Lindy West interview: ‘#MeToo as a concept has absolutely not gone away’

Three years after her memoir ‘Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman’, Lindy West is back with a new collection of essays titled ‘The Witches Are Coming’. In it, West tackles a variety of topics from Donald Trump to Matt Lauer, Adam Sandler movies, abortions, Twitter and the serial killer Ted Bundy. She speaks to Clémence Michallon

Lindy West's new book of essays is out now (Jenny Jimenez)

Lindy West is as tough as nails. She shouldn’t have to be, but it comes with the territory when you’re not only a woman writing on the internet, but one who writes about divisive topics such as bodies, sexism and privilege. Her first book, a memoir titled Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, came out in 2016 and was adapted into a TV series on Hulu starring Aidy Bryant.

West is back with a new volume, a collection of incisive essays titled The Witches Are Coming. In it, West once again demonstrates a knack for dissecting just about any pop-cultural phenomenon with the right level of acerbity.

The book is named after a column she wrote for The New York Times in October 2017, which itself reflected on Woody Allen’s comment that the allegations of sexual misconduct made against Harvey Weinstein around that time might contribute to “a witch-hunt atmosphere”.

“Setting aside the gendered power differential inherent in real historical witch-hunts (pretty sure it wasn’t all the rape victims in Salem getting together to burn the mayor), and the pathetic gall of men feeling hunted after millenniums of treating women like prey, I will let you guys have this one,” West wrote in her column. “Sure, if you insist, it’s a witch-hunt. I’m a witch, and I’m hunting you.”

West has no time for hand-wringing over the perceived excesses of the #MeToo movement – whether it’s from Allen or anyone else. The Witches Are Coming tackles a number of topics, from Donald Trump to Matt Lauer via South Park’s politics, Adam Sandler movies, abortions, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop, food and TV personality Guy Fieri, Twitter and the serial killer Ted Bundy (there’s a chapter titled “Ted Bundy Was Not Charming – Are You High?”).

For a book that unpacks so many infuriating topics, The Witches Are Coming is energising rather than depressing. That’s because, as West says down the phone from the west coast of the United States, she has made hope a key part of her world view and views it as an essential counterpart to anger.

“This whole thing is gruelling and it’s not fair that some of us have to have to carry that burden – this whole process of airing out a lot of the ways in which our system is broken falls on the people victimised by the broken system to not just to carry the pain of it, but to be the person in charge of fixing it. And that’s f***ed,” the 37-year-old from Seattle says. “It’s really unfair. And of course people get burnt out and people need escapism. You can’t stay all the time. But I feel like anger mixed with hope is energising and galvanising and anger mixed with despair is painful and exhausting.”

Down the phone, West is assertive but never judgemental, with a warm laugh that breathes levity even into the most serious exchanges. Even though she’s tired and frequently yawns throughout our conversation – for which she apologises – she’s voluble and engaging.

West, who “does not believe in guilty pleasures”, devotes part of her book to one of her favourite ways to recharge, which is watching “as many consecutive episodes” of the reality-based US culinary series show Guy’s Grocery Games “as the Food Network will feed me”. However, she observes that if terrible accusations were to come to light against its host, Guy Fieri, she would stop watching the programme, as “this is the slow, dumb work of progress”.

She explores that idea further in a chapter titled “Obsolescence Is a Preventable Disease”, in which she argues that “art has no obligation to evolve, but it has a powerful incentive to do so”. In other words, sure, comedians, writers and other creators are free to keep making content that doesn’t work in our day and age, but that means their art will only shine a light on how they refused to adapt to the world around them.

West is careful not to place the burden of morality on the people who enjoy said art, even though she personally doesn’t find it difficult to stop consuming parts of our cultural output that have become associated with sinister allegations.

“No one has to do anything,” she says. “If you can listen to Michael Jackson and not have the phrase ‘child rapist’ pop into your head, great, go ahead. I don’t personally feel like I can listen to Michael Jackson anymore without being wildly distracted and feeling gross. And I certainly don’t think you should give R Kelly your money. But also, everyone’s an autonomous human being, and all you can really do is have conversations, let people make choices and hope that people make good choices, or choices that are in line with their own ethics.”

Perhaps West’s healthy approach to a perennially heated debate stems from her ability to set boundaries as to how much she’s willing to engage with the discourse. She left Twitter in 2017, not long after Donald Trump sent out a rash tweet about North Korea and nuclear weapons. And while she admits that she “definitely [doesn’t] feel tuned into the zeitgeist”, she has no regrets.

“I just feel so much happier not waking up with that dread every day of what’s going to be in there when I open my Twitter feed this morning,” she says. “I don’t want to go back to that. And I think that it frees up my mental energy to do a lot of other things, to be a lot more creative in other areas.”

A particularly creative part of The Witches Are Coming is a cutting analysis of Adam Sandler’s contributions (or lack thereof) to comedy. Through her scathing analysis of Sandler’s films, and by highlighting their (many, as it turns out) weaknesses, West reflects on the male-dominated world of comedy and the lack of female role models in the industry. Her essay, titled “Is Adam Sandler Funny?”, also demonstrates why pop culture can and should be critiqued – even if attempts to criticise comedy shows are often met with cries of “lighten up!” and allegations of censorship.

“If me writing a book of essays and Adam Sandler still having a however-many-million-dollar Netflix deal looks like censorship to you, then you are confused,” West says. “These are massively rich and famous and successful people with massive platforms and they’re fine. And I think that there is absolutely no harm and possibly quite a lot of good and examining stories that we’ve been telling ourselves about ourselves and who we are and how we treat each other for the past, you know, millennia.”

Of Sandler, whom she saw perform during a live Saturday Night Live taping, she adds: “I’m not trying to destroy Adam Sandler. I think Adam Sandler is a nice man. He was very nice to me at Saturday Night Live. He shook my hand backstage and I felt very guilty for writing a mean chapter about him. I’m not trying to destroy anyone. I don’t even think that he was trying to do anything bad. I think that we have some broken systems in place and we treat each other in disordered ways and we have to talk about it to be better.”

The Witches Are Coming is being published two years after #MeToo went mainstream, in the wake of the many allegations of sexual misconduct faced by Harvey Weinstein and, since then, numerous other powerful men. West is optimistic about what the movement has accomplished so far and what changes it may bring about in the future.

“I definitely think that #MeToo as a concept has absolutely not gone away,” she says. “People are talking about it all the time. It has absolutely reframed the way that people think about sexual assault and sexual harassment. We’re just still in this really early kind of growing pains phase where we’re figuring out what this new world is going to look like and how we’re going to regulate it and how it’s going to work.”

‘The Witches Are Coming’ is out now through Hachette Books