Max Vyshynsky on creative activity, family life and reaction to hate
In an exclusive interview with Woman Magazine, Ukrainian stand-up comedian and young father Max Vyshynsky talks about how he combines stand-up and fatherhood, about raising a child, and the mission he and his wife want to convey to young families.
Is the modern comedian dad a fictional image or do you show the real you?
There can be no fictional image in stand-up. Stand-up is you, your story, your experience, your attitude to a situation, event or phenomenon. It doesn’t happen here, like in the movies, that you come out as a womanizer or a nerd. The stand-up is himself on stage. You are looking at a 100% perfect father, but not in the sense that we get into our minivan, smile a Hollywood smile, go throw Frisbees, have a dog, and so on.
An ideal modern father is a father who respects his wife, spends time with his child of his own free will, i.e. no one forces me to do it, and a father who prioritizes his child.
I was preparing for fatherhood, I really wanted a child, and now I can’t get enough of it, so I enjoy spending time together. There is no such thing as me saying on stage that a man should respect his wife and child, be able to change diapers, go to a partnered birth, never go to a show, drink for a week while your wife is sitting there in the delivery room and is physically hurting, she needs support, but in reality I am like that: “Well, this is all on stage, but in real life I drink beer and watch football.” All the things that I say on stage, I promote in my life outside of it.
Comedian Max Vyshynsky with his family
Why did you decide to make a joke about the “idealization” of family life, and how does the audience of mothers react?
I believe that in our society there are still some forms of relationships that come from the Soviet Union, i.e., “man is the breadwinner” and “woman is the keeper of the hearth,” but we need to move away from this. A family is a team, it’s your shared responsibility if we’re talking about a child, and it shouldn’t be that “you’re the mother, you gave birth, you’re the one who’s going to do it, and I’m going to earn money and that’s it.” We live in a modern society, and we need to convey these narratives to people. The audience is mostly mothers, 90% of them give me a standing ovation, and they often write in the comments: “Where else can I find something like this?”, “Don’t you have a clone?”, that is, they really like everything. To be honest, when I started writing about this, I thought it was obvious, but it turned out that there are a lot of problems in society, in families, many women complain about their husbands, that he can’t change a diaper or doesn’t take any interest in his child at all, always using the excuse “I’m tired,” but isn’t mom tired? Isn’t your wife tired of being with the child all day, feeding him, putting him to bed, babysitting? That’s why the audience of mothers is very positive about my material and always notes my adequacy and great respect for women.
You talk about the family institution, although many men are ashamed of this topic. Why did you choose it?
I did not choose her. In stand-up, there is no such thing as a joke about family today, global warming tomorrow, and football the day after tomorrow. Stand-up, as I said, is something you live by. I am now a young father, and this is a new experience for me, the most important event that has happened in my life, and I will, of course, translate this experience into humor, irony, and sarcasm, so that I can convey to society the things I am conveying through jokes. I want to talk about this on stage so that other men can see my example and feel free to speak up and change their behavior. I see a lot of guys my age, and even younger, they just take this form, you know, like “father to son” and are like this: “That’s it, I’m going to take care of the child, I’m not going to do anything, let my wife take him out, I’ll think of some things to do to stay at work, because a child is very hard,” and they dump all the responsibility on their wife. You don’t need to do that. In my stand-ups, I tell people that being a father is easy if you talk through all the issues with your wife, show her that you can solve many issues regarding the child, and you really can, and be the maximum support for the family so that the child is brought up in joy and sleeps well. From my experience, if two parents are calm, then the child is calm.
How does your wife react to jokes that cover family life and life with a child?
My wife is only in favor of me telling these important things for the Ukrainian family from the stage. Many viewers come to a concert, for example, my solo show “You Have a Girl,” and think that I’m going to make jokes about having a baby and not knowing what to do, running away from home or something, but I say that you don’t have to do that. My wife supports this, she also talks about motherhood as it is, she has a vlog called “I gave birth and understood”, and she talks there without a vanilla story about what it is like to be a mother in the 21st century, about all the hardships, all the problems, and that the most important thing is that they can be solved. Yes, of course, I may be hyperbolizing here and there, but it’s more of a humorous device than just some kind of fiction for the sake of a joke. No matter how pretentious it may sound, both my wife and I have a mission – – to convey to young families or experienced families that parenthood is simple, the main thing is love and understanding that it is your shared responsibility.
Comedian Max Vyshynsky with his family
Do you actively respond to current events on Twitter, or are you afraid of getting a wave of hate?
I’m a comedian, I have to react to current events. Now comedians, and this is very nice, are becoming real opinion leaders, we should tweet, with our jokes, to relieve society in our extremely difficult time. As for hate, it exists and will always exist, especially in the age of modern technology. I understand that you can go overboard somewhere, say something wrong, maybe phrase it incorrectly, and I am ready to apologize to people if my joke is inappropriate. But I’m a very hardworking, diligent person, my internal editor works perfectly, and I never try to offend anyone in my tweets. Sometimes such cruel things happen, for example, when Efrosynina and Polyakova said that it was hard for them to generate their thoughts in Ukrainian, I wrote a tweet hinting that they were in Malorossia for now, and I was ready for fans to write something, but no, because I was completely right, and when you are right, hate can only be artificial. I don’t pay attention to hate for the sake of hate. If it is constructive criticism, I listen to it. If I have directly crossed someone’s path, chosen a position that the majority does not like, but this position is mine, it is justified, and it is also supported by many people, I will be happy to know that I have triggered someone, but I am right. That is, hate is not something terrible for me, especially if it is not for business. If it’s for business, if I, God forbid, record a song like “Wild Game” tomorrow or say something bad about the Armed Forces and get hated, then it’s my own fault, so I’m not a professional yet.
