Let me start with Comedy Club. I remember the first meeting, and the first thing I realized was how male dominated the whole club is! Its gotten better throughout the year, more girls show up eventually, but none of them are really brave enough to do stand up, and if we do choose to sack up and do stand up, the guys tease us for not being funny. I even tried to stand up a few times and I found it so difficult to write stuff that would be funny to males AND females. So I took the easy way out and wrote a bit about breasts.
In Comedy Sauce, the female to male ratio is much more balanced, but the skits we shoot and record mostly have male characters! That makes me so upset. I try my best to write sketches with female characters, but they have to be absolutely off-the-wall hilarious to be chosen to record (no luck yet, still trying).
My dream is to work for (write for) Saturday Night Live one day.
I was doing some research about various casts, and I mainly looked at the casts from 2000-2010, but I also skimmed through from 1975-1995. SNL started with 3 women in the cast, it went down to 2 women some years in the 80's and early 90's. In the 00's, there have been 4-5 women in the cast.
And you have to realize, the total of cast members varies from 10-17 people.
Seriously?? When I think about it, it makes me livid.
I was watching the episode that Dana Carvey hosted a few weeks ago, it was pretty funny, I loved seeing the return of Wayne's World, but I noticed what a lack of female-driven sketches there were!! Many times men played women too, which is hilarious... But still! What the fuck SNL?
I mean, at least we have Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig and among other hilarious females in the world of comedy but we need MORE WOMEN. And enough of this men playing women thing, it's gonna get old soon.
Talia,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really important issue you bring to the table: why aren't women "supposed to be" funny? As you know, I've been in Comedy Club since my first year at IC and it's always been desperate for women, but mostly to appeal to ideals of diversity and representation rather than an actual appreciation for females who do comedy. in other words, the guys want girls but make fun of them when they actually try to do comedy (which again, is brave enough as it is, but extremely frustrating when sexist structures are holding you back).
Just remember that you don't have to rely on the male gaze-version of comedy, which means you don't have to be really crude and sexist to be funny since that's what men do a lot of the time to be funny.
There are hilarious feminists and they don't rely on making fun of their own bodies and experiences as women from a sexist perspective to do so! I know two girls from IC who are in Chicago this semester, training at the same comedy school Tina Fey once attended!! Women are making impressive steps in comedy and showing the world they can be funny, too; it's something we need to fight for and tell people: women aren't inherently less funny, but it might seem so when they are systematically denied the right to try and crack jokes, especially non-sexist ones!
I think a large part of the whole "guys accusing women of not being funny" thing is just sort of symptomatic of people growing up with mostly male comedians and really not knowing how to react to women who are subtle and eccentric in ways that don't rely on gross-out humor.
ReplyDeleteThere's been a big shift in the last decade towards "dirty guy" humor, and the emphasis is clearly on "guy." People like to point to Chelsea Handler but I remember even watching this one female comedian doing a skit where she basically copied Handler and just sort of pointed out how sexist and lowest common denominator her humor was. You don't need to be blue to be funny, but a lot of guys have a hard time remembering that when a woman is up at the mic.
That being said, body humor just kind of ends up being one of those things that is contextually just hard for women to pull off. Let's face it, dicks are just kind of funny organs (or, that is, GUYS think they're hilarious because we're obsessed with them and ourselves). A woman making a joke about boobs may get results from from a certain stand-point is does come off as this unfair capitulation you have to make that really becomes about your own insecurities as opposed to a male comedian joking about his small dick to boost his ego. And having heard you say to me personally that you don't really like blue humor, I just kind of feel bad that that seems to be where the trend of comedy is continuing.
I do remember finding this one really tall, black woman comedian who was absolutely hysterical and, while she used a lot of blue humor, none of it really seemed like coping out. There really is a "humor gap" as Christopher Hitchens would say between men and women, and changing it really comes down to more than just having more women on television.
We've talked about this before, so you know I agree, but I think a big part of this is that women are a little limited to comedy. If a guy dresses up in a dress/ wig/ make-up, it's funny, if a girl dresses up in pants and a t-shirt, it's everyday. It even happened at the Oscars: Anne Hathaway was in a tuxedo, no big deal, and then James Franco came out looking like Marylin Monroe, and it was hilarious. I want to say women get away with more and that is why it is funny when guys sort of "challenge" roles, but the thing is, guys can curse or talk about sex in comedy and be considered funny, yet if a woman does, she is vulgar. It's a double standard, and even I fall into that. I think Chelsea Handler is gross, Wanda Sykes taste is too strong for me, and Sara Silverman used to be awesome but not so much any more. I don't know what it is, but until Tina Fey there were really no dominant female comedians...and that needs to change. The only other woman I can really think of that I truly admire as a comedian is Kristen Schaal, but even she gets put on the back burner. She is in Flight of the Conchords, was responsibly for the Sexy book of Sexy Sex, voiced Trixie in Toy Story 3, and frequently does things for the Daily Show, yet no one really knows who she is. It's unbalanced and unfair, but there really is no way to challenge this until we get stronger and more accepted female comedians.
ReplyDeletewas/is responsible*
ReplyDeleteIt always struck me as interesting how few female comedians were considered to be successful. Even in my own home, we will occasionally watch stand up comedy on television and my dad (King of the Remote) will always change the channel when a female comedian comes on. His reasoning is that none of them are ever funny. I always found that to be a little odd that he never gave them a chance. I've made it a note to always give female comedians a chance when watching them on television.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that many should change the content of their jokes. Most female comedians I have watched usually resort to sexual jokes, I'm guessing they do this because they feel that sex sells and it is the only way for their material to be heard. I say they should give other material a shot and see what happens. I believe the outcome will be much better than they anticipate.