Mon, March 10, 2008

Vanity Fair has published a completely preposterous take on women in comedy. I love women. I love comedy. I love women in comedy, and they've definitely had a rough go of it for years, and it's great to see the old "Women can't be funny" dictum fading into obscurity.

Somehow, this article ignores all that. Instead it runs down the women on SNL's IMDb page and presents their take on comedy as though no other women know what it means to be funny. As a counterpoint, there's Jerry Lewis and a very chauvinist straw man. To round it out, a thin and shifting definition of what a "funny" woman is.

For lack of anything better to do, I'll give my take on its most ridiculous passages, with apologies to Ken Tremendous.

WHO SAYS WOMEN AREN'T FUNNY?
by Alessandra Stanley

There are people who lament that no women now are as funny as Carole Lombard or Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedies of Lubitsch, Sturges, and Hawks. They are missing the point: today's comediennes are on television, where they are often responsible for their own material.

Right off the bat, "Fuck the heck?" Tina Fey and Sarah Silverman contribute to the writing of their own shows, and they're very funny, but they're still collaborating with a room full of writers. They're not doing live improv. Also, that's a grand total of two examples. (Then again, Lombard and Stanwyck are only two – maybe two of anything is enough for a sweeping generalization.)

Tina Fey, for instance. The former head writer of Saturday Night Live, who wrote the film Mean Girls before creating the sitcom 30 Rock, is one of the leading voices in a new generation of comediennes—women who not only play comic roles but also perform stand-up and write and direct comedy.

I love Tina Fey and 30 Rock, but crediting either with granting women access to stand-up or directing is preposterous. 30 Rock is too busy dodging cancellation to take credit for opening any doors.

Lombard and Stanwyck were great comic actresses on-screen, but they had about as much to do with the joke writing as Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox did on Friends.

This implies that anyone could do what Aniston or Cox did on Friends. Maybe every laugh they got didn't originate in their own brains, but to say that makes them unfunny is going a lot farther than the straw man female-humor-denier this article purports to respond to.

"There is no question that there are a million more funny women than there used to be," says Nora Ephron, the writer and film director. "But everything has more women. There are more women in a whole bunch of places, and this is one of them." Ephron knows exactly why female comedians are currently much more successful than they used to be. "Here's the answer to any question: cable," she says. "There are so many hours to fill, and they ran out of men, so then there were women."

Maybe the only cohesive and defensible point made in this entire article. Cable, Internet, the whole "long tail" concept: it all demands more content, which means more creative people are invited to the table. When more people get a shot, more people break through.

The suffragette movement must have taken a toll on the male ego: by the late 19th century the humorlessness of women was a staple of club toasts and magazines such as Punch. Jerry Lewis picked it up again in earnest in 2000, telling an audience at a comedy festival, "I don't like any female comedians."

There's your comprehensive history of comedians sidelining comediennes. It happened in the late 1800s and again in 2000. So, we're kicking this article off on a solid foundation.

Dissecting the nature of women's humor, or supposed lack thereof, is a joyless and increasingly moot subject, but it boils down to the point [...] that society has different expectations for women.

Of course society does – in the broad, general sense. Which is why you can make broad generalizations like "Women aren't funny," and "People don't give funny women enough credit." But you can always find plenty of individual exceptions to those broad generalizations. (Sometimes as many as two!)

[Harvard president Larry] Summers sealed his fate by also suggesting that women's innate aptitude for science and math might be weaker. The nature-versus-nurture argument also extends to humor. It's a shame that Margaret Mead never made it to that tribe in Papua New Guinea where women tell the jokes, and men pretend to find them funny.

Alessandra means this as an inversion: that men usually tell jokes and women usually pretend to find men funny. But, at first glance, it just as easily reads: even in a remote tribe where women are allowed to tell jokes, men must pretend to find them funny, because they're not. Because they're women.

Alessandra is trying, and failing, to make a cute joke. Generally, plenty of women are funny. But if you look only at the women who are writing this article – they are dreadfully unfunny.

Certainly, the rewards of wit are not nearly as ample for women as for men, and sometimes funny women are actually penalized. [...] Or as Joan Rivers puts it, "Men find funny women threatening. They ask me, 'Are you going to be funny in bed?'"

This implies that men (or anyone) find Joan Rivers funny. It also implies that men (or anyone) are interested in going to bed with Joan Rivers. At least, that's what Joan Rivers would like us to believe.

