Comp Lit 231 Comedy
Teja Pallikonda
The fundamental question of this class has been: among all the varying comedic tastes, what makes something funny? Several theories have come about to answer this question, none being more famous than Henri Bergson’s rules of comedy. In Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of a Comic, he highlights three main rules of comedy: 1) The comic does not exist outside of what is human; 2) Comics appeal to intelligence, not emotion; 3) Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo (Bergson 2-4). Overall, he claims that “the comic will come into being, it appears, whenever a group of men concentrate their attention on one of their numbers, imposing silence on their emotions, and calling to play nothing but their intelligence” (Bergson 4).
It does not take much to notice a key issue with Bergson’s rules: it only considers the opinion and intelligence of men. From Lucille Ball, Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner, Wanda Sykes, Ellen DeGenres, to many others, women have always played a significant role in creating the improv and stand-up comedy culture of the United States. Yet, comedy remains a male-dominated field. Data from one of the most famous comedy clubs in New York City, Carolines on Broadway, shows that only 14.3% of performers were females from 2011-2014 (Mitchell). Amongst TV writing staffs on Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and Last Week Tonight, only two of these shows have writing staffs that are over 50% women (Mitchell). On the bright side, the success of comedians such as Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, Mindy Kaling, Ali Wong, and many others has definitely been a strong rebuttal against the cultural bias that women just aren’t funny. Coupled with feminism and representation being at the forefront of discussion in the entertainment industry, there has never been a better time to be a female comedian.
I decided to see for myself what makes stand-up so difficult as a woman. In February of this year, I entered into a charity beauty pageant and for my talent, I performed a 10-minute stand up piece. When preparing my performance, I did not want to shy away from expressing my opinions. From the resurgence of the n-word, dating, to my generation’s escapist attitude toward life, I wanted to tackle it all. But I was constantly anxious about figuring out what my angle into speaking about such heavy topics was going to be. I worried that if I got up on stage and performed a roast of my generation, it would not be perceived well coming from a woman. I wanted to avoid offending people and being perceived as bossy and holier-than-thou. I did not want my format or delivery to hinder my broader message. Then suddenly it hit me. If I could balance my jokes about my generation by roasting myself. I remembered that I had a copy of my ugliest school picture in my phone camera roll, so I decided that I would showcase that photo, roast my appearance, and from there delve into my deeper critiques of my generation. Afterall, the best way not to offend people was to make myself the biggest target. My performance worked out beautifully and exceeded my every expectation. I placed second in the pageant! I was getting laughs from the very beginning to the very end. Even the people I was most worried about offending praised my set. My performance was compared to Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act, and people went as far to say that if I had a TV show, they would tune in.
As wonderful and fulfilling as this experience was for me, I realized that there were certain obstacles I could not overcome. Out of a ten-minute set, I dedicated half my time to making jokes about my 6th-grade self, and went beyond just my appearance. I made fun of my mindset as a 6th grader and even went as far as to make a deal with the audience: if I promised to never look this ugly again, then maybe we can leave the “n-word” in the past. I am still incredibly proud of the performance I gave and the feedback I got showed that people perceived me as a funny, intelligent woman. But I still question whether or not I could have delivered the same level of performance without self-deprecation. Especially as a woman, I did not want to rely on lessening myself in order to get my point across, but I could not think of a way to get the audience to warm up to me without it. Maybe that is simply the novice in me. But upon further research, this seems to be an issue faced by even the most successful women in comedy.
According to research conducted by author Karen M. Stoddard, “there are very few women stand-up comics. Of those who achieved fame during the early and mid-1960s,… not one gained an audience based on positive, assertive acts about women…” (Stoddard 12). This may seem outdated given the progress of the feminism movement, but testimony from today’s top comediennes show that very little has changed. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Amy Schumer, one of the highest paid comedians today commented, “I know my experience has been tricking people to listen and then you get in the door that way, but it’s like a dance you have to do because there is still such an aggression towards women” (The Hollywood Reporter 28:05-28:22). Even with so many examples of successful female comedians, it still seems that women are battling against the idea that women aren’t funny. Former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts recalled that star John Belushi, being of the “chicks-aren’t-funny” school, often requested that the women writers be fired (Kein 672).
