Community Things.

thisfeelsterrible:

After falling down a hate filled tumblr-rabbit hole this evening, I would like to join the current discussion about my boyfriend, Dan Harmon. 

     Dan Harmon is the most kindhearted, sensitive and passionate person I have ever known.  His passion is the reason why Community has more heart than any other sitcom on TV and why its fan-base is the most devoted. His passion is the reason why Joel Mchale fought to get him rehired for Season 5 and why several writers and crew refused to return for Season 4 out of loyalty to Dan(including now co-EP Chris Mckenna).

       In Dan’s office is a giant white board with the names of every writer who has handed him a script in the last month with hopes of joining the writing staff for Season 5, a large portion of them being fans. He included every name on that board no matter how green a writer is because he loves people who loveCommunity. I guarantee: there is no other Showrunner who gives fans more of his time than Dan Harmon. Watch any interview with him and you will feel how much he cares.

       Even if Season 4 of Community had been the best season of Television in Television history, it would have been painful for Dan to watch. HYPERBOLE WARNING: It would be like watching home videos of your kids with new parents after they had been taken from you. You probably wouldn’t choose to watch those videos, even if you knew the parents were taking great care of your kids.Months ago, before he was asked back, Dan told me he could never watch Season 4  because, no matter what, it would be too hard and he didn’t want to discuss his feelings publicly and hurt the people who worked on the show or its fans.

        Dan’s weekly show, Harmontown is an unplanned, unproduced, improvised podcast featuring Dan and his friends chatting and playing D&D. Sometimes Dan talks about humanity, sometimes he talks about writing, sometimes he talks about farts; but mostly he just talks about whatever is on his mind and sometimes those things are dark. If this show description sounds boring or hurtful to you, you do not have to listen to it and I promise, no one willmake you listen to it and you will not find yourself accidentally listing to it. It is produced and released exclusively for people who listen to it on purpose. There is a reason why it’s not written and or enjoyed in transcript-form.

   Unlike the articles I read today would lead me to believe, the mood at last night’s Harmontown was light, heartwarming and revolved mostly around the theme of FATHERHOOD, not hatred for Season 4 or anyone involved in it’s writing or production. Dan tried to articulate the unique feeling of watching his project in the hands of other people. He wasn’t saying it was the end of the world or comparable to rape, or that he’s not excited about Season 5, he was expressing his very understandable feelings that were consuming him the day he watched Season 4. He did not want the audience to leave the show with hatred for the S4 writers or Community. Side note: I also made jokes about Season 4 at Harmontown that I regret. I am friends with several writers on Season 4 and I know they worked their hearts out. I was also swept away by my defensive feelings and I feel bad about that.

Now…

 This “rape joke controversy” is misguided, unfair and I believe started with reporter who wanted more traffic on her article’s page. She used the word “rape” in a headline so she could get more sweet, sweet clicks. Now, THAT’S vile.

Dan didn’t say the word “rape” because he thinks rape is funny.

Months ago, when Daniel Tosh made a rape joke it was undeniably wrong because he joked about his audience raping a female heckler to teach her a lesson. That’s different than using an analogy to express the extremity of one’s feelings.  OBVIOUSLY, Dan could have made a better analogy that didn’t include this painful buzz word, but as someone who was actually at the show, spends the most of her time with Dan and as a woman who has actually experienced the horror of non-consensual sex firsthand, I assure you: Dan was not making light of rape. Kids are murdered everyday and if he had said “It was like watching my kids being murdered” no one would think that Dan was making light of murdering kids, they would think “wow, his feelings are really strong and maybe he’s being a little dramatic”. I mean, really. Come on. If we are going to change the tide of this “rape culture”, we need to be smarter. To the tumblr “Dan is a rape-joke making monster coalition”: I get that it’s fun to hate someone and to have such an identifiable reason to hate him, but your hatred is monstrous and HEART BREAKING.  

