Before I begin, I’ll admit that my two favorite shows are Better off Ted and Terriers. Both were cancelled, given the run-around and are apparently only popular with critics and people who are late to everything. And no, I haven’t watched much Archer. I’ll get to it.
The idea that “women aren’t funny” has been around for a long time. Christopher Hitchens theorized that this had something to do with brain chemistry and the evolutionary value of humor. Men need to impress women and they do it through humor. Women, on the other hand, have no need to impress men since men already find women pants-droppingly funny. “Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates. This is the unspoken compromise,” he writes. Leaving aside the obvious heteronormative bullshit embedded in that comment (as well as all evolutionary psychology), it raises an interesting dichotomy: humor at someone else’s expense and humor at one’s own expense. Popular culture and talking heads seem to agree that women’s high sex status makes them unfit for humor at other people’s expense (too mean, too cruel, coming from the Goddess on her Throne) and therefore the only funny woman is a woman that is self-deprecating to a fault. TV, by and large, reflects that popular prejudice but it is indeed changing. It mostly agrees with the premise that ladybrains are wired only to play damsels in distress, emotional melodrama queens and non-threatening straight foils. All of these archetypes are, after all, women who have lost their pedestal and are therefore capable of humor.
The women of Community, for instance, are flawed but not self-deprecating, certainly not in the way that Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon, Queen of self-deprecating humor and the reigning Champion of the Thunderdome, is self-deprecating. Liz Lemon has stains on her shirt. She’s a woman. That is funny. Liz Lemon, a slob who could do better, is a clear example of the sort of TV woman who is funny because of the dissonance between her status and her reality, at least for the five people who watch NBC programming. Tina Fey’s character is made ugly in order to be funny. Our expectations of attractive women demand this. Even Tina Fey’s uproariously funny Sarah Palin impression relies on the “attractive woman being less than perfect” trope to some degree. In this case, the ugliness of Ms. Palin’s ignorance was enough but the riff still requires that trope for its power. As TV grows up, we see that it is possible for women to both be attractive and funny and self-aware. Community’s Annie, played by the consistently excellent Allison Brie, is not only given actual jokes where she isn’t just a foil but she remains attractive, even when the sexualized parts of her (her boobs) are transferred into the vessel of a monkey that lives in the vents and hoards stationery. The Monkey is literally called Annie’s Boobs. Annie’s Boobs are funny on their own, divorced from Annie, and form the basis of unrelated subplots. In this way, the show allows us to see the real Annie, boobs and all, be funny while still allowing for the kind of humor that is, apparently, only the province of adolescent males.
Only two women on TV, however, are/were playing women with power being funny without apologizing for it. It is no surprise that they are the best female comics on TV. I enjoy Sarah Silverman but she’s a little too complicated for this piece so pardon her exclusion while she bangs Jeff Goldblum in front of Nick Kroll. One, obviously, is Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope, a high-strung bureaucrat/elected official managing the Parks and Recreation department of Pawnee, Indiana. Not only does she not apologize for power, she wants more of it. She risks her comfortable niche to run for elected office. And, what’s more, she’s good at her job and sincere about her intentions. Those are both things that she should not be able to do under prevailing theories of humor. A sincere, hard-working bureaucrat, of whatever gender, is a mindfuck. The other, and my favorite, is/was Better off Ted’s Veronica Palmer, played in the most insincere way by Portia DeRossi.
Veronica works for Veridian Dynamics, the archetypical evil corporation that subverts all the things people love. Can you think of something suitably evil? An octo-chicken, perhaps, with its extra drumsticks? A motion sensor that ignores black people? Weaponized pumpkins? Nicotine-flavored ice cream? Veronica is a woman whose unapologetic attractiveness is intimidating, which makes her the perfect boss for the cubicle drones she commands. She is in total charge of her sexuality, a point made clear not just by her subordinates dropping trou at a moment’s notice, but by her affair with the magician Mordor. While she worries that having people know about her double life as a magician’s assistant might harm her, ultimately when she performs, she really does perform. She doesn’t turn her sexuality into the joke in the end but instead, turns our gaze into the joke. There is not an Evolutionary Psychologist/Pseudo-scientist alive that can explain why Portia De Rossi/Veronica Palmer is fucking amazing. She is the ultimate Goddess on her Throne, out of reach and cold. And still funny. And she never does tell you where she hides the dove.
Seriously, guys, how could you cancel this?
I don’t get it, is that video representative of the show? Do they use curse words on the show at all? I don’t have a tv, hence comic books
Aha! You just needed to read the note under the video.
Much food for thought!
Even with comedy out of the equation, if women are to be shown as “successful” and liberated, in order to satisfy male viewers’ insecure little egos or women stuck in lives of domestic drudgery, it is routine practice that those characters must be brought down, depicted as flawed. Clutzy, insecure, with low self-esteem, lonely and isolated. (See Susan Faludi’s great “Backlash”; unfortunately still timely after all these years.)
How low we’ve sunk since the days of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”…! (She was even on “the pill”!)
A beautiful woman is too sexually attractive to men; which short-circuits the laughter response. The blood rushes downward and away from the “humor center” of the male brain. (Consider the countless movie scenes of a couple laughing together; then when they’re about to get *romantic*, they get serious.)