It used to be that women were not funny. Then they couldn't be funny if they were pretty. Now a female comedian has to be pretty—even sexy—to get a laugh.

What the hell is going on here? Where does that progression come from? Specific funny women who were regarded as unfunny by the men of their time? Who and when?

At least, that's one way to view the trajectory from Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett to Tina Fey.

Does this mean you're calling Phyllis Diller unfunny or Carol Burnett unattractive? Would Tina Fey's material be less funny if she looked like Rachel Dratch? Or are these two consecutive sentences completely unrelated to one another?

Some say it's the natural evolution of the women's movement; others argue it's a devolution. But the funniest women on television are youthful, good-looking, and even, in a few cases, close to beautiful—the kind of women who in past decades might have been the butt of a stand-up comic's jokes.

An inordinate amount of this article has been spent constructing a vague straw man stand-up comic of some undetermined bygone era, with no specifics whatsoever. Women have undeniably faced struggles in comedy, but this bewildering approach does little to communicate those actual challenges.

And it doesn't help to point out that Lucille Ball began her Hollywood career as a model and starlet or that Elaine May was—and still is—fetching.

Well, the only thing it "doesn't help" is your own half-baked theory that unattractive women weren't considered funny up until Tina Fey took to the Weekend Update desk. Maybe this is just a bad theory. I wouldn't blame Lucille Ball or Elaine May. ("God damn them for being so funny, and in years beginning with '19'! If no woman had ever gotten so much as a giggle until last week, my article would be so awesome!")

How this evolution happened is not entirely clear. The backlash school of feminism would argue that it's the tyranny of a looks-obsessed culture that promotes sex appeal over talent, be it in comedy, pop music, or even sports.

This makes sense. No one buys a Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan CD because they're known as good singers – it's sex appeal. But that undercuts the premise of the article: it says women aren't any funnier today, but the sexy ones are able to fake it because sex appeal is more important than talent.

On the other hand, the comedy business offers more opportunity and cachet for women than ever before. It could be that after decades of insecurity—and self-derision—women finally feel they can look good and still be taken seriously as comics.

"Maybe pretty women were always funny but only now decided to go into comedy," argues Patricia Marx, a humorist who in the 1970s became one of the first woman writers on The Harvard Lampoon. "Maybe pretty women weren't funny before because they had no reason to be funny," she says. "There was no point to it—people already liked you."

I agree with Patricia Marx. Especially the way she contradicts everything Alessandra Stanley wrote in the preceding paragraph (and most of the ones before that).

It has become a supply-and-demand issue: the supply of good-looking female comedians is growing, and the industry demands that they keep growing prettier.

A lame pun! Women may be funny (many are), but Alessandra Stanley steadfastly defends their right to choose not to be.

Amy Poehler, who's been on S.N.L. since 2001, says much the same thing. "For funny ladies, we're attractive. But when you open us up to real, professional attractive people—I do not want to run with those horses."

Amy Poehler is neither a funny lady nor attractive. She's not attractive for a funny lady. She's attractive for a lady when standing next to Jocelyn Wildenstein, but even that is pushing it. She would not be included in this article if its author had done one iota of research into actual funny women working today, especially funny women who have been working for decades and had great success on- or off-screen, such as Bonnie Hunt, Janeane Garofalo, or Jennifer Crittenden, to name but a few of the ridiculous snubs from this slapdash, scattershot, and self-contradictory article.

And yet, they increasingly do.

Again, Alessandra Stanley boldly contradicts her own interview subjects.

Obviously, though, pretty comics still have to be willing at times to put their looks aside. Cleaned up, Amy Sedaris is a bubbly champagne blonde with a seditious edge, like Kyra Sedgwick; in Strangers with Candy, her Comedy Central series, Sedaris squinted, slumped, and drooped her mouth downward.

And now she contradicts herself. Attractive women are not allowed to be funny; women aren't considered funny unless they're attractive; but... attractive women are only funny when they make themselves unattractive. It's all coming together.

[S]tarting in 1975, [Lorne Michaels] presided over decades of male-dominated sketch comedy (brightened by the likes of Gilda Radner) until he named Fey the head writer in 1999 and in 2000 made her "Weekend Update" co-anchor opposite Jimmy Fallon. (In 2004 two women anchored the mock news desk when Amy Poehler replaced Fallon.) Suddenly, S.N.L. sketches were written by women, for women; the biggest stars were Poehler and Maya Rudolph; and the oh-God-I-hate-myself-so-much routines seemed passé. The satire shifted outward, with parodies of everything from "Mom Jeans" to Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice.