NOW: I present a self-growth experiment, free of charge:

 For ONE day, record yourself speaking openly and honestly about everything that you happen to feel and think. Note: This will be more helpful if you choose a day that’s more emotionally charged. Try to talk without editorializing or changing your opinions or truth depending on who is in the room. No matter how dark, gross, illegal, stupid, misinformed, racist, ignorant or brilliant you sound in your recording, send the file of the recording to someone you don’t know, but suspect may not care about you personally. That person  will then find the most unflattering and controversial portions of the recording and edit them together without context. Then, allow this stranger to post your words in transcript form on the internet so no can hear the inclination of your voice. Ask them to include a link to the larger file, so if someone wants to go the trouble of getting the full story, she can (but be prepared for most people not listening to the larger file).  Then, implore strangers to size your worth as a human being. Note how this makes you feel and how it affects your perception of quotes in Entertainment columns. 

I hope that for the sake of creativity and LOVE, you… the internet and fans of Community can see how much Dan loves Community and understand that he is a human being. I know he is excited and thankful that he was asked back for Season 5. I watched him cry today at the thought that he hurt fans of the show and that was without him seeing any tumblr hatred. He just wants to do his show and make people happy.

Love,

Erin McGathy

Dan and Me at last year’s fantastic Community Artshow

danharmon:

My apolotweets might not have fit the scale of the crime for some, so I’m following them up with one of my patented apoloblogs.  I want to clarify, I’m apoloblogging in an effort to counteract pain I caused other people.  Not because I think what I have to say is important - this is one of those days when I’m definitely fantasizing about getting less attention.  And less money, and less oxygen, and, like, getting run over by a bus and stuff.  But while I accidentally have your attention, I want to use it to say things I would have and should have said instead of what I did say.

On Sunday night, during my award winning Harmontown podcast (*), which is available for free and, for those interested, is a joyfully overflowing source of opportunities to dislike me, I vented some spleen about the allegedly traumatizing experience of binge-watching a season of TV I didn’t get to control (cue microscopic violin).  Laughs were had, I felt better, I cried about my Dad, we played Dungeons and Dragons - it’s a great podcast.  It’s not as good as “This Feels Terrible with Erin McGathy” or “The Duncan Trussell Family Hour” but it’s pretty okay if you’re, say, a 25 year old aspiring narcissist whose drive to work is two hours long and thinks stammering is hot. 

I went to bed feeling great, woke up and started work on season five of Community with our exciting season five staff.  I took them to lunch, checked my tweets, discovered my name in several headlines next to several bad words, and, as usual, it was then that I started to consider how my words might affect other people if viewed as headlines.  After five seconds of thinking, I realized, as usual, that other people might be hurt, and that I really need to do this whole “saying things and thinking about other people” cycle in a different order at some point.  I think it would make my podcast shorter but I think there’s a lot of listeners that would consider that an upgrade, too.

Here’s a list of people of whom I failed to think in that moment, and the sincerely owed apologies to them.

I am first and foremost sorry to Community fans that got paid nothing to stick by Community and get us to a fifth season only to hear the incoming showrunner say some stuff that felt very un-Community.  Even if my goal had been to hurt someone, it would never have been you.  What I said was disrespectful to your love for this show, love that I sometimes erroneously equate with validation of me as a person.  I am unwittingly and unfortunately infamous for the amount I care about your opinion.  I often say that I write in an attempt to “make people like me.”  I’m realizing what makes me unlikable is that I haven’t made the leap from “caring what people think about me” to “caring about people.”  And let’s face it, if I’m doing this at 40 how cool am I going to get before I die.  But I do know, every minute of every day, that I owe you folks what I consider to be my life and guarantee you that every time I’ve pissed you off it’s been on accident. And to keep from hurting you, I’m going to try thinking about you before saying things into microphones.  I’m usually okay at it when I’m talking to actual press, because there’s a big visual reminder in the form of a cube on a mic or monkey in a diaper on the table.  But when you’re listening to Harmontown, or, worse yet, reading transcripts from Harmontown, you’re catching me in unforgivably human moments.  Obviously the solution is to stop talking about my job in my podcast until production is safely complete.  That will protect the show you love, and your love of it, from the creator with the Mouth from PR Hell.  I will do this.  But more importantly, I am sorry.

