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I’ve been ranting opining all week about Nate Bargatze’s performance as Emmys host. I won’t relitigate the whole thing again, but to sum it up I was disappointed that he only had one bit for the entire evening, checking in on that asinine tally that was trying to pressure winners into giving nano-second speeches. I can be fair-minded, though, (stop laughing) and was startled to be informed of a correction: there was one other joke… it was just so “subtle” that no one caught it. Remember that mystifying moment midway when Bargatze waltzed out in a blue jean tux? He said, “I have a blue jean tux on for some reason. We had, like, a joke. There’s a cummerbund, and I forgot what it — I don’t know,” and then he introduced Sydney Sweeney as a presenter. Apparently, his outfit was a joke on Sweeney’s much-maligned, eugenics-flavored American Eagle ad campaign. The Hollywood Reporter weighs in on the age-old question: if a joke bombs in the Peacock Theater, and everyone is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
A colleague, clearly more plugged in to fabric-based controversies than I, asked, “Was that [a] Sydney Sweeney joke? The jeans tux?”
My response, verbatim: “I don’t think so? Unless I missed some dialogue…”
She was right, I was wrong. Well, I was sort of wrong. Though I didn’t miss any dialogue, I do believe the joke was missing dialogue. That was by design, a person with knowledge of the bit told The Hollywood Reporter. Bargatze, an outspoken Christian who works squeaky clean, doesn’t degrade and doesn’t wade into controversy. The denim tux was him going there about Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle billboard and ad, in which the Hollywood “It” girl poses alone with the double entendre copy, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” Basically, some of the chronically-online found the message to be that only blonde-haired, blue-eyed white women have “great genes.”
The suit was the setup and the Sweeney intro was the punchline. What was spoken in the middle was simply Bargatze-patter — there wasn’t actually “a joke” he “forgot” as he stated.
Unfortunately, the “joke” doesn’t stand on the visual itself. Bargatze was in a tux, while Sweeney, at her most denim-y, wore jeans and a jean jacket. … Yes, Bargatze’s formal wear and Sweeney’s dressed-down modeling moment both featured denim-based outfits, but this side of cotton, denim is probably our most common textile — parody only works when the original work is recognizable within the spoof. Multiple people attending the awards show told me that they didn’t pick up on the joke, and a source who was backstage acknowledged a tepid response to the moment.
To call the joke “subtle,” as a number of my colleagues did, would be endorsing it for a level of cleverness and recognizability. Even with the info I have today, I cannot get on board with that classification. Not to overstate the importance of the moment, but a comedic cost-benefit analysis would probably conclude that, given what Bargatze had to work with, the risk of confusion outweighed its potential benefit. And as we all know, the best comedy comes out of economists’ tools.
For her part, Sweeney took to the stage with no acknowledgment of the moment and no interaction with Bargatze — not in a rude way, just in a doing-the-job way. Sweeney either didn’t catch the joke, didn’t hear it, or ignored it, which could have been her choice or a choice made for her for the sake of the joke.
Either way, the joke needed more — like, I don’t know, a joke?
“Bargatze, an outspoken Christian who works squeaky clean, doesn’t degrade and doesn’t wade into controversy.” Ugh, major eyeroll. For one thing, the implication that any one single group, in this case Christians, have a moral high ground is insulting. Second, if Bargatze truly didn’t want to “wade into controversy,” he wouldn’t have come out in a jean tuxedo at all! Which makes me suspect that this is just him trying to push back on the lukewarm-to-scathing reviews he got. Because much like the British Royal Family, there’s no half-in half-out with joke-telling. You gotta commit to the bit, otherwise it’s just a half-assed attempt at relevant social commentary, held back by someone not daring enough to risk ruffling feathers. And that’s exactly what we got from Bargatze, an effort so muddled it was completely unrecognizable as a “joke.” Also, having a general policy of not wanting to touch on controversies is a very limiting stance for a stand-up comic! Comedians are truth-tellers, and today more than ever, truth is controversial.
