tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/melbourne-international-comedy-festival-9656/articlesMelbourne International Comedy Festival – The Conversation2023-05-11T20:08:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027482023-05-11T20:08:39Z2023-05-11T20:08:39ZFriday essay: cancellation or conflicted joy – grappling with the work of our ‘art monsters’<p>Author Claire Dederer started off writing a book about the film director Roman Polanski. Forty-five years ago, Polanski fled the United States after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. </p>
<p>Samantha Galley (now Geimer), who was 13 years old in 1977 when she said <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-19/roman-polanski-case-new-testimony/101250020">she was drugged and raped by the director</a>, has told her side of the story numerous times, including in her 2013 memoir <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Girl-Life-Shadow-Roman-Polanski/dp/1476716846">The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.</a></p>
<p>Geimer has forgiven Polanski. And just last month, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/roman-polanski-rape-victim-samantha-geimer-defends-director-1234828246/">in an interview</a> with the director’s wife Emmanuel Seigner, she reiterated that “what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me”. What weighs heavily on her is having to repeat that, over and again.</p>
<p>Dederer, who started her writing life as a film critic, has long been a Polanski fan. But for her, Polanski <em>is</em> a big problem. For more than any other contemporary figure, Dederer argues, it is Polanski who balances so equally the forces of “the absoluteness of the monstrosity and the absoluteness of the genius”.</p>
<p>Dederer knew a book about Polanski was going to be complicated – that’s why she embarked on it. But somewhere along the way, her project morphed into <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/claire-dederer/monsters-a-fan-s-dilemma">Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma</a>. It’s a thrilling work of feminist cultural criticism which promises to be career-defining for her and essential reading for those of us who have wrestled with the ethics and emotions of fandom. </p>
<p>Fallen idols: we all have at least one. While I was reading Monsters, comedian and satirist <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-barry-humphries-the-man-who-enriched-the-culture-reimagined-the-one-man-show-and-upended-the-cultural-cringe-188719">Barry Humphries died</a>, prompting a nationwide debate about how he should best be remembered – for his iconic roles as Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson and general comic genius, or for his transphobia, casual racism and rather flippant defences of unacceptable workplace behaviours? </p>
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<span class="caption">Barry Humphries’ death sparked a national debate about how he should be remembered. Rob Griffith AP.</span>
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<p>There’s plenty of evidence for all of it – watch a classic skit on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVyIiDAS9RU">YouTube</a> and revel in his brilliance. Or read an account of how he described trans as a “fashion” and referred to gender reassignment surgery as “self-mutilation” to comprehend why the Melbourne International Comedy Festival <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47943745">decided to rename</a> their prestigious Barry Award back in 2019. </p>
<p>Or why, in the immediate wake of his death, some trans people and their allies were compelled to call out the hypocrisy of a man who made his fortune performing in drag, yet purportedly <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/27/barry-humphries-trans-views-jk-rowling-email/">sent a letter of support aimed at J.K. Rowling</a> in support of her anti-trans agenda.</p>
<p>Then friends and contemporaries of Humphries paid tribute. Film director Bruce Beresford <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/apr/25/barry-humphries-melbourne-comedy-festival-says-tribute-is-in-works-after-criticism">described</a> the Comedy Festival’s decision as a “disgrace” and Humphries as “one of the great comic geniuses”. </p>
<p>Entertainer Miriam Margolyes, who had “sharply disagreed politically” with her friend of 65 years, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-23/barry-humphries-was-saddened-cancelled-miriam-margolyes/102257954">also lambasted</a> what she saw as her friend’s late-in-life “cancellation”. Margolyes declared, “He was acerbic, and he was often quite nasty, but he was a genius, and you have to accept it.” </p>
<p>But do we?</p>
<p>This is where Dederer’s Monsters starts off – she recognises Polanski’s genius, yes, but the Geimer incident also changed her experience of consuming his art. And she has so much more to say, including about the terms “genius” and “cancel culture” and their limitations.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-barry-humphries-humour-is-now-history-thats-the-fate-of-topical-satirical-comedy-117499">Friday essay: Barry Humphries' humour is now history – that's the fate of topical, satirical comedy</a>
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<h2>‘I felt like Woody Allen’</h2>
<p>My own fallen idols include the film director Woody Allen, who also happens to be one of Dederer’s. “When I was young”, she recalls, “I felt like Woody Allen. I intuited or believed he represented me on-screen. He was me. This was one of the peculiar aspects of his genius – this ability to stand in for the audience”.</p>
