Joan Rivers has passed away at the age of 81. The official cause of death has not been released, but multiple sources over the past few days have reported that Ms. Rivers suffered numerous complications during a surgical procedure, and the legendary comedian passed this afternoon.
My fondest memories of Ms. Rivers are the makeup scene in “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” in which she and Ms. Piggy have a screamingly hilarious makeover, and her voice acting for the robotic Dot Matrix in “Spaceballs.” I firmly remember asking my mother about Joan Rivers after seeing “Spaceballs,” and her reply was “well, she’s a comedian. She’s vulgar but funny, but she’s very important. For a lot of years she’s been successful at things women haven’t really been allowed to do.” My mother’s summation was accurate, but grossly understated.
Can you name five female comedians who were doing stand up in the sixties? I cannot. I can name two, maybe three. Not only was Joan doing stand up about feminism and misogyny in a decade when you couldn’t say the word “pregnant” on television, she did it so well it made her famous. She wrote for “Candid Camera” and Topo Gigio, starred in plays on and off Broadway, wrote screenplays, and advanced her way through the comedy clubs of Greenwich Village to being the first “permanent” guest host on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”
Ms. Rivers’s style was always very blunt. Many of her routines centered around poking fun of fellow celebrities or airing her own self deprecating anecdotes. Later in her career, she became somewhat of a parody of herself, albeit a very self aware, possibly carefully constructed parody. She made frequent digs at her own plastic surgery excursions, and even guest starred several times on the FX series “Nip/Tuck.” She abandoned a very lucrative contract with the E! network to do fashion commentary on the TV Guide Channel, and for a while was The Voice of red carpet approval. Many a starlet would joke during a red carpet interview about taking Joan’s opinions into consideration when deciding on an event’s look.
In recent years, Joan Rivers achieved more negative attention for her controversial humor. She was never apologetic about her Holocaust jokes, her digs at the weight of celebrities, or her political opinions. I myself even became disillusioned with the comedian’s style. I would frequently wonder when the shift happened and noticed more and more people asking “when did Joan shift from funny to just mean?” But I always found myself thinking, without any judgment on either party, did Joan change – or did we?
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for her recent opinions, I never forgot Joan’s contribution to comedy. And some of her later projects, namely her documentary and a guest appearance on “Louie,” are reminders of the reasons why Joan Rivers became, and will remain, a legend.
A thought popped up while I was reminiscing – I confess that my most vivid memory is not the Muppets makeover. One year during an Oscar telecast, a producer didn’t cut to commercial quickly enough and I got to see Joan Rivers say “twat” on live television. And that, my friends, is actually the memory I think she’d most like me to share.