Christopher Hitchens penned a typically controversial article for Vanity Fair early this year called, "Why Women Aren't Funny." It’s a great read, guaranteed to cause a reaction (the letters to the editor as a result of the article in the subsequent VF issue were just as entertaining).
Hitchens asserts that women are “backward in generating [humour]” compared to men and hypothesizes that the reason is that we just don’t have to be as funny as men do. He calls on Darwin for this claim, attesting that women are already appealing to men without having to make them laugh. His basic equation: being funny is to a man what being pretty and nurturing is to a woman.
Before you scream in protest, read the article through—Hitchens does make some interesting points, such as that women do have a sense of humour—it’s just more selective than men’s is. And, he speculates that it may be that men don’t want women to be funny—preferring us in the role of audience.
With these last ideas, I have experience. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat in front of a man while he tells a bad joke, trying desperately to look amused and figure out when the punch line is happening. And then fake laughing (which I am terrible at). Why do I bother? Because I don’t want them to feel bad, and because I've been socialized to be polite in such benign circumstances.
Women don’t try as hard to be funny as men do, again in my experience. But when they are funny, boy can they be funny (who didn’t love Elaine on Seinfeld? Or our very own Heather Mallick, a Canadian scribe). Not always in as ribald or explicit a way as men, but reaching at least as high on the funny scale.
In honour of funny chicks everywhere, today’s post spotlights Gill Partington, a woman who sounds impossible not to like. I found out about her in Elizabeth Renzetti’s Globe article last Saturday, "Evil Meets the Stove.” Ms. Partington not only wrote her PhD thesis on the dissemination of conspiracy theories (so cool!) but has just come out with "The Axis of Evil Cookbook.”
Partington says the “ridiculousness of the book,” which compiles recipes from North Korea, Libya, Syria, and Cuba, “draws attention to the ridiculousness of the concept [the Axis of Evil] in the first place." Renzetti (who does a great job with this article) quotes a few of Partington’s recipe introductions in the book, including that for Korean Dog Stew:
“For vegetarians or those who are just too busy to cook a whole dog, quorn pieces make an acceptable substitute.”
When she flubs the Iranian omelette she’s making in front of Renzetti, breaking it into three pieces, she is at first horrified, then quips:
“Actually, look at it. It’s a map of the Axis of Evil. It’s not as bad as we thought—or maybe it’s much worse.”
Partington seems both goofy and intelligent as all hell. You get the sense that she couldn’t care less whether you “get” her or what she’s trying to do—she would have done it anyway. And that’s just how I like my funny, whether it's from a man or from a woman.
Just for the record, no one has ever fake-laughed at my stuff, if you know what I'm saying. I'm all about the A-material. Seriously.
Posted by: Craig | November 22, 2007 at 06:23 PM