On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Kevin M. <drunkbastar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Pollak, Melissa F. <mpol...@nsf.gov> > wrote: > > Queens of Comedy > > Q How many women are on Letterman's, Leno's, and Conan O'Brien's > > comedy-writing staffs? > > > > A Zero. And Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson each employ just one (in > > Ferguson's case, it's his sister). "My best guess is that it has some > > relationship to Newton's Law-an object in motion stays in motion," > > veteran (female) comedy writer Merrill Markoe says. "It's a pernicious > > pattern that has set in over the years and needs to be interrupted > > somehow." A notable exception is the E! Network's Chelsea Handler > > [pictured], whose 10-person writing staff is half men and half women. > > Kevin M: > There is a genuine scarcity of funny women in the world... And before I > get attacked, I'm not saying men are funnier than women. > A funny woman is as good or better than a funny guy. But there are more > funny men than women. > Jeffrey M: At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I do not find female comedians funny...not a single one of them. And I know a lot of people that feel this way. PGage: I don't agree with either of the M-Brothers on this (I can think of lots of funny women over the years, famous and not famous). But I do think we are long past the point of simply observing the lack of a particular demographic represented in some area and implying that the next step is to impose a hiring quota to fix it. Certainly nobody (not even Markoe) is suggesting that there is a plot to keep women out of positions of authority in television. Indeed, as was noted here the last time this subject came up a few months ago, two of the three decision-makers on Dave's show are women (at least one is a lesbian, which may count for extra credit) and they have had a long term relationship with the show. Aaron Barnhart discussed this exact issue in September, discussing Nancy Franklin's review of the Jay Leno Show ( http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2009/09/late-night-tv-still-a-boys-club-except-at-30-rock.html). The money quote from Franklin's review (which seems to be the source of Melissa's, and Parade's, catechism above): "The other night on the Emmy Awards broadcast, the names of the nominees for best writing on a comedy or variety series were read, and, out of eighty-one people, only seven were women. Leno has no women writers on his show. Neither does David Letterman, and neither does Conan O’Brien. Come *on*." What is left out of the Parade piece, I guess because it would diluted the impact of the other numbers a little (but only a little) is the report card for Jimmy Fallon, who, according to Aaron, "employs three women: Ali Waller, Morgan Murphy and Amy Ozols. There are also two African-American writers on the show". Of course this may have been suppressed because anecdotally it tends to support the claims of the M-Brothers that there are fewer funny women (though I will say the few times I have seen it the last month Fallon seems to be less unfunny). I think we can use the figure of 8.5% to represent women in late night comedy (given the Fallon numbers, it is probably higher than that, but 8.5% of the writers at Emmy nominated late night comedy talk shows are women, and that seems like a fair place to start). That number is obviously significantly less than the 53% or so of the population that is between the ages of, say, 21 and 51, so there clearly are fewer women working in this field than are in the population. I don't think it is because women are less funny (some do think this obviously), I also don't think it is because of some agenda to keep women's voices off of late night air (some probably think this too). The two likely explanations, which I think I have heard Markoe suggest herself in the past, is that 1) the prime target of most late night talk shows is young men, and they tend (or at least, the received wisdom is that they tend) to like a kind of frat boy, gross out, or macho humor written most often by men and/or 2) the cultures of the writing rooms of most of these shows is hostile to women; not in the legal, sexual harassment sense we have talked about here in the past, but in the "I don't really want to live my life with immature, adolescent jerks" sense that cause most women to leave their college boyfriends and marry a guy they met in grad school or at work. Most obviously the explanation for this gender imbalance (and for the related ethnic imbalances that could also be described) is that the hosts of all of these programs are white men (which probably also explains the Handler exception). Dave Letterman is not going to tell a lot of menopause jokes. On the other hand, he does tell some viagra jokes about himself - and is it possible these might be funnier (er, funny) if written a little more from a woman's perspective? This seems to be the way forward on this front - demonstrate that the kind of funny women write is at least as appealing to a wide (or, I guess, the specific target) audience, as men write. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