Therefore, in order for a beautiful woman to be funny to males (the demographically-significant audience, things being the sorry mess that they are) she must be “de-beautified” somewhat. Shown as flawed, neurotic, etc.; brought down to “her proper level.”
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[Caleb Das summarizing Hitchens’ argument]
Men need to impress women and they do it through humor. Women, on the other hand, have no need to impress men since men already find women pants-droppingly funny.
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Good grief, that’s mind-bogglingly asinine. Only men who can’t impress women via the most popular and successful methods — wealth, looks, fame, power, arrogance — try to appeal to them (which is hardly the same things as impressing, in this case) via their funnybone.
And men have significant difficulty in finding women in general funny; consider the old comic-strip trope of goofy-looking male characters surrounded by bevies of generically-pretty women*. The very appeal that any halfway-decent-looking woman has for hetero males interferes with seeing her as an object of mirth.
How much humor is there in porn, for instance? A product overwhelmingly aimed at males? Pretty damn little.
And consider the difference between the reactions of males watching female strip shows (exceedingly grim, from my personal experience; you’d think these guys were to be executed on the morrow) versus the bawdy laughter and cheer of women looking at male strippers…
*F’r instance, in “Alley Oop”: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CJYTe51awSs/TYyaLiPm5sI/AAAAAAAAOR4/DneBNeZUHMc/s1600/AlleyOop_1971-04-11_100.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NQIsg24PfQ0/TbPMLIDVrjI/AAAAAAAAOgk/lRjpvXzr4Bg/s1600/AlleyOop_1971-08-15_100.jpg
“How much humor is there in porn, for instance? A product overwhelmingly aimed at males? Pretty damn little.”
I don’t know that this is true, at least not uniformly. There’s definitely flirtatious/x-rated humor in Michael Manning’s fetish porn comics, for instance. I don’t think that’s so unusual.
Isn’t most porn un-serious? My impression is that there are earnest but unfunny attempts at humor in a significant amount of pornography. I mean who wants to watch the Bela Tarr version of Deep Throat or whatever. “Serious” porn usually falls into the category of erotica – like Story of O.
“Only two women on TV, however, are/were playing women with power being funny without apologizing for it.”
That can’t be right surely. I can’t stand “Bones” but the lead character in that show is supposed to be funny in an autistic way I presume. And she tramples over people as well. Also the Archie Panjabi character in “The Good Wife”. There must be others…
Ng,
You’re probably right. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with either show. Is Bones the power character on that show? I’ve been meaning to watch it. My buddy told me that if I could get over a silly title like Terriers and like a show, I could do the same for Bones. Haven’t taken him up on it yet. At best, I can argue that the characters you bring up don’t have as much of a comic profile but that’d be somewhat disingenuous. By and large though, I think that TV holds up, in varying fashion, that old chestnut that women in power are deeply unfunny. Even as, say, Secretary Clinton is now a text-happy meme, she wasn’t always seen as such. I think it says more about our cultural expectations of women in power than anything else.
I think Bones could be described as the power character in the show. She lords over everyone in the lab (but not in an evil way) and the male lead tends to defer to her. This is not a recommendation to watch “Bones” which is by the numbers TV.
How about Miranda Richardson in Blackadder II?
Also, for the Liz Lemon thing, I vaguely remember that in the early seasons of 30 Rock, Tina Fey would be described as a slob but was certainly not dressed like one a lot of times. They sort of rectified the problem later on.
Temperance Brennan is definitely the main character and the boss in Bones. She is (supposed to be) funny too…the caveat perhaps being that the comedy is mostly in terms of witty banter with the male lead, with whom there’s a will-they, won’t-they sexual tension. Romantic comedies are a venue in which women are able to be funny, I think. That seems a little different than what Caleb is talking about though…?
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Ng Suat Tong says:
Isn’t most porn un-serious?
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…I yield to your superior knowledge of the subject!
(Jes’ kidding…!)
From my exceedingly skimpy watching of American TV (we’re hooked on Masterpiece Theatre and Brit murder mystery TV shows), things are somewhat improved for women dramatic characters. Anna Torv’s splendid Olivia in “Fringe”
(haven’t been able to watch the show for quite a while, though) didn’t get need to regularly be rescued, as Scully did. Even if they had an annoying sidebar for a while with her interacting with her sister’s cute moppet, bearing nothing whatsoever on the plots, obviously intended to reassure viewers that she could be “maternal,” show her “soft, feminine side.” Bleagh!
Speaking of British murder mysteries (and the “can good-looking women be accepted as funny” theme of this article), “Murder in Suburbia” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_Suburbia , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396997/ — featured wonderful female friendship interaction between its two women detectives, who were good-looking and wryly witty. (The scripts often amusingly written as well) Highly recommended!
There was a time I’m sure when being a comics “expert” was only marginally better than being a porn “expert”.
Is it supposed to be better now?
Actually, you’re right. I’m pretty sure Linda Williams has more cred than most comics scholars. But top cartoonists are better paid than pornstars right?
Portia de Rossi is also hilarious in Arrested Development….and she’s the reverse of self-deprecating there. The show deprecates her plenty, though…as does her cruel mother.