<p>I too had once felt like Woody Allen – I was a teenage girl living in Sydney’s western suburbs, and he was a then-middle-aged Jewish New Yorker who played clarinet in a jazz club every Monday night. But somehow, like Dederer, I identified with him. I also aspired to one day live in Manhattan in a book-lined apartment in the vicinity of Central Park. My future life would be filled with dinner parties, love affairs, shrink sessions and one-liners.</p>
<p>For Dederer, revelations of Allen’s relationship with his then-wife Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn were experienced as a “terrible betrayal of me personally”. He had slipped from “one of us, the powerless” to “predator”. </p>
<p>My own feelings were murkier, and it was convenient that the quality of his movies started to descend with his reputation. By the time his daughter Dylan Farrow’s account of his alleged sexual abuse of her started to be widely publicised, I was no longer a fan. (Allen has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56563149">long denied these allegations</a>).</p>
<p>Between Dylan Farrow’s <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?mcubz=1">Open Letter</a> about Allen, published in the New York Times in 2014 (and still available online, with over 3500 comments below), and the HBO documentary series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13990468/">Allen v. Farrow</a>, first aired in early 2021, #MeToo went viral. </p>
<p>Woody Allen’s son and Dylan’s brother, Ronan, was one of one of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories">the journalists who helped expose</a> the astounding extent of the abuses perpetrated by film producer Harvey Weinstein, now serving multiple prison sentences.</p>
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<span class="caption">Ronan Farrow, Woody Allen’s son, (pictured with mother Mia) helped expose Harvey Weinstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Pizello/AP</span></span>
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<h2>The stain</h2>
<p>Against this backdrop, Dederer’s book can be seen as both timely and overdue. Yet, as is obvious from her 2017 Paris Review essay <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/">What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?</a>, she started exploring the terrain long before the celebrity phase of #MeToo kicked in. </p>
<p>With a book to play with, Dederer fleshes out her concerns, but Monsters is not – or not only – an extended version of her viral essay, or a catalogue of the monstrous acts of male artists. Through a blend of memoir, cultural critique and feminist analysis, Dederer offers a hybrid form that is far more ambitious, wide-ranging, slippery and complicated. </p>
<p>Sensing in the “psychic theatre of public condemnation” against disgraced celebrities a “kind of elaborate misdirection” or deflection, Dederer turns her gaze to the audience, including herself. </p>
<p>Monsters follows an intuitive logic, guided by Dederer’s shifting sense of her own project. Early on, she re-watches Roman Polanski’s films, an exercise that confirms his talent but fails to ease her conscience. “Polanski would be no problem at all for the viewer,” she notes, “if the films were bad. But they’re not”. </p>
<p>From the outset, the question of “do we separate the art from the artist?” opens up other, more interesting questions – like, who is this “we” that proposes such a separation is possible, or desirable?</p>
<p>When Dederer returns to Allen’s multi-Oscar-winning <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Annie Hall</a> (1977), she declares it “the greatest comic film of the twentieth century” – a critical assessment she later mocks for its grandiosity, for she is not that kind of critic. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, Allen’s other peak-period “classic”, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/style/woody-allen-manhattan.html">Manhattan</a> (1979) – in which Allen’s character Isaac romances the teenaged Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway – does not stack up so well. </p>
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<span class="caption">Manhattan, the film in which Woody Allen romances a teenager, ‘does not stack up so well’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MGM/IMDB</span></span>
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<p>Her women friends share her “complicated” feelings and emotions. For numerous older, white men of her acquaintance, however, Manhattan remains a work of unequivocal genius, untainted by its proximity to the director’s “real-life creepiness”.</p>
<p>From the opening chapters on Polanski and Allen, Dederer moves in all sorts of productive directions. Almost immediately she undermines her own title, making a compelling case for the metaphor of “the stain” as a more apt alternative to the rage-filled “monster”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-separating-the-art-from-the-badly-behaved-artist-a-philosophers-view-116279">Friday essay: separating the art from the badly behaved artist – a philosopher's view</a>
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<h2>Venerating white male rock stars</h2>
<p>Next, the persistently masculinist category of “genius”, embodied in Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, is examined as a product of the mass media, with a legacy most obvious in the veneration of white male rock stars. </p>
<p>More than once, Dederer brings up David Bowie, who in life (and now in death) has largely escaped reputational damage from <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/the_dark_side_of_david_bowie_as_the_mourning_goes_on_we_cant_ignore_his_history_with_underaged_groupies_in_70s/">allegedly having sex</a> with underage girls. She does so out of curiosity not condemnation, and with a sense of her own complicity and investment as a fan.</p>