Next I want to apologize to the people that did get paid to work on that season, but not enough: the cast and crew.  I get personal value out of being as honest as possible, but, honestly, how honest was what I said?  It was dishonest to imply that something you worked on was as hard to watch as my family being  assaulted.  I was riffing and tried to turn darkness into levity through shock and hyperbole.  I was very much not thinking about anyone but myself while watching that season, which was the crime.  I hope over time you’ll forgive me.  I wasn’t thinking about your contribution or describing it.  I was just indulging my petty feelings about being left out.  It seemed kind of funny at the time because it seemed at the time like I was the only person with feelings.  Because my head was up my ass.  Again, it’s been up there 40 years so it would be dishonest to promise it’s coming out, but what I can promise is that I’ll stop talking about the show without thinking of you.  You second, fans first.  I think that’s how you’d want it.

Thirdly, because they got paid more, but still not enough, the season 4 writers.  I’m sorry I pooped on your work.  You had to do something nobody should have to attempt, and you had the option of doing it the lazy way or the sellout way and you clearly did what you did because you were thinking of the fans.  There was some amazing stuff in there.  Funny jokes.  I liked the “Hogan’s Villains” line.  The idea that in Germany, people watch Hogan’s Heroes, but they call it Hogan’s Villains, is seriously so funny I had to rewind it a couple times to finish laughing.  I will apologize to the Germans later.  Season 4 writers:  Thank you and I’m sorry.  As I went on to say in my podcast, the creatives are not the bad guys…I shouldn’t be letting an inhuman system that doesn’t care about humans enough turn humans against humans.  Especially us.  Don’t tell anyone I said this but all writers are better people than all non-writers.  Nobody read that unless you’re a writer.  I broke a code when I judged the work of writers with whom I wasn’t in the same trenches.  I’ll suffer for it because I’ll be looking for a job soon enough and nobody will want to work with Judgy McPsycho Van Crieswhenhetypes.  So I hope my ten seconds of, as the kids say, “butthurt” comedy was worth it to me, and I’ll see you in Hell, where, don’t tell anybody I said this but is where I believe all writers go because we make God jealous.

Almost lastly, I have to address this “rape joke” concept.  I have to address it because it looks like if I don’t say anything, it could send the wrong message to people with an understandable passion for the subject.  This is a subject that is, and should be, insanely volatile and provocative, because it combines the words “rape” and “joke.”  It puts them right next to each other, it’s like putting a running chainsaw next to a puppy, it’s just not something you can walk past without getting disturbed and invested.  Does anyone think rape is funny?  I hope not.  Do we become more progressive culturally through the mitigation of inappropriate language?  I don’t know, it’s sure worth continued discussion, if you feel strongly one way or the other you should come up on stage at the next Harmontown.  In the mean time, I am deeply sorry to anyone I hurt by using the word “rape” in a comedic context.  I am sorry to anyone I hurt by conjuring the concept of rape in a metaphor about my stupid hurt feelings.  As you saw above, unless you skimmed this blog entry for the word “rape,” I was not thinking about the impact of my words on the people that love Community and work on it.  So I hope you can believe me when I tell you I was definitely not thinking about the impact of that word on people that are currently seeking to get it out of comedic contexts.  I’m very sorry to have hurt and frustrated you and I will definitely be swayed from the use of that word in comedic contexts because I don’t like hurting people and as an added bonus, I don’t like getting yelled at on Twitter.  Especially when the people yelling have phrases like “rape joke” on their side.  It’s kind of hard to think of oneself as being “pro rape joke.”  Don’t want to be that guy.  Done and done.

Oh, on the politically correct side, I just remembered something else.  I think when I did my impression of Season 4’s impression of me, I said “durpy durpy dur, I’m Dan Harmon,” which I think I saw someone point out is language used to dehumanize the developmentally disabled, and that’s not cool, I shouldn’t have done that.  

Okay, wow, that was a lot of apologizing.  That was not a short blog post.  Because that’s how sorry I am.  Also I love talking about myself, but, trust me, this has been more pain than pleasure for the guy that made you feel bad.  Now I’m going to get back to conceptualizing with the writers about season 5 and, I hope, achieve a heightened level of actual empathy in the bargain.

Love,

A Remorseful Friend

(*) Harmontown is currently award-free but I don’t want to have to edit this post later.