Sketches from the Peabody Award-winning third season of Inside Amy Schumer were as shareable as GIFs on social media this summer. From one feed to another, people posted clips of her show while proclaiming to have just discovered the feminist icon of comedy, with an air of she just gets me. Schumer’s usage of comedy as a platform for feminism suddenly went mainstream.
When the “12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer” and “Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup” sketches premiered, the she just gets me comments resurfaced. As a viewer, I’ve found her sketches light and hilarious. As a woman of colour, Amy Schumer’s comedy is not entirely relatable to me. Seeing my mutual friends on social media and in real life hail her as the saviour of all women makes me uncomfortable and disappointed. Women in comedy shouldn’t have to be put on a pedestal to represent every woman out there—men in comedy aren’t subject to discussion of whether they represent every other guy out there.
When a comedian claims to embody a marginalised group, however, it can be heartbreaking when they only speak for the most privileged among that subset. White feminism isn’t well equipped to deal with heavier topics that revolve around more marginalized groups and intersectional identities. White feminism is a brand that Schumer capitalizes on, such as in the opening sketch of her third season, “Milk, Milk, Lemonade,” where she exploits the bodies of black women for her joke. Yet, many white people still don’t understand why Schumer’s failure to be inclusive isolates people of colour. Silence—and then defenses—followed after Monica Heisey wrote an article for The Guardian about Schumer’s tendency to have a race problem with her jokes. Instead of she just gets me, there were accusations that pieces like Heisey’s don’t represent who [Schumer] is.
Trainwreck, Schumer’s comedy film with Bill Hader, was released after The Guardian piece was published, but it still became a box office success, with many critics announcing the film’s revival of the romantic comedy genre through a feminist lens. While Trainwreck revisits the traditional storyline of a meet-cute couple and douses it with a rowdy, complex female protagonist who doesn’t feel ashamed of the choices she makes with her body, the film is sparse in providing diverse representation of women who are not white, middle class, and cisgender.
Trainwreck is feminist when it wants to be, and only funny to the select few it is targeted towards. The film is conditional and not wholly representational. Amy Schumer’s vision of feminism supports a worldview that simplifies sexism through a white woman’s lens, representing problems that can be solved through rom-com plots. The strong reviews for Trainwreck reveal the dual nature of the state of viewership in cinema of 2015. Schumer is able to write and star in her own film and control her own happy ending, which—considering how ridiculous the politics of Hollywood can be—is a refreshing feat (if we forget Schumer’s white feminism, that is). Fade to black and the she just gets me comments start to resurface again, silencing the cis and trans viewers of colour who are left wondering how this so-called revolution that ran for two hours and five minutes could ever reflect their experiences. This downside isn’t about the audience, who can identify with Schumer, suspending their disbelief at the film’s lack of diversity; this is about an audience looking the other way when the whiteness of Trainwreck, and her oeuvre dedicated to every woman out there, becomes too apparent, resulting in defenses over her comedic integrity.
When Schumer took to social media to address Heisey’s article, her claim that she was only joking showed her inability to be accountable. While she has since apologized for her remarks, she has yet to acknowledge that she, as a white woman, benefits from racism. Instead of opening the much needed discussion with I need to do better, Schumer is shutting it down with a moving on, now attitude that is enabled by her fans and followers.
What is remarkable about accountability is that there is always room for understanding after the wake of a mishap. I, like many curious viewers out there, will still tune in to see how, or if, her brand of feminism will evolve into something more inclusive and intersectional for the fourth season. But I’ll hold off from hastily sharing her work on my social media feed.
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