Comedy and Femininity Running Head: Comedy and Femininity

Comedy and Femininity: How the Women of SNL Influence Comedy

Tess Fortier College of Charleston

Comedy and Femininity Literature Review

Comedian, actress, writer and producer Tina Fey once wrote, I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our societyunless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool (Fey, 2011). In our time, women have been constantly cursed with a stigma that has left them fighting for a level playing field when it comes to their male counterpartsincluding comedy. Since the beginning of the entertainment industry, public debates have fueled the question that has reinforced female oppression: have women a sense of humor? In a Rolling Stone interview in 1979, Johnny Carson gave his opinion on female comedians, stating, ''The ones that try sometimes are a little aggressive for my taste,'' he said. ''I'll take it from a guy, but from women, sometimes, it just doesn't fit too well.'' Being a man of such influence and power in the world of comedy, it goes to show how far women have had to come in creating new representation and identities for female comedians. When female comedians were first introduced to the public eye in the early 19th century, they were crossing behavioral boundaries that were not deemed lady-like, causing a major gap between male and female comedians. Because of this, there has not only been the creation of gendered humor, but a marginalization within the production and writing of humor between men and women as well. While it still remains a male-dominated industry, some women have come out on top to prove the power of female humor and their shifting of female comedian stereotypes. This study specifically looks at 21st century female cast members of Saturday Night Live: Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Maya Rudolph, and their success from Saturday Night Live to starring television roles, to the behind-the-scenes influence on comedy today. This study looks to find how these three women influence the comedic world through femininity in a maledominated arena.

Comedy and Femininity Gendered Humor When it comes to questioning the ability of a woman to be humorous, scholars have looked at how humor is gendered. While gender lines will always cross in some areas, research has shown that men and women produce and focus on different areas of humor. Since the early twentieth century, it has been recognized and understood that men and women use humor differently. In a study entitled, Have Women a Sense of Humor?comedy and femininity in the early twentieth century is observed, stating, Like traditional femininity, feminine comedy was thought to be sensitive and emotional, gentle rather than aggressive, and passive rather than

active (Wagner, 2011). While it is no surprise that men are not as drawn to female comedians as they are to male comedians, research has indicated that even female participants in a study believed that such womens comedy as having limited appeal for male viewers (Bore, 2010). While it would seem likely that these humor stereotypes have evolved in the turn of the century, they have stayed mostly intact. Humor is seen as situated discursive practice, which can be characterized in four dimensions of joking as especially sensitive to gender: status, aggressiveness, social alignment, and sexuality (Kotthoff, 2006). According to a study by Andrea Greenbaum in Womens Comic Voices: The Art and Craft of Female Humor, she observes that womens humor is more internally focused on relationships, emotions, politics as it relates to feminism, and body image. On the other side, male humor is more concerned with external issues of performance, current events, popular culture, and professional achievement (Greenbaum, 1997). The humor of women tends to be much subtler than the humor of men, and described as delicate humor (Wagner, 2011). With the distinctions between male and female humor in mind, these differences bear a strong similarity to Deborah Tannens Genderlect Styles, in which the differences between men

Comedy and Femininity and womens discourse is discussed. Tannen describes adult men and women as speaking

different words from different worlds, and even when they use the same terms, they are tuned to different frequencies (Griffin, 2009). The term genderlect suggests that masculine and feminine styles of dialogue are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects (Griffin, 2009). Furthermore, these separate forms of cultural dialects are distinguished by rapport talk versus report talk. Rapport talk is defined as the typical conversational style of women which seeks to establish connection (Griffin, 2009). On the other hand, report talk defines the typical monologic style of men, which seeks to command attention, convey information and focus on status (Griffin, 2009). These contrasting dialects help bring to the light how humor can easily be gendered through male and female language. In pulling together the two ideologies, it is understood that men and women have different dialects, which can then be reflected through their different types of humor. In relation to comedy, men and women utilize their inherent dialogue to create their comedic dialogue which tends to communicate different messages. While women have a tendency to establish connection in their discourse, their humor is characteristically similar in focusing on internal subjects of emotion, relationships and body image that will create connections with their audience members. The male discourse wants to establish status and command attention, much like their comedic style which focuses on external factors of personal achievement and performance. In paralleling these dissimilarities between men and womens speech and their comedic stereotypes, this study will have more concrete modes of measurement in understanding the comedic styles of the women of Saturday Night Live and how they utilize femininity. Representation of Female Comedians

