Eve Tushnet
for AmCon:
One of the weirder trends in today’s art is the rise of a certain kind of comedy: cynical and even scathing on the surface, but in the end, staunchly moral. These comedies push forgiveness, humility, and love as self-gift; the great enemies are personal ambition, unwillingness to embrace adult responsibility, and concern for one’s own self-image. (The lesser enemy is positive self-talk, which all these comedies go out of their way to satirize.) It’s a sort of comedic burned marshmallow, with an acrid outside and sweet gooey inside.
This week I’ve watched an indie Noah Baumbach/Greta Gerwig flick about women’s friendship and ambition, and a coarse cartoon about an alcoholic has-been Hollywood horse-person, and both of these otherwise utterly different comedies fit into the acrid/gooey genre. Which I’m not knocking–I mean, I wrote one of these things, apparently I’m on trend. You’ll get more on “BoJack Horseman” soon in another piece, but for now, let me tell you about “Mistress America.”
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