ANXIETY CLUB – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)
The bumper crop of comics mining their psychic wounds for material continues unabated, to the benefit of both comics and audiences. From Gary Gulman’s The Great Depresh, Neal Brennan’s 3 Mics, Jerrod Carmichael’s Rothaniel, to Taylor Tomlinson’s exploration of being bipolar, standup has, by now, completely incorporated conversations about mental health. Comics may still sublimate their pain to get a laugh and connect, but audiences are now primed to learn about the actual scaffolding underneath.
In fact, this territory seems so well defined that one is left asking whether, except for individual stories, there is anything left to unearth. A new film by Wendy Lobel, Anxiety Club, shows there is. At first blush, Anxiety Club may seem like another straightforward exploration of individual comics battling their demons amid the broader questions about comedy and mental illness. Even Marc Maron, the OG of digging through emotional muck together, is on hand. Yet he is there as a sort of founding father passing on the torch to a new generation who have already internalized the power of vulnerability as critical to both their well-being and their comedy. They are so fluent and self-aware, seamlessly capturing their generation’s earnestness and their own keen ability for expression. From this new baseline, Lobel also builds the next iteration of this conversation and shows how it can evolve. Continue reading on THE FEMALE GAZE.
ABOUT YAEL FRIEDMAN
Yael Friedman is a journalist based in New York. She covers art and culture and their intersection with economics, politics, and history. She has written extensively about urban history and urban planning, particularly New York’s, analyzing its past and assessing its present and future. Her articles have appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, 1843, The Conversationalist, The Economist, The Daily Beast, Haaretz, Forward, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Urban Omnibus.
