Michelle Wolf Is the Future of Stand-Up Comedy
The stand-up comedy world is in the throes of a sea change, as three of its marquee names — Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K. and T.J. Miller — stand accused of various degrees of sexual misconduct. Muddling matters further is the largesse of streaming giant Netflix, whose lofty $20 million-per-hour paydays for male comics Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle have caused much consternation among lesser-compensated women (and understandably so).
As the so-called Bad Men dissolve from the pop-culture consciousness faster than the McFly family photo in Back to the Future, and as women across all industries reclaim their time, a confident new comedy voice has emerged from the maelstrom.
Her name is Michelle Wolf. And she is fucking hilarious.
If you haven’t seen the 32-year-old’s HBO comedy special, Michelle Wolf: Nice Lady, well, you should get on that immediately. It was, in this writer’s estimation, the funniest stand-up special of 2017, packed with sidesplitting — and blessedly Trump-free — jokes on topics ranging from the fragile male ego (“A soft penis looks like the sound of sad”) and the feminism of naked selfies to pay equity and Caitlyn Jenner’s brave transition (“I still fucking hate your personality”). Throughout the hour-long ride, she is both cutting and ebullient, her piercing voice, bobbing red mane, and chortle accentuating each clever punch line.
The through-line is the outmoded concept of the “nice lady,” and how, in the immortal words of The Real World, it’s time for women to stop being polite and start getting real. Though the special was recorded in August, two months prior to the disturbing Harvey Weinstein revelations, it’s a sentiment that aligns perfectly with the current #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.
“I don’t want to say ‘serendipitous,’ because so many terrible things are happening to so many people, but it’s kind of serendipitous, I guess,” offers Wolf. “It’s just a good time in comedy right now for women, because it’s a perspective that people are now more open to.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9_WXe6-3u4
Unlike her male contemporaries who’ve struggled with addressing the epidemic of sexual-harassment allegations, Wolf has proven to be more than up to the task. In late October, just after the Weinstein stories dropped, her Daily Show boss Trevor Noah tasked her with creating a humorous bit on the truly horrifying case — in just a few hours, no less.
“It’s a hard thing to make jokes about — especially that soon,” she recalls. “I struggled to find a take on it. It’s good to have emotion behind something, but sometimes your feelings can blind you comedically. You have to remain fairly neutral, stand back from a situation, and think of the way it will actually work, not the way it will make your heart feel better.”
The result was both funny and spot-on: “My solution? Every time a guy gets caught sexually harassing someone, you don’t just fire him. You have to replace him with a woman. It’s a policy that I call, ‘Pull out your dick, get replaced by a chick.’”
