Slut-Shaming at The Onion: Humor Fail

Yes, I know some consider the Onion and its brand of satirical humor to be off-limits from criticism, complaints of bad taste, and the strictures of political correctness. And yes, I acknowledge that I often love the Onion most when it is at its most offensive -- when I find myself thinking, "Oh no they didn't." Sometimes the Onion is simultaneously hilariously funny and outrageously offensive.

But the Onion shouldn't be able to hide behind its reputation for producing some of the best satire around at those times when it produces some of the worst satire around, and this is one of them. In a video released yesterday, "VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes in California Causing Major Slut Spill," the Onion went too far and wasn't even funny. There, I said it.

The supposed humor in this video is created using the Onion's usual maneuvers: framing a "funny" situation as an extremely serious one, satirizing the mainstream news' aggrandizement of trivial stories, caricaturing pop culture absurdities, taking far-fetched analogies to their logical or illogical extremes, and creating a sort of ridiculous mad-libs wherein silliness substitutes for real-life events. But this time, the humor just doesn't work, because there's a hateful, cruel edge to it, and one that echoes rather than satirizes our culture's judgement of women's sexuality. In fact, it reminded me of Hustler's infamous cover depicting a woman being turned into ground beef via a meat grinder.

Was I supposed to laugh at lines like this?:

"Officials there are struggling to control the spread of slut, which has already polluted the roadway and is spreading now down a hillside into residential areas."

"There's been speculation, in fact, the accident was actually caused by some slut leaking into the front cab on the vehicle and getting on the driver."

"The local fire department is just not equipped to handle something this toxic."

"Ryan, stay safe out there and don't fuck any of those sluts."

The visuals, I'm afraid, are just as horrid.

The Sexist's Amanda Hess considered whether rape humor -- and, by extension, misogynist humor -- can ever actually be funny, in the follow-up to her recent column on the rape cartoons drawn by Real World D.C. cast member Andrew Woods. She admits that she has found rape jokes funny in the past, but only when they have presented their material in a way that gives them a new context, and not when they simply rely on the shock value of depicting an unfunny reality as somehow hilarious. She places Woods' cartoons squarely in the latter category, and I would place the "slut spill" video right there with it. Not only does it reflect our slut-shaming culture at its worst, but it's also been done a million times before, not least of which by the Onion itself. What's so envelope-pushing or funny about a joke that's completely redundant?

Hess actually uses a previous Onion story as an example of a funny rape joke ("Raped Environment Led Polluters On, Defense Attorneys Argue"). I do find that headline giggle-inducing in spite of my absolute hatred of rape humor, but that's because the headline inherently critiques rape victim-blaming instead of condoning it.

Not so much the case with the "slut spill" video. This one pushes horribly damaging ideas about women as meat, objects, dirty, dangerous, polluting, and yes, sluts, further into our culture's realm of acceptability. If the Onion really wanted to be funny, they would cleverly turn these ideas on their head instead of perpetuating them.

So call me shrill, reactionary, lacking in a sense of humor. I stand behind my assertion: this video is misogynist, and it stinks.

Photo credit: Eurleif's photostream