{"id":2264,"date":"2025-08-01T13:30:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/?p=2264"},"modified":"2025-08-08T16:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T20:33:07","slug":"anxiety-club-review-by-yael-friedman-guest-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/2025\/08\/01\/anxiety-club-review-by-yael-friedman-guest-post\/","title":{"rendered":"ANXIETY CLUB – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The bumper crop of comics mining their psychic wounds for material continues unabated, to the benefit of both comics and audiences. From Gary Gulman\u2019s The Great Depresh<\/em>, Neal Brennan\u2019s 3 Mics,<\/em> Jerrod Carmichael\u2019s Rothaniel<\/em>, to Taylor Tomlinson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, shows there is. At first blush, Anxiety Club<\/em> 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Lobel assembled a highly diverse cast that includes Tiffany Jenkins, Mark Normand, Joe List, Aparna Nancherla, Baron Vaughn and Eva Victor. This kaleidoscope of comics articulating their struggles in one film, in a broader dialogue, rather than the typical monologue or conversation with another comic, is a greater salve, a greater normalization than what came before. By maintaining the focus on anxiety, the film also makes the conversation much more concrete. It feels like a therapeutic tool itself and truly is analogous to group therapy, where one can see oneself reflected back more easily than in conventional therapy, alone in a room with someone who is not a peer. There is a certain vacuum when watching a sole person on stage, one that also allows for a sometimes-unhealthy parasocial relationship, it is so intimate! This group portrait gets around both. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The film adds another layer that sets it apart in this way. While it follows all of the comics as they interrogate their anxiety in life and on stage, we get to join one of them as they embark on exposure therapy. Tiffany Jenkins, a comedian from Florida who gained a major following on YouTube and elsewhere by drawing on her anxiety in a way that resonated with millions, agreed to let us ride along. From her assignment to leave her children briefly alone downstairs, to eventually allowing them to go to a sleepover, we watch as she tries to peel back the layers of a compulsion that so many battling with anxiety cling to. While anxiety is only pathological to some, it is a disorder that is highly relatable and another reason this film can resonate with so many.<\/p>\n

By zooming in and out like this, Anxiety Club<\/em> allows for the bigger questions of whether and why comedians seem disproportionately afflicted by mental illness. More than one of the comics points out that while on stage, the comic has total control, and Aparna Nancherla also reminds us that when you make someone laugh you feel safe. Ultimately, it seems self-evident that comics are generally more adept at articulating their struggles, find succor in humor, and also have a need for others to validate them. This film rightly assumes that we have already digested this.<\/p>\n

Of course, it is also because the comics in this film are so funny, and so thoughtful about their respective anxieties, that the film works. The lessons only land if the jokes do. And in a cultural landscape that offers little common ground for truly diverse voices, politically and\/or demographically, this film provides that very rare space that appeals to so many and for the right reasons.<\/p>\n

ABOUT YAEL FRIEDMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first blush, Wendy Lobel’s Anxiety Club<\/em> 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[404],"tags":[759,768,764,767,59,765,762,766,761,760,758,729],"class_list":["post-2264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-anxiety-club","tag-aparna-nancherla","tag-baron-vaughn","tag-comedians","tag-documentaries","tag-eva-victor","tag-joe-list","tag-marc-maron","tag-mark-normand","tag-tiffany-jenkins","tag-wendy-lobel","tag-yael-friedman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/08\/anxiety-club-uael.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2264"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions\/2276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awfj.org\/female-gaze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}