Annotations
(14/01/2024 à 12:56:21)

« In this paper, we argue that the informalization of the industry enables people with power in the industry, such as promoters, club owners, and privileged comedy workers, the ability to offload an uneven burden of precarious working conditions onto marginalized comedy workers. This additional labour falls to women, queer, transgender, disabled, and/or Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) comedians, and exacerbates their already felt experiences of harassment and violence. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 2)

« Through our research we have found that gender plays a significant role in increasing the risk of discrimination, harassment, and violence. We know through existing research that gender plays a key role in determining who gets stage time, thereby deepening comedy workers’ experiences of precarity and marginalization (Jeffries, 2017). For instance, it is common practice for line ups to be solely white, straight, cisgender men with a “diversity spot” saved for one marginalized comedian (Kachel and Sheaffer n.d.).3 Marginalized comedians are often required to perform in unwelcoming spaces (Trusolino 2022). Anasimone George, a Toronto-based comedian and producer, says this results in comedy workers performing in spaces where jokes are misogynist, racist, or homophobic, making performers and audience members uncomfortable, offended, or hurt by this material (Hillary Di Menna 2018). » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 4)

« We understand this increased exposure to damaging content from their coworkers as an additional form of precarity directly related to experiences of violence and harassment. For example, in an article for Vulture comedian and writer Guy Branum (2017) showed how he and other marginalized comedians are “always just waiting for one of the guys—and it is always a guy—to pay attention and help you out” making harassment and violence “one of the many tools heterosexual men use to remind other comics that our status is provisional.” » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 4)

« Although all comedians are beholden to reputation-based booking practice, comedy workers who are not white, straight, cisgender men face added risk because, as Brooklyn-based comedian Mo Fry Pasic speaking to the online magazine The Cut (Emily McCombs 2016) said, they must consider “staying in good with the right people, even if the right people are abusers.” Recognizing precarity in this way extends our understanding of precarious workers’ material conditions to the body » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, page 4-5)

« Women, queer, transgender, disabled, and/or BIPOC comedy workers, already face structural violence because of their race, sexuality, and/or gender and are then additionally vulnerable to precarity because of the nature of comedy work and the disorganization of their workplace. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 5)

« In addition to performing for low to no wages, comedy workers who experience violence and harassment in the industry double their workload to perform (unpaid) labour in order to generate safe and inclusive workplaces. In the comedy industry, those management strategies that are typically performed by human resource (HR) departments or unions fall onto the shoulders of comedians. Accountabilities such as hearing worker’s grievances, supporting equity in the workplace through booking diverse line ups, and sharing information about—and holding accountable—abusers in the industry. We turn to the figure of the double killjoy comedian to understand, and contextualize, this work and its many risks » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 5)

« There have been some moves to create institutional support for comedians, such as comedy schools who have hired HR staff and external therapists, but much of the “human resources” labour is still completed by unpaid communities of comedy workers (Katie J.M Baker 2016). Angela McRobbie (2014, 522) argues that uneven institutional supports in the workplace are replaced with an oft-unspoken expectation that the worker themselves would find “individual solutions to systemic problems.” The outcome of this arrangement is that the “vocabulary of the workplace is absent and therefore so are collective organizing of workplace rights” (522). » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 6)

« When employers in the comedy industry choose not to manage the workplace as a legitimate place of work, the violence, harassment, and precarity that comedy workers experience is perpetuated through the social structure of their workplace. This ongoing illegitimacy is central to toxic gatekeeping that capitalizes on the lack of workplace protections to be able to centre the success of white, straight, cisgender men (Becky Mansfield et al. 2019). » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 6)

« When enmeshed with toxic masculinities—that exist alongside white supremacy, settler colonialism, and the hetero-patriarchy—these forms of precarity not only create unsafe working conditions, but also maintain and strengthen hierarchies in the industry all but guaranteeing an unsafe work environment for comedy workers who experience ongoing violence and exclusion. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 6)

« This ensures that comedy workers who choose to self-advocate risk being blacklisted or losing their careers. Chicago-based comedian, Kristin Clifford, described that in addition to sexual assaulted being traumatic, the way that victims are treated within the industry coupled with anxiety about the impact to one’s career, “it’s not hard to see why many victims might be afraid to speak up” (Amy Zimmerman 2016). » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 6)

« However, when these workers call out the harm and oppressive conditions they experience, they are read as being negative and “ruining comedy,” thereby becoming, what we call, the killjoy comedian. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 6)

