American Cunt

Instead of trying to shock with the word in the title, Jena Friedman starts by apologizing for the offensive word, whispering that she actually meant “American.” It is a useful indicator of her general posture: calm and deeply cynical about the cultural and political state of the United States. Her best material works by taking loaded political arguments and reducing them to cold, dark logic. She contrasts the use of gendered slurs against the label “crazy,” pointing out that men call women crazy for over-texting, whereas when men blow up cities and chop off heads, we call them a state.

Filmed at the Slipper Room in Manhattan in August 2016, the special caught Friedman at a transitional moment. A former field producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and writer for David Letterman, she was working out an hour of political material on the assumption that Hillary Clinton was about to win the presidency. Instead, the special’s release on the streaming platform Seeso in late 2016, followed by an audio release on Inauguration Day in 2017, turned the performance into an accidental time capsule. The material, which includes jokes about Bill Cosby, reproductive rights, and street harassment, is delivered with a flat, detached tone that makes the grim subject matter hit harder.