<p>Rock stars like Bowie, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger – all of whom <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/i-lost-my-virginity-to-david-bowie">apparently slept with</a> teenaged Lori Mattix in the 1970s, to name one high-profile example – have, of course, often been excused for their bad behaviour on the basis that those were different times. </p>
<p>Integral to this argument is the smug assumption that we live in a more enlightened present. Dederer encourages readers to ponder their own participation in such a liberal fantasy. </p>
<p>She also spotlights enduring strains of antisemitism and racism, including historical amnesia about figures like <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/virginia-woolfs-anti-jew-diatribe-20030616-gdgxsg.html">Virginia Woolf</a>, whose diaries were “pocked” with “flippant anti-Semitic remarks”. When Dederer discusses Woolf with a Jewish friend, her friend replies “Well, if we give up the anti-Semites, we’ll have to give up everyone”. </p>
<p>Feminism propels Dederer’s analysis, and morphs with it. The feminism she initially identifies with is virtuous, fault-finding and punitive – or white, liberal and carceral. Accordingly, she depicts her feminism and her desire to be “demonstrably good” as “coming into conflict” with wanting to be a “citizen of the world of art” and her “increasingly leftist politics”. However, while such distinctions can be blind to the long history of (for example) left-wing feminism, they also dissolve as the book goes along.</p>
<h2>Staking a claim for the ‘I’ in criticism</h2>
<p>In the most pivotal chapter in the book, Dederer shares her own history as a cultural critic. It’s a significant contribution to feminist criticism, not least of all because Dederer challenges the phallocentric model of the critic as a “kind of priest” who dispenses “critical pronouncements” as gospel. </p>
<p>Against this, in the spirit of critics like Vivian Gornick, she stakes a claim for the “I”, of criticism as “relentlessly, proudly subjective”. Feminist challenges of this kind are hardly new, but Dederer’s insights are fresh, welcome and well-pitched. </p>
<p>Critics who cloak their opinions in the “garb of authority”, she reminds us, are part of the problem. “Consuming a piece of art”, Dederer concludes, involves “two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist, which might disrupt the viewing of the art, the biography of the audience member, which might shape the viewing of the art”.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Dederer models her critical practice to dazzling effect. Another stand-out chapter is her re-reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s most infamous novel, <a href="https://theconversation.com/lolita-why-this-vivid-illicit-portrait-of-a-pervert-matters-at-a-time-of-endless-commodification-of-young-girls-189688">Lolita </a>(1955). If <a href="https://www.avclub.com/reminder-pablo-picasso-was-a-bit-of-an-asshole-1836674197">Picasso</a> and <a href="https://bookninja.com/2021/04/12/on-great-writers-who-are-terrible-people-hemingway-edition/">Hemingway</a> have been largely spared the conflation of the art with the artist, Nabokov has had no such luck. By writing from the perspective of Humbert Humbert, “the child rapist”, the author was widely assumed to be a “monster” himself. </p>
<p>Dederer first read Lolita at age 13 and was “horrified” by it, including because Lolita herself did not seem like a “real character”, only an “absence”. The adult Dederer comes to see that may be precisely the point, that Lolita is “a portrait of a girl’s annihilation”. Yet Dederer does not disavow her younger self, who after all was onto something. </p>
<p>She also takes seriously the fandom of children who grew up obsessed with <a href="https://theconversation.com/rethinking-harry-potter-twenty-years-on-86761">Harry Potter</a> and the observations of her children and their friends. Her kids, she notices, are not tortured about Picasso the same way she is, or at all. At an exhibition of his work, curated to tell the story of “Picasso-as-asshole”, they ask to leave.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lolita-why-this-vivid-illicit-portrait-of-a-pervert-matters-at-a-time-of-endless-commodification-of-young-girls-189688">Lolita: why this 'vivid, illicit' portrait of a pervert matters at a time of endless commodification of young girls</a>
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<h2>‘Maybe I’m not monstrous enough’</h2>
<p>Motherhood is a central theme in Monsters. A gifted memoirist, Dederer builds on her previous books <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/poser-9781408817827/">Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses</a> (2010) and <a href="https://www.clairedederer.com/love-and-trouble">Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning</a> (2017) by sharing her experience as a “writer-mother”, and the dilemmas that flow from it. </p>
<p>Contemplating her writing career to date, Dederer wonders “maybe I’m not monstrous enough”. “Every writer-mother I know,” she contends, has asked herself the question: “If I were more selfish, would my work be better?” </p>
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<span class="caption">Joni Mitchell surrendered her baby daughter for adoption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Suzanne Plunkett/AP</span></span>
