early Baby JThe comedian, John Mulaney’s first stand-up show in five years and airing on Netflix this Tuesday, sings out his long absence from the industry. Nearly three years after a public rehab and subsequent divorce, she mutters “now.” [my] reputation…different!” He says former fans have already shifted their allegiance to “less troublesome” comedians like Bo Burnham, concluding with pomp: “Likability is a prison!”
This line hangs over the rest of the show, because he’s right: Celebrities endure great pressure to protect their public image while navigating their private problems, and it’s undoubtedly a burdensome task. Still, the success of Mulaney’s comeback special largely depends on her liking. More precisely, it depends on his dignity, his status as someone who can be trusted to re-enter society. If likability is a prison, Mulaney is not yet ready to leave it behind; something that needs to dig deeper to reclaim its cultural stamp.
Along Baby JAs Mulaney walks viewers through tough issues—his intervention night in December 2020, his first week of sobriety, and his various devious plans to acquire drugs, among other things—Mulaney takes a “Hey, it wasn’t” tone. Am I going crazy?” He remembered the intervention night when he decided to get a haircut from the stylists. Saturday night liveHe jokes about how they handled his implausible question: “You know… when a junkie comes into your office and wants to get a haircut and you’re like, ‘Well, would it be faster to get a haircut?’ you say.”
During the special event, this is at her most comfortable: chuckling fondly about the bad judgment she once displayed. The show climaxes with a dramatic reading by Mulaney. GQ An interview he gave three days before his intervention that he “absolutely didn’t remember giving”. he is playing GQ the interviewer as a confused professional and himself as an angry madman making irrelevant sentences while holding the microphone down. His past self is more like a character than a memory, completely removed from Mulaney’s sober present self, depicted with silly voices and exaggerated body language.
This is a smart move. Mulaney reasserts control over her image by redefining the most turbulent period of her public life as a distant past that is as shocking to everyone as it is to herself. He puts an end to voyeuristic speculation about the state of his health, with a definitive final word: Yes, he made mistakes, but he’s better now and look how sane he is! Everything is incredibly smooth and processed from start to finish; Watch his long interview with Seth Meyers in 2021 and you’ll see how long these jokes have been worked on.
Because Mulaney is truly adorable, it’s tempting to attribute her success to her. Baby J to his precision-honed craft and obvious intelligence as a comedian. Yet few celebrities are given such a graceful opportunity to bounce back from a public showdown over substance abuse. Watching Mulaney, it’s hard not to think about the famous women whose social downfall no one has allowed to forget, especially those who rose to teenage stardom: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Amanda Bynes, among other women who had early clashes with fame, come to mind. led to flammable media demonstrations and intense scrutiny of their substance use and mental health.
An individual’s public perception of substance use, like almost everything else, is highly dependent on that person’s demographic markers: race and class in particular. Rich white people who drank coke to maintain their hard party lifestyles have always been the most socially acceptable way to use drugs. review twitter reactions Check out The Cut’s recent history of New York “It” girls and you’ll find a lot of people joking that the list is skinny white girls drinking coke. Georgetown graduate Mulaney, SNLThe millionaire son of a professor and a lawyer, he’s just the kind of person who can come back from rehab and continue to boost his career. Historically, designer drug use does not diminish the dignity of a wealthy person.
When he calls himself a “junk”, he relies on a strong dramatic irony. Dressed in an expensive suit, he presides over the multi-story stage of Boston’s Symphony Hall, safely away from the threatening, unlikely connotations of drug use: poverty, violence. The name of the special comes from a constant joke that he says, “They call me Baby J in these streets.” Again, it boils down to the irony of his status: Of course, this primitive white man grew up far from the world of gangs and cartels. Even his most “gruesome” story is an epic about buying and pawning a $12,000 Rolex watch, with Mulaney’s class status inspiring, his involvement in the drug economy as a privileged consumer, never a dealer, never dirtyly in the business. It reminds me that it is not contagious. intergenerational cycles of poverty that compel people to seek the lucrative opportunity to sell drugs.
But even among wealthy white celebrities, age and gender change the way we perceive and respond to people’s histories of substance use and abuse. Celebrity women’s public struggles with addiction and mental health are both more likely to be seen as a joke and less likely to be discredited.
The 2007 incident where Britney Spears shaved her head has since been preserved in memes, shirts, and other souvenirs; This dangerous personal moment for the pop star has made her a public figure that people feel free to make fun of. More than a decade after the incident, his lewd Instagram posts have become fodder for mental health parody and speculation. Despite the solid news about her entry into a conservatory controlled by her father and the months of #FreeBritney fans pushing for the pop star to regain her autonomy, she has not been able to re-establish herself in the public eye as a gifted adult whose life has changed. shaped and challenged by mega fame. Instead, it remains fair game for cheap laughs.
Part of the problem is that Spears – like other famous women in similar positions – was photographed in great detail of her public collapse. The power of a photograph is difficult to combat, and the privacy of famous women has always come after the possibility of exploiting their image. Spears’s half-shaven head, Lindsay Lohan’s criminal photos, Amanda Bynes in a wrinkled blond wig in her appearance at the courthouse, Amy Winehouse stumbled on stage, Cara Delevigne barefoot at the airport: All these images have fueled the public’s admiration for the essence of the stars involved. it pierces heavily.
Photographic evidence of Mulaney’s erratic behavior never circulated—whether it was because she didn’t exist at all or because she had a diligent promotional team, it’s hard to say—and it certainly made it easy for her to keep substance abuse at bay. current life. However, compromising photos of famous men have never been as popular as compromising photos of famous women.
From leaked nudes to pornographic deep fakes, people are trying to seize and control images of famous women to deprive them of their privacy and dignity; whereas even criminal photos of famous men—Robert Downey Jr., Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, Shia Labeouf all have criminal records of arrests on drug or alcohol charges—tend to be treated as fun facts rather than defamation. The tabloid obsession with photographing women in their most blatant moments of dealing with substance use is a natural extension of the more deeply rooted impulses to treat images of women as commodities and their appearance as the criteria of their value.
It’s a lucky gift that the gruesome distribution of photos didn’t compromise Mulaney’s recovery, but it’s not really a coincidence. He’s putting on a successful comeback because he’s exactly the kind of celebrity audiences would like forgiveness from: a rich white man who’s mild-mannered, well-groomed, and seemingly trustworthy. He is also a talented comedian and Baby J funny, attractive watch. But in some ways, this doesn’t seem very important. Spears is a great pop star and Lohan and Bynes have always been talented actors. The fact that they are treated much less compassionately in the public eye is not a function of their abilities but rather the vulnerability as young women who are immediately judged for losing control.
Listen and subscribe for more The Last Laugh podcast.