Supporting Audra's joke about being raped on-stage.

On ATC there is discussion that Audra's joke was "really not an okay thing to say" and someone even described her to be a "mess".

Hopefully fulfilling a stereotype that BWW posters are younger and more laid back, I'm starting a parallel thread that suggests her joke was not inappropriate but a funny, intelligent (humour is correlated with intelligence) and down-to-earth way to make light of the character she won her 5th Tony Award playing. I don't think Audra deserves to be criticised for the joke.

Thoughts?

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Updated On: 6/11/12 at 04:09 AM

Audra's joke was not thoughtless - she made the same joke at the Drama Desk Awards IIRC (I.e. it was pre-planned material that she had already thought of and used previously).

Thank you for your thoughts . You are clearly passionate about the tragedy of rape, even if I think you are directing that passion towards the wrong people and might be seeing meaning (e.g. 'pro-violence') where there is none.

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Updated On: 6/11/12 at 04:39 AM

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She made a comment IN CONTEXT with the role for which she just rec'd an award. How is that a big deal? No one can MENTION rape unless they've truly suffered it?

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No one in this thread so far has spoken out against mentioning rape (not sure why you are 'yelling' the word 'mention', which no one has used as the basis of the discussion here).

In answer to the question "what is the big deal", the big deal is saying that she enjoys being raped by her co-worker every night, which is highly insensitive considering that lots of studies estimate that anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 women are raped in their lifetimes. In an audience of about 2000 people, assuming about half are women, there could easily be over 200 women in that theatre who have been raped, not to mention television viewers, so to imply that it is in any way enjoyable is insensitive. Yes, it is not actually happening in real life, which is why saying that she enjoys working with Philip every night would be a way to recognize her colleague without stirring up pain by making light of something that by definition cannot be enjoyed.

But the response in this thread was to the idea of starting a thread to support a rape joke (again, the intent is spelled out clearly in the title of the thread), and as such, it is entirely premeditated. If Audra actually did plan that joke ahead of time and didn't just make it thoughtlessly due to the pressure of saying something on the spot, that certainly reflects worse on her. But starting a thread to support such a joke intentionally makes the problem worse, and that is what the response was directed towards.

Updated On: 6/11/12 at 05:41 AM

Yes, saying that one enjoys being raped (even jokingly) *is* more offensive than saying one enjoys taking drugs because taking drugs is something that people voluntarily choose to do, at least the first time(s), and often specifically for enjoyment. Being raped is never *by definition* a choice that anyone makes or that can ever be enjoyable (by the very definition of the act).

If we are going to entertain the cancer analogy we'd have to think of a plausible joke that would actually be analogous to Audra's. If Dick Latessa won a Tony award for THE LYONS and in his speech thanked Linda Lavin jokingly for "Watching him die of cancer"* every night, I think it would be fine.

* (I haven't seen the play but I assume this happens)

To take another analogy, if Molly Ranson won an award for her performance in CARRIE and said jokingly "I have enjoyed being abused by Marin Mazzie every night", I would see no problem and laugh at the joke.

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Updated On: 6/11/12 at 05:58 AM

dramamama, It has already been pointed out to you once, so i'm not sure if you are doing the straw-man argument technique on purpose, or if you really don't see the difference between *mentioning* something and saying that something that is a criminal and non-consensual act is enjoyable. No one here (again, repeating) has said that it is not okay to mention rape. So both posts where you say there is nothing wrong with mentioning it are both outside of the original scope of discussion, as no one else has said that there is anything wrong with mentioning it.

As previously mentioned, the issue is with saying that one enjoys something that by definition cannot be enjoyed and that in fact traumatizes people who go through it for the rest of their lives. Saying she enjoyed working with Philip every night would be a way to acknowledge her co-worker and their comfortable relationship without adding to the suffering of millions of survivors who were listening to her speech (assuming millions of viewers on television, approximately half women, and approximately 1/4 of those survivors according to the low end of studies).

Here go the PC police..

1. I would hardly call that a "joke". If you think that was a JOKE, you have your own issues.
2. She was NOT talking about being RAPED. She was remarking about an acting moment in the show, where her character is raped, and that she enjoys working with said actor in the context of listing several costars and how they (as said characters) interact in the show. No more. No less. Since her character is raped, should she say how she loathes working said actor because his character rapes her character? Would THAT be acceptable?

Note to all actors and future winners - you must never speak of enjoying stage time with an actor portraying a character that commits a violent crime against the character you play. Apparently that constitutes a JOKE.

If I HAD to interpret her remark as a joke, I think it should be fairly plainly obvious that she is making comment on how she manages to love sharing the stage with a fellow actor when they depict something horrible.

Jan Maxwell's fans are being too sensitive.

Very well put, Henrik. I couldn't agree more.

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I thought that Tyler Perry's comment was in poor taste...WAY more that her comment.

I'm copying my post from a related thread because I thought I was weighing in on this one when I submitted it.

"There was rape down by the harbor, little Susie caused a stir, claiming that she'd been assaulted, wonder what got into her?" Mack the Knife, Threepenny Opera.

Was Brecht (here Blitzstein's translation) misogynistic? Was he dehumanizing? Should rape have been excluded as a theme in a work as comically revelatory about the cruelty and immorality of modern life as Threepenny Opera?

Was rape an inappropriate subject for vaudeville? For serious, but nonetheless comic, musical theater? Or was Brecht transformatively addressing cruelty and immorality, both in the demimonde and in the greater world which encompasses all of us and rationalizes exploitation and victimization of others?

The same can be said about "Evita" which makes light of the Perons and "The Producers" which makes light of Hitler. Hopefully, no one thinks that fascism, oppression and genocide should be trivialized. Why should rape be singled out for exclusion as an appropriate subject matter for theater which pushes us to examine life and criminality in jarring, challenging but revolutionarilly provocative terms through the exercise of humor? Or do the humanities provide for a variety of mind-expanding and illuminating ways to address serious subject matters, some of which push us to the limits of our expectations of what is acceptable?

Provocative theater which chooses musical comedy as its medium sometimes "make light" of provocative subjects. By doing so it far from trivializes or legitimizes evil. To the contrary, it shakes us to the core by forcing us to take a raw and uncompromising look at our world at its most oppressive.