Illeana Douglas used jokes to escape Moonves.

On the other hand, people like Douglas did not really have time to turn tragedy into comedy: it had to happen on the spot. She must have found the joke right away to appease Moonves and minimize the consequences for herself, and one of the reasons that's interesting is that it's not like that we've been taught to wait that the victims act. As a society, we take a kind of crash course on how harassed or abused humans behave. One of the most interesting and informative things about #MeToo was the reminder that the human response to trauma is unpredictable. Victims of sexual assault can be very creative when they try to mitigate the damage suffered in the moment and after. Gadsby turned his pain into a show in part to regain a sense of control. So, in a way, Douglas.

Needless to say, Douglas's joke did not mitigate the gravity of the incident. Douglas has reported Moonves aggression to friends and even to a lawyer; she was suddenly fired from the show in which she had been thrown, after which her manager and agent fired her too. She must have panicked in the moment, but Douglas, like Gadsby, has told this story many times since in his capacity as an artist (without naming his abuser), and in a version published in a collection entitled Fired! [19659011] She keeps it light. Most. "At first, it was funny," she wrote speaking of the man who pushes his tongue down his throat. "It was like one of those 60s movies where somebody is wooing around a desk and a couch." And it was more like a French film with him on me on the couch, and finally it was like a 70's disaster movie where I shouted a lot and no one heard me. "

This last sentence turns a funny story into something like horror. Yet, the impulse of the artist pushes Douglas to finish the story triumphantly, to reassure the reader that justice has been served:

By the end of the week, I was fully paid, and as everyone had dismissed me, I had to pay no one commission to anyone. The head of the network even called for me to offer a miniseries.

"So you'll do the mini, no? Breasts and weapons, baby! Tits and guns!"

On Friday, my entire team called me to congratulate me, hang me up and re-engage me, what I allowed them to do by an act of good karma.

It is surprising to realize, thanks to Farrow's presentation how much this happy ending hides. "What does it make to have someone holding you back – you can not breathe, you can not move," she told him, released from the pressure of pressure. pack his experience to laugh. "The physicality of it was horrible."

The jokes can be clubs. Gadsby recognizes and explains this by repeatedly explaining that she has created tension in the room that the public yearns for what it relieves. The actress's relationship with the public, she says, is inherently abusive for this reason: her punchlines relieve anxiety that she has also provoked. The connection of humor to power is not exactly obscure. Dictators and aspiring dictators adore this form of "comedy" to its extreme limit: That it is the strong man of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte joking that his soldiers can rape up to three women Hilarious 1982 from Reagan "We start bombing in five minutes" bit, or Texas governor Gregg Abbott slapper about wearing a riddled target around " in case I see reporters ", the point is not that one of those jokes is funny. They are obviously not. The point – to borrow the framing of Gadsby – is that they release the tension that the speaker made: I could destroy you right now, but I will not do it . They borrow the power relationship we associate with jokes without bothering to deliver laughter.

But jokes can also be intensely conciliatory. Douglas was trying the opposite of "dictator humor", which uses fear to make you laugh: She was trying to defuse an intensely scary situation by making a powerful man laugh so that he feels safe enough to destroy his. It's tragic in its own way, and it's something that anatomical Gadsby too: his rejection of the self-destructive humor that characterizes much of his act is based on the idea that his function – coming from at least someone on the sidelines – is not humility. it's humiliation. "

What Farrow documents in his reporting on culture at CBS is a scheme of humiliation. "People's reputation is important, do you understand?" Moonves would have screamed at writer Janet Jones on the phone after forcibly kissing her. "I'm warning you, I'm going to ruin your career, you'll never get a writing job." He seems to have done pretty much the same thing to several other talented women. And what prevented the public from knowing it was precisely this obsession with the male reputation. "These men control our stories and yet they have an ever closer connection to their own humanity, and that does not bother us as long as they retain their valuable reputation," says Gadsby in Nanette and Though she did not think of CBS's head, or Douglas struggling under it, trying to joke and keep their two reputations intact, she could have been. It is easier to be funny from a position of power. Douglas had to use comedy as a defense. She had to be funny right now, with the tongue of a man in her throat, to save her reputation and her career. But comedy was not enough. The comedy will not save us, nor will it use it to minimize the pain. Moonves was not appeased. He reportedly called Douglas home to fire her. The reason he gave? "You make me sick, you're not funny."