Female Comedians aren't Funny: Gender and Sketch Comedy

It's been two years since Kenan Thompson came under fire for blaming a lack of diversity casing in Saturday Night Live on the poor quality of black female comedians. Women often lack representation in the media, especially women of color, and the comedy genre is no exception. Similar to previous posts I've written about tokenism, it seems that the few females that are successful serve as stand-ins for the general inability for women to be funny. If Amy Schumer or Garfunkel and Oates can achieve success, why not every woman? Those who are successful are held up as proof that there is no bias or discrimination, although they still represent a minority of comedic faces. It's clear that prejudice still remains, with men still chairing key positions on popular comedy news shows and women of color remaining relatively absent even as male diversity increases. There are some notable exceptions that I hope will become more frequent. One of my favorite Daily Show segments features Samantha Bee and Jessica Williams tackling race issues. Tell me these women aren't funny.

Daily Show news team. Retrieved from Comedy Central.

The new season of Inside Amy Schumer has also been receiving attention as she tackles important social issues with a comedic slant. Among the very many attempted sketch shows, this one seems likely to succeed with Amy's keen insight for satire. Among her many hilarious and poignant videos, Amy has addressed beauty standards (video below), female representation in the media (long, but completely worth it, especially if you like 12 Angry Men), rape culture, and obsession with the female anatomy. Catchy and hilarious, "Girl, You Don't Need No Makeup" is a satire of boy bands and requirements for female beauty that reinforce unnecessary adornment and pruning. They note, "with a little mascara, you'll look female" linking the wearing of makeup as a female gendered activity; to not wear makeup is to violate the female identity. It is okay for males to comment on and discipline the actions women should take regarding their appearance. At the end of the video, the male singers try on some of the makeup products and their reactions reveal the ridiculousness of the products women are expected to wear.

Garfunkel and Oates (who frequent one of my favorite LA coffee spots, Bricks & Scones) are a successful comedy duo that also release sketch comedy videos. They've commented on issues such as an emphasis on pregnancy as crucial to the female identity, the gender divide in sports, and chastity (video below). This is a heads up that the video on chastity does show some mimed sex acts and references anal and vaginal sex. The song is a humorous take on the religious restrictions placed on youth to avoid their sexuality and find "loopholes" to stay pure. For me, this video does a great job at highlighting the double standards for purity, where females cannot be pleased sexually but the male can. Overall, the song brings attention to a common side-effect of abstinence-only sex education that promotes female virginity over information and personal choice. It also brings into question why certain sexual acts are treated differently than others and the treatment of sodomy in homosexual vs heterosexual relationships.

Comedy is a persuasive means of communication that often keeps attention and promotes critical thinking (especially in works of satire). The rise of female comedians opens up new areas for this critical eye of importance to women. I don't think these spaces are exclusively for females to occupy, but it is hard to speak for others. Female comedians provide a sense of legitimacy and authenticity to these issues, having lived many of these double standards and social obstacles. The writers and performers of the jokes come from a standpoint that reflects the unique position of a female in contemporary society. I hope that these shows continue to be popular and I encourage people to support them!

The Selfie: Self-Love and Object-Love

There has been an influx of attention on the phenomenon of "the selfie." I know that I am perhaps a little late to this discussion, partly because it is far outside my typical realm of interest. A small epiphany regarding them, however, has prompted me to address what I think is an overlooked but important aspect of the selfie: the Freudian divide between self-love and object-love. The selfie is the perfect integration of our love for technology and our love for ourselves. To illustrate this union, I will first describe the myths of Narcissus and Pygmalion on which Freud based the two extreme disorders of love: ego-libido and object-libido.

Retrieved from this site.

Narcissus was a Greek youth that was captivated by his beauty reflected in the river. He wasted away and finally died being unable to leave his mirror and break his own gaze. The basic version often excludes the presence of Echo, the nymph who falls for Narcissus but is unable to warn him of the danger. She can only repeat the words of others and represents the love that others felt for Narcissus that was not returned. Instead, Narcissus turned his love inward and loved only himself (and specifically, only his aesthetics and beauty). The myth of Narcissus has inspired the phrase "narcissistic personality disorder" or Freud's ego-libido, which links a physical and emotional desire for oneself over others or objects. This is also associated with megalomania, or the idea that oneself is more important or better than others. Before summarizing the tale of Pygmalion, it is easy to note how narcissistic themes can be seen in today's individualized society.