« The killjoy comedian mitigates workplace violence by refusing to maintain joy through silence and isolation, instead enacting activities that invite other affected comedy workers to join DIY networks of support and care. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 6)

« Other comedy workers have cited Stelling and Pauroso’s experience as a catalyst to actively organize their workplaces via whisper networks on private Facebook groups (Ed Cara 2017). Because the comedy worker’s workplace is populated mostly with white, cisgender men, comedy workers look to these groups to be able to share experiences of violence, including sexual harassment, assault, and abuse-related exclusion in a safe and supportive space. While not initially meant as a space to address issues of abuse in their industry, the Facebook groups, their moderators, and other women comedians took on the role of care workers warning other women of the abuse they had experienced. The founder of the Upright Citizen Brigade’s (UCB)—an improvisational and sketch comedy theatre and training centre—all-women Facebook group, Gina Ippolito, recognized that these private Facebook groups are not necessarily the ideal place to talk about rape, harassment, and abuse because they might attract spurious comments against survivors. Nonetheless, as comedy workers have little access to resources in the workplace to address these issues, the groups were the best resource they had (Baker 2016). » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 8)

« Although pre-dating Me Too, backlash to this form of online activism similarly had commentators denouncing the outing of abusers on social media as a “witch hunt” (Baker 2016) and a form of unsubstantiated vigilante justice. This DIY workplace organizing strategy follows a long line of DIY activism in feminist movements (Ian Moran 2010). These practices encouraged primarily white, cisgender women to forgo capital’s oppressive expectations for their bodies, sexualities, hobbies, and careers, instead offering them collaboration, friendship, and activism as a sort of misogyny-salve (Diandra Oliver 2009). » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 8)

« San Francisco-based comedian, Kelly Annekan, shared that women in comedy needed an outlet to be able to deal with issues of sexism and harassment and that private groups on social media are how they have chosen to deal because there is “no HR department in comedy” (Tyler Kingkade 2016). By reporting these incidents on these platforms, comedy workers opened a space to talk about violence and harassment in comedy in an inclusive and transparent way. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 8)

« We thus argue, alongside Anastasia Powell (2015, 580), that by using social media, comedy workers are also able to “be heard and supported in a way not currently offered by formal criminal justice processes,” where rather than asking “who should be punished,” they ask “who has been hurt? And what do they need for healing?” In this context, we identify these public spaces where comedy workers perform protective forms of labour as sites of coalition and cooperation where they relate to the community and state in a variety of ways. In the comedy cases we surveyed, these spaces include cafés, women, and LGBTQ2S+ club nights, and social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. These spaces are often associated with more “productive” forms of capital, but for comedy workers they are also sites of resisting gendered subjectification » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 9)

« We learned in our research that since employers in the comedy industry are unable, or unwilling, to provide workplace safety, employment stability, or other antidotes to precarity, affected comedy workers “asserted themselves against capital time and again” by turning their workplaces into sites of struggle (Ferguson 2020, 126). Comedy workers use this terrain as a platform from which they fight for recognition, agency, and safety in the effort to sustain their mental and physical wellbeing in the workplace and expand their comedy careers, relying on their own labour to create and maintain safe and generative spaces for themselves and each other. However, the precarious nature of comedy work is incompatible with traditional forms of labour organizing so comedy workers use feminist and queer informed, “DIY” strategies to address their grievances. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 9)

« Looking beyond gender-based analysis and into how the comedy industry structures the workplace enables us to examine how cultural workers deal with violence and harassment in precarious, ill-defined workspaces. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 9)

« However, we remain cautious when celebrating DIY organizing because we understand DIY’s complex relationship with capital and how the mechanisms by which these workers choose to engage community reflects the failure of their employer to provide appropriate support in the workplace. We have also witnessed the tangible impact this organizing has had on the industry including alleged abusers being banned from comedy clubs, schools and venues, and organizations hiring outside therapists or expanding HR departments (Baker 2016). Nonetheless, when these double killjoy comedians take these issues into their own hands, they do so at the risk of absolving the industry and their employers of responsibility. This means that while their forms of DIY workplace have impact—including the opportunity to air grievances, talk more openly, and share in a way that does not potentially re-traumatize survivors of abuse or harassment—these double killjoy comedians end up taking on additional, unwaged duties that benefit the industry overall. » (Trusolino et Ships, 2023, p. 10)