This past month the Kennedy Center awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Tina Fey, an extraordinary writer, comedian and performer. Starting at Chicago’s Second City Improv, Fey later joined the writing team of Saturday Night Live. She was promoted to head writer in 1999 (the first woman to ever occupy the position) and added to the cast the following year. Fey left SNL in 2006 to start her TV show “30 Rock,” but made brief return to play vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Her Palin impersonations (and uncanny resemblance to the political figure) increased her popularity, making “Tina Fey” a household name.
Why the biography? Fey’s success is far from typical for female comedians. A (misguided) belief persists in American culture that women are simply less funny than men. A Google search for “female comedians not funny” (I know, my Google grammar is poor. So sue me.) returns a slew of results supporting that statement, while the same search with “male” finds articles on why men are better comedians than women.
Clearly, this isn’t true. Contemporary comedians like Amy Poehler, Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Silverman, and, of course, Fey, play to adoring audiences. Writers like Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “When Harry Met Sally”) enjoy critical success. Going back further, literary wit Dorothy Parker amused readers in the mid twentieth century, and comedy legend Lucille Ball created and starred in the wildly successful sitcom “I Love Lucy.”
Despite these luminous examples, there are far more successful men on the comedy circuit than women. Fey’s accomplishments are made more notable by her gender, but, as she said in her acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize, after being the first woman to do things, hopefully soon we can “stop counting at what number [women are achieving] things. Dated stereotypes about female comedians exist in force, but examples like Fey bring comedy to a more equal balance.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Is the "Chick Flick" the Inverse of the "Guy Movie?"
Having examined the “guy movie” it’s only right to turn to the “chick flick.”
Often in the romantic comedy genre, “chick flicks” * are designed to appeal to a female audience. The typical rom-com features an oft-recycled plot, involving a man, a woman, and some complication that takes up space in the middle of the film before the characters end up together. While smaller details about the narrative can vary, for the most part romantic comedies don’t deviate from this outline.
Despite their repetitive nature, ticket sales show that movies like “The Proposal” perform well at the box office. The popular television show turned big screen feature “Sex and the City,” for example, opened to the tune of fifty-five million dollars.
Sales statistics show us another thing about rom-coms – they cater mostly to female audiences. This is, I’m sure, quite a shock. What’s worth considering here though is how the rom-com differs from the “guy movie.” Fart jokes, and crude humor in general, (principle ingredients of “guy movies”) are often downplayed. What replaces them however, is hardly more refined. Laughs revolve around embarrassing situations (like a spilled coffee drink, or a fall off of high heels) awkwardness between the characters or the cluelessness of the male characters. None of this seems like it should be remarkably attractive to a female audience more so than a male one (except perhaps the griping about men.) What seems more apparent is that unlike “guy movies,” which appeal to their target audience mainly because of their humor, rom-coms and “chick flicks” appeal to audiences because of their themes. Sure, comedy makes the recycled theme more palatable, but in the end, that theme is why women are there.
What does this mean about how American women consume humor? I’m not sure. Perhaps because so much popular humor is directed towards men, women have moved away from it as a source of entertainment. Instead, they focus on storylines that they find engaging, or at least distracting. *
*Some women object to the “chick” label, which infantilizes women, characterizing adult consumers as fluffy babies. But that’s another post. I use it here because it is a term in the popular vernacular for this type of film.
**Full recognition, of course, that some women dislike “chick flicks” and rom-coms, some tolerate them, and some find them occasionally enjoyable. In these past postings I attempt to address what stereotypically men and women find amusing, and what popular culture tells us about consumption habits.
Often in the romantic comedy genre, “chick flicks” * are designed to appeal to a female audience. The typical rom-com features an oft-recycled plot, involving a man, a woman, and some complication that takes up space in the middle of the film before the characters end up together. While smaller details about the narrative can vary, for the most part romantic comedies don’t deviate from this outline.
Despite their repetitive nature, ticket sales show that movies like “The Proposal” perform well at the box office. The popular television show turned big screen feature “Sex and the City,” for example, opened to the tune of fifty-five million dollars.
Sales statistics show us another thing about rom-coms – they cater mostly to female audiences. This is, I’m sure, quite a shock. What’s worth considering here though is how the rom-com differs from the “guy movie.” Fart jokes, and crude humor in general, (principle ingredients of “guy movies”) are often downplayed. What replaces them however, is hardly more refined. Laughs revolve around embarrassing situations (like a spilled coffee drink, or a fall off of high heels) awkwardness between the characters or the cluelessness of the male characters. None of this seems like it should be remarkably attractive to a female audience more so than a male one (except perhaps the griping about men.) What seems more apparent is that unlike “guy movies,” which appeal to their target audience mainly because of their humor, rom-coms and “chick flicks” appeal to audiences because of their themes. Sure, comedy makes the recycled theme more palatable, but in the end, that theme is why women are there.
What does this mean about how American women consume humor? I’m not sure. Perhaps because so much popular humor is directed towards men, women have moved away from it as a source of entertainment. Instead, they focus on storylines that they find engaging, or at least distracting. *
*Some women object to the “chick” label, which infantilizes women, characterizing adult consumers as fluffy babies. But that’s another post. I use it here because it is a term in the popular vernacular for this type of film.
**Full recognition, of course, that some women dislike “chick flicks” and rom-coms, some tolerate them, and some find them occasionally enjoyable. In these past postings I attempt to address what stereotypically men and women find amusing, and what popular culture tells us about consumption habits.
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