Why aren't women funny?Follow

It's being pitched as laugh out loud comedy here in the US, at least in all the ads I've seen for it, which is jarring, becuase the ad goes like "OMG Daisy is HILARIOUS! FUNNY! AMAZING! SO COOL AND FRESH AND NEW!" and then it's a low-key Brit joke.

Cho and Ball get my nods as funny female comedians.

I agree, Danalog, and I think that tends to support my theory. Ball, in particular, was an enormous risk-taker, willing to go above and beyond looking ridiculous. She was amazing.

Edited for context. Context good.


Edited, Wed Dec 7 12:32:24 2005 by Samira

I heard Sarah Silverman is fall-off-your-seat funny in The Aristocrats. Waiting for it to come out on DVD though.

Found some good quote from the 11 O'Clock show. Worth the effort, I have been in tears of laughter at my desk reading all of these.

http://www.angelfire.com/tv/11Show/Quotes2/Quotes.html

I think you are on to something with the aimed at Brits vs aimed at Americans thing. No matter how hard I try, I can't figure out what the bolded sentence means :P

Carol Burnette was Jim Carrey Funny. God, I still chuckle when I think about the "Went with the Wind" sketch.

Are you coming on to me?

If that song isn't out of my head by the end of the hour, I'm going to kill you once for every additional minute it stays there

yeah, and I'd **** the living **** out of her too.

Speaking of which, Meg Griffin is also a funny gal.

A few other people have mentioned her, but Margaret Cho is nails. Ellen can be funny, never liked Gilda Radner or Roseanne. As far as TV female characters that make me laugh (not comics), I always tip my hat to Carla from Cheers and Karen from Will and Grace (both from the same writers), as well as Sophia from The Golden Girls.

Sara Silverman, who is very funny
(JH: Between CRANK YANKERS and GREG THE BUNNY, you've been a part of at least two puppet shows on TV. Anything we should know?
SS: Puppets are into ***-play)
has a movie coming out, Jesus is Magic.

When you tell a joke and make a woman laugh I think, as a man, you feel you have scored points with her. Espeically if you are interested in her. If the woman makes the man laugh, the man may feel defensive, especially if interested in her. I don't know how to put it into words: as if the initiative has been taken away, or that the woman is the more clever? Men are far more honest about how funny other men are.

However, I do have some evidence that, in general, men laugh less at equally funny material from a woman then a man. It isn't really great evidence. When I played Everquest (bear with me) I wound up playing a female character once in a while. Long story. Anyhow, I would typically joke around a bit in Eq but with the female character, nothing "worked" - the men never laughed and the other females (who perhaps were also played by men aren't the statistics about 50/50?) didn't really respond either. I actually tried identical material which my main (male) character afterwords, in roughly the same sequence, and it worked fairly well - as well as I was used to.