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<p>The female version of the monstrous male artist slash sexual predator, Dederer tells us, is the mother who abandons her children – and these “female monsters” are far fewer. Dederer weaves her own account of spending five conflicted weeks at an artist retreat in Marfa, Texas, into the vastly bigger stories of “abandoning mothers”: writer Doris Lessing (who, when she was 23, <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2022/04/doris-lessing-abandoned-children-motherhood-letters.html#:%7E:text=Lessing%20was%20said%20to%20have,been%20both%20vilified%20and%20celebrated.">left her two toddlers</a> behind in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, to move to London) and singer songwriter Joni Mitchell, who, as a destitute folk singer, surrendered her baby daughter for adoption. This way, Dederer encourages readers to contemplate stubborn cultural resistance and obstacles to women’s artistic freedom.</p>
<p>Dederer admirably creates space for maternal ambivalence and stakes a claim for female ambition. These motherhood chapters are scattered with gems – like Dederer’s appreciation of Jane Campion’s cinematic evocation in the 1990 biopic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099040/">Angel at My Table</a> of writer Janet Frame (a non-mother) luxuriating in her writerly solitude after years in a mental hospital. But for me, they read as more predictable, less convincing and even oddly retrograde in parts, especially given the binary of mother/non-mother is largely left untouched. </p>
<p>I found myself wishing Dederer had cast her net wider (Sylvia Plath – again?) and challenged some of her own assumptions more. Surely the lives of say, Toni Morrison or Cate Blanchett – genius-mother-artists – would throw some new light on the dilemmas Dederer poses as endemic and perennial among “writer-mothers” like herself and her friends. </p>
<p>Is female ambition, for example, really still so widely and uniformly discouraged? And what of not-so-hetronormative models of motherhood and parenthood that offer alternatives, and which are under attack throughout the US by conservatives who deem them monstrous?</p>
<h2>Your own art monsters</h2>
<p>In any case, Monsters is, taken as a whole, a wonderfully generative read that is enhanced, not undermined, by Dederer’s unapologetic subjectivity. But nor is it confined to Dederer’s worldview or canon of fallen or “stained” idols. Her former or current cherished artists may not overlap with your own, but reading Monsters will surely bring them to mind.</p>
<p>Animated by the chapter on Woody Allen, I found myself scouring the shelves for my copy of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55386.Getting_Even">Getting Even</a> (1971), his classic comic short-story collection. It includes <a href="http://thisrecording.com/today/2009/7/1/in-which-woody-recalls-his-roaring-twenties.html">A Twenties Memory</a>, in which Allen gleefully skewers some of the “genuises” discussed in Dederer’s book: Picasso and Hemingway, among others. But I couldn’t find it – I must have thrown it out, like the people described in Monsters who did the same with their Allen books and movies.</p>
<p>Throughout, Dederer engages with others who have wrestled with their emotional responses to the art and lives of beloved monstrous men, like <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-30-vw-29516-story.html">Pearl Cleage on Miles Davis</a> (who, as Dederer notes, “wrote frankly” in his 1989 autobiography, about beating his wives). The book is overflowing with conversations, and it inspires them too. Since reading it, I’ve talked to a number of friends about our mixed feelings about Woody Allen – including men. He was big among Gen X-ers, as was Johnny Depp (but I won’t go there …).</p>
<p>Then there’s Morrissey, the former lead singer of The Smiths (the greatest band of the 20th century!). He’s not mentioned by Dederer, but he is – for me, and at least five other people I know – our most beloved “monster”. </p>
<p>In Morrissey’s case, it’s not sexual abuse that has “stained” his reputation and the Smiths’ legacy, but his far right, neo-fascist turn (though I’ve since discovered, after conducting a quick update search, that “Moz”, as he was once affectionately known, has also <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42050512">victim-blamed</a> those who were allegedly abused by Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/30/bigmouth-strikes-again-morrissey-songs-loneliness-shyness-misfits-far-right-party-tonight-show-jimmy-fallon">Billy Bragg</a> captured something of the despair and rage felt by Morrissey fans when he described the singer as “the Oswald Mosley of Pop”, an artist who has betrayed his fans and empowered “the very people Smiths fans were brought into being to oppose”.</p>
<p>The night I learned Queen Elizabeth II had died, I did something I had not done in a long time – I played <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3UMjNUqFM">the Derek-Jarman-directed video</a> of The Smiths song The Queen Is Dead on You Tube. Then I sent a friend a text: “I’m allowed to play The Smiths tonight!” I’ve had them on regular rotation since.</p>
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<p>The closest Dederer comes to a conclusion is to let us tortured fans “off the hook” because under capitalism, our consumer choices will “solve nothing”. We “do not need to have a grand unified theory about Michael Jackson”. I chuckled reading this passage, recalling my recent rediscovery of The Smiths back catalogue and the conflicted joy it has brought me.</p>
<p>For me, what was most rewarding about reading Monsters is that Dederer describes and gets “it” – the pleasure and pain of being a fan, feminist, critic and person with a unique history. And bringing all of this to the art we love (and to our criticisms of “untouchable” geniuses). </p>
