In an interview for The Globe and Mail (8/1/2017), D.J. Mausner tells Giuseppe Valiante about how to helps out female comics.
Role models
She says that women don’t have enough role models, and they can’t look to men as,
[W]omen have different experiences and they share (jokes) in different ways.
This discrepancy has been widely noted [I’ll talk more about it in a later post]; if memory serves, women have been shown to appreciate a storytelling style more than a strict, script theory (setup, punchline) style.
But that sets the problem: less women are doing it because less women have done it. So this problem is a significant one, and it trickles down to others.
Expectations
Martha O’Neill founder of Toronto’s SheDot comedy festival says,
A man steps on stage and the audience waits to laugh. For women there is another layer. The audience says, ‘Prove to me you’re funny.’ People still come up to me after shows and say, ‘Normally I don’t find women funny but I think you’re hilarious’ – and I would argue it’s more women than men who say that.
Yes, expectations are key to creating the space in which comedy can happen, and that expectation is still not as easily granted to women as to men. The problem is, there are less women doing it, and they’re just as likely to not be funny as the men are. So when you watch a sea of male open-mic’ers flail about on-stage, and yet see a few good ones, you’re convinced men can be funny. However, in that sea of men, if two women perform, and one is funny and one bombs, you question whether or not women are funny. Plus, they’re doing it differently than the men, so it’s not what we were expecting at all.
Equal booking and equal pay
Mausner talks about booking agents hiring more women, and men talking openly about pay to promote equality; however, that brings us back to the representation problem. We had this question in our local comic’s Facebook forum. We don’t have that many funny women in the scene, so people booking shows would quickly book them and then have nobody else to book for future shows. Thus the question: Should you put a woman (or POC) on the show even if they’re not that funny, to promote diversity? The risk is to degrade the quality of the show and lose audience. It’s not an easy answer.
Stereotyping and heckling
Valiante notes that woman and especially trans women have a harder time, as they are heckled more, and more hatefully. Zack Freeman also mentions this problem in his article for the Chicago Tribune (8/3/2017). This is impossible to combat, save to have the hecklers removed, and that practice (or policy) would have a sort of chilling effect on the space of comedy – you mean this isn’t a space where we can talk about anything? *mock outrage*
What we can control are the jokes we tell, and this is a point I’ve made before in talking about marginalized personas: we have to be sure we’re empowering, not stereotyping. As Mausner says,
“I’m not saying I believe in censorship and people not being allowed to tell certain jokes,” she said. “But I think your responsibility when you say those jokes is to know how they are going to affect the audience.”
Society, she said, is already homophobic, racist and transphobic.
“So if you can make jokes about anything, why are you touching on tired stereotypes? By making jokes in that way you are just another drop in the bucket. It’s boring.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
