Comedian Amy Schumer released a special on Netflix on March 7th, and the reviews are either pretty good or incredibly bad — dependent, it seems, on whether or not you buy into what the trolls are saying.
As first reported by Splitsider.com, The Leather Special (which debuted on March 7th) accumulated a surprising avalanche of viewer ratings soon after it became first available. Unlike previous efforts by Schumer, the large majority of ratings were negative: as of four days ago, it had received 33 five star reviews and a whopping 710 one star reviews.
It turns out that this is apparently the result of a co-ordinated effort among a small but dedicated group of internet trolls, specifically those found in groups which are often called “Alt-Right.” If you aren’t familiar with the people who describe themselves in these terms — well, it’s too complicated for me to get into here. But if you are a woman or know any or actually like them or perhaps your mother or daughter is/was one, then you should educate yourself about these people.
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Comedians, like comedic tastes, are pretty individualistic. They aren’t the kind of people to readily shut up: after all, talking is the main component of the job. Another part of the job is handling hecklers. Amy Schumer (born June 1, 1981, time unknown, New York, New York) has sold out venues around the world with her comedy and has been known to verbally eviscerate hecklers. Given that she has a very close Mars in Taurus-Uranus in Scorpio opposition in her birth chart, we should perhaps be thankful that it’s only the deserving who have experienced her wrath.
This also raises the question of where “humor” comes from in a birth chart, and again, it’s complicated. Certainly the condition of Mercury and the Third House of the birth chart are factors (unfortunately, without a time of birth, we don’t know which planet rules Amy’s Third House), at least when it comes to communicating a joke.
Jupiter is traditionally associated with humor. In fact, the Ancient Roman alternate name for Jupiter (Jove) is where we get the word “jovial” from. And in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud theorized that humor is related to what is otherwise being repressed, and thus can be considered a Mars function — a joke is just an observation of something being held back that had to fight its way through to be expressed.
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We can see both from Amy’s actions and her birth chart that she’s more than capable of putting some badly-behaved boys in their place, but astrologically those factors in the birth chart are only part of the story. We also need to ask about the timing involved.
Normally when we’re looking at transits affecting public image and career issues, we need to look at the Midheaven and its ruler, and the transits they are experiencing. In Amy’s case, we are at a disadvantage because we don’t know her time of birth, which determines these things. Nonetheless, there were some distinct transits happening this month for her that could indicate trouble.
First of all, transiting Jupiter is closely conjunct her natal Pluto. A Jupiter transit usually brings growth, expansion, and amplification… and Pluto rules a lot of very deep and explosive things. If this were a mere one-time prank, isolated in scope, we might not see something this big. However, the involvement of Pluto indicates this could be a part of something bigger to come… and this is not the first time the Alt-Right have used their powerful combination of Mad Internet Skillz, Loud Compensation For An Inferiority Complex, and Too Much Spare Time to focus on women in comedy. Consider the case of last year’s female-centric remake of Ghostbusters, which gained notoriety for having the worst-rated trailer of all time on YouTube.
I haven’t seen the new Ghostbusters, but I’ve seen the trailer and there is absolutely no way it’s the worst movie trailer of all time. The reason this film got so heavily downvoted on YouTube was that the haters put their efforts behind a huge online campaign to downvote the trailer. Apparently, your childhood action figures shouldn’t be remade with vaginas. Who knew?
Is this sort of thing likely to happen again? There is an all-female remake of Ocean’s Eleven coming, and Amy Schumer’s next major film role is scheduled to be Barbie, based on the iconic Mattel toy. That film is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2018… when transiting Saturn is square Amy Schumer’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, transiting Uranus is square her Nodes. Thus, we can almost certainly expect to hear of Amy getting trolled again. Unless, of course, the trolls suddenly grow up and get a life.
Nah… that ain’t gonna happen.
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