THE JOKE'S ON HER?
All kidding aside, men are funnier than women, Celia Walden is willing to say.
Asked whether he bought into the preconception that men found it harder to express their emotions, British broadcaster Michael Parkinson said in a recent interview: “Most men I know are the opposite — they're very sensitive and also very funny. That's the thing I like most about men. It's a very contentious statement, but they're much better than women in their sense of humour.”
If the screech of brakes and crumple of metal drowned out that last part, I'll repeat: Men (are) funnier than women. Not just a contentious, but an outlandish assertion for any man to make — and one I happen to agree with.
I know. As a woman, I'm supposed to toe the party line, PR the hell out of my own sex and propagate the sisterly view that we are not just equal but innately superior in every way — and plenty of women will write that piece after the 85-year-old talk-show host Parkinson's comments.
But I can't. Because although I know a vast number of clever women, acerbic women, shrewd women, kind women, perspicacious women, generous women, strong women and beautiful women, I can count the rib-achingly, eye-streamingly funny women I've met on one hand.
What about the women I don't know? The Roseanne Barrs, Rebel Wilsons, Tiffany Haddishs, Amy Schumers, Ellen Degenereses, Dawn Frenchs, Melissa Mccarthys? Sorry — I don't find them funny either. Which is not to say there haven't been and there aren't brilliant female comics and wits: Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, Joan Rivers, Victoria Wood, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, Sarah Cooper and more.
But as the late Christopher Hitchens once wrote in a piece about what he called “the humour gap,” the fact remains that “there are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians.”
Just imagine what Hitchens would have made of the blockbuster “gross-out” girl comedies now held up as proof that women can be funny. I sat through the whole of Bridesmaids — one of the top-grossing “girl comedies” of all time — without even the smallest gurgle of laughter. If anything, the film left me despondent at the notion that female humour meant prying fratboy tropes like convulsive diarrhea, binge-drinking and swearing from the hands of ( by the way equally unfunny) men, and making those things our own.
Likewise, Girls Trip — another massive hit — left me disappointed and perplexed, not amused but bemused by the fact that a series of ribald, absinthe-fuelled nightclub scenes were enough to earn critical praise such as “fresh and filthy” and “hugely charming.”
Therein lies the problem with female funny today. At some point between third- and fourth-wave feminism, a memo went around urging female comedians to play men at their own game. If we wanted to break through the comedy ceiling, it could be done only either by acting like men or playing on our own failures. So we riffed on our fatness, ugliness and undesirableness, we put our uselessness as wives and mothers at the heart of our banter.
If in doubt, the “hot, hilarious mess” was always a winner. But any hint of chippiness or bitterness, any simmering underlying rage, kills humour. Yes, we've got plenty of reason to feel all of those things, but if you're making a serious sociological point, if you're even close to moralizing, then you've already lost the room — or me, at any rate.
The most sobering part of this sorry situation is that, intrinsically, women are just as funny as men. So how did I end up agreeing with Parkinson's statement? A statement I resent for being true. Well, humour is a muscle that grows flaccid without use, and from the moment we're born, there's a cultural emphasis on a girl's looks, above all. We are the ones with the appealing shape and plumage, and men are the ones who had better hone their funny muscles if they want to get near us. This also explains why supermodels are about as funny as undertakers.
If your wit does continue to bubble up regardless, there's another cultural quash to contend with. Women are supposed to be pleasers, aren't they? Smoother-overs rather than mischief-makers. And if that too is ignored, we still have to overcome the combined humour hammer blow of domesticity and motherhood, with all the fun-sapping nagging and mundane hamster-wheeling involved.
Because, as a female friend put it in an expletive-ridden text yesterday: “We're too busy folding f-----g socks, putting on a wash and dinner to excel at things we'd be able to, given half a chance. And, by the way, you cannot write that ...”
I just did. All that's left for me and Parkinson is to duck — and run for cover.