In your jokes, you show real life as a dad. How does the public react to this?
When you speak such truth from the stage, even teach someone with your jokes, the reaction can be different. People realize that you are talking about them, and sometimes they feel ashamed. When I told them that I don’t drink alcohol, that alcohol is marketing and we are just sold beautiful bottles of poison, many people understand this, but they are unable to admit to themselves that they have any problems, so they just sit and keep quiet. They came to have a laugh, and then you see, they started giving some kind of instruction from the comedian, sitting there with this face like this: “You’re the smartest, go ahead and make jokes, what are you telling me here, whether I should drink or not?” The same goes for raising a child. I often say that a man should walk with a stroller, be completely with the child, wake up at night and cradle the child, that is, it should not be only the woman who does all this because she gave birth to the child. And if it’s a group of women, they certainly support me, but men don’t understand. Again, the reaction is like this: “Are you the smartest?”, sometimes vice versa: “Wow, I thought I was the only one, and now you’re saying it from the stage, so I can go tell my friends that even a comedian says these things to huge audiences.” The reaction may be different, but I am ready for it. The main thing is to have your own position and convey to people that parenthood is cool, it’s cool, yes, it’s difficult, but first and foremost, it’s cool and cool.
Does your daughter also accompany you to performances?
Yes, my daughter comes to my performances, even though she hasn’t been walking in her life yet. I was very pleased when she and her wife came to the solo concert, which was written about her, You Have a Girl. While I was performing, they went backstage to the dressing room when I was already bowing to people, I came back and they were there – it was very nice, because it’s support and it’s very cool! I am sure that my child will continue to be present at my important concerts, so I am all for it.
Is it hard to combine parenthood and stand-up, while trying to be a perfect dad and a great stand-up comedian?
No, it’s not difficult. At first, of course, I was very afraid, because children are a responsibility, this is my first child, I didn’t know how it all works. But again, when you are a team, when you know what to expect from your spouse, and my wife and I know that we can rely on each other 100%, then everything is real. I have time for stand-up, she has time for her business. We just do everything very competently and can almost schedule ourselves. For example, I try to get up in the morning while my wife and child are still sleeping and work on my stand-up for two hours, then take care of the child, go for a walk with him, and go to a performance in the evening. You can make sure that you fit everything into 24 hours – work and raising a child – and that it is all absolutely harmonious. The main thing is that stand-up shouldn’t be a residual thing, and education shouldn’t be a residual thing either. That is, it is possible to find harmony in all this.
It takes two people to raise a child, and no matter how paradoxical it may sound, when the two of you are as busy as possible with the child, the two of you have time for each other.
What are you preparing for your audience in the near future?
Now I am writing a new solo concert, it will take place in the October Palace on October 7. It will also say a lot about the role of the father in the family, about the relationship between husband and wife when they have a child. There will be a lot of biographical and topical things, but everything will be around the family, because I am a family comedian. Once again, an independent, trendy man will stand on the stage, a father who is raising his child, who is able to wash the dishes and buy his own underwear, who does not send his wife to the market in the morning, because if nothing is cooked for me, I will be hungry. There will be an example of such a man that many women in the audience will say: “Oh, how lucky his wife is.” But, without such narcissistic things, I want to say that there are a lot of men like me, they exist, they are in my environment, they just need to be talked about and we need to make sure that men are not ashamed to say: “I spend time with my child while my wife is out doing her own thing.” Some men are afraid that their friends will tease them, that he is a backstabber, but there is no question of backstabbing. You just need to be there for your family so that when your child starts talking, he or she will say “I love you” instead of “Where’s dad?” So I invite you to a concert that will be very interesting and funny. It will be different from the one I had this year, which was about my wife’s pregnancy, our partnered childbirth, my experiences on the first days of the child’s birth, and this will be a broader story. I will be glad to see you on October 7 at the October Palace.
What kind of jokes will you make after the victory and what will you write about?
I will not deviate from my main vector, because I live with my family. Those who have children understand that this experience does not end, so every time I will write something new and interesting. I will write about myself, my family, my experience, and share it with people. I want him to make people laugh and teach them something. There will also, of course, be relevant topics. All of us, comedians, will talk about peace on stage, trying to solve the problems that will arise in Ukraine through our jokes. We will relieve the society and respond to the actual things that will happen, because all fans of stand-up comedy want to hear from a particular comedian, some specific opinion on a particular issue. Through myself, through my family jokes and observations, I will come up with some perhaps more global things. Of course, we will talk and joke about the Russians and how they are oppressed all over the world, because they have to pay for what they did on our territory. Frankly speaking, there is nothing wrong with making a complete mockery of your enemy.
I think we have a bright future ahead of us, and it will include bright Ukrainian stand-up!
Photo: press service
