Defining “Funny”
Posted
September 26, 2006 at
8:34 pm by
Stacy
Today was toga day at our sons’ high school. Unlike the all-white styles I wore to college parties–or worse– the flowered yellow twin sheets snagged from my own dorm bed, today’s teens are looking to make a statement or to poke fun at themselves.
So it was my oldest son’s sincerest wish to show up at school today looking like “Animal House’s” Eric Stratton (”Damned glad to meet ya!”) in a toga fashioned from a Batman sheet. He considered, for about three seconds, wearing a “My Little Pony”-embossed bedsheet, though he changed his mind before I drove to Target to make the purchase. Had the middle son not been heavily influenced by friends who decided that toga-wearing wasn’t something they wanted to do, he would have shown up in a blue-flannel number festooned with the images of sock-monkeys watching television. Just the thought of a six-foot tall baseball player wearing something like that makes me giggle and make a dash for my camera.
As we were brainstorming about what would make for an entertaining ensemble, I wondered what lengths the female students would have to go to in order to elicit a laugh from fellow classmates. Interestingly enough, I don’t think the sight of a girl wearing a G.I. Joe costume or dressed as an NFL linebacker is much of a rib-tickler. Isn’t it just as humorous for a girl to wear something atypical for her gender as it is for a guy to do so?Someone once pointed out to me that a man dressing up as a woman was funny and that a woman dressing up as a man…well…wasn’t. Their reasoning was that, through the centuries, women dressed as men in order to partake of the rights and privileges denied them as females. To serve in a war or be part of a ship’s crew or, like the character in the movie “Yentl”, receive an education, required a disguise. A woman was “trading up” for a better life by wearing the clothes of her male counterparts.
Yet, when a man dons a dress and speaks in a high-pitched voice, he’s lowering his status. Picture the men of Monty Python and it all becomes rather clear, no? This phenomenon doesn’t make me angry, but it does make me a little sad. I love a sense of humor and I believe that some of the greatest comedians in the world come from both genders. That said, I know that, in many ways, the male of the species is better represented. I can’t deny it and, as a feminist, I can’t explain it. Can you?
Tags: gender-roles, Humor, Monty-Python |
7 Responses to “Defining “Funny””
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1. Jessica Carlson said:
September 27, 2006 @ 6:27 pm
Are you talking stand-up comedians or just comedic actors? I think that more men probably go into stand-up than women do, although there are some really talented, female comedians out there. Rosanne Barr, Ellen Degeneres, Kathy Griffith are a few that come to mind, but it’s taken some pretty ballsy women to break into it. I think it used to be a primarily male dominated field and now women have to be really good to get noticed.
Too funny about the Togas. That brings me back. Have kids always done that are is it just a sign of old age that I remember this from highschool?
2. ortizzle said:
September 27, 2006 @ 10:37 pm
Regarding men dressing like women vs. women dressing like men: I think part of the reason for the imbalance which makes the male situation inherently funnier than the female situation might lie with the fact that women *do* wear pants/trousers as an accepted part of their attire, whereas men do not normally sport a skirt, except for perhaps isolated groups of inebriated Scots on designated festive occasions http://tinyurl.com/p29zl.
Note to Jessica: I don’t think it’s a sign of old age that you remember this from high school. Trust me, I never even heard of it in my high school days or even before. *That fact,* I am afraid, is truly a sign of old age
3. Cristina said:
September 28, 2006 @ 1:43 am
I’ve noticed that most stand-ups are very crass (including the women) even if their TV shows are “family-friendly”. Maybe it took women longer to break into stand-up because they didn’t feel comfortable delivering “crass” material in stand-up routines until more recently. This is just a wild guess. I’m sure others would disagree.
4. TB said:
September 28, 2006 @ 10:33 am
The biological reason is that the female needs to blend into the environment to protect the offspring.
Pretty telling, no?
5. Nils Ling said:
September 28, 2006 @ 6:14 pm
I will always remember a New Yorker cartoon that had a guy at a counter and the person behind it saying “We don’t have a “Humour” section. This is a feminist bookstore.”
I don’t have a preference for one gender or another when it comes to who makes me laugh. I’m as amused by women as by men. The sheer weight of numbers dictates that men will be well represented when it comes to stand-up comedy, but women have always been right in there.
Why is a man dressed as a woman more amusing than a woman dressed as a man? I think it has less to do with sexual politics or economics than with the sheer silliness. Rather than pain or sorrow mor anger, the real wellspring of humour is “superiority”. We laugh at that which makes us feel superior - smarter, less unfortunate, more apt in social settings. A man dressed as a woman is funny because … well, he’s so frigging ugly. We love that.
A woman dressed as a man is . well … Prince.
That is my theory. Which is mine, and mine alone. And belongs to me. Ahem. Ahem-hem-hem.
(obscure monty Python “woman dressed as man” reference.)
6. Jessica Carlson said:
September 28, 2006 @ 6:44 pm
Nils Ling, you said, “A woman dressed as a man is . well … Prince.”
Major LOL to that!!!
Also, I think it’s socially acceptable for a woman to dress like a man, but not socially acceptable for a man to dress like a woman. It’s considered ridiculous and absurd and laughter ensues. So feminists ought to be championing that, no?
7. Michelle said:
November 10, 2007 @ 2:45 am
The responses left by everyone pretty much reinforce the post. The fact that men are dressing down and being silly is, indeed, an indication that we see women as having less power. All of you seemingly want to deny that and in doing so mirror the views of society. We do not want to recognize that we inherently assume that men are too good for that. The crack about Prince, a musician that is slight and diminutive in stature, is also another good indicator of how if a man does not meet the standards of masculinity we ridicule him by calling him a woman… you basically made the point the poster was making.