The issue of women and comedy brings out the worst in people. Before
we start, let’s state straight off that the evidence is very much
against women when it comes to stand up comedy. Or, at least, there
aren’t as many women as men who reach a professional level. Yes there
are a few, but for every woman stand-up comedian there are about 500
men, or so it seems. When a woman stand up comic takes the stage, she
knows she’s facing lowered expectations.
Women get tetchy when faced with this evidence. Desperate not to
give ground despite the evidence to the contrary, they generally quote
a number of good female stand-up comedians and deny the whole thing.
Men, if they’re intelligent, say something about humour being a kind of
Darwinian prerequisite to getting sex. If they’re not intelligent
they’ll simply state that men are simply better at everything and then
claim as their own the achievements of everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci
to Ismbard Kingdom Brunel.
The situation won’t be helped by Germaine Greer’s article in the Guardian,
that argues that the lack of female stand up comedians is down to
innate and cultural differences between men and women, noticeable from
school, that derive from Darwinian male competition. According to Greer
women cannot remember jokes or tell them well, cannot do repartee and
absolutely cannot do surreal or silly.
Well, let’s get a few things straight:
Myth 1: Stand-up Comedy = Comic Ability
Stand up comedy is not the be all and end all of comedy. In fact,
stand up comedy is a pretty freakish occupation that 98% of the
population would find terrifying, which is not to say it does not take
extreme skill and talent – it does – but it is also no barometer of a
gender’s general comic ability. Put most people on ‘Whose Line is it
Anyway’ and they will cry.
While female stand-up comics are few and far between, women comedy
writers turn up everywhere. Tina Fey is the darling of US sketch-show
comedy and many of the writers of extravagantly staffed US sitcoms are
women. In the UK, shows like Victoria Wood As Seen on TV, French and Saunders, Nighty Night, and Pulling show women have top-class comic writing talent.
Women can perform - comic actresses are as celebrated as comic
actors. Unfortunately one of the greatest of them all – Marilyn Monroe
– is often dismissed as a dumb blonde.
Myth 2: Gender is the Only Factor that Impinges on Comic Success
Women don’t often make it as stand up comedians, but neither do
people of either gender from minority races, despite notable
exceptions. Why? Maybe because the pressures that stop some people from
even attempting a comedy career are many and complicated.
In the UK, the Oxbridge universities used to be the primary breeding
ground of a certain kind of comedy – notably Monty Python. In the
eighties, comedy underwent a kind of revolution – called alternative comedy
at the time - and comedians from what are known as the red brick
universities broke through. At the time, this was celebrated as a
victory against both the traditional, variety-style comedians that came
up from the working men’s clubs and the Oxbridge elite. The whole
incident shows the influence of class on comic style and success, and
puts the idea that gender bias can only be down to innate skill in
perspective.
Myth 3: Women Don’t Do Banter
AA Gill once said that stand up comedy is to humour what porn is to
sex. In other words, humour is best when you’re doing it, not watching
it. For most people, men and women, their friends make them laugh much
harder than any professional.
I can only speak from experience when talking about women and banter
– I have never had a friendship that wasn’t based on banter and a
mutual understanding of what makes the other laugh. And oddly enough,
our topics are not usually men, sex, periods or chocolate, they’re
anything and everything that might produce a laugh.
This is not a
‘sense of fun’ or boisterousness without any real comic content. Every
conversation has to have a punch line, every idea has to be turned on
its head, everything is set up for a laugh. If any of us go more than
30 seconds without laughing, we get nervous, and it’s been this way
since school.
Myth 4: A Woman Can’t Be Beautiful AND Funny
See Marilyn Monroe, above. Andy Warhol once said: “I used to think
that beauty is humourless. Then I remembered that Marilyn Monroe had
all the best lines.” Please also see Miranda Richardson, Sarah
Silverman etc. That looks should even enter the debate shows how far
women have yet to go to actually be regarded as full human beings in
the eyes of men.
Myth 5: Women Can’t do Abstract or Surrealist Humour
This is more difficult to argue as there is no Monty Python
equivalent penned by women. However, I can offer you ‘Nighty Night’, a
sitcom written by Julia Davies that is dark, cruel and surreal. See
particularly the scene where she enters the church at her own husband’s
funeral – faked by herself – riding a horse side saddle, before
performing an expressionistic funeral dance.
Women are also masters of the surreal in story telling – see
particularly the works of Angela Carter and Diane Wynne Jones. For an
example of where the surreal and the comic meet see Edward Scissorhands
– written by Caroline Thompson. Women clearly have the ability to think
in surreal and abstract ways; that they haven’t yet displayed this
ability in sketch-show format hardly proves they’re lacking in a
certain kind imagination.
Myth 6: Men Aren’t Attracted to Funny Women
Do men really want humourless mates? Personally, I don’t
believe it. If anyone finds a mate who shares their sense of humour
then they’ve won the jackpot of life. Men aren’t so stupid they don’t
recognise this.
Myth 7: It’s All to do With Some Kind of Darwinian Competitive Urge
Evolutionary retro-fitting is very popular because it’s so difficult
to disprove. Yes, a keen comic wit may give some men a competitive
advantage but that doesn’t mean it’s the reason it exists. It’s just as
possible our ability to be funny is some kind of stress valve that
stops us going insane. No one knows and generalisations do us no good
at all.
Image: Julia Davies and Ruth Jones in Nighty Night. Source: www.goview.tv