The Hilariousness of Sexual Assault
People naturally expect a level of offensive behavior at a comedy show. However, a recent performance by Johnny Vegas crossed the line from offensive to criminal, and most people just sat back and laughed at the victim’s expense.
Since When is Sexual Assault funny?
The essence of the “joke” was that he had a number of men carry a woman from the audience onstage who was to pretend to be dead and he was going to awaken her with a kiss. I’ll post a quick quote from the article to let you know where it went from there.
“As she was carried on stage, Vegas repeatedly goaded one of the pallbearers to “finger” the girl.
Once she was on stage, Vegas told her to lie very still. She couldn’t stop her nervous giggling; he threatened to kick her in the ribs. It didn’t come across to me as a joke - and near to where I was sitting, no one was laughing. Eventually Vegas crouched down beside the nervous girl and started stroking her breasts while repeatedly saying, “don’t fucking move”. Then he ran his hand up her leg and began pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she would reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up. According to Williams, who had a different view of the stage from me, Vegas ended up “fingering her through her clothes for a second or two”. What I heard was an audible sharp intake of breath from the audience as they realised that the woman was getting much more than the kiss Vegas had told her to expect.
There was an air of menace from the outset, made worse by the fact that Vegas clearly had no idea where he was going with his act. The more the young woman was groped, the more anxious one of the “pallbearers” looked. Then Vegas straddled the young woman, pinning her to the floor, and kissing her for quite a while. Most disturbing, perhaps was that around half the audience seemed to find this really funny.”
There seem to be two main responses by those who were actually in the audience. Some thought that it was absolutely hilarious which is just out and out disturbing. These people basically laughed along as a woman was sexually assaulted in front of them. Then there were those who were very uncomfortable with the performance and complained about it after the fact. This is disturbing in a completely different way than the previous group. While many people saw a problem with what was happening, they did nothing to stop it.
It’s called the bystander effect and usually the more people viewing an event, the less likely it is for someone to actually speak up on behalf of the victim. There have been a number of rape cases where there were so many witnesses, no one actually did anything to stop it expecting someone else to step in. What happens instead is that no one steps in and a heinous crime is committed in front of a large crowd of people.
In the absence of a statement from the woman who was assaulted, many have assumed that the entire act was staged and she was a plant completely in on the “joke”. First, if it was all planned and meant to be a joke, I have to ask, what the fuck is funny about sexual assault? How is staging what appears to be a real sexual assault supposed to entertain the audience? Disturbingly enough, many were actually entertained by it which I think is a huge statement on the way women are perceived in a patriarchal society. And keep in mind, even if it was all staged, no one in the audience knew this and they still either laughed along or sat by in stunned silence.
It just furthers my theory that if you ask 100 people if they think rape/sexual assault is wrong, most likely 100 people will say “of course!”. However, start to get into specifics about what sexual assault actually it (marital/aquantance rape, having sex with someone who is unconscious, repeatedly groping/fondling a woman in front of a live audience in the name of comedy) and a good percentage will start to backtrack and say “well that’s not rape/sexual assault”. The majority of the people who laughed at this during the show, and defended it as funny after, saw absolutely nothing wrong with what occurred. They see nothing wrong with treating a woman as an object for one’s own pleasure.
However, from the accounts I’ve read, I honestly don’t believe that it was staged. I think this woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had no idea what she was getting into. I also think it’s very unfair for people to say “well she willingly went on stage, no one forced her up there”. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a woman to believe that she can be called on stage by a comedian to take part in the show without the fear of being sexually assaulted once she’s up there. And don’t even get me started on the fact that she was laughing so must have been enjoying it. Nervous laughter is a very common occurrence during sexual assault, especially toward the beginning when it’s not clear what’s going on.
Bruce Dessau of The Evening Standard said this about the performance:
“Vegas may not have had much in the way of a routine but he managed to finish in unforgettable style, having a front-row fan carried onstage like the dead Snow White and serenading her back to life like a safari-jacketed anti-Russell Brand. Not the best gig ever, but definitely unique.”