This thumbnail history of SNL sketches and personalities couldn't be more cherry-picked. Will Ferrell and arguably Jimmy Fallon were huge stars compared to Poehler and Rudolph over most of this period, until they left. The satire was all over the map, as the madcap pace demands, and about 80% of any given episode was in response to something that had happened that week on TV or in the news. If Tina Fey managed to fit a "sudden" feminist satire-shift into all that, more power to her, but I doubt she would make that claim.

When Rachel Dratch, another strong cast member, introduced her whining Debbie Downer character, in 2004, Michaels says, "It was almost old-school."

It was also fucking terrible. Absolute laugh poison. Also, Dratch is strikingly unattractive and often earned laughs in sketches by making her self more unattractive still. Add this to the revolving "funny vs. pretty" battle still raging in Alessandra Stanley's head.

Now [Michaels] is holding auditions for the next generation of [SNL's] female stars. "Two or three are really funny. And they are totally confident and don't feel any need to do ugly-girl comedy. They do skits like 'Angelina Jolie on an airplane.'"

Sounds hilarious. Sign me up for that sort of timely and socially relevant humor the minute it hits NBC's air.

There are still limits to how high a female comedian can climb—the crass ceiling.

Another lame pun. You're not just killing your own argument, you are killing the written word.

Late-night talk shows, from The Tonight Show to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, all have male hosts and huge writing staffs that, when gathered onstage at awards shows, are startlingly white and male, like the Whiffenpoofs of 1961 or Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

Those are always the first two things I think of when Daily Show writers take the stage. When Tonight Show writers take the stage at an awards show, I usually think, "Ah, yes. Something is happening which has never actually happened and is completely impossible. I must be dreaming. Look, a fancy leprechaun is throwing cat innards at a dancing, one-eyed hobo!"

On the other hand, cable has whittled away at the primacy of the biggest shows. The Tonight Show, now in its 53rd year, is a little like the American presidency—still sought after but sadly diminished in power and influence.

True, but probably as far off-topic as you could possibly get without leaving the entertainment field.

The same can be said for movies: they cost more and more, studios make fewer and fewer, and, thanks to the Internet and other technological advances, the era of seeing them in theaters may end any day now.

Right. Certainly this decade at the latest. And this relates to comedy, how? Or women in comedy? Or The Tonight Show? Or, hell, even the power and influence of the American presidency?

At the moment, though, big-budget comedies are still a reach for most women.

Okay, granted. I'm not going to struggle to relate this to the last two sentences, because we're back within sight of our original topic, so I'm just holding on for dear life. I'll add one thing, though: whatever a "big-budget comedy" is (like those huge tentpole summer comedies Spider-Man or Pirates of the Caribbean?), it's not really any larger than a typical romantic comedy, which have long been dominated by female stars. Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon are major movie stars for comedies that aren't as goofy as Will Ferrell movies, but are still comedies.

Comedians such as Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, and Sacha Baron Cohen are major movie stars in a way that their female counterparts are not. Looks, for them, aren't important: pudgy Jack Black and Seth Rogen are tapped as romantic leads opposite Kate Winslet and Katherine Heigl.

So, romantic comedies don't count because it's a different type of humor? This "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" premise won't be satisfied until Witherspoon plays a role that could've been written for Will Ferrell? I have to agree with Larry Summers here: men and women can both be funny, but they can't necessarily be funny in exactly the same way. Ask any of the women you interviewed in this article about that – whether they could or would ever want to be funny in exactly the same way as Will Ferrell or Steve Carell.

As for Cohen, America would not stand for a female comedy star who pushes limits the way Borat does. The all-but-forgotten run of Daisy Does America should attest to that. Playing dumb in interviews would seem like yet another dumb-blonde joke, attributable to endemic chauvinism. And a high-impact fully nude chase scene would absolutely never be tolerated. Studios and MPAA chiefs would reject it long before audiences had their chance to. This says much more about our country's backward approach to sexuality and femininity in general, but that's not the discussion raised here. (Also, Cohen is a "major movie star" after just one movie and two or three small supporting roles?)

