My choice - Jessica Williams!
Let's take the opportunity to introduce each other to our some of favorite female comics or even some female comics that we've recently discovered! But we should be academic in our endeavors; I would like us to identify the comic's style, topic of discussion, sense of humor, and appeal. What draws you to this comedian? Be aware of each other's choices and try not to repeat a comedian twice.
My comic of choice is Ellen DeGeneres. I've been watching her ever since i was in middle school. What draws me to her shows is the fact that she is so open about every topic, especially about her sexuality on live television. I find it very amusing to watch her joke about the things you would only say with your friends in your living room.
ReplyDeleteEllen's style of humor is the bonding type. She embraces her audience by sharing good-natured, relatable humor.
Her topic of discussion can range from anything, whether it be something she read in her daily news to her guest speaker. There is very little she will not talk about on her show.
Her sense of humor is the type that draws you in. She will make references that everyone gets so that no one will feel left out. She often jokes about what happened that day in the show and refers to it many times throughout the course of the show.
Ellen appeals to all audiences, but mostly to people of late teens and beyond.
Ellen has entertained me for many years and i believe that she is a comedian that is worthy to be remembered.
One of my favorite female comics is Phyllis Diller. Although I haven't heard of her until recently, I looked her up and found her to be very funny.
ReplyDeleteHer style of humor was self deprecation. She made fun of her looks and her figure. Not only that, but she also made jokes about the idealization of women as wives, mothers, and homeworkers.
Her topics of discussion were usually about making fun of herself and her flaws but they were also about love, marriage, domesticity, and females in general.
She had a great sense of humor. She would joke about anything, making hilarious references that would draw all types of people to her performances.
She appeals to all audiences, male or female, although you would need to be of a certain age to understand what she is joking about.
Diller's charismatic personality, hilarious sense of humor, and eccentric looks all draw me to her.
I chose Moms Mabley (born Loretta Aiken, 1894-1974), one of the pioneers of mainstream comedy for both African Americans and women. She reportedly got her start with a traveling show, which she joined after running away from home at age 14. Later she began performing on the Chitlin’ circuit, an informal collection of venues at which black entertainers performed during segregation, often referred to as “the black Vaudeville.” By the height of her career, however, she was also very popular with white audiences, doing stand-up at Carnegie hall, putting out comedy records, and making regular television appearances on programs like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Supposedly, she was at this point earning roughly $10,000 a week.
ReplyDeleteMabley often dealt with controversial topics in her stand-up, deemed “too edgy” by many. Her act was to dress up as a toothless old woman in a rumpled floral-print dress and cap, exactly the opposite of whom you would expect to talk about things like sexuality, sexual violence, and racial politics. While she joked about a variety of topics, she was especially avant-garde when it came to jokes in which she made fun of old men and talked about having a preference for younger ones, and jokes about the ways in which young black women had their sexuality controlled via things like arranged marriages, which she claimed in her act to be something she herself experienced. These stories were all fiction- in real life, Mabley was a lesbian, something she also alluded to in her jokes, although she claimed to have been raped twice when she was young and to have given both babies up for adoption. For a black woman to be talking about rape and sexuality was unprecedented, as slavery and Jim Crow had created a legacy of black women being viewed by whites as hypersexual “Jezebels,” leading most black women to shy away from discussing their sexuality in an effort to combat this stereotype. She also delved into racial politics, and towards the end of her life recorded a cover of a song called “Abraham, Martin and John,” a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, and a lament of the obstacles facing social change. It peaked at #33 on American charts, making Mabley, at age 75, the oldest person ever to record a Top 40 hit.
Mabley influenced a huge number of comedians we regard as mainstream, including Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, and Richard Pryor. Recently a documentary film was made about her life, directed by Whoopi Goldberg, for HBO.
For a while now, I have been interested in Kathy Griffin, a brilliant stand-up comedian/actress who is very adept at showing the audience the ridiculousness of the celebrity world. Whether it be some gossip one might expect from Beverly Hills or public slander from the news, the punch lines of Griffin's humor are always shockingly wicked. Many times she has recounted embellished stories about problems or tendencies of other celebrities from her personal experience; sometimes she even jokes about herself as a Hollywood outsider. Despite her implied reclusiveness from celebrity culture, Griffin has been shown to hold good friendships with a few other celebrities.
ReplyDeleteKathy Griffin has also starred in plenty of fine television series before, including Kathy’s My So-Called Reality, Bravo’s Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, and Suddenly Susan. She even has her own talk show Kathy on Bravo Network. Despite this, however, she is slowly becoming less popular due to her constant reuse of gossip for jokes. I think this is commendable though, and feel that this persistence will reinvigorate her role-model position among female comedians.
I recently discovered Margaret Cho, a bisexual Korean-American comedian known for her outspoken and almost crude style that touches upon sensitive topics related to sexuality, race, and gender. Her very unrestrained humor and “no holds barred” style is what appeals to her audience and to me. She does not hold back from bringing up taboo topics in her performances. Her sense of humor and appeal is aimed more towards adults because she touches a lot upon topics NSFW and not age-appropriate for children.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Cho first turned to comedy after being bullied as a child; she began stand up at the age of 14, and was a professional performer at the age of 16. She has been through not only childhood bullying, but also eating disorders and self abuse. She throws herself into comedy to positively channel her anger. The thing that draws me most to Margaret Cho is her activism in promoting equal rights for all. She is extremely passionate about promoting equal rights for all, regardless of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity, because she herself was bullied for being an Asian-American, a bisexual, and for being a female. Margaret Cho uses her experiences and her observations to discuss these topics in her performances.