<p>More broadly, Monsters is assured of ongoing relevance, at least for the near future. Dederer reminds us that dilemmas like how we should remember Barry Humphries will never be fully resolved – not by “thinking”, nor through a moral calculus that weighs up the variables. </p>
<p>What we can pay attention to, however, is how authoritative claims of “genius” continue to hold sway in this purported age of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-joanna-bourke-the-nsw-arts-minister-and-the-unruly-contradictions-of-cancel-culture-189377">cancel culture</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zora Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So many of our artistic geniuses have complicated legacies. What do we do with work we love by artists whose behaviour is more difficult to admire?Zora Simic, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1338032020-03-17T01:24:49Z2020-03-17T01:24:49ZArts need a COVID stimulus package. Here’s what it should look like<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320903/original/file-20200316-27648-j39ass.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C0%2C2880%2C1914&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Writers Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1606, Shakespeare and his company bolted the doors of the Globe Theatre and fled London as bubonic plague led to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/24/shakespeares-great-escape-plague-1606--james-shapiro">total shutdown of theatres</a>. </p>
<p>Now we know what it must have felt like. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.broadsheet.com.au/national/city-file/article/live-list-australian-events-cancelled-due-coronavirus">sudden implosion</a> of Australia’s performing arts sector in recent days has been breathtaking. </p>
<p>Everything I’m about to write should begin with this necessary introduction: no-one in the cultural sector wants people to get sick and die from COVID-19. We know closing down festivals and theatres is the right thing to do. </p>
<p>Without exception, everyone I have talked to agrees with measures to reduce risks of infection and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-flatten-the-curve-of-coronavirus-a-mathematician-explains-133514">flatten the curve</a>. But closing down theatres doesn’t make paying the rent any easier. </p>
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<p>The disaster has affected companies large and small, from great cultural institutions such as the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/arts-centres-across-melbourne-close-en-masse-as-covid-19-fears-rise-20200315-p54abt.html">State Library of Victoria</a>, to one-person shows in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-13/victoria-coronavirus-outbreak-melbourne-comedy-fest-cancelled/12053174">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</a>. </p>
<p>Some of the events taken down by COVID-19 are the jewels in the crown of Australian culture. Melbourne International Comedy Festival sells <a href="https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/about-us/background">more tickets than any other arts event</a> in the nation. Dark Mofo is one of the <a href="https://www.examiner.com.au/story/6672977/dark-mofo-cancellation-shocking-blow-to-tasmanian-tourism/">largest inbound tourism attractors</a> on the Tasmanian calendar. Sydney Writers’ Festival is <a href="https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2019/05/15/132855/swf-2019-paid-attendance-figures-book-sales-up-in-second-year-at-carriageworks/">Australia’s largest literary event</a>. </p>
<p>With government support and audience goodwill, these large events might be able to recover. Smaller organisations will struggle. With revenues vaporised and no chance of reopening for months, any company with a lease is in serious trouble. </p>
<p>The damage is not limited to performing arts. Film and television productions are shutting down, including Baz Luhrmann’s <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/03/baz-luhrmann-heads-into-quarantine-after-tom-hanks-diagnosis-1202883716/">Elvis biopic</a>. Tom Hanks has COVID-19 and Luhrmann and many of the crew are in quarantine. </p>
<p>The downturn is all the more devastating because of the insecurity of the cultural sector. After years of <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-arts-funding-in-australia-is-falling-and-local-governments-are-picking-up-the-slack-124160">federal funding cuts</a>, smaller Australian performing arts companies were already doing it tough. </p>
<p>Two-thirds of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-15/arts-entertainment-industry-thrown-into-turmoil-by-coronavirus/12057082">artists and cultural workers</a> are employed as casuals or sole traders. Some have savings; many don’t. Newstart is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/29/just-two-rentals-in-australia-affordable-for-single-people-on-newstart-report">not remotely enough</a> to pay the rent in a capital city. </p>
<p>Australia’s cultural sector requires a federal bail-out: a concerted policy that might staunch the bleeding and allow at least some of our cultural companies to survive. </p>
<h2>What would a stimulus package look like?</h2>
<p>To be effective, it should provide enough of a boost to ameliorate the COVID-19 shock. The Morrison government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/cash-handout-of-750-for-6-5-million-pensioners-and-others-receiving-government-payments-133512">first stimulus package</a> totals A$17.6 billion, about 1.2% of gross domestic product. </p>
<p>Most of this stimulus is targeted towards pensioners, business investment and incorporated companies. The cultural sector will get some benefit, but the neediest workers, such as casuals and sole traders, will miss out completely. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/morrisons-coronavirus-package-is-a-good-start-but-hell-probably-have-to-spend-more-133511">Morrison's coronavirus package is a good start, but he'll probably have to spend more</a>
