamala Harris make an impassioned plea on the Senate floor to finally pass an anti-lynching bill. I later learned that the bill had stalled due to the "private objections of one Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has succeeded for months in preventing it from becoming law." One would be right to wonder how one man could stand in the way of such an obviously needed piece of legislation at a time like this. And one would be further justified in thinking it unreal that an entire nation of protests is not enough to pressure this one white male into doing the right thing. So, what we see is a culture that is producing adult white males who feel justified in carrying out acts of violence against people of color; young white males with guns who have taken their frustration out on unarmed innocent people; and the prevention of laws to stop all this by powerful white men in government. It's enough to drive one crazy from grief and anxiety. The antidote to this may be to turn to the people who's voices do matter but who may go unnoticed in a news cycle such as this—the writers, poets, artists, entertainers, and activists who are addressing our collective nightmare and offering us their work. IN the coming weeks, I hope to feature some of them on this blog. Today, I have been reading a chapbook of just-published poetry titled Shadow Black by Naima Yael Tokunow. Tokunow writes poems that are both searing and sensitive. Reading her words provides a deeper, visceral understanding of what it means to live in a culture that allows supremacy crimes to proliferate. "I always thought my pretty would save me flash dimple and toss hair and not die and maybe it’s shameful to say that out loud because every black body moments before becoming dead was exquisite and they weren’t saved" — Naima Yael Tokunow So far, 2020 has been a time that calls for us all to reflect more deeply on what is happening all around us. Art can help us in this moment. Maybe art cannot solve all of our problems, but it can slow us down and help us process, understand, and make meaning of the onslaught. Shadow Black is one notable work that shows us the way. Shadow Black is published by Frontier Poetry and is available as a free downloadable chapbook from their website. Copyright © 2020 Naima Yael Tokunow Supremacy Crimes was excerpted from: Joy Ritchie. “Available Means.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/available-means/id911935639 |
About this BlogWritten by Hannah Onstad, unless specified otherwise. Occasionally, posts here have been previously published elsewhere, and if so, that is noted at the top. Archives
June 2020
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