Where does this bias come from? And why is it so difficult for women to have an audience without self-deprecation? According to Stoddard, the traditional ingredient of stand-up humor in American culture is aggression – the success of the joke is usually at the expense of others (Stoddard 11). But women are taught to not be aggressive because it threatens the foundation of the women’s role (Stoddard 11). Additionally, it is a commonly-held cultural stereotype, by both men and women, that women have no sense of humor (Stoddard 11). Regarding the difficulty in garnering an audience, Rebecca Krefting, author of All Jokes Aside, explains that there are a disproportionate number of women performing “charged humor.” Charged humor is “humor that gives voice to the identities and experiences of marginalized groups and movie audiences of those groups to action” (Kein 674). Krefting goes on to explain that charged humor is not easily marketable because television networks and club owners want to appeal to the broadest audience they can, and charged humor threatens to alienate market segments (Klein 674). Additionally, unlike racial humor that developed among oppressed communities because of the commonly-held knowledge of oppression, charged humor does not favor women because there is no widespread belief among women that they are, indeed, oppressed (Stoddard 11). Therefore, it becomes harder for an audience to identify with women’s point of view when doing charged comedy because women aren’t seen as marginalized (Kein 674).
But there are notable exceptions to this trend. One in particular is Hannah Gadsby. Gadsby’s Netflix special, Nanette, is probably the only female comedian that I have seen in recent years that barely used self-deprecating humor while also being fearless in mentioning her politics. Her special discussed issues within the LGBTQ+ community, homophobia, her difficulties in coming out, mental health, and toxic masculinity. But the central point of her special was: I need to get out of comedy. She claims that in her 10 years as a comedian, she has made a career out of self-deprecation. She says “people feel safer when men do the angry comedy, they are kings of the genre. When I do it, I’m just a miserable lesbian ruining all the fun and the banter. When men do it—heroes of free speech” (Nanette). She delved into the mental toll of having to explain traumatic events in jokes. For example, in the beginning of her special, she tells a funny story about the time she almost got beat up at a bus stop. A young man thought that she was a gay man and was acting very aggressive, until the moment he realized she was a lesbian. Towards the end of the special, she explains that in order to get the laugh at the right time, she could not tell the truth of that story. The truth is, once this man figured out that she was a “lady-faggot,” he beat her at the bus stop and nobody had stopped him. Gadsby finds that comedy has hindered how she remembers her own story, which diminishes its value. She concludes by saying, “laughter is not our medicine, stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine” (Madeline, Olb 1:06:51-1:07:01).
Henri Bergson’s theory is right: the comic will come into being whenever a group of men concentrate their attention on one of their numbers. With the foundation of comedy rooted in patriarchal attitudes about men and women, Stoddard, Kein, and Gadsby have shown that women can be funny, but only when they garner our attention through self-deprecation and package their story in an uncharged, noncontroversial performance. So, why aren’t there more women in comedy? The answer is the same for any woman going into a male-dominated field. Given the bias, the obstacles, and the lack of opportunity and creative control all due to a biological trait that cannot be controlled—is it even worth it?
Works Cited
“Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, Gina Rodriguez and More Actresses on THR’s Roundtables | Emmys 2016.” Youtube, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Aug. 2015.
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Alpha Editions, 2018.
Kein, Kathryn. “Recovering Our Sense of Humor: New Directions in Feminist Humor Studies.” Feminist Studies.
Mitchell, Kaitlyn. “We Crunched the Numbers on How Much Stage Time Female Comedians Get.” Bitchmedia, Bitchmedia, 4 Feb. 2015.
Parry, Madeline, and Jon Olb . “Nanette.” Netflix Official Site, Netflix, 19 June 2018.
Sandberg, Sheryl. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
Stoddard, Karen M. “‘Women Have No Sense of Humor and Other Myths: A Consideration of Female Stand-Up Comics, 1960-1976.” American Humor Studies Association, 1977.