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<p>According to <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/departmental-news/economic-value-cultural-and-creative-activity">satellite national accounts data</a> from the federal Department of Communications, the libraries, museums, performing arts and music sectors are worth collectively around A$8.1 billion in economic output in 2020. Screen production is worth another A$1.18 billion, <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/media-centre/news/2019/10-31-drama-report-2018-19-australian-titles">according to Screen Australia</a>. </p>
<p>A 1.2% stimulus to the COVID-19 affected industries of the Australian cultural sector would total around A$111 million. Given the severity of the downturn, a 2% stimulus across two quarters would be more appropriate. </p>
<p>A 2% stimulus tallies up to around A$186 million – barely a rounding error in the context of the Morrison government’s spend this week. </p>
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<h2>How should the cultural stimulus be spent?</h2>
<p>Economists stress stimulus spending should be <a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2020/03/16/policy-action-for-a-healthy-global-economy/#more-28600">effective and timely</a>. </p>
<p>In the cultural sector, this would be best done by directing funds to casual workers and sole traders, small-to-medium arts companies, and cultural businesses facing oblivion within weeks if not extended a lifeline. </p>
<p>Reaching cultural workers won’t be easy, but support for sole-trading artists and cultural workers would be an excellent start. They could be readily identified via the Australian Tax Office and should be provided with a stimulus payment in much the same way the Rudd government paid ordinary citizens in 2008. </p>
<p>Another way to reach artists is via collection agencies, such as <a href="https://apraamcos.com.au">APRA-AMCOS</a> with a database of tens of thousands of musicians paid royalties for live performance. A federal stimulus to live music could pay every musician lodging a valid live performance return with APRA-AMCOS a one-off payment of, say, A$1,000. </p>
<p>Actors and performing artists are more difficult to identify, but with enough policy innovation stimulus should be possible. A payment could be made to every individual with a show in an eligible festival, such Dark Mofo, the Comedy Festival or Sydney Writers’ Festival. </p>
<p>Cultural firms also need support, particularly where current circumstances have rendered them rapidly insolvent. Some existing stimulus measures will apply here, but these could be built upon with culture-specific programs providing interest-free loans to critical businesses such as small music venues, independent cinemas and theatres. </p>
<p>An emergency funding package to the small-to-medium arts companies funded by the Australia Council would be an excellent policy even in the absence of the current crisis, given the centrality of these firms to Australian cultural life. A one-off A$100,000 payment to all <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/arts-organisations-hit-by-funding-bad-news-20190812-p52g9x.html">162 smaller companies</a> invited to apply for four-year funding in 2019 would cost A$16.2 million and would be an extremely well-targeted measure. </p>
<p>Screen Australia is well placed to deliver stimulus to the screen sector, with interest-free loan guarantees to cancelled or postponed productions, and individual stimulus payments to key production companies and film and television workers.</p>
<p>Australia’s artists and cultural organisations are part of a lean and efficient sector. They put on shows that millions of Australians love. During the bushfire crisis over the summer, artists and cultural organisations were <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-help-communities-during-a-crisis-not-hinder-why-are-we-still-told-they-dont-matter-129695">at the forefront</a> of fundraising efforts. Now is the time to return that favour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Eltham has previously received arts funding from the Australia Council. He is a member of APRA-AMCOS. </span></em></p>The cancellation of cultural events will be devastating for artists and arts workers. A $186 million stimulus package could help stem the damage.Ben Eltham, Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1145022019-03-29T05:00:24Z2019-03-29T05:00:24ZHannah Gadsby’s follow-up to Nanette is an act of considered self-care<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266483/original/file-20190329-139377-1yayfil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Following the whirlwind success of Nanette, Hannah Gadsby recreates comedy as a safe, comfortable space in her new show Douglas.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Hannah Gadsby, Douglas, Melbourne International Comedy Festival</em></p>
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<p>Hannah Gadsby’s new show, Douglas, is not earth-shattering the way <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8465676/">Nanette</a> was; but then, nothing could be. </p>
<p>Many of us watched with fascination as Gadsby’s tenth solo show, Nanette, took her from a local niche market in queer comedy to international superstardom, skipping quite a few steps in between. </p>
