If you are into tearing comedy apart and looking at its innards...

http://www.comicgrail.com

Coming in February

Ladylike: Why Women Aren’t Funny

You’re looking at the title and asking one of two questions.

1. Has someone come up with the definitive reason?
2. Who is this fucking jackass and where can I find him?

If you are asking the second question, fear not. I just didn’t want to preach to the choir. I wanted those seeking reinforcement of that idea to come in here, if only for a moment.

If you asked the first question, give me a bit of your time and an open mind. That’s all I ask.

This is the title of a book I am working on. In my time as a comedy writing teacher at Second City in Chicago I saw women, talented women, come into my class beaten before they’d begun. The desire was there, but they carried something else. The attitude, pounded into them subtly, sometimes overtly, that wanting to be funny was cute, but…well, don’t quit your day job, sweetie.

To me comedy is as close to religion, laughter as close to prayer, as one can get. To laugh until you puke is to touch the face of God, preferably to honk the divine schnozz. When a comic voice is silenced before it is heard, that is the worst heresy.

Jerry Lewis, accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 1999 said "A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.'' For a while I hated him for it but lately I’ve changed my opinion. He is from that generation and I really can’t expect anything different from him. The battle cannot be waged on that front. It must be fought with an eye toward the future.

With that in mind, Ladylike will be a document of women’s comic suffrage.

Women in comedy, I want your stories, nightmares, questions, fears… tell me the effect this attitude has had on you.

If you’re one who truly believes that women aren’t or cannot be funny, then by all means, tell me your side.

In advance, I thank you. A book like this could not exist without you.

http://www.comicgrail.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b=ladylike,m=1095048922

I see comedy in everyday life. Check out Election 2004, and join in on our DUDQ threads (the DU Drama Queens).

But seriously, I guess I never thought of that before...the different roles of gender in comedy. I always thought Carol Burnett was/is hilarious. I like Tracy Ullmann, and love Ellen's stand-up acts on HBO. Gilda was one of the best, and I miss her. Joan Rivers, Lilly Tomlin, even Roseann...funny. There are so many that I've left out...

But there are many different ways to approach comedy, aren't there? I don't get much from the Stooges. I used to like Jerry Lewis, but now he seems so over the top. Is it that men and women are wired differently? Does the minority status of being a woman affect what we interpret as funny? (and especially what is NOT?)

You mention "The attitude, pounded into them subtly, sometimes overtly, that wanting to be funny was cute, but…well, don’t quit your day job, sweetie." Are women more prone to external validation? Or does the problem lie in "wanting to be funny?"

Does Robin Williams want to be funny, or is it simply a part of who he is? Why is it that Bill Maher is funnier in his interactions with people, rather than trying to be funny with stand-up? The entire cast of The Daily Show, I think, does an excellent job of finding the line between "wanting to be funny" and actually BEING funny. So did Monty Python. And for most of its history, SNL is NOT that funny. It tries too hard. (with the exception of Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, and a small list of others)


Your words are golden, and spoke directly to my heart:



The Cheese approves. Laughter is a gift from God, and a cheerful heart is a good medicine, indeed!

I wish I could come up with a definitive reason for the bias, other than plain old run of the mill sexism. That's actually the reason for the book. To try to get at the guts of the "women aren't funny" myth and see where it came from, how it survives to this day, and what it will take to kill it.

I have a theory that it has to do with audience education as much as the "old boys club" that comedy has been since burlesque and the Catskills eras. There have been fewer women comics, because they just plain couldn't get bookings. Women's comedy as a genre, if you can call it that, never found its footing. They weren't getting booked, therefore they weren't onstage or backstage, which is where comics recieve their training, so women comics didn't develop in the same way as white male comics.

They developed, but in their own way, and without the benefit of the Catskills crockpot that male comics had. Audiences, conditioned to view comedy as "white male on stage with microphone" were unsure of this new comedy. Male comics, as well as being stylisticly skeptical, didn't want the competition for bookings, which was already brutal.

I'm still thinking this through, and I'm sure it will mutate many times as I go through the process.

Your last paragraph poses what I consider to be a question of craft, and so doesn't have a single answer.

Williams is a comedic sponge. He was known on the circuit, in the early days, as a notorius material thief. There were comics who refused to go onstage if they knew Robin was in the building.

To his credit he would also pay you on the spot if you called him on it. He wasn't an intentional thief. He heard "funny", it logged in, and came right back out when the time is right.

I got to meet him years ago when I was working the box office at Second City in Chicago. He came to the show, and during intermission we had to stash him away, out of audience reach, or he would have been mobbed. So he sat in the box office.

A very nice man. Calm, low key. This was Robin, the person. Later he got up onstage to improvise with the cast and he was Robin, the performer. His energy level tripled and his mind went into overdrive. The cast, no slouches when it came to improvisation (Bonnie Hunt was in the cast at the time), had a hell of a time keeping up.

After he came off stage I spoke with him briefly and he was Robin the person again. Drained, and tired, but the person.

So, does Robin Williams want to be funny, or is it simply a part of who he is? It's a bit of both. What is innate in him contains a good deal of the humor, but I think it's the person who makes a choice to flip the switch.

As far as the difference between trying too hard and being funny naturally, part of it is the acknowledgement that the performer or writer knows they are funny. The minute they acknowledge that, giv a sly wink to the audience that says, "Funny, right?", at that moment the rules change. And if they don't change with them they find themselves gunning the engine and spinning their wheels in the same spot, rather than moving forward.

The men were funny (entertainers), the women were sex objects to be oogled at (eye candy), not listened to.

Then you get Mae West, who could do both. Men fell all over themselves - and women hated her. If a woman were to try to be funny without being sexual, some people are going "WTF? Show us your tits!"

Remember the Women's suffrage movement, ca. 1800-1920. Women were radically re-defining their roles, and demanding that they be taken seriously. Others were grasping on to "the way things have always been." You can't do too many new things all at once.

'Tis confusing, indeed.

One evening puppy and I were in the car, and there he was at the stoplight next to him. I didn't know what to do so I did nothing. I wish I would have yelled 'hi'.

He smiled at my dog, who was in the front seat, and he had such light in his eyes. A very real person.

It's fun. For some people, anyway.

Oh, and I registered for the website.

I was kinda hoping you'd join in.

Still tweaking, but it's starting to pull together a bit.

Trying to line up some interviews for the future...

I also signed up.

I've been tearing comedy apart and looking at its innards for years, and I've grown tired of making such a mess all by myself.

I've also kept a journal off and on for some time, though mainly I write humor rather than write or perform comedy. (Yes, I know, the difference is rather vague.) Maybe now I can share my insights to see just how clueless I really am.

You're literally the first one on the 'Net to do something like this, except for brief threads in places like Improv Resource Center and lists like Laughter Crafters. Yea, the tittering throng of wit-wannabes will be flocking to your web demense like the Doves of Peace to the Newly-Washed Windshield of the Dramaturges.

This way lies Guruhood. You're going to end up with a reputation like Moses or L. Ron Hubbard, you know.

Now I have something to look forward to in February other than Groundhog Day. You've got my vote, Diebold or not.

--p!
Stoked Like Carmichael.

I really look forward to seeing you there.

"To me comedy is as close to religion, laughter as close to prayer, as one can get. To laugh until you puke is to touch the face of God, preferably to honk the divine schnozz. When a comic voice is silenced before it is heard, that is the worst heresy."

I have been saying humor is the height of spirituality for a while now. It's nice to have people understand how I feel. I'm not a big laugh-fest on this board (yet), but humor is of utmost importance to me.
:loveya:

I'm hoping to demystify comedy a bit...