Is Rape Too Real to Be Funny?

So what exactly does a comedy show about rape look like?

This year, local comedians Emma Cooper and Heather Jordan Ross managed to repeatedly sell out East Vancouver venues for their production Rape is Real and Everywhere, featuring comedians who are also survivors of sexual assault. If that sounds unlikely, you can be sure that there are a wealth of locals, like myself, who were excited at the prospect of going to a comedy show where we wouldn’t have to cringe at self-excusing comics deploying oppressive stereotypes for clichéd punchlines.

Rape is Real was just as I had hoped it would be: actually funny. The show is balance between jokes that “punched up,” reflections on the culture and legal system that allow so many survivors to go without justice, and personal stories that were nothing except brutally honest. For some of the comics, the difficulty of telling these stories was palpable, but the crowd provided claps, cheers, and kind words to help everyone through their sets. If being part of a supportive atmosphere contributed in any way to personal healing, then it was well worth the ticket price.

But can comedy make an impact as a political tool? Comedy in comparison to other kinds of storytelling is an insider/outsider artform. Punchlines need to be relatable to land.

It was no surprise that the vast majority of hands in the audience went up when Cooper asked at the beginning of the show if anyone was a survivor of sexual assault (and that no hands went up when she asked who in the audience was a rapist). The overwhelming response in Vancouver is telling us something about this specific conversation. Can many comedy shows with such a “narrow” focus take off so quickly?

In an interview with VICE, Ross says “I have this joke where I say: “I always hear from guys, they say, ‘If you can tell a murder joke, you can tell a rape joke, right?’ And my response is always, ‘I don’t know if one in three men in this room have been—murdered.’ I think we’re talking about something a little different here.”

Rape is Real and Everywhere has kicked off its national tour, and is by now heading east from Ottawa. The show will include local comics from each stop, all with stories of their own to tell and laugh about. Finding and knowing that this community exists, has similar struggles, and is willing to talk about it, can make all the difference.

-Sydney from The Media Democracy Project

What Good is a Feel-Good Narrative When it’s Up Against the Mining Industry?

What roles can different kinds of media take in fueling the public outrage necessary to create change?

It’s DOXA season again, and included in the documentary film festival’s selection this year is We Call Them Intruders, by local filmmakers Tamara Herman and Susi Porter-Bopp. The film was an entry point into the terrifying global impact of Canadian mines, as well as the actions Canadians can take to improve the situation.

We Call Them Intruders smartly steers away from discussing the implications of consumer demand, and also largely ignores human rights violations by Canadian mines on workers. Instead the film focuses on the economic impact the mines have had on the communities they are situated in. The filmmakers traveled to communities in Tanzania and Zambia in which many persons’ livelihoods have been displaced by Canadian mines. Meanwhile, little of the money made on their land has stayed in these countries to benefit its citizens, despite the continued promises made by these mines and local governments.

It’s a stripped down but focused version of global mineral extraction, digestible for younger students, but also fitting for Herman and Porter-Bopp’s distribution plans. The film speaks in simple but direct terms to the place of Canadian investments, pensions, and taxes in supporting the mining industry.

Their plan is to target schools and pension and investment groups with the film, which calls for divestment and local activism. We Call Them Intruders avoids placing blame on individuals, with the exception of the most obvious of Canadian villains, Stephen Harper. The filmmakers were quick to note in a Q&A following the screening that they did not expect our current government to do any better in promoting socially conscious mining practices internationally.

This was a stark contrast to the framework placed around mining in Dr. Alessandra Santos’ (from UBC’s Dept of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies) lecture for The Vancouver Institute for Social Research, called “Dust, Media, and Invisible Materiality.” In Dr. Santos’ lecture, dust was the invisible evidence of our global production system, living in the bodies of mining labourers, and coming off of the technology in our pockets. In one of her examples, Dr. Santos uses the video game Phone Story, made for Apple and Android, in which you play a manager at a mine with the goal of preventing the suicides of labourers.

Santos asked the audience if that made the game makers hypocrites? Using a medium which utilizes the minerals mined by companies known for these kinds of working conditions? I’d wager that the game makers intended on exposing potential players to be hypocrites. The weapon employed here is pure shock, and can have just the opposite effect of We Call Them Intruders. Rather than feel empowered, it was hard to listen to the lecture and not feel paralysed.

For a narrative to make an impact on global social responsibility, we have to see the connections between our actions and their consequences in both the place we occupy in promoting and continuing global industries that degrade human and ecological rights, and the activism we can do to improve or stop these industries. But where exactly is the place to hold individuals accountable? What space do we leave for the discomfort caused by our complacency in participating in destructive global markets? How can media give us the outrage necessary to make change?

DOXA continues at different venues in Vancouver until May 15^th. You can catch the remaining lectures in the Vancouver Institute for Social Research’s Spring Term, themed “Fantasy, Ideology, Media,” on Monday evenings at 7 PM at Or Gallery.

-Sydney from The Media Democracy Project