<p>The comedian had intended Nanette to be her farewell show, and by all accounts was not prepared for what followed: major awards at international comedy festivals, a world tour, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/hannah-gadsby-a-royal-wedding-and-a-female-doctor-in-2018-tv-got-a-shake-up-109068">Netflix special</a>, appearing at the Emmys, moving to Los Angeles, and receiving endorsements from the likes of <a href="https://junkee.com/nanette-reviews/166225">Ellen Page</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/08/hannah-gadsby-roxane-gay-in-conversation-body-image-fan-encounters-trolls">Roxane Gay</a>, and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/monica-lewinsky-says-hannah-gadsby-helped-her-reclaim-her-self-esteem-20181025-p50byr.html">Monica Lewinsky</a>. It was well deserved, but also disconcertingly rapid.</p>
<p>Gadsby was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jul/16/hannah-gadsby-trauma-comedy-nanette-standup-netflix">diagnosed with autism</a> in the years leading up to Nanette. In fact, she tells us in Douglas that the show came directly out of that diagnosis: “I found a name for how I experienced the world.” Gadsby’s comedic voice changed with Nanette; there, she spoke with the newfound confidence of someone who has come to understand themselves, someone who no longer seeks to belong to clubs that wouldn’t have them. </p>
<p>How Gadsby weathered being thrust into Hollywood is a good question, but Douglas reads like a direct response to that experience, and an act of considered self-care.</p>
<p>As a comedy show, Douglas is in some ways deliberately very normal. It is funny throughout, it has those rehearsed non-sequiturs that move the narration forward, and its progression is linear rather than exponential in the way of Nanette. Gadsby takes time to talk about her last show, her last tour, what she has learned – all that ordinary stuff local comedians do at every Melbourne Comedy Festival. </p>
<p>These are no doubt premeditated choices. Gadsby has spoken at length about not wanting to be seen as a non-funny comedian, or to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/feb/05/hannah-gadsby-announces-nanette-follow-up-the-humour-will-be-back-in">quit comedy altogether</a> (even though quitting was the premise of Nanette). After all, Nanette’s great success made her think that her best move would be to showcase her comedic craft “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/feb/05/hannah-gadsby-announces-nanette-follow-up-the-humour-will-be-back-in">instead of trying to learn a whole new skill set</a>”.</p>
<p>While performing Douglas, Gadsby talks about the emotional toll of spending two years touring a show about trauma. She adds: “That was only my fault. I started that conversation.” Formally, if Douglas is about anything, it is about recreating comedy as Gadsby’s safe, comfortable space. </p>
<p>Douglas begins with phones being taken away from audience members and locked into magnetic pouches. Having spent considerable time introducing the sensory sensitivity associated with autism, Gadsby later explains that the sudden flashing of light in the audience is very distracting.</p>
<p>She notes that she now has to pay people to touch her, despite the discomfort it causes her: a stylist, a tailor, a hairdresser. She describes the “meltdown” that autistic people experience with complete sensory overload, often dismissed as a “tantrum”, but in reality anything but. </p>
<p>Gadsby also notes the intentional medicalisation of women’s emotional range: “Sure, I may nibble on a bit of dark chocolate on a full moon. But I’ve never wanted to punch a door!” She points out that expectations of women to be the emotional workhorses of social situations are so high, and autistic women learn to camouflage their symptoms to such a degree, that autism in women and girls was once thought to be an impossibility. </p>
<p>Throughout the show she narrates her life, lived in the consequences of these misconceptions and misdiagnoses. Again and again she returns to a lament: “This is because we live in a world where everything is named by men.” </p>
<p>Nanette was a terrifically crafted piece of standup comedy, as well as a timely reckoning with patriarchy, sexual violence and homophobia, just as #MeToo was getting going. It was always going to be a very hard act to follow.</p>
<p>Douglas is a deftly executed, brilliant comedy about women and autism – speaking about an often painfully experienced difference without self-deprecation or condescension. I hope it finds its audience.</p>
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<p><em><a href="http://hannahgadsby.com.au/">Douglas</a> is on at Arts Centre Melbourne until April 7.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Perkovic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hannah Gadsby’s groundbreaking stand-up show Nanette was always going to be hard to follow. Her new show is a deftly executed, brilliant comedy about women and autism.Jana Perkovic, Sessional lecturer and researcher, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734492017-03-28T19:05:05Z2017-03-28T19:05:05ZDeadly Funny – a new brand of Australian comedy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162562/original/image-20170327-18974-197z56m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shiralee Hood performing in 2016: being a left-handed, Indigenous woman, she describes herself as a 'triple threat'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Aboriginal stand-up is a small, but increasingly recognisable, element of Australia’s comedy scene. Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival first held its <a href="https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/deadly-funny">Deadly Funny competition</a> in 2007 and The Deadly Funnies have helped to sustain the genre. More recently we’ve have TV shows like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3697996/">Black Comedy</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4636272/">8MMM</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2835522">Comedy Up Late</a></p>
