After finishing a Masters on whether British comedy is ageist as well as sexist and playing the UK comedy scene with spots at the 2009 Fringe, and written work for the Houston Urban Business Initiative, Sheila Stone seems the perfect specimen for thoughts on the eternal question: are men better than women when it comes to comedy?
“Women are generally not as good,” she begins, “particularly when it comes to panel shows like Mock The Week, where men fight for mic time”.
Jo Brand, in an interview for Chortle, said she’d “never appear on Mock The Week again, because she hates the aggressive, bearpit atmosphere”.
Fuelled by competition and, at times, aggression, men are just wired differently to women, and Stone doesn’t believe the British television industry has found a means of showcasing female comedy to its advantage. Ending with the naïve, simplistic assumption: women just can’t do it.
Elayne Boosler, American comedienne, famously said that when women are depressed they eat or go shopping, whereas men invade another country. It is this innate aggression on which many male comedians thrive, with panel shows providing prime example; rising to the occasion and “whipping out their swords,” says Stone.
Women can play an equally funny hour slot, but do so weighted more by cooperation than competition. Stone recalls a Laughing Cows gig – famous for booking only women comediennes – in which she featured in Manchester. The first act, an amateur playing her first real slot blanked mid-set, leaving in tears. The whole cast and crew reassured her – far from the farcical back stabbing allegedly expected of women comediennes in competition with each other.
Stone debates whether the same would have happened with an all male set. Unlikely. Despite the fact that clearly not all men are comfortable with this primary, base behaviour, they are again lost in the sea of generalisation, much like the successful female counterparts.
“People are very quick to judge,” says Stone, who widens her scope to the successes of Michael McIntyre. “He is nonetheless labelled as too mainstream, but doesn’t the mainstream need to laugh too?”
Stone does add, however, that compared to the US, British comedy is a gem, particularly when it comes to matters of age. Take Lynn Ruth Miller, aged 78; six years on and she is far from finishing comedy. Although well received in Britain, she struggles to book a set when she crosses the Atlantic back to her hometown.
Stone, a Californian resident, attributes a lot of this to the typical (again generalised) asymmetric mindset of what she calls “beautiful America”, i.e. “If you’re not beautiful then you don’t count”.
She offers Kathy Griffin as a fine example. Griffin’s cutting edge stand up and TV persona are aided by the fact she’s had mass amounts of plastic surgery. This is not something men have to deal with in the same respects.
Unfortunately, Stone thinks the age-old stereotype will be around for the foreseeable future, but with the veritable selection of opportunities for comedians here in Britain, both male and female, surely it doesn’t need to be?
See where the great debate began at: http://www.festivalpreviews.com/blog/10186/that’s-what-she-said…-by-hannah-van-den-bergh/
Post by Hannah Van Den Bergh
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