Fuck Yeah, Awkwardness!

So I’m trying to start a movement. I think I’ll call it the awkwardness appreciation movement. In short, I believe that the emotional/affective/psychic experience that we often call awkwardness is beneficial, necessary for personal growth as well as social change, and should be courted rather than avoided.

In critical theory, much attention has been paid to the experience of shame. Shame, theorists say, is a moment of intense awareness of how you are different from other people, often accompanied by the fear that your difference is unacceptable. In this way, shame simultaneously creates the sense of differentiated individuality and the desire to re-aggregate with the whole. In shame’s hot intensity, you see yourself from a new angle. Your perspective on yourself expands to include the shared context of others.

The problem is that shame has a stopping force. It can freeze you like a wild animal sensing the rifle sights. It’s hard to let your perspective on your own significance shift when you’re afraid you’re going to be annihilated. In the face of shame, childhood defense mechanisms (however useless) rush in to protect you: fight, flight, freeze, play dead.

Awkwardness, however, is shame lite. If shame is the terrifying fall into the cavernous gap between self and other, awkwardness is the giggly, heart-racing fear you feel when peering over the edge. There is space to move and breathe inside awkwardness, but it is still a meditation on the sometimes-precarious experience of being a self surrounded by other selves that are constantly affecting you and being affected by you.

In awkward experiences, we sense the precariousness of our ego boundaries as well as the sheer randomness of the social conventions that regulate our interactions with each other. In that heightened sphere of awareness, you wonder how else you could be, other than the way you are right now, and how else we could be together within the grip of this strangely funny, embarrassing, uncomfortable moment.

Awkwardness is vulnerability with its fly unzipped.

Awkwardness is a prologue to transformation and invitation to grace.

I'm Not Offended

I’m trying to stop using the phrase “offended” to describe my response to works of art. “Offended” is a cop-out word, a polite substitute for what I’m actually feeling, which is usually closer to hurt or anger.

Some art hurts me. Often it breaks my heart consensually, painfully cracking me open in that way that hurts but feels good at the same time. The pain is a sign that the intensity of the work’s vision is spreading to me, where it has the potential to change me. Change hurts.

Some art hurts me in a non-consensual way. Some ideas, like unchallenged expressions of bigotry, feel particularly poisonous or dangerous when nestled into a work of art. I don’t want them to get inside me and I’m scared of what they’ll do if they take root in other people.

In the wake of this fear travels anger. Anger at ideas that I think are cruel or unfair, at people who spread them, and at their power to access a pulpit.

All of these experiences – hurt, fear, anger – can generate energy. Rather than use that energy to shout “I’m offended!” I’d like to use it to make more art, “better” (in my opinion) art, that speaks more directly to the world I live in and the one I envision.

Saying “I’m offended” carries the spectre of censorship. It’s an attempt to claim moral high ground without first acknowledging the vulnerable experiences of hurt, fear, and anger. Rather than hardening into feeling offended, I want to first feel what the work of art is conjuring inside me, then discuss why, then, if there is still energy left over from the exchange, create something new in response to my experience.

Being offended has the subtle air of privilege. When you’re offended you seem to say “Well I can handle the intensity of this art, but other people can’t. Women and children shouldn’t see this. Weak-minded or weak-willed individuals couldn’t understand its ambiguity. So it should change or go away entirely.” We don’t always watch with our own eyes alone, often our response to art is caught up with our fantasies and fears of how other people would respond to it. This kind of collective spectatorship can be a manifestation of empathy, but it can also point to a distrust of other people’s ability to process input, both pleasure and pain.

When a work of art hurts me (in that non-consensual way) sometimes I think “Dear God, don’t let others be hurt by this the way that I was.” The pain of representation and misrepresentation can hurt like sticks and stones. But if set into motion, the energy of that pain and anger can transform into new forces of expression.

Being offended is an (ultimately futile) attempt to stop the forceful exchange of expression and responsiveness. Instead let's express and respond even more fully, even more energetically, with deeper respect and greater endurance.

Syncopated Censorship

The rhythm of self-censorship is syncopated. Like coming in on the upbeat instead of the downbeat, self-censorship is premature; you restrict your own self-expression in advance, so as to not risk being silenced by someone else.

Expectations about what we do or don’t express are the unwritten rules of social groups, and ignoring them is tantamount to challenging the authority of existing power structures. The “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy of the U.S Military was an extreme, legislated form of expected self-censorship. Gay men and women were required to remain invisible or be rendered invisible through discharge from the service. Paradoxically, self-censorship both precedes and is a result of external censorship. Syncopation.

When expectations about self-censorship are outright flaunted, things get interesting. These moments force into the public eye the ongoing negotiations between internal and external censorship. Breaking a taboo always serves to bring that taboo to light, thus exposing the machinery of social order.

One example of flaunting expectations of self-censorship is the “Too Soon” joke.

The “Too Soon” joke is a joke of variable offensiveness that is made unbearably offensive because it’s told “too soon” after the tragic event to which it refers. The more traumatic the event, the more likely the cry “too soon” will arise from the audience. The “too soon” joke also operates on the syncopated rhythm of prematurity. Self-censorship is covering your mouth before someone else can do it, and the “too soon” joke is uncovering your mouth before the collective decision that it’s acceptable to do so.

One of the most famous examples of the "too soon" joke was comedian Gilbert Gottfried's performance at the Hugh Hefner Roast at the Friar's Club on Nov 4th, 2001, three weeks after 9/11. The atmosphere of this event was unique - the traditionally raucous, offensive nature of a roast was at odds with the emotional sensitivity of New Yorkers in the wake of the attacks. And then Gottfried, known for pushing boundaries of appropriateness, cracks a joke about his flight from LA to NY making an unexpected connection at the Empire State Building.

The audience turns on him, booing and shouting "too soon!" What was not even a very good joke in the first place threatens to ruin the whole party.

In response, Gottfried immediately launches into the dirtiest joke of all time – "The Aristocrats." Suddenly the image of planes hitting buildings is replaced by images of sex, violence, excrement, incest and beastiality.

The joke goes on for almost ten minutes, and Gottfried's aggressive delivery seems like comedic retribution against his audience - "You didn't like that joke? FINE! Have this one!"

Oddly enough, this horrible, disgusting joke eventually wins them back.

I wasn't there so I can't claim authority, but it seems Gottfried did a bit of a magic trick. The 9/11 joke conjured uncomfortable emotions that the audience wasn't yet ready to process. However, that discomfort was quickly re-purposed as disgust at the X-rated "Aristocrats". And through the elaborate, increasingly ridiculous telling of that joke, the disgust was transformed and released as laughter.

Not only did Gottfried bring into public awareness the ever-present tension between external and internal censorship, but he also reminded his audience that sometimes too soon is right on time.

The rhythm of the artist-activist is necessarily syncopated. We must risk speaking too soon for comfort. Sometimes the art lies in finding roundabout ways to address those questions that beat urgently inside us like so many winged creatures, wanting to get out.