So sexually assaulting a woman in the name of comedy is deemed a unique take on stand up comedy. We have to keep things fresh and edgy and keep pushing the envelope in the name of entertainment, even if it creates some victims in the process. Who doesn’t love the utilitarian notion that the public humiliation and sexual degradation of one woman is worth it to entertain hundreds? </sarcasm>
One comment posted on Chortle, which appears to celebrate the sexual molestation of a woman in public… reads: “This was the most enjoyable night of comedy I have ever experienced. The discomfort in the predominately middle-class section of the audience I was sitting in was palpable during Vegas’s set! During the bit where Vegas was sexually molesting a librarian whilst singing Shakespeare Sister’s Stay With Me Baby I overheard a lady behind mutter under her breath ‘this is hideous!’ The scene was horrifying yet hilarious and Vegas was relentless until Simon Munnery covered the spectacle with his jacket! I will be laughing about this evening for a very long time!”.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!?!?!?!?! It seems that this person knew exactly what they were watching and relished in every minute of it. Seeing a woman sexually molested on stage was the most enjoyable night of comedy this person has ever experienced! At this, I’m left completely speechless…
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I’m Angie Bowen, the voice here at Voice of Dissent. I’m an artist/designer living in the mountains of Colorado. I’m very passionate about feminism and abolitionist animal rights so you can expect to hear a lot about those two topics. I’m also just starting to study anarchy and Marxism (and still don’t really know which fits with my own beliefs more yet), so you can expect musings on those topics as well. And obviously, since I’m an artist, you can expect to see quite a bit of artwork as well as articles about other artists.
I just don’t get this country at all any more. People claim it is a christian nation and that we were founded on christianity, and are willing to ban gay marriage. Yet when something so blatant and foul as sexual assault happens we laugh! We laugh? Apparantly maroality is only relevent if something can not be considered amusing by someone somewhere! What a dipshit that vegas is. And those people should all be ashamed of themselves for letting it happen, and be embarassed to speak of it because they thought it was funny.
Angie’s Reply: I couldn’t agree with you more! Sexual assault has never been taken seriously in this country and I’m not sure it has been in any other either. Rape is about power and power is what is important in the world so essentially those who run things just see rape as another tool to be used.
I admit that I don’t think it was the most tasteful comedy routine, although I do feel people’s comments and condemnation have gone too far.
Angie’s Reply: So do you still consider it simply a comedy routine knowing now that the woman in question wasn’t in on the “joke”?
I won’t reply farther here since I know you posted this before it was confirmed that she wasn’t a plant and I will be doing a follow up article on the fact that he did in fact sexually assault a woman in one of his “comedy” routines.
Sorry that this comment is so late, but I just read this entry and found it so bizarre and horrific that I had to leave a comment, even if 3 months late.
My first reaction to reading about this is horror and disbelief that no one came to the woman’s aid, and also that she did not protest or defend herself. But when I really think about it, our society’s notions of sexual ethics are so messed up that I am not that surprised the situation played out the way it did.
I’m certain the main reason or excuse that most people in the crowd would use for not helping the woman is, she didn’t protest or defend herself, so it was consensual. This is complete nonsense and ignores the incredible amount of psychological pressure this woman was under to comply with what the “comedian” was doing to her. She was in front of a crowd of people who were getting off on watching her be hurt. Defending herself would have meant ruining the fun for everyone (or maybe they would have found that funny, too - maybe that was the comedian’s backup plan if she didn’t go along with it).
It’s a trend in comedy these days to do or say things that make your audience really uncomfortable (try watching the movie “The Aristocrats”). A lot of people find this sort of humor really appealing, and I think that’s what the comedian was going for. However, it should be pretty obvious that sexual assault goes beyond the “discomfort” zone and into the “seriously harming another person” zone. The night that he sexually assaulted the woman, I wish the crowd had been filled with thinking, caring people who would have held him accountable for what he did. But instead it was filled with a bunch of sadists who get their jollies from seeing another person assaulted and humiliated.