Has Amy Schumer ever seen Spongebob?
Cultural Sensitivity: Brought to You by Spongebob Squarepants
Amy Schumer, in (unsuccessfully) trying to convince us that her jokes aren’t racist, is missing out on a crucial lesson that any millennial with a well-cultivated childhood Spongebob obsession can see plain as day: jokes that belittle people for their identities aren’t just jokes. They’re impactful, and usually violently so. The cost of you insisting that your racist joke isn’t racist is giving yourself and your misguided fans carte blanche not to be funny, but to be rude to people under the guise of being comedic. Just like what happened to Sandy Cheeks. Recall:
The Krusty Krab is having an open-mic night and Spongebob decides to try his hand at stand-up comedy. He gets onstage and he flops. Tyga album flops. So what does he do? Scan the room for witty observational humor, and bam, he locks eyes with Sandy — as she is smiling encouragingly in his face — and decides to ask the room if they’ve noticed how big squirrels’ teeth are. And everyone laughs.
And when Sandy clocks his disloyal ass for his squirrel jokes — which, amongst the fishy majority in the room, are a hit — Spongebob tells her that she must simply laugh at herself. Giggle at my “humorous” claims about your hygiene and your appearance and your intelligence based off the fact that you’re a squirrel. Don’t be so sensitive! You know you’re the baddest bitch in Bikini Bottom. It’s just jokes.
So Sandy decides to play it off — but Spongebob’s jokes have become so popular that their impact has bled into her daily life. Poor Sandy is at the grocery store just trying to buy snacks and deodorant when Bikini Bottomites hit her with pure disrespect. One group, noticing that she’s a squirrel, decide they’ll “try to communicate with” her by speaking to her with exaggerated “duh” noises. One motherfucker says snidely, passing her as she’s deciding between purchasing two different deodorants, that she should buy both. And most heartbreakingly, a mother snatches her baby away from Sandy when he runs near her, with the warning that getting too close to a squirrel means you might catch its stupidity. So now, it’s not just jokes. It’s generational.
The episode ends with Sandy having to check Spongebob again for the squirrel jokes, but instead of relying on a new shtick in order to make people laugh, he just decides to go in on starfish and crabs and sponges and other fish so that the whole room can laugh at itself together. It’s a cute ending for a fictional underwater town without things like systemic speciesism, I guess, but that method can’t work for real people in real places whose lives are affected by the real consequences of claiming that your immensely popular jokes aren’t harmful.
As is explained by a brilliant piece in the Washington Post, this type of behavior shouldn’t be tolerated as harmless comedy— not from Spongebob Squarepants, not from Amy Schumer. If comedians want to be racist irreverent idiots, they can’t shy away from the impact of what they’re doing because they don’t want their work to fall under the umbrella of offense.
So own up to it, Amy Schumer. Your jokes are racist. Your Tweets don’t convince us that they aren’t. You’re trying to convince us it’s okay to be racist.