Poehler argues that, despite the changes in television and comedy clubs, Hollywood has made it harder than ever for comediennes to play leads in romantic film comedies. "I guess I'm not able to play the girlfriend of guys my own age anymore," she says. "I play the bitchy older sister."

I'm pretty sure this isn't the reason Poehler isn't headlining any romantic films, but it's convenient for Alessandra's point: romantic comedies don't count unless a funny woman plays the lead. This is basically another different way to be funny. A funny performer (Aniston or Stanwyck) versus someone who just is (by some hidden measurement) funny (such as Tina Fey). Seems to me both are valid. We don't usually go to movies to see people improvise from a blank page.

So it is something of a milestone that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have teamed up to make Baby Mama, a comedy about a single career woman (Fey) who wants a child and hires a working-class surrogate (Poehler), who moves in; they then clash like The Odd Couple. In a market that favors boy-girl romantic comedies such as 27 Dresses, a female buddy picture is bold.

The dynamic of female comedy duos does seem to have changed a little since the days of ironclad Mary/Rhoda rule—a pretty heroine and a plainer, funnier best friend. (The 1997 comedy Romy and Michele's High School Reunion was more of a cult favorite than a box-office hit, but the movie made a joke about the pretty girl/ugly friend principle: the characters played by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow fall out after a heated dispute over who is the Mary figure in their friendship.)

To review: the dynamic has finally changed, but it actually had as of 1997, but that doesn't count because Romy and Michele's box office take falls short of some magic number. Baby Mama, which has yet to open, has hypothetically already exceeded that number. (Also, Alessandra has seen Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and totally remembers some scenes from it.)

That is apparently not the pattern in Baby Mama. "Amy and Tina have transcended that," says Lorne Michaels (who's one of the film's producers). "Neither is pinned down to that archetype—either one could play either role."

This is patented Lorne Michaels stupidity. He couldn't be more wrong (although, when it comes to comedy, he often is). Poehler always plays the villain, the catty bitch, or the strung-out working-class scuzzbag. She looks the part. And she embraces it with gusto – one of her recurring characters on SNL is a one-legged white trash serial reality show contestant. Who farts a lot. (Thank God for women in comedy!) In no way could Poehler and Fey have switched roles in Baby Mama. Tina Fey squatting in Poehler's sink would be like Tom Hanks playing Hannibal Lecter: audiences would not stand for it, because it would ring undeniably false.

There is obviously a difference between witty writers (Mme. de Staël, Nora Ephron, Fran Lebowitz) and stand-up comics. Stand-up comedy was always harder for women, because it is aggressive—comedians have to dominate their audiences and "kill," by common metaphor. Male listeners might make allowances for sparkling repartee—which is, after all, instinctive and responsive and manslaughter at the very worst. But a premeditated joke or routine can be murderous in the first degree.

More puns, more arbitrary delineations of what makes someone "funny," more total misunderstanding of what makes comedy comedy.

Women either had to compete—head-on, in the aggressive style of Paula Poundstone or Lisa Lampanelli—or subvert the form and make themselves offbeat and likable, the way that Whoopi Goldberg and Ellen DeGeneres do.

I can't fathom a way in which Ellen DeGeneres and Whoopi Goldberg share a style. Nor has Poundstone ever been aggressive. Has Alessandra transposed the names Paula Poundstone and Whoopi Goldberg? Fallen asleep at the keyboard?

Sometimes political correctness can overshoot. In 1999 a young female writing assistant tried unsuccessfully to sue the producers of Friends, claiming that the male writers were sexist and disrespectful, which was a little like suing Pepsi because its carbonated soft drinks are so bubbly.

So very true. But how is it germane to the concept of women in comedy, or funny women getting credit for their sense of humor? If anything it undermines the "women can too be funny" angle, casting all women as humorless PC gestapo just because one of them – a person I definitely wouldn't want representing my gender – couldn't hack it in the writer's room of one of the most vanilla sitcoms on modern TV.

Comedy writers, and comedy clichés, don't always go quietly. Fey says that there are people who continue to insist that women are not funny. "You still hear it," she says. "It's just a lot easier to ignore."

I would be surprised if, for Tina Fey, this hasn't always been very easy to ignore. She's always been funny, so what else could she do but ignore someone ignorant enough to say she wasn't? Sure, it's easier to make a living at it now, but I think the ignoring must have become second nature pretty early on.

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