Is rape ever an appropriate comedic topic, or is this a line that shouldn’t be crossed? In her show titled Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else!, Adrienne Truscott makes us question the lines we draw in comedy. Truscott’s performance shows us how the cathartic nature of humor can relieve some of the tensity of the horrific realities of sexual violence. In a society where rape culture is rampant and inescapable, to Truscott, “the comedy is like the last little membrane before insanity.” I had the chance to catch one of her shows at The Creek and the Cave comedy club in Queens, NY.
Asking For It is unapologetically hilarious and offensive; the show has us constantly questioning the lines we draw in comedy. In about an hour, Truscott works to reclaim the misogynistic history of comedy about sexual violence, one that is traditionally dominated by popular male comedians like Daniel Tosh and Jim Jefferies. In Truscott’s words, “it’s been a big year for rape and comedy”. The Tosh ‘jokes’ of 2012 sparked a new wave in the conversation about rape and comedy, one that Truscott has been an active part of for the past two years. The material for Truscott’s comedic exploration is constantly updating, which Truscott says is great as an artist, but as a woman living in a society that keeps giving her content, it’s not so great.
Asking For It isn’t just stand-up comedy; rather, Truscott is performing a comedian. It’s important to delineate between Truscott’s intentions and her character’s intentions. Truscott’s decisions are calculated and drenched with social commentary, and she uses a burlesque-dancing ditzy character to prove her points. Her charming Southern belle persona fumbles on stage wearing a stack of blonde wigs, multiple denim jackets, about a dozen pink bras, heels, and literally nothing else. In an interview with The New York Times, Truscott said: “The fact that I’m not ‘naked naked’ is also relevant. And I would never have done this show naked. Then, there are layers of art history, of the nude, the naked woman. But I wear a jacket and shoes, which is the
dumbest outfit ever. It’s also the most explicitly asking-for-it outfit ever.”
Truscott challenges the idea that a woman who drinks or dresses provocatively is asking to be assaulted. What Truscott is asking for is for people to come watch her perform – she even talked about how she’d be happy getting people into the audience who just wanted to see her naked. But it’s impossible to objectify Truscott during her show. In fact, her agency over her body and her control of the room make her nudity more empowering than anything else.
With contemporary pop music blaring, she starts off the show by walking off the stage and through the room, swigging a beer and chatting with audience members. And this is a theme throughout the show – Asking For It is personal, confrontational, and at times, really uncomfortable. There’s no distance between Truscott and the audience – in fact, at this particular venue, she had us laughing with her at the precise height of the stage, as our eyesight happened to be perfectly in line with her crotch. The close proximity, combined with her confrontational attitude allow people to enter into a conversation that could otherwise be too tense or uncomfortable. Truscott is bringing the taboo and undiscussed into a public space, forcing us to confront the horrific realities of sexual violence and rape culture.
That being said, there were times when I felt that Asking For It crossed the line from joking about rape culture, to joking about rape. Specifically, there’s a scene that struck me where Truscott’s character goes into a grossly detailed description of a graphic rape scene, involving her drugging a man at a bar. Her character casually chuckles along to the story, attempting to drive home how heinous it is that these things happen so often, and are hardly discussed openly. And it’s true – maybe we need this. Maybe we need Truscott to haul a bunch of strangers into a room and tell them what’s going on, whether they like it or not. If Daniel Tosh can get on stage and make a disgusting comment about gang rape, why shouldn’t she do the same, but with a political and informed agenda?
But Truscott knows how heavy her material is, and makes sure to check in with the audience multiple times throughout the show. She even makes herself available to people who want to talk with her afterwards, acting as a support system for her own potentially triggering content. The show’s particularly intense moments are interrupted by loud music and burlesque-style dance, which can be both startling and relieving. She even uses her “talking pussy” in the form of projections of famous men’s faces on her body to highlight the appalling ridiculousness of misogyny in rape culture.
The show is dramatized and embellished, and yet completely confrontational. Truscott manages to drive home the devastating realities of rape culture, without a hint of seriousness. There are hundreds of ways to discuss consent that can feel isolating and lonely – and Truscott’s show is anything but. She gives us another way to think about these issues, in an empowering, fun context. But she also knows that comedy is a good vehicle for anger, and gives us the space to be angry, while also allowing herself to get angry.
Truscott’s comedy is punching up rather than down; her jokes are aimed to tear down the systems of power that perpetuate rape culture, rather than the survivors who have experienced rape culture. She bluntly asks the audience, “Anyone here been raped? Anyone here raped anyone? A little bit?”. Truscott reminds us that statistically, at every show she performs, there is probably a perpetrator of sexual violence in the audience. Too often, our culture only looks at one side of the conversation about sexual violence, when we should bring that discomfort to people who perpetuate rape culture.
And Truscott doesn’t let us forget who those people are – the stage is surrounded by framed pictures of popular male comedians who have joked about rape – setting them up as the target of her jokes, keeping them in close proximity to point out. But the stage also acts as a sort of shrine to these men. Truscott’s character is new to the comedy world, and trying to “learn from the best”. This objective is very different from Truscott’s own intentions for the show – the two contrast each other in order to work together, all for the same goal.
Despite my love for the show and the work that Truscott is doing, I’m still n
ot sure if consent can be adequately discussed without the layer of seriousness, and even Truscott admits she doesn’t have time to get into the more subtle aspects of the conversation. For example, the references and descriptions of sexual violence throughout the show fit into a very traditional heterosexual discourse. This heterosexual, mostly penetrative, rape narrative is far from receiving enough recognition, and Asking For It is one of the most powerful forms of recognition I’ve seen. But in a world where what little recognition there is tends to focus on this one experience, I hope Truscott will take it a step further in the future