Comedy and Femininity

The question of whether women have a sense of humor or not was first posed in Harpers Bazaar in 1901. Since this time, the debate has lived on, allowing countless critics and writers to argue that femininity and a sense of humor are mutually exclusive (Wagner, 2011). While women have always been naturally inclined toward emotion and sensitivity, it was known that humor was incapable of falling in line with such traits. In further analyzing comedy and femininity in the early twentieth century, Kristen Wagner states, Female comics were much more liable than other performers to be seen as crossing social boundaries into unacceptable behavior and were open to criticism for performing certain types of comedy thought to be unladylike (Wagner, 2011). Into the 1950s and 1960s, sitcoms started producing more and more female comedians. A couple of the female comedians who revolutionized the entertainment industry at this time include Phyllis Diller and Elaine May. While both had different comedic styles, both laid the groundwork for a new kind of female comic. Diller was the type of comedian who believed that women could tell jokes just like a man, whereas May introduced the country to improv (Kohen, 2012). With these women leading the revolution of female comedians, it shows how they had to match their personas to that of the men who dominated comedy at this time. In the past and present, women have had to make communicative changes to be at an equal level with their male counterparts. This is studied and analyzed through Muted-Group Theory of Cheris Kramarae. She defines a muted group as people with little power who have trouble giving voice to their perceptions because they must re-encode their thoughts to make them understood in the public sphere (Griffin, 2009). In this case, the muted group is women. Women must modify their language to fit that of mens dominating language. Feminist writer Dorothy Smith claims that womens absence from history is the result of this, stating, Men

Comedy and Femininity attend to and treat as significant only what men say (Griffin, 2009). In relation to comedy, female comedians may feel the need to change their tone and language to suit those of their successful male colleagues. Kramaraes studies found one woman writer saying that men can tell it straight, while women have to tell it slant. During the era of Phyllis Diller and Elaine May, a comedians big break came when they were featured on the Tonight Show hosted by

Johnny Carson. After reading Johnny Carsons statement that I quoted above, it is very clear that he had a negative take on female comedians, especially when they tried to take on a more aggressive and masculine role. According to We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, Johnny Carsons preferred female comedian is characterized as a blonde, buxom female who was good at playing dumb (Kohen, 2012). With this in mind, female comedians are put between a rock and hard place, dealing with polarizing representations and the weight of male hegemony in the comedic world. Into the 1980s, some female comedians were able to get ahead and gain starring roles in television and movies, and even spots on the Tonight Show, but there were certain attributes that all these successful female comedians had in common, They were brassy, overweight, or sexually ambiguous, and none focused their acts on dating or sex. The one barrier that these women could not knock down was the old exception that pretty isnt funny (Kohen, 2012). With this representation aside, the 1980s was a turning point for female comedians as more and more penetrated this entertainment industry. Saturday Night Live became a pedestal for comedians when it started in 1976, and more female comedians were showcased and put in the spotlight because of this show. Moving into the late 1990s and early 2000s, a group of women joined the cast who had bold ideas and amped up the visibility and dominance of women on the show (Kohen, 2012). These women included Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Tina Fey. By

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2000 and beyond, it was clear that women were equal, if not better than the male players (Kohen, 2012). According to Yael Kohen, the tension brought between male and female SNL players had more to do with stylistic differences than the age-old notion that women are not funny. She states that there are two kinds of sketches: character-based scenes where the performers design a skit around a character and concept-based pieces where a scenario is written for a performer and the performer drives the premise of the skit. Between these two, the latter is considered to be more feminine whereas concept-based is classified as more masculine (Kohen, 2012). As the popularity of Saturday Night Live grew, so did these female comedians as they quickly jumped to fame. With this, representation of female comedians was slowly shifting from the stereotypes that plagued women in previous decades. Marginalization of Female Comedic Writers and Producers Lucille Kallen was a writer for Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954. In an interview, she stated, I was torn between preserving my femininity and preserving my careerToo combative and I would lose my femininity, a little too much delicacy and I could lose my career (Henderson, 2011). Much like the front-end of comedy, the back-end was very much maledominated in the writers room. The writers room is essentially where collective authorship takes place to create on-screen texts. Felicia Henderson is a former consulting producer for Everybody Hates Chris, and she states, In this space, ideas are negotiated, consensus is formed, and issues of gender, race and class identities play out to complicated the on-screen narratives that eventually air on network and cable television. As a result, there is categorization based on difference within the writers room to maintain social and symbolic order (Henderson, 2011). As a result, points made by they dominate group outshine the subordinate group. The subordinate group must then create ideas that are acceptable to more powerful group, which ultimately leads

