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Where Will the Comeback Trail Lead Aziz Ansari?

Aziz Ansari with Alan Yang at Peabody Awards 2016

The comeback trail is filled with landmines for Emmy Award and Golden Globe- winning comedian Aziz Ansari.

He built his star on not only on being funny, but also being socially conscious. He added a voice of color to a sea of White in Hollywood.

Ansari (seen above with Alan Yang, Co-creator of Master of None at the Peabody Awards in 2016) has been on nationwide comedy tour since August staying largely in the Eastern half of the country-his reputation swallowed up by the #MeToo movement.

It was in January when a former date wrote in Babe.net about Ansari acted overly aggressive, pushing her into sexual activity without her consent.

Ansari kept his profile low in the months that followed, electing to skip the Screen Actor Guild Awards weeks after the allegations surfaced.

His comeback tour, if you can call it that, has been largely uneventful and Ansari has managed not to make anymore news.

The Houston Chronicle reported his show makes no reference to the allegations.

In the months that followed the article, some in the #MeToo movement have even come to his defense, calling the anonymous article in Babe.net “revenge porn” and wondering if it was an overreaction to a bad date.Aziz Ansari

TK Pritchard of the Sexual Assault Support Center near Kitchener, Ontario, where Aziz is performing this Wednesday, is not among those defenders.

Pritchard told The Record the #MeToo Movement isn’t just about sexual assault, it’s about respect for women.

“It’s a complicated issue. “Sexual violence exists on a spectrum. ‘Consent’ is not just something you engage in so you don’t go to jail,” said Pritchard.

Ansari’s comeback will not be complete unless he is accepted back into the Hollywood fold.

Mike Schur, the creator of Parks and Recreation, gave Ansari one of his biggest breaks-making him a series regular.

Schur told the Daily Beast he’d work with Ansari again.

“Yes, I would,” he said. “And the tricky thing about all of this stuff is this kind of national reckoning that the entertainment industry has finally had with itself—or at least has begun to have, I would say—we’re far from actually having the complete, sort of thought process and emotional processing that is required. There was a lot of dust and a lot of that dust has now settled a little bit, and now it’s time for everybody to really think hard and reflect and change and grow and do all of that stuff that is required to heal.

“That’s what we all need to do in every one of these cases is keep talking about it, don’t ignore it, confront it, deal with it, cope with it, root it out where it needs to be rooted out. That’s the cure for this, ultimately, I think. The cure for any bad behavior, any systematic bad behavior, any calcified bad behavior, is to be like, sorry! We just gotta keep talking about it. I know it’s exhausting. But think about how exhausting it was for people when no one would talk about it. That’s how I feel about all of this stuff.”

What’s obvious, this is not an issue with an easy solution. Pritchard of the Sexual Assault Support Center, thinks a sincere apology from Ansari would go a long ways toward the healing.

“If I burned your house down and the next day said ‘Yeah Joel, your house caught on fire. I’m sorry that happened’ and sort of half apologized, and then six months later I didn’t understand why you don’t trust me in your house or with fire, it would seem ludicrous,” said Pritchard.

“Maybe what I should be saying is ‘I want to apologize and make reparations and get therapy and counseling and maybe I should not be trusted with fire for a while.’ Maybe having that power right now is not a good idea for me.”
 
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1 COMMENT

  1. RE: Where will the Comeback Trail Lead Aziz Ansari: Here’s the thing. I look for a pattern of behavior. I had heard of Louis CK exposing himself, it wasn’t a secret and I’m just a guy not in showbiz. I’ve never heard of another incident with Anzari. What are we to do when it’s a person who is otherwise admirable but clearly did something we don’t approve of? I have no answers only questions. This is purely a judgement call. Louis CK though is going to have a much harder time.

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