Gender is No Laughing Matter

Chances are, most all of you can name at least one female comedian on prime time television (hint: Tina Fey). You can probably just as easily name a male comedian with similar success on the small screen (hint: Steve Carell). But moving to the silver screen, it gets a little more difficult. Can you name any female comedians that have much success on the big screen (hint: none)? What about males (hint: Steve Carell, Seth Rogan, Will Farrell, Vince Vaughn)? Judd Apatow, producer of blockbusters like Anchorman (2004), The 40-Year Old Virgin (2005), and Superbad (2007) to name a few of the biggest, is just one producer to provide a mainstream outlet through which male comedic performers become giant success stories, but it seems that for female comedians, no such outlets exist. While there are plenty of successful female comedic actors, it would appear that female comedians plateau at small movie roles or are pushed into bland, shrew-y female supporting roles alongside funny male leads.

Take Parks and Recreation, NBC’s new Office-esque comedy, starring female comedian Amy Poehler, which was recently renewed for a third season. The comedy, which struggled from the beginning of its run, is now starting to gain more mainstream popularity. In contrast, Poehler’s most recent movie, Spring Breakdown (2009), in which she co-starred alongside fellow Saturday Night Live alums Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey, did not even make its way to theatres, taking the straight-to-DVD route instead.

30 Rock is another story of a female comedian who found success on TV but wasn’t as lucky in film. Tina Fey’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful NBC sitcom puts Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, in a very quirky and strangely unfeminine role. As she is the creator of the show, Fey’s character is feminine without being a parody of femininity, perhaps partly accounting for the show’s popularity. The movie Mean Girls (2004), for which Fey developed the screenplay, is probably her most successful movie venture, even though she only played the small part of high school teacher. The movie was well received by critics and did well in the box office, yet the lead female roles were filled by actors in comic roles rather than by women specializing in comedy.

Amy Sedaris is a much more off-the-wall female comedian in the Comedy Central show Strangers With Candy than Liz Lemon’s character from 30 Rock. Sedaris plays a 46-year-old woman who decides to go back to high school. Her character, Jerri Blank, was a runaway drug-user as a teenager, and now has to struggle as she attempts to fit in with her more traditionally aged peers. Her character is amazingly weird, distorting and contorting her face frequently, and speaking in a childish, high-pitched voice. Her role departs from any stereotypical female character and strives, successfully, to be as absurd as possible. After her consistently outrageous performances in Strangers With Candy, Sedaris is almost unrecognizable in the minor parts she has landed in well-known movies. In her role as the secretary Deb in the Jon Favreau film Elf (2003), Sedaris fulfills every conception of a motherly female role.

In a similar vein to Amy Sedaris, Sarah Silverman is one of the most outrageous female comedians around today. Her Comedy Central show, The Sarah Silverman Program, is an absurd comedy about Sarah’s life. The show warps real life by having Sarah’s real-life sister, Laura Silverman, play her sister while well known comedians play the other characters. She narrates the show as if it is wholesome, often delivering a moral at the end in a cutesy voice. She is offensive, having episodes deal with topics like AIDS, blackface, and abortion, but acts so innocent and oblivious that one can’t help but to find her hilarious.

Before she had her own show, Silverman had roles in a few movies, one of these being School of Rock, in which she played an over-controlling girlfriend to the very boring character Ned Schneebly. Compared to her own show, this movie puts her away in the “high-strung girlfriend” role. Constantly nagging and eventually being kicked out by Ned when he takes sides with Jack Black’s character, Dewey Finn, Sarah is forced to leave in a fit of rage at not being able to maintain control her boyfriend’s life. Again, she is a shrew in this movie and is not allowed to break away from that part. The comedy that sets her apart in her own show is completely sacrificed when she is underestimated as an actor in such a one-dimensional role.

Clearly female comedians are underrepresented in big-name film. This brings us back to Judd Apatow and the genre he’s spearheaded that consistently springboards the careers of male comedians. His comedies, such as Talladega Nights (2006) and Pineapple Express (2008), have dominated the box office since Anchorman (2004). So what kinds of roles are written for female actors in these blockbuster comedies? Katherine Heigl, who co-starred in Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007) with Seth Rogan, admits to Vanity Fair’s contributing editor Leslie Bennetts that her first break-out role was hard to love: “It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I’m playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you’re portraying women?” Why indeed, Ms. Heigl. These stereotypical roles aren’t ridiculed, but rather, presented as normal. The comedy is in how the “goofy, fun-loving guys” deal with the wet-blanket females in endearing ways.

I Love You Man (2009) is a movie that is not in any way related to Apatow, besides being clearly influenced by his “bro-mance” style. It featured male characters bonding while the female character—former Office and current Parks and Recreation actor Rashida Jones—stresses out about the well-being of their relationship. She is not given much of a personality, instead waiting around while her fiancé searches to find his best friend.

Wedding Crashers (2005), on the other hand, while appealing to the same audience as Apatow’s films, managed to cast Isla Fisher in a positive comedic female role as Gloria Cleary. She won “Breakthrough Performance” at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for her character’s loveable manic mood swings. What keeps her from falling under a negative stereotypical female category is that her insanity is matched perfectly with the lead male’s own craziness (Vince Vaughn as Jeremy Grey).

Are the most prominent female comedians incapable of translating their work to the big screen, or is it just that writers aren’t creating roles in big-budget comedies for them? We think the latter. If female comedians do make it to film, they are stuck with one-dimensional, underdeveloped and stereotypical minor roles. As Sarah Silverman once said, “I think you can make fun of anything as long as it’s funny enough.”