"Amy Schumer, like most female comedians is not funny"
"What?! She's hilarious! Trainwreck was cheeky as hell!"
"What I mean is, that female comedians like her are more interested in cracking jokes about their vaginas, periods etc instead of actually providing a comical commentary on everyday life."
This was a conversation I had last week with a very close guy friend of mine. I was hella triggered!
Don't get me wrong, I don't think I am the best judge on what kind of content makes a comic a master in their art. I tend to laugh at anything I personally find funny. I have seen some of Schumer's stand-ups on Youtube. I found her witty, crass, with a no holds barred approach in her jokes.
But after last weeks conversation, I really started to play a closer attention to why so many people say that Schumer is not funny. Is it because she's a woman and people aren't used to women making jokes? Or is it because her content is actually lackluster? I realized it's simply because she tries to be funny by sticking to jokes about her adventures with womanhood. One can only talk about their vagina for so long.
Christopher Hitchens wrote a thoroughly provocative piece called, "Why Women Aren't Funny." In it he takes a evolutionary approach towards the tendency of men to be more funnier then women. From a mating perspective, men do have a massive responsibility of courting the opposite sex, and women love to laugh. Women want to feel comfortable, safe, and happy around men. Amongst the many ways of doing that, humour is exceptionally unique and makes the man with a mastery of it stand out in the crowd.
Bear with me. It's culturally impossible that women are never adored for their laughter by men. When asked what qualities they seek in their male counterparts, funniness always takes one of the top marks. Ask any of your female friends and they will all have something that goes along the line of, "Oh I want him to be funny/ able to make me laugh/ have an amazing sense of humor etc etc."
On the other hand, ask any of your male friends on what they seek for in a perfect partner. They will all desire their ladies to have the most sought after powerfully feminine traits in women: Beauty, compassion, inner strength, adaptability etc etc. And somewhere down this prattling of traits will come 'I would like her to have a sense of humour.'
As someone who likes to crack jokes to the point of unconsciously hurting the polite society, I also happen to have a uterus with all the lovely adornments one gets as a woman. I have been able to make a lot of men laugh, but I can say with absolute certainty that men are much better at making and taking jokes across the board.
If I meet a man, who can make me laugh, unconsciously I process this remarkable ability to that man not being a hard-ass, able to enjoy life, possessing wit equating to intelligence, and being an all over happy person. These are attractive traits to find in anyone, but highlighted in men by appreciation from women.
Now, it's not to say that women can't be witty or aren't appreciated for being witty. It's simply that women are more prone towards the analysis of a joke, than just garishly laughing as almost anything funny...like most men. According to Fran Lebowitz, "The cultural values
are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man
saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and
pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?"
Women by virtue of their nature are called the fairer sex for we want to see a peaceful and a happy world where everything is alright. Thank fucking heavens for that! However, some of the best jokes are upsetting, dark, or flat out brutal in their authenticity. Men by virtue of their evolutionary makeup are able to not wince as much at irregularities or problematic scenarios as much as women.
That's not to say that all women are snowflakes and pansies. We are just different then men for all the good reasons. It is perhaps a beautiful design of mother nature to hold men responsible for adoring, comforting, and protecting women. And a large part of that is in making women happy by letting them laugh.
