Gender and Humor

3 fav female comedians:Lucille Ball
Gilda Radner
Toss up between Carol Burnett & Rosemarie5 fav comedy filmsThe Long Trailer (1954)
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Murder By Death (1976)Honorable mention:
Sons of the Desert (1935?)
Back to the Future (1985)
The Parent Trap (1961)

I have no read nor watched the video but I just want to share my thoughts you.I definitely also think men have more humor than women in the big picture. Some intuitive thoughts; humor is some sort of defence mechanism and a way to socialize. Through the history of the human species men have been the dominating gender -> "women in the kitchen and making sandwiches structure". The importance of being able to show humor was more important for men than women, since they socialized and competed with other men to gain glory, power, moneyz, and girls. If the woman can make good sandwhiches and make us comfortable; then she did her job well.Shortly said; I think this is a result of social structures affecting our attitude. To be more "extreme" you could probably say there is an evolutionary imperative to why men have more humor than women.

I just hate trying to pick top fives! If I must (in no particular order and subject to revision every time something else comes to mind):Shaun of the Dead
South Park
Time Bandits
Life of Brian
..... Erm, you know - it's much easier to think of funny series than funny films. It's a simpler matter to sustain comedy for half an hour than for a full film. Some of the best there have to be Spaced, The Day Today and Brass Eye, Futurama, Red Dwarf, the Young Ones, Peep Show (I could go on for a while here). A preponderance of male writers, now that I think about it.

Funnily enough, while I'm not, the name originally given to Debbie Downer (Matousek) is.Unsure where to continue from that irrelevance, except to point out an upcoming comedy film I really want to see:Edit: Well that didn't work. How on earth do you embed a video?Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

(I've noticed nobody says "comedienne" any more - I assume that’s because it's not PC, although I never saw the announcement.)To be honest, I can't think of many really great female stand-up comedians. Victoria Wood stands out by a mile for me as an original and really funny stand-up comedian. There are several other good ones, but I think it’s a shame that they often tend to rely too heavily on single issues, such as Jo Brand (feminism) or Shappi Khorsandi (her Iranian ethnicity). They’re very good at what they do but I think it's a shame they’re not a bit broader in their topics. Maybe it’s a confidence thing. Or maybe it reflects badly on the public’s attitude to female comedians — they have to justify why they’re on stage.There are a lot of great female comic writers and performers. Julia Davies is probably my favourite for writing and staring in the fantastic dark comedy, Nighty Night.This has just reminded me of something. There’s an excellent TV series here that you may not be aware of outside UK called QI (Quite Interesting). It’s a humorous quiz show hosted by Stephen Fry and contested each week by 4 different comedians. In one episode, 2 of the contestants were (unusually) female, and so they asked the question: "why are there so few female comedians on that show and on TV in general?" The 2 female contestants, Sandi Toksvig and Ronni Ancona, launched into a long discussion as to the reasons for this, and after a couple of minutes another of the contestants, Jack Dee, said, Is it because once they start talking you can’t shut them up?

I've got a pet theory that humour is a subtle mode of communication and clique building that men use to form in and out groups.Women have their methods of doing that e.g. or (i.e depending on your taste) bitching.

So the humour a group of men would use to define and exclude an outgroup would not be defined as bitchiness then?For what it's worth, I feel motivated to form friendships with people who are kind and have a sense of humour that sparks with mine. I would not wish to spend any time with anyone (male or female) who's bitchy - for a start, they could not be trusted. Those who feel an overiding pressure to join in with a dominant group/avoid an 'undesirable' group might feel differently. For me friendships are about individual connections, not group membership.

Are you familiar with Michael McIntyre? He's been the popular comedy sensation over here for the past couple of years. He's not exactly edgy, but I think he has a very accessible and fresh style of observational comedy. Anyway, women really seem to love his humour. I went to see him last year and there were a lot of women in the audience. I've seen many of them literall crying with laughter at his performances.I suppose he's a fairly average looking guy and a bit on the stocky side. So, I guess you know what you're talking about.

However, most homour, at the heart has some body falling over a banana and getting laughed at.

I like my humour a bit weirder than that but have to admit to laughing a great deal at the bit when David Mitchell had a typewriter thrown at him from offscreen in the last (?) series of That Mitchell and Webb Look. It's different, though, when you know it's not a real typewriter.

People like Eddie Izzard and Bill Bailey aren't most people's idea of top totty to look at either, but both are very appealing to women. Being funny in their wildly imaginative but gentle way is worth a lot in its own right, but it also suggests that they're a) very clever and b) good-natured.

Applegate as a clear sense of humor and I thought she was funny in that movie. Diaz just has a bubbly attitude, and Blair, well, nevermind. I just think these caricatures aren't valid. Lucille Ball for her time was a riot. Sure, by today's standards we wouldn't laugh as hard because we might view it as dated and cheesy, but she has true comedic talent. And she's not a bull-dyke or ugly.Pretty much all the girls cast on MAD or SNL, with a few exceptions, are all funny. Would I say that females tend to worse comics than men in general? Yes, I would. But that women can't be funny is of course absurd. Agreed. I once liked her and Cho, but no longer. You hit the nail on the head. I can't stand either of them. I agree, it takes a subtlty that I can't quite identify and put in to words, but somehow when Hicks did it it didn't sound as genuinely spiteful, which is in contrast to Maher and Miller. That sounds strange because he's an overtly brash comic, but I didn't feel condenscended the way I do with Garafolo, Miller, and Maher. I'm happy for him in being able to branch out and not be typecasted as a goofball in every movie. His sense of comedy is genuine and he's usually funny, just sometimes overdone.

quote:

---

And now the Doug Song is my ringtone

---

"And if he's been murdered by Crystal Meth tweekerrrrrrrssss..... Well, then we're shit out of luck."One thing I've noticed with comics in general (not always the case) is that they are people driven by the approval of others. If you watch the first season of Last Comic Standing, Dat Phan tried so hard that he failed. And while he made me laugh, he should NOT have won that thing, ESPECIALLY when he recycled the same routine every show. He played for a new audience each show, so he got away with it, but the other comics were like, "Oh, for fuck's sake, are you serious?!?!?"There is only so much you can use self-deprecating humor before it wears thin. Yeah, if you're the fat guy, it's funny to hear you make fun of yourself once or twice in a set. If you're the Asian guy it is funny to hear you exaggerate an accent, once or twice. But not in every routine. It's a played out schtick and it looks desperate, like you don't actually have any real material.And then there's Carlos Mencia (MenStealia) who's the biggest hack in show-business. The man jacked Ari Shaffir, Joe Rogan, even Bill Cosby. No respect.Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

---

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Important Note to Self:Be intelligent and good-natured around women, and I might finally get lucky one of these days!

Everybody says that Percy definately hit a homerun here with the software. It doesn't matter. Especially for the non-science topics. Having more diverse opinions makes this place better.A female Brit is a new addition...

Right under the number of views is a button called "Embed" that opens up a line of code that you can copy and paste into the reply box.