I have been recently introduced to Loni Love because she has been on Ellen as the guest DJ a few times now. It is hilarious to watch them together because of how different they are as comedians. Loni is more or less the stereotypical "large" black woman who speaks her mind, and as a joke Ellen has to always put out the disclaimer that the Ellen Show does not reflect the views of Loni.
ReplyDeleteAlthough her jokes are meant to be addressed towards adults, they are very understandable and just plain funny. After watching a few of her stand up clips its easy to see that she uses her race and size as many of her jokes but instead of being self deprecating she manages to turn her characteristics into something positive.
After watching a few interviews, it is apparent that she really values how women see themselves and advocates woman power. She started out as an engineer to prove to her family she can achieve that goal and later turned to comedy because it is her passion. Because of how hard it is to make it as a female comedian she divorced her husband and made a self conscious decision to not be tied down by a man and family to put her career first. Now she has co-host a day time show The Real, in which she talks about everything female.
I found myself interested in Ali Wong, a Vietnamese-Chinese stand-up comedian living in Los Angeles. Considered as a raunchy comic, Wong started her career doing stand-ups in her hometown in San Francisco. After being named as “The Best Comedian of 2009” by the SF Weekly, Wong has performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the FOX series Breaking In, and NBC’s Are You There, Chelsea? .
ReplyDeleteShe is characterized with her bold, straightforward jokes about her sexuality, race, gender, and other seemingly taboo subjects. What I found magnetic about Wong is her ability to observe established norms and trends in society from a different perspective, usually against expectations, while incorporating a vulgar element to her stand-ups. Although fully supportive of empowering women, Wong's jokes break staunch feminist stereotypes as well as those of Asian females. Her use of voice inflection, active use of body language, and her unrestrained confidence to joke about female perceptions about topics such as marriage and masochism are essential skills she makes use of in her acts. One stand-up can be seen in this video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z76dej59k0I).
Sarah Millican is a stand-up comedian from the United Kingdom. As I watched her performances and read articles about how she got her start in comedy, I realized that she is very much like the type of comedian we talk about in class. When she was 29, her husband dumped her and disillusioned her. I think as a coping mechanism she began to perform stand-up in comedy clubs and talk about her divorce. She even said in an interview that she knew “there were people out there who’d also been dumped dramatically, even if I didn’t know what they looked like. But when people laughed, I didn’t feel as alone.” Her first show was based on her divorce and has launched her into a huge success in just five years. I think she feels strength in herself to walk away from a horrible divorce and her mother’s death. This goes back to a point that was made in class about how you can’t tell if someone in your audience or the comedian is going through cancer or just went through a dramatic divorce just from appearance, but I think when you share your uncomfortable situations and topics and draw attention towards absurdities of the situation it makes people feel good to know that there are other’s out there going through the same situation. So to answer the question in class about what it says about our society's ability to joke about sensitive matters, I think there is empowerment and unity.
ReplyDeleteShe is characterized by her cheerful personal when telling intimate stories. I think that immediately when I was watching some of her performances you could tell that her appearance and style was a contributor to her “funnyness.” She sometimes jokes about her physical appearance. I noticed her high, squeaky like voice that distinguishes her from other comedians and makes her comedy seem more light-hearted in a way. Some people think her voice gives her a sweet lady charm. She says her humor is a mix of her parent’s which is why is chatty and anecdotal but at the same time not afraid to speak about “filth.” I liked that Sarah Millican was relatable because while she tells stories of how she once peed in a car and blamed in on the dog, she also shares stories about darker aspects of her life.
The comedian that I want to introduce to the class is Lisa Lampanelli.
ReplyDeleteLampanelli first started off as a journalist - she studied journalism at Boston College, Syracuse, and Harvard, and then worked as a copy editor for Popular Mechanics and as an assistant at Rolling Stone. She made her switch to the comedy world in the early 1990s (in New York!) apparently because of the pay raise and because she got to "say the n- word on stage and get paid money."
... As you can probably tell by now, Lampanelli is not one to hold back on offensive or racy jokes. Most of her jokes are ethnic jokes (some people refer to them as race jokes or racist jokes) that poke fun at minority groups (in her case, racial minorities and homosexuals.) In fact, her pseudonym is "Queen of Mean," mostly because of her insult comedy. In the past, she has defended her controversial style by saying that "I can get away with it because I'm a nice person, I have a warm personality, my intention is good behind it. The thing is, people sense when you have the least bit of anger or hate towards a group––that's why you never make fun of people you don't like" (which is kind of an interesting way to look at it, I would say.) Although some of her jokes badmouth homosexuals, she is an enthusiastic supporter of the LGBT community. Along with ethnic jokes, she also pokes fun at celebrities and occasionally at her own sexuality and body size.
I guess her appeal comes mostly from the fact that she isn't afraid to make racy and offensive jokes. We live in a world that values "political correctness" and I guess it's refreshing to hear her be so outspoken and unrestrained about such sensitive topics like ethnicity and race.
Interestingly enough, Lampanelli actually also commented on her appeal as a comedian in an interview in 2006, and she attributed it to her desexualized image. Basically, she said that it'd be "much harder for a very, very hot woman to get away with it because if you look like Cameron Diaz and you're trying to do this humor, women in the audience might get mad, they think you're trying to steal their guy. It's because I'm more the woman next door, soccer-type mom, so it's more shocking coming out of my mouth, but that works for me." I guess this also goes back to the idea of how women in comedy need to give up their looks and be "unattractive" to make it.