Nzinga, I like you. You’re smart and seem like a nice person. On this, you’re completely wrong. Well, not completely… see below. Hitchens was wrong. But not completely, see below.
As you might recall I’m scraping along the lower rungs of standup. Just started 18 months ago, but I’ve gotten all over Toronto. I know a lot of really, really funny female standup comics on the Toronto scene. Hilariously funny. And elsewhere too; I did a show in San Jose and the headliner was a Bay Area comedienne and I was crying with laughter. I’m seeing the up and coming talent right here on the ground in a big comedy market and I am telling you, flat out, that there are screamingly funny female comics out there. Debra DiGiovanni is funny and she is - and I am saying this absolutely dead straight - not one of the five funniest female comics I have seen just in Toronto. If there is a difference in average funniness between female and male comics I do not see it. There are MORE male comics. They are not funnier, on average.
But women just don’t get the breaks. I know that sounds apologetic but it’s true. Men try and try and very occasionally one will get a break. Women almost never do; they simply cannot break through in standup, with maybe one exception every few years. (I think Ellen DeGeneres is one of the best of all time, YMMV.) I know how that sounds but you have to believe me, as a guy out there in the comedy bushes several times a week, that funny female comics are out there. You don’t get a chance to see them.
The comics you become aware of in popular media, the really successful ones, are a tiny part of the comedy universe and they are not, truth be told, perfectly coincidental with the set of the funniest comics out there. I’d certainly agree the absolute elite are the funniest - Louis C.K. is the funniest man in the business today - but a lot of the comics you see are out there because they’re just better at marketing, worked harder, hit a market segment at the right time, or just got the breaks. Dane Cook is not one of the thousand funniest standups in the business, but he’s one of the richest because he’s got a marketing approach that works for him. Russell Peters is funny but I can effortlessly name 25 funnier comics you can see for ten bucks in Toronto any week you want to come up here; Russell hit the big time because he got breaks at exactly the point that the market needed a comic with his point of view. (Note: I sure as hell am not suggesting I am funnier than any of these people.) And some of the folks funnier than those guys are women.
Why, precisely, women are not given the same chances to do big time comedy I cannot really explain to you.
Of course, everyone has their thing, and it may be that you are simply not predispositioned to find women funny. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t find battle-of-the-sexes jokes funny, but most people seem to think they’re a scream. That’s just me, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if a battle-of-the-sexes comedian’s making the whole room howl except me I bow to his skill.
Part of this - actually, part of both issues here, why women don’t get breaks and why you don’t like them - is that much of an audience’s reaction to a comic is based on the legitimacy they place in the comic. If you would allow me to indulge myself to explain, your willingness to buy into the comic’s joke is proportional to the trust you have that the comic will make you laugh.
If you load up a Louis C.K. show on Netflix and watch Louis do his thing, he will do stuff that a no-name comic simply could not do. Louis will go (to me) incredible lengths of time without actually delivering a punchline, and for 2-3 minutes he might just do setup, with only the most mildly funny of punchlines.
If I got on stage and did that I’d be hated, even if I told the same jokes. I could never, ever go two minutes without telling a joke, because no large audience knows me and can trust that I will bring the house down at the end of a long setup. Even if I end a 3-minute setup with jokes of absolutely Grade-A caliber, the audience will have turned against me and won’t laugh (much.) Even if my delivery was just as good (which it’s not, but bear with me here.) The thing is that Louis C.K. can go three minutes without telling a really Grade A punchline because you trust him to do that. The audience has every expectation that waiting three minutes is worth it, because there will be a huge payoff, because they know Louis is really funny. They know there’s a reason you pay $70 to see him rather than seeing him at an open mic night. They know Louis is going to end that long setup with hysterically funny jokes, so they’re willing to wait. It’s a very participative, interactive art form.
Other factors besides fame and reputation come into play as well - how friendly a comic looks, whether you identify with him, whether you are attracted to them (Dane Cook gets laughs this way) whether they say things that you agree with, and so on. Much of the reason you laugh at people is because you have decided you want to laugh at them. It is as important for a comic to make you want to laugh at them with non-joke signals as it is to tell jokes. If the comic can get you on his or her side, you’ll laugh. You will forgive and overlook their errors. Youll find humor in everything they do. If they repulse you, the laughs will be extremely hard to come by. You will be unforgiving. You’ll try to see through the facade instead of suspending your disbelief.
Female comics are always working against the assumption that they aren’t funny. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but there it is. And if you have assumed they are not funny, you won’t find them funny.
And again, that’s really quite okay. If it’s not your thing it is not your thing. People think Bill Hicks was super hilarious; his stuff leaves me cold. I know he was a genius, though, because he sure made other people laugh. Or as one comedian told me once (himself pretty successful) “I don’t find Jerry Seinfeld funny. But I’ve heard of him, and he’s never heard of me.”
Cuz then I’d kind of agree or at least nod my head silently. But otherwise I’d say “HI DO U KNO TINA FEY???”