The Daily Show, Olivia Munn and the Comedy Problem (a.k.a. the post I'll regret writing.)
I decided I wasn’t going to write this post until the entire hullabaloo died down and I could let my own thoughts on the matter solidify without the influence of the articles I’d been reading on the subject as well as the great Fake News wank of 2010. I know everyone’s thrown in their two cents and it often got messy, especially with the Jezebel versus Daily Show staff debate turning into a mudslinging match but I feel like this is something I need to write.
As you may or may not know, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently hired Olivia Munn as a new correspondent and her hiring has brought about some interesting reactions. Jezebel discussed the lack of female correspondents on the show, which led to one hell of a slinging match between the sides which turned into a massive fight on blogs, twitter and livejournal. As a feminist, comedy fan and someone with an interest in politics, I couldn’t help but get involved.
Let me get this off my chest. I don’t think Olivia Munn is funny. That doesn’t make me some angry feminist, that doesn’t make me a woman hater or basher and it certainly doesn’t make me just some jealous bitch who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I just don’t think she’s funny. She doesn’t exactly do much to make me warm to her either, from her comments about critics of her needing to “walk it off, bitch” to her generalisation that “If you stand up for women, then don’t bash me” to her frankly insulting hipster racism filled comments over how it was okay for her to make racist jokes because oh, she’s had sex with black men! If this is what the Daily Show is looking for then fine, more power to them. Miss Munn is very popular with her male audience which is a key demographic in the Daily Show’s audience so I guess they’ve got what they’re looking for. But I’m not going to pretend that she doesn’t bother me.
"I never tried to use anything besides my own sweat and blood and talent to get somewhere. I think that anyone who’s out there trying to bring down why any woman would get anywhere, or why we’re different, just needs to f**king turn her f**king computer off, take the sandwich out of her mouth and go for a goddamn f**king walk. You know what? Just walk it off, bitch. Just walk it off, bitch.”
Hmm, where do I start? Why are sandwiches the key food for fat, lonely feminists? I wonder if she feels like a big woman, one of the guys, for using the word bitch. Are women not allowed to have opinions on the net, or are they only allowed to leave glowing tweets to her praising how amazing she is and what bitches Jezebel.com are? I don’t know if anyone’s told her but the internet is full of opinions, not all of them positive, and we are going to bash and criticise things we see as wrong or problematic. Of course that makes us fat, lonely bitches because we don’t pose in Playboy or deep throat hot dogs.
But Ms Munn aside, her hiring and the following criticism does highlight something very important in our media, the original comment brought up by Jezebel. There really aren’t enough women in comedy, especially late night comedy. You’ve got Chelsea Handler on E! (who is pretty funny but her network has a less than fantastic feminism record) and Wanda Sykes did have a weekly show but I’ve been informed it was cancelled. Samantha Bee is the longest running correspondent on the Daily Show and there are the hilarious women in Saturday Night Live. And that’s it. There are women writing for these shows but it’s predominantly a male environment, not to forget the frequent sexual harassment accusations and scandals coming out from there, most recently David Letterman’s. Outside of late night, the most popular comedy shows on US TV are predominantly written, created and developed by men (Tina Fey’s 30 Rock is a favourite of mine and she’s one of my heroes but aside from her, the show is written mostly by men). The stars are mostly male (and white) and this extends up my side of the pond too, with the most popular stages for comedians, panel shows, predominantly being filled by men (all the regular panellists on Mock the Week are male, same for Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Would I Lie To You, QI and Have I Got News For You. Charlie Brooker’s You Have Been Watching is a feminist heartening exception as there is always 1 female panellist on each week). So why is this?
It’s certainly not because men are funnier than women, as I blogged about before, and it does leave the comedy world open to criticise female comedians, saying they only joke about women’s problems while men are universal, or they’re incapable of having the same charismatic gravitas a male comedian has. None of this is true. Some of the funniest, most popular figures in comedy over the years have been women (come on, Betty White!) Nobody ever accuses Samantha Bee of being a women’s comedian on The Daily Show. They don’t just make her talk about women’s stuff. And they’re not going to make Ms Munn do that from what I’ve seen. Yet this entire argument got out of hand so quickly and ended up hurting a lot of people, myself included. Yes, I was offended by her comment. I don’t criticise shows like the Daily Show because I hate them or want them to fail. It’s the 21st century and we still have to have these discussions; that’s not good. I love comedy, I wish I was talented enough to get up in front of a room of people and make them laugh. I wish we didn’t have to write articles about the lack of women on TV or refute claims by people like Christopher Hitchens that women aren’t funny but we do because if we don’t it becomes okay to say those sort of things. It becomes okay for Olivia Munn to insult feminism, to make potentially offensive comments and encourage bashing of people who work hard to make things better.
And please don’t pull the ‘oh it’s just a joke’ argument. Jon Stewart’s less than mature response to all this was to yell out ‘oh and Jezebel thinks I’m a sexist prick!’ on the show as a punch-line, which lost him a lot of my respect. Comedy is an extremely powerful weapon and satire is used to wound. Stewart can’t use the get-out-of-jail-free card of comedy when his show is revered amongst people as a shining beacon of not just comedy but fighting back against people like Fox News. You can’t throw yourself into the deep end, calling out liars like Jim Cramer and Glenn Beck, then jump backwards with your hands in the air saying ‘oh, I’m just a comedian.’ That’s why Munn’s comments needed to be called out. She’s been given this amazing job and a pedestal to stand on where she could potentially be a powerful weapon and how does she use this - she insults women.
With or without Munn, the Daily Show does have a women problem, but so does comedy in general. Actually, entertainment and the media has a women problem. We still have so called media critics insulting female journalists based on their looks, we still have entire shows centred around the idea of what nags and pests women are and even if this stuff all magically gets fixed, women will probably still be judged in a different manner. “She’s pretty funny for a woman” is a phrase that will still get used. On the opposite side, maybe Munn will become the funniest correspondent the Daily Show’s ever had, I can’t say she won’t, but regardless of that, her problematic comments will always prey on my mind, as will my disappointment in the fact that it was apparently impossible for the media to engage with their critics and supporters to have a proper, concise debate on the under-representation of women in comedy and the media without it resorting to bitching and insulting. Not that my two cents will make a difference but I feel better for putting it out there.
I now declare this a funny women post! Post your favourite pictures, clips and assorted goodies of your favourite funny ladies and revel in the fact that a good sense of humour is not dictated by your genitalia!