1 Long Essay: Wait, is ‘Whiplash’ unintentionally funny?

It’s not quite my tempo...

Apr 22, 2026

I think it was Marx who first suggested that history plays out twice, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Karl, not Groucho, by the way.

This also applies to the 2014 movie Whiplash, which critics cheered and won veteran character actor JK Simmons a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The movie made the career of its then-29-year-old director, Damien Chazelle, whose follow-up, the neo-musical La La Land, was mistakenly awarded the 2017 Best Picture Oscar. (His last movie, 2022’s Babylon, a frenetic Old Hollywood tragicomedy, was dismissed, even mocked, but it could be a masterpiece? Ah, well, that’s another essay.)

When I first saw Whiplash in the movie theater, I was riveted. Watching the story of a toxic relationship between an abusive teacher and a brilliant student was torturous. Their scenes together were tense, to say the least. And I distinctly remember enjoying it? I spent the entire movie clenching my fists as JK Simmons’ muscular loudmouth conservatory jazz band teacher torments Miles Teller’s determined young student drummer.

Simmons’ character believes that musicians have to be pushed beyond their limits in order to be great, and Teller wants nothing more than to be one of the greats, like a modern-day Buddy Rich.

But I rewatched Whiplash recently, and all I saw was a movie about the two most talented jazz musicians in New York City, a pair of white dudes.

I don’t know what compelled me to stream Whiplash. I think there was a part of me that couldn’t believe that movie was as talked about as it was back in 2014. Did we really applaud a movie that combined enhanced interrogation techniques and music school?

The whole movie is a testosterone-spiced brawl between fellas with weak chins. What I once thought was harrowing is now laughable. JK Simmons’ homophobic zingers don’t sound quite right coming out of that actor’s mouth, and I chuckled to myself when Miles Teller’s fingers started bleeding because he’s playing the drums with such power and passion.

Whiplash asks the audience to accept Miles Teller’s character as the next Charlie “Bird” Parker and that Simmons’ psycho teacher is the man to mold him into that legend. But is Teller’s drummer any good? The answer is: you have to take the filmmaker’s word for it.

But Whiplash is funny if you indulge one small idea: what if Teller and Simmons’ characters are actually talentless? Or if not talentless, then just… average. They spend the whole movie sweating and shouting and makin’ jazz tunes, and the audience is left to assume they’re both the best of the best, but what if that assumption is wrong?

What if the jazz world thinks those two are, simply, mediocre? The movie is more enjoyable if you toy with that hypothetical.

At first, I thought Whiplash was about a battle of the wills, but it’s not, really. It’s a feature-length slap fight. A mash note to machismo. This is the most serious movie in the world about dudes beating their chests like hairless gorillas. I don’t know if Chazelle knew this when he was making it. I don’t think so. I think he thought he was making the most badass movie possible about cool jazz cats.

Am I being too harsh? Maybe. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood this time for a movie about empty conflict. I was, however, in the mood for a movie that made sense, and the locker room cruelty of Whiplash just didn’t make sense for me, at least at this point in my life. These two characters have no inner life. Their motivations are… childish, really. The drama itself is contrived. As a boxing match, Whiplash didn’t connect with me that way; I remember it connecting with me once, though. It also didn’t strike me as a particularly credible examination of an abusive relationship. The climax of the movie even suggests that, yes, emotional terror can make someone better at… improvisational boogie-woogie?

Whiplash has wannabe Glengarry Glen Ross energy, another movie about dudes abusing dudes. But the stakes are higher in David Mamet’s portrait of sweat-stained salesmen barking at each other. The losers in Glengarry Glen Ross better sell, or they’re going to get shit-canned. It’s not like Teller’s character’s hands are going to get broken with hammers like in the gangster movie Casino. I think the worst thing that can happen to him is that he has to find a new jazz band. And I’m pretty sure there is more than one jazz band in NYC? The stakes in Whiplash are small apples.

If the jazz world is super cutthroat, that’s not properly dramatized. I’d love to have seen that. I doubt the jazz scene is Game of Trombones, though. The guys I know who talk about Bird and Mingus and Coltrane all the time seem super nice.

But the driving theme of Whiplash has nothing to do with music or musicians. It has to do with male egos utterly detached from reality. Which is fine, but that theme should never be taken seriously. Have you ever seen a man so furious that he punches a wall? That shit is pure uncut comedy.

So Whiplash does not hold up. It doesn’t help that 2014 was a thousand internet years ago. At the time, I think, Chazelle thought he was exploring men behaving badly, but it was a superficial study. Weak, half-hearted. The young filmmaker was too fascinated by the dark power of emotional violence. Even Teller’s character is romantically written, a driven kid from a small family who wants to be big. Big! Big, I tell ya!

I don’t think all-consuming ambition is gender-specific, but men are obsessed with being the best at whatever is in front of them. Darts, farts, chugging beers. It’s part of our cultural training. Hormones help, but American boys are commanded to compete from the moment they stop sucking on Legos.

I think dreaming of being the GOAT is a very manly delusion. To be a man is to constantly prove your value, and society is very adamant about what that means: men achieve, they strive, they make money and compete, they win, at all costs. And if they can’t do that, instead of accepting failure, they act like total rage donkeys and deny, deny, deny.

There was a time, too, I wanted to be one of the greats, but I am not great at anything. I can nap almost anywhere—airports, buses, sitting on a folding chair during a middle-school recital. That’s a talent, but I wouldn’t say I’m great at dozing off. I would have settled for being great at anything, honestly. My accountant is great at finding deductions, and I envy him. I don’t even think I’m a great newsletter-writer-whatever-this-is. But this fantasy feeds the belief that men are supposed to be bosses, number ones, apex predator kings who scream and push other men towards excellence. It’s absurd.

The world of Whiplash suggests, somewhere, a veteran competitive eater who looks like JK Simmons is screaming at his mentor, who can’t suck the meat off hot wings fast enough. Right now, a buff wellness startup founder is berating a marketing associate for an underperforming Instagram post. Whiplash, but it’s Yoda telling Luke he’s a pussy.