Fran Lebowitz: A Relieving Icon

by Olivia Cantadori

It’s rare for a celebrity to stay relevant from one generation to the next, and especially rare if that celebrity has a bent, acidic, relentless personality. Despite this, Fran Lebowitz has reawakened her fame with a new audience of both astounding impulsivity and hopelessness. In the midst of fad culture, Lebowitz has created an island around herself and her work. Standing firm and solitary, Lebowitz’s humor has persisted against the waves of cancel culture, seemingly against all odds. While strange and unlikely, Lebowitz’s enduring relevance not only as a commentator but also as a pop culture icon cements another aspect of American society. While engulfed in doom-scrolling and slippery trends, the public still yearns for what today would be tagged “authenticity”, but which really manifests as a kind of naked self-awareness. In the current labyrinth of tech culture, Lebowitz provides us with a figure of clarity and autonomy. No excuses or apologies, Lebowitz feeds the other side of consumerist culture, the starving need for unbridled and unfearing expression. 

Lebowitz has most recently caught the public's attention through a collaboration with her long-time friend and master filmmaker, Martin Scorsese. In the Netflix series Pretend It’s a City, directed by Scorsese, Lebowitz airs her most blunt and acrid comments on New York City, the people who live there, and the passage of time, all set to perfectly framed shots, capturing a gray and brown, somewhat analog, atmosphere. The series lured hundreds of viewers, reigniting the nation’s interest in Lebowitz’s fiery opinions and validating audiences’ frustrations with society. 

Though today she is more widely known for the series, as well as her orations, conversations, and interviews, all of which regularly sell out theaters across the country, Lebowitz began as a writer. Becoming an integral part of the artistic scene in 1970s and 80s New York City, Lebowitz began her writing career at Andy Warhol’s magazine Interview and published two acclaimed books, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, both of which have been published in The Fran Lebowitz Reader. Demonstrating her talents of oration and prose, befriending artists like David Wojnarowics and Toni Morrison, Lebowitz cemented herself in the consciousness of American academia and remained there as a unique figure, renowned for her ability to express herself. 

This expression is what leads Lebowitz to seem as though she’s made up of a mass of contradictions. She has stated that her urge to express herself came from growing up in a time period where her opinions and feelings were largely ignored. When speaking about her background, Lebowitz told New Jersey Jewish News that she sees herself as an “ethnic or cultural” Jewish person, but is “not religious.” When asked about her connection to technology, Lebowitz has stated that she owns neither a computer nor a telephone and writes by hand. In short, Lebowitz seems to exist in her own sway, not succumbing to any one modern temptation or past ideology. She defines herself outside of upbringing and religion, has protected herself from the toxicity of internet culture, and has abstained from guilt, infamously stating in Pretend It’s A City: “There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure”. 

Through all of this, Lebowitz has maintained a singularly New York City persona–that is, the City of the ’70s and 80’s: serious, dangerous, and limitlessly artistic. Rubbing elbows with great jazz musicians and fellow rising creatives, Lebowitz has emerged from the thick of a previous culture to reign over the present and has preserved herself as a kind of island for those who feel overwhelmed by the swill of modern times. 

Despite her paradoxical fame, Lebowitz is the latest in a long line of American satirists. From Mark Twain to Dorothy Parker, American culture, more famous for its abundance and lack of moderation, has had a clinging relationship with those who break, dismiss, and criticize its whims. Satire is societal catharsis–and never was there more of a need for it than right now, when corruption and hypocrisy seem always just a step away. It’s the exposure of everyday pet peeves or contradictions and the awareness of larger societal corruption that make the satirical view so attractive. While American society rushes headlong into consumer addiction and overwhelmed lifestyles, it also instinctively draws back. And in drawing back, it hopes to find stable ground. The catharsis of witnessing all our anger and fears vented and defended by an intimidatingly consistent voice is a somewhat communal experience. Reading of all the relief expressed after the release of Pretend It’s A City is just about as connected as a person can feel to mass culture. Almost everyone’s found a voice in Lebowitz. 

In the increasingly hustle-focused, fast-paced mindset of the modern day, and especially, the modern city, a slow, unbothered, analog satirist seems to be a vital life source for the people. With temptation and guilt at every corner, Lebowitz’s consistently unapologetic presence presents the opportunity for freedom from the pervasive eye of what we believe we should be doing. She’s an aspirational model in a hyper-connected world, with no guilt about her smoking habit and no need to seek the validation of those around her, and she does it all while exuding an aura of cool detachment. She’s at the very least, an anomaly, a woman whose opinions surmount all possible oppression, and a public figure immune to the pitfalls of publicity. 

As the threat of AI, and more generally, tech addiction loom ever closer, such a figure becomes a sign of escape from digital chaos. Not only is humanity growing more reliant on tech, but we’re almost painfully aware of the fact as it’s becoming more apparent. Lebowitz’s lack of even an email is, at the very least, reassuring. As we watch the possibility of a life free from self-shaming and tech stress stray further and further from our reality, there’s an underlying desperation for opinion and privacy, and Lebowitz’s renewed popularity seems to be a manifestation of that. 

In the midst of controversies surrounding AI, in the midst, also, of shortening attention spans and cell phone addiction, Lebowitz is a creator who is both autonomous and refreshing. Commenting scathingly on modern times and yet immune from cancel culture through her firm ignorance of social media, Lebowitz represents the dream of being able to partake in American culture without being a part of it. Whether this dream can be achieved by a wider public is an increasingly worrisome debate, but the anomaly of Fran Lebowitz remains a beacon.

Olivia Cantadori is a student living in New York. Her articles have appeared in the blog Books of Brilliance. She is currently an editor at the literary journal Pato and an admirer of hotel breakfasts.

For more on Jewish humor, check out our commentary on Bros, You People, and Amy Winehouse.

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Photo of Fran Leibowitz at Caffe Reggio courtesy of Cultured Magazine