On the other hand, what do comedians suffering from complaints do when paradoxes and complaints become the norm? Bill Barr, a poster child of long-awaited white man abuse, kind of poster, may be the last person you would expect to accept empathy according to everything, but that's true.
Barr recently told NPR's Terry Gross that “someone really hates the fact that I'm so angry.” His new Hulu comedy special, Bill Barr: I'll drop the year I diedthen relies on regret, and most often joke that support self-reflection and brings to anger and protest. It's a far cry from his old persona. He often enjoys jokes about lesbians, fat people, trans athletes, and other marginalized groups that appear to attract his rage.
Barr discusses what he would have previously ridiculed at first. Learn the treatment experience, how to be a kind partner, and the real effects of toxic masculinity on men. He opens up briefly about experiencing severe depression and childhood sexual abuse. It is quite heavy and is handled with surprisingly studied care.
He also makes headlines to roast Elon Musk for his billionaires alongside the special, protecting Luigi Mangione, fighting conservative commentators and giving Nazi salutes.
Well, no, it's not accurate. But there's something new about the way he positions himself as the 2025 American man. “He gives a voice to the sense that the rules or acceptable strategies for climbing the ladder of masculinity are opaque, contradictory and changing,” northwestern sociologist Rebecca Ewart told Vox, referring to the status hierarchy that men must navigate in patriarchal societies. “There were rules – they weren't consistent. Black men need a different strategy than white men. There are different ways to prove their advantage in weightlifting gyms over Congress floors. The bar explains it's more contradictory than ever.”
As a 56-year-old white man, Barr embodies a highly controversial crisis of masculinity, but while grasping his losses, he also realizes that even his own advantages can be the downside of his disguise. “He's clear about how the system doesn't help him,” Ewert said.
You may think that anxiety over the loss of his perceived position will create even more angry comedy. However, Bali seems to feel freed by aging, as it contradicts the general cultural narrative of angry white men getting older and gaining easier abilities. He was pleased to be doing well with his wife, reassuring that he could say something sad out loud.
“Men are not allowed to be sad,” he says. He says in a moment of self-deprecation, explaining how he opened up to his wife about experiencing emotions. “We are allowed to be one of two things. We are allowed to be angry or cheerful.” It's far from the revelation of the shattering of the earth, but when it comes from someone like Bar, who was previously rebellious and proud of his limited emotional range, I feel it matters. He was not alone. If anything, he was part of a cultural moment that seemed to be directed at rewarding the boring forms of emotional oppression and masculinity.
Yuchen Yang, a sociologist at the University of Birmingham, points out that Burr's sudden interest in Chilling Out is selfish on an existential level. For many years, he has served as a poster child of a kind of masculinity, as Yang said, “not only is it harmful to women, queers and people of color, but also harmful. [men]”My existence.”
“The dominant cultural beliefs about masculinity often lead men to an unhealthy lifestyle,” Yang said. “But at the same time, the stigma around vulnerability makes it difficult for men to seek help when they need it,” he explains, pointing out as an alternative to double the number of treatments, medical inventions, and simple health tactics.
According to Yang, the real problem is that men are “pursuing cultural ideals that are far from realistic.” As he points out, “There are few men who can actually achieve this ideal, and those approaching it can hardly embody it all the time.” In other words, even if men want to embody patriarchal masculinity, they are just as trapped in social expectations as everyone else.
Over the past decade, “Manosphere” – Internet space has focused on the lives and status of men ruled by influencers and podcasters like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and his fellow compatriots, and has emerged as both a response to the issue and aggravating agent. Yang suggests its existence. “It is an attempt to resolve the inherent contradictions of patriarchy without overthrowing it.”
“The people at Manosphere want to restore the 'natural' masculinity of men,” he said.
These online spaces give men a sense of community, but they also promote a growing misogyny, extremism and frustration. Men are now more isolated than ever, and compared to women, they are more likely to die younger and die from causes such as suicide, overdose, or complications of alcohol or substance abuse.
Throughout I'll drop the year I diedBarr discusses his own struggle with alcoholism and the wider trends of sad men. (“Is this the number one place to see a sad man?” he jokes, “Guitar Center”) But he not only recognized this all, but decided to evolve accordingly. Barr points out that all of emotional repression is a real blow to men's health. “You start thinking about your life, right?” he confesses. “You take stock in it. I start thinking about how fast my life is going and how fast my kids are growing.”
None of this is as easy as “as you get older, you realize you want to be a better person.” What stands out for Ewert is his deep ambiguity about all of this. She notes that Barr often swings from serious discussions about his deep fears, and from his hopes of a jab about a woman to punch down as if his gut reactions were to remind himself or others that he wasn't at the bottom.
“I don't see him having a consistent argument. I see a lot of reactions,” she says. “It's friendly – I think that's something that a lot of men are experiencing.”
There's a sense that Burr is solving not only how to touch his soft feelings, but also how to make softer, less confrontational comedy in ways that still feel subtle and subtle.
At one point, he roasts the audience members laughing at the jokes he sets up about Joe Biden and dementia. “It wasn't 30 seconds ago, when someone from my family said they had been diagnosed, [with dementia]you were everything – you could hear the pindrop. And you had empathy,” he points out. Fuck him! I'm glad he's going to die! ”
In recent years, comedy has been treated to a series of comics that have doubled their commitment to grievance when they were called out for various crimes, from Dave Chapelle to Louis CK. The bar doesn't go beyond the idea either. He is still frustrated that the rules about who was cancelled and who wasn't so contradictory, still talking about how social phenomena could not scorn anyone he deserves. “Even if he takes my last pizza and takes a breath and denys it with Pepperoni,” Barr says.
But whatever Bill Barr says as a redress to “cancelling culture,” in his case, he managed to do one thing that liberal backlash has always wanted. None of the other comics did anything.
“I think he's seen the real reward for emotional connections in his life,” Ewart said. Screamsing on stage is one thing, she points out. do not have Screams make you feel better. ”
“I think there's hope in this message,” she continued. “If we can talk about men's issues, men's mental health, men's mental health, as a result of patriarchy that puts us all in the hierarchy, then it helps us all.”