Narcissus discovering his reflection. Retrieved from this site.

Pygmalion was a Greek artist who built a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it. Appealing to the gods for reprieve from his unrequited love, his statue Galatea was brought to life by Aphrodite. They married and Pygmalion was able to spend his life with his creation. Many variations, plays and films, have emerged from this myth, where different variations on "brought to life" have emerged. A notable one might be the recent film, Her, where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with the operating system in his phone. His phone, as an object, came to life with a personalized, teachable, intelligent female voice. In a brilliant dualism, Phoenix even has a sexual experience with Samantha less creepy than phone sex he previously performed with an actual person. Pygmalion is the myth of object-love, in opposition to Narcissus as the myth of self-love. Physical and emotional eros is directed as certain people and objects that epitomize how people can love.

Pygmalion discovers that Galatea is now human.  Image retrieved from this site.
Currently on display in The Lourve, Paris.

The two forms of libido and love: inward and outward come together in the selfie. This new trend in photo-taking simultaneously emphasizes the importance and singularity of the individual and glorifies the technology that allows the self to be captured and spread so easily and prolifically. This is particularly apparent in images that also show the camera in a mirror as opposed to a front facing camera shot. The phone is immortalized in partnership with the individual, a perfect union of self- and object-love. We love ourselves, so we wish to capture our image and likeness. We love our technology, so we capitalize on its capabilities to connect ourselves with the world. As in Narcissus and Pygmalion, the love is often an aesthetic, physical love for appearances, than a deeper emotional love as is lauded in Plato's Symposium.

What Would Jesus Post? Retrieved from this site.

To worship ourselves, we fall into the phone's lens which collapses Narcissus's river. Our phone becomes our partner, come to life in its utility, friendship, and closeness. People cannot be without their technology, phones at their sides or in their hands, preferring the reflective screen to the faces of people around them. Some may say that like Narcissus, we will waste away focused on ourselves, individuality, and narcissism that restricts us from progressing or experiencing the world. Some may say that like Pygmalion, we are too emotionally and physically involved in our technology that we miss the beauty of the world around us in favor of a Google search for its likeness. In my cursory experience with selfies, I take very few and have posted even fewer, I see many positives and negatives to the phenomenon.

Comic by The Oatmeal about the negatives of selfies

Undoubtedly, it has taken news media by storm. The selfie of Obama and Biden made headline news and people were discussing the Oscar selfie (which was potentially a contrived Samsung advertisement) almost as much as the award winners. I'm not sure about the wide appeal of other people's selfies (in the immortal words of Mallory Archer: why would anyone want a picture of someone else's food?), but as a personal expression of self-worth, confidence, and creativity, selfies do have an important role in the rhetoric of identification. Especially considering that some people may not always find themselves presented in media (or they are expressed negatively), online, or in safe spaces, selfies could help establish an online presence and carve out spaces for open discussion about personal identification, labels, and communities. Selfies create visibility, are unapologetic, and bluntly express one's visual appearance, identity, and existence as important and worthy of appreciation. Even if it is produced for personal consumption, it necessary sharing (often on social media sites) encourages a reflection of how it may influence a larger public. The physical presentation of the body demands attention, space, and gaze onto individual, their stories, and potential arguments. The selfie also glamorizes the power of technology, to turn what would have taken many hours of labor to produce a self-portrait can be accomplished in seconds and sent around the world instantaneously.

I hear the cries on both sides about the narcissism and objectification that is implicit in the selfie. But, I see the selfie as merely an offshoot of these larger cultural changes than a root cause or responsible for them. There are innovative potentials in how the selfie could carve out rhetorical communities, enhance identities, and change norms of personal expression. Though I can imagine Kenneth Burke terrified by the reliance on technology that he warned against, I hope that he might appreciate the rhetorical opportunities for identification, mimicry, and understanding between people that may otherwise never have met. And, the rhetorical opportunities for personal expression and control over how one defines themselves and their relation to the world.