Fed: Female comedians still face problems of the past

AAP General News (Australia)
04-06-2007
Fed: Female comedians still face problems of the past

By Michael Gadd, National Entertainment Writer

MELBOURNE, April 6 AAP - The stereotypes about women in comedy are well entrenched
- apparently tampon jokes, bagging out blokes and body image dominate.

It's a false image, stand-up comic Amelia Jane Hunter insists, as she discusses the
status of women in comedy.

But the perception that female comedians are some sort of underground society in the
world of comedy still exists in some quarters, despite claims to the contrary.

"Obviously that's where society is at the moment," says Hunter. "I hear people say
that and think, wow, way to convert the dominant paradigm.

"But you also have to remember, the people who go into a show with that perception
also watch The Biggest Loser, Home and Away and Desperate Housewives."

Hunter's one-woman show Amelia Jane Hunter is Keith Flipp has been bending minds and
pushing the limits of what is funny during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival,
which began last week.

It's a theatrical piece from a stand-up who refuses to conform.

She plays a person with three personalities, each with a sort of timeshare arrangement
that would make redistributing the Gaza Strip look as simple as paying an insult to George
W. Bush, a popular pastime at the festival.

It's an emotional journey, a challenging piece for the performer and the audience.

She recalls in mocking tones one man who told her: "I never thought women were funny
... but you're funny."

But she admits comedy means different things to different people. "It doesn't have
to be guys in T-shirts making amazing observations to which everyone can nod their head,"

she said.

"It's pushing the line of what's acceptable. Is a joke by a misogynist wife-beater
more acceptable than something from an obscure place that requires a bit of effort to
follow?"

Brisbane-based stand-up Meshell Laurie says it's the radio and television industries
which fan the perception that females have a tough time in comedy.

"TV and radio are still quite discriminatory and only decide they need a girl to balance
out their seven men," she says.

"But it's not like that in stand-up. That's what I love about it. Stand-up is where
you can be any type of person and have a career."

Terry Psiakis, whose latest show Unavailable follows her piece last year called Available
- since then she's found a bloke - says for people to say female comedians aren't funny
is like saying "black chickens lay bad eggs ... It's just bullshit basically."

But the numbers aren't friendly.

In 1997, only 14 per cent of performers at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival
represented the dominant X-chromosome.

Last year, the figure had risen to 33 per cent, but that appears to be the peak, or
at least the modern day standard.

Among the record 282 shows at the 2007 festival, 30 per cent are from women.

Emma Powell, creator and one of the stars of D-Cuppetry, a woman's answer to Puppetry
of The Penis, says history makes it harder for women to find comedic material.

The D-Cuppetry show is all about "women's material", about subverting the idea of perfection
thrust upon modern society and encouraging women to be proud of who they are. It also,
as Powell says, "teaches men how women feel about their breasts rather than just being
people who feel them", but it has been a runaway hit since last year's festival.

"There's still this idea that women can't make a fool of themselves and some sort of
subconscious reaction that people have when women's issues come up in a show that makes
them switch off," she says.

"We've come a lot further than the 1950s, but there's still a bit of The Stepford Wives
syndrome."

While Laurie's latest show, A Shadow of My Former Self, deals with her mental attitude
towards body image rather than weight loss, Psiakis says she avoids such topics if she
can.

"I try not to do that so called `women material', because, one, it's been done to death
and I'm not bringing anything new to it and, two, why reinforce that stereotype that all
women talk about is periods and having kids and bagging men? That's just such crap. There's
so much more to talk about," says Psiakis.

"I think you're really limiting yourself if you talk from a stereotypically female perspective."

The blue ribbon event at the festival each year, the Oxfam Community Aid Abroad fundraising
gala, may have been a rollicking success, but it highlighted the sexual inequality in
comedy.

Among more than 20 acts, which can be seen on Network Ten on Monday, April 16, just
four were female stand-up acts.

Of the four, only British-Iranian Shappi Khorsandi didn't feature "women material",
with her routine revolving around being Iranian and having a funny name.

Australia's Fiona O'Loughlan, a highly regarded comic internationally, delivered her
trademark schtick about being a neglectful mother and a bad wife.

There was Corrine Grant, best known for her TV work on The Glasshouse and Rove Live,
whose most memorable moment was when she grasped her breasts firmly, and challenged why
such a move would be offensive. It wasn't.

If there was a moment anyone fell flat on the night, it was Meshell Laurie and her
musing about the type of materials which could make the female genitalia more appealing.

While this isn't necessarily a representation of their body of work, or what women
deliver on stage in general, this sort of material only fuels the stereotype, Hunter says.

"Comedy is an asexual community, it's your own fault if you fall into a stereotype," she says.

"If you want to get up and do dick or fanny jokes, you can, but you're cutting out
half of your audience."

At the same time, dick and fanny jokes, as she says, can have a place if the performer
has engaged in the correct level of foreplay, described by Hunter as "charm".

"A lot can be said about charm," she says. "If you want to hit the audience with a
tampon joke they'll love it, as long as you've charmed them first."

Now a fixture of the Melbourne festival, Up Front is a night exclusively featuring
female comedians and it routinely sells out.

While Psiakis says the event was born out of necessity, it is now a celebration of
how far women in comedy have come.

"Now it's more of a pointer to say how many female comedians there are and how funny
they can be," Psiakis says.

Despite working in radio, the industry she says is yet to cotton on the sexual equality,
Laurie says her career has been an exception to the apparent rule.

"I've never felt discriminated against in the industry or anything," she says.

"I actually think most male comedians are pretty effeminate, they're a pretty girly
sort of bunch themselves so I've never felt put down by them."

AAP mdg/jt/mn

KEYWORD: COMEDY WOMEN (AAP FEATURE) (WITH FILE PIX)

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