Mar 17 2008
It’s Supposed To Be Funny, And Yet … It’s Not
As everyone knows, in ranking of importance with other major issues of the day — the 5 year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Presidential race, and the Chinese crackdown on Nepalese protesters — right up there is the seemingly ceaseless debate as to whether or not women are funny. (Yeah, I know, apparently I've got this alternating feminist/misogynistic theme going this week, but I leave for Indonesia in 2 days and I'm trying to get in all my reading under the wire).
If you're not aware, Christopher Hitchens wrote an article on the subject last year, in the January 2007 issue of Vanity Fair magazine (cleverly entitled "Why Women Aren't Funny"). I'll give you 2 guesses to figure out his stance on the issue.
I'm not going to waste my time rehashing Hitchens' extraordinarily long-winded attempt to avoid having sex for the rest of his adult life. However, if you're interested in sacrificing an hour of your life you'll never get back, the original article, as well as a decent compilation of some of the more vocal 'responses' can be found HERE.
Now, more than a year after Hitchens wrote that staggering work of dribble, Vanity Fair has seen fit to resurrect the whole sordid affair by publishing in its latest (April 2008) issue a rebuttal by writer Allessandra Stanley.
Like the original, this new article — sporting the less-than-convincing title: "Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?") — is yet another piece of inspired comedic genius:
Dissecting the nature of women's humor, or supposed lack thereof, is a joyless and increasingly moot subject, but it boils down to the point Virginia Woolf argued in her essay about Shakespeare's sister in A Room of One's Own, and it's analogous to the case Larry Summers made so clumsily with regard to women in the sciences that it cost him his job as president of Harvard: namely, that society has different expectations for women. Summers sealed his fate by also suggesting that women's innate aptitude for science and math might be weaker. The nature-versus-nurture argument also extends to humor. It's a shame that Margaret Mead never made it to that tribe in Papua New Guinea where women tell the jokes, and men pretend to find them funny.
Virginia Wolfe? Margaret Meade? Papua New-Fucking Guinea?
Good grief, what in the name of everything holy is this broad even talking about?
I thought that articles about humour — especially one written by a woman arguing that women are funny — should at least be mildly amusing. That would be the reasonable approach, doncha' think?
Apparently not, since the only things to be learned from either of these two articles are that: (1) neither Hitchens nor Stanley will be headlining at the Improv any time soon; (2) Vanity Fair pays its contributors by the number of words used, not coherency; and (3) reading ANYTHING in Vanity Fair with the word 'funny' in the title will make your eyes bleed.
What the hell is going on over at Vanity Fair, anyway? I mean, if they're trying to piss off their readers, then by all means, I'm pretty sure there's a used 'Mission Accomplished' banner they can pick up on the cheap. But if, on the other hand, VF is trying to publish some funny and engaging articles about contemporary pop culture … yeah, not so much.
Honestly, the most staggeringly idiotic part of this whole thing is that she deems dissecting the nature of women’s humour to be an “increasingly moot subject.” Increasingly? Seriously? Was there ever a time when this subject wasn’t moot? Funny has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with how you choose to look at the world and the freakshow parade of lunatics running around in it.
This is why I don’t read Vanity Fair, and it’s also why I like to make a concerted effort to ignore longwinded, pseudo highbrow explanations about the nature of people or the world. Instead, I just blithely carry on living my life as if the world were already just as it should be. This means that some people find me incredibly frustrating and/or annoying, and others think I’m refreshing or progressive or some other stupid thing, and most people have no idea what the hell to make of me. It really cuts down on my urge to kill everyone, though.
Funny, the Vanity Fair article made perfect sense to me!
Signed,
The girl with an English degree and a blog named A Room of One’s Own….