Tina Fey and the Impossibility of Opting Out

[TMC]

https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-pl...-of-opting-out

In a 2015 interview, Tina Fey infamously said of the criticism she had received, “We did an [‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’] episode and the internet was in a whirlwind, calling it ‘racist,’ but my new goal is not to explain jokes. I feel like we put so much effort into writing and crafting everything, they need to speak for themselves. There’s a real culture of demanding apologies, and I’m opting out of that.”

Five years later, Fey responded to the long-overdue racial reckoning brought on by George Floyd’s murder by essentially apologizing profusely for 30 Rock’s use of blackface in a memo politely asking asking streaming services, “As we strive to do the work and do better in regards to race in America, we believe that these episodes featuring actors in race-changing makeup are best taken out of circulation.”

What changed in the interim? Just about everything, it is safe to say. In 2015, Fey imagined that she had the option of “opting out” of a “culture demanding apologies.”

That is obviously no longer the case. In 2015, Fey could delude herself into thinking that longstanding allegations of insensitivity at best and racism at worst involving her work at Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, Mean Girls, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Whiskey Foxtrot Tango could be dismissed as the hyper-sensitivity of humorless scolds who can’t take a joke and filter everything through the prism of identity politics.