Comedy and Femininity to the homogenization of ideas (Henderson, 2011). According to Henderson, for membership within this clique of the dominate group, one must have the ability to assimilate with the senior writers who run the room. For a long time, this resulted in women obtaining male language to even have a voice within the writers room, much like the Muted Group Theory stated previously. After looking at the women of SNL, it is clear that they are helping to change this landscape through starring, writing and/or producing their own television series. Amy Poehler

currently writes and produces her show Parks and Recreation. Tina Fey created and writes in her show with herself as the lead character on 30 Rock. In a study, it was shown that Fey's star text is ideologically significant because it highlights and challenges the gendered labor of comedy stardom, as well as the feminized space of television stardom (Patterson, 2012). Fey was already breaking barriers when she became the first head writer for Saturday Night Live. In all, female writers and producers are still marginalized but that does not mean that they are stuck in a homogenized culture where men control the atmosphere of comedy. Methods To better gage the publics perception of female comedians, this study focus on both quantitative and qualitative comprehensive methodology. Because these three women, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph, arose to fame on SNL in the early 2000s and have been maintained this fame in recent years, their most influenced audience members are Millennials, ages 20-35. This is the generation watching both SNL during the 2000s and the female comedians current television programs. By targeting this demographic, this study will garner a better understanding of the influence of femininity in comedy. The quantitative piece to this study will be extremely vital in gathering information on femininity found in the comedic styles of the three women of Saturday Night Live. For this, we

Comedy and Femininity will do content analyses through the coding of various texts. Starting with Saturday Night Live, the study will concentrate on the seasons that aired from 2000-2009, during which all three women are cast on the show. For each female comedian, we will take their top ten skits performed on SNL and code each for cues of femininity. Specifically, these cues will be more internally focused on relationships, emotions, politics as it relates to feminism, and body image.

Further content analysis will be done through coding of each of the comedians current television show. Three individual shows for each comedian will be chosen at random and coded for the same cues of relationships, emotions, politics as it relates to feminism, and body image, and how each portrays their character on the show. This study will also conduct a survey made of ten to fifteen questions that pertain to these three women and their influence on comedy through femininity. The survey will be constructed of questions that ask survey recipients how they generally perceive female comedians, how they differentiate the humor of male and female comedians, and their perceptions of Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Maya Rudolph, specific to their time on Saturday Night Live and their current television programs. This survey will be made of closed-ended questions consisting of multiplechoice, yes/no and likert scale forms of measurement. This quantitative piece of the study will be vital in conducting the qualitative focus groups. Gathering focus groups will make up the qualitative piece of this study to aid in gaining further knowledge on the perception of comedy and femininity within the targeted test group. Specifically, there will be three focus groups constructed of six people, equally comprised of male and females between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. Three SNL skits of each comedian that are previously coded in the quantitative content analysis will be chosen at random and screened to each group, as well as a randomly chosen television show that has also been screened

Comedy and Femininity in the quantitative piece of this study. After the screening, questions will be posed to generate conversation between people within the focus groups. These questions will relate to how focus

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group members pick up on cues of femininity, their perception of female comedians in relation to femininity, and how they are compared to their male counterparts on-screen. Observing this dialogue will help further facilitate results and gage the opinions of this targeted group. Studying these women will give great insight into how they portray female comedians and how they influence the perception of female comedians as a whole. Today, the media has put a stigma on femininity, often heightening stereotypes that women face in association to femininity. With this study, we can see how female comedians embrace femininity and draw people away from the stigma placed by media and understand how women can succeed in the male dominated world of comedy.

Comedy and Femininity References Patterson, E. (2012). Fracturing tina fey: A critical analysis of postfeminist television comedy stardom. Communication Review, 15(3), 232-251. doi: 10.1080/10714421.2012.701991 Bore, I. K. (2010). (Un)funny women: Tv comedy audiences and the gendering of humour. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 13(2), 139-154. doi: 10.1177/1367549409352272 Greenbaum, A. (1997). Women's comic voices: The art and craft of female humor. American Studies, 38(1), 117. Retrieved from

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http://ehis.ebscohost.com.nuncio.cofc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=249a35a5-1b92-4cb0ade87af3a635473@sessionmgr114&vid=1&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3 QtbGl2ZQ== Wagner, K. A. (2011). "Have women a sense of humor?"Comedy and femininity in early twentieth-century film. Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, (68), 35-46. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com.nuncio.cofc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=1fce106e-6329-4c4db0f24871861206b3@sessionmgr4&vid=1&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3Q tbGl2ZQ== Kohen, Y. (2012). We killed: The rise of women in american comedy. New York, NY: D&M Publishers, Inc.

Comedy and Femininity Haggins, B. (2008). Comic relief. Ms., 18(1), 52-55. Retrieved from

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http://ehis.ebscohost.com.nuncio.cofc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=b4f11f9d-0566-4e1bae58b46f05b9cc78@sessionmgr111&vid=1&hid=103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3Qtb Gl2ZQ== Kotthoff, H. (2006). gender and humor: The state of the art. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1), 4-25. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.003 Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (Seventh ed., Vol. 7, pp. 429-464). New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. Fey, T. (2011). Bossypants. New York: Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Bossypants-Tina-Fey/dp/0316056871 Henderson, F. D. (2011). The culture behind closed doors: Issues of gender and race in the writer's room. Cinema Journal, 50(2), 145-152.