<p>Indigenous comedians also perform at festivals, comedy road-shows, on TV programs like the AFL/NFL footy shows and on radio. But is there something particular about Indigenous humour that distinguishes it from other forms of comedy?</p>
<p>In 2006, Yorta Yorta producer Jason Tamiru recognised the need for greater Aboriginal presence within Melbourne’s comedy festival. Tamiru envisaged a series of Australian-wide comedy heats that would progress towards a live finale. The idea behind the Deadly Funnies was to train and encourage amateur Indigenous comedians and offer them exposure and mentoring. Since they began, comedians like Sean Choolburra, Kevin Kropinyeri, Shiralee Hood, and Andrew Saunders have become regular Deadly Funny attendees.</p>
<p>Although pinpointing particular techniques as traits of Indigenous humour is fraught with the danger of generalisations, there are some recognisable comedy elements found in much Aboriginal stand-up. Physical humour, from mimicry to dancing and general tomfoolery is popular. Sean Choolburra, for instance, is the undisputed “master of the move”, having come to comedy after a successful dance career. </p>
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<p>Slick dance moves and quick words enhance his routines, heralding influences such as Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby. Kropinyeri has called Choolburra the “nice guy” of Australian comedy and his performances, which weave facts and fiction, are often about growing up in a large Queensland family; love and romance. Choolburra has said that Aboriginal people are quintessential storytellers, a role they have been honing for thousands of years.</p>
<p>Comedy, for Choolburra, is mostly about making people laugh whereas other Aboriginal comedians are more acutely political. 2009 Deadly Funny winner, Shiralee Hood, based her 2016 festival show on being a black woman in a white man’s world. </p>
<h2>A ‘triple threat’</h2>
<p>Hood recognises that being a black, left-handed woman, she is a “triple threat”. She is, she says, “coming from the lowest, lowest ground in comedy” as an Aboriginal woman, therefore no topic is off limits for her. She compares the roundabout talk of Canberra politicians to the city’s many roundabouts and her definition of politics is “poly” meaning many and “tics”: ie blood sucking mongrels.</p>
<p>Hood often yarns about how she lost her front teeth in a freak Hills Hoist incident. Following the tragedy, her family were there to “fix her up” with laughing taunts about her toothless grin. </p>
<p>Along with his cousin ( Jay Davis) and brother, Grant, Andrew Saunders was instrumental in producing the internet YouTube comedy series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/grantly003/videos">WhiteBLACKatcha</a>. This skit series satirised fads such as reality-TV cooking and exercise programs, with an Aboriginal twist. WhiteBLACKatcha gave Saunders a platform to create some hilarious characters such as “Ray Ray Boy”, his camp Koori Zumba (“Koomba”) fitness instructor. </p>
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<p>Saunders presented Ray Ray Boy to an enthusiastic audience at the Deadly Funny Showcase in 2013. Parading around the stage in a skimpy crop-top, shorts, tights and large afro wig, the slim-built Saunders cut quite a theatrical presence. </p>
<p>Ray Ray Boy invited either black or white audience members to join him on the stage, controversially quipping that the only way you can tell who’s white these days is by their “orange” skin colour due to a “f … d-up” spray tan. This reference to the non-Indigenous predilection for dark skin drew ironic laughter from the mostly Koori audience who often deal with their own issues of identity racism stemming from appearances that don’t meet non-Indigenous expectations of “real” Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>Saunders gets a kick out of seeing the dilemma on peoples’ faces as they decide whether it is appropriate or not to laugh at his set. He told me that he feels that it’s important for him to have the courage to say contentious things in his routines. Still, mostly, Saunders creates comic personas that audiences genuinely like because he recognises that if people like you, and trust you, you can take them almost anywhere, including to the very heart of social hypocrisies.</p>
<p>Kropinyeri, a Ngarrindjeri man from South Australia, also uses his performances to raise political issues. He too delights in self-deprecating humour – sometimes prancing around the stage in a ballet tutu or g-string and tights while mocking his voluptuous belly.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162525/original/image-20170326-18970-1m65vr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kevin Kropinyeri is known for his self-deprecating but socially penetrating humour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>He jokes about “Aboriginal issues” like alcoholism and high incarceration rates, but this self-styled mockery quickly turns into social critique. His joking clearly points to the underlying hypocrisies of non-Indigenous socio-political systems that have created such dysfunction in the first place.</p>
<h2>Deadly jokes</h2>
<p>Kropinyeri tells how a local government ran an expensive anti-drug campaign without any prior consultation with the local Aboriginal community. The campaign slogan – “Drugs are Deadly” – mistakenly sent Aboriginal people the opposite message. In Aboriginal communities “Deadly” means awesome or excellent. Aboriginal English words are another recognisable aspect of much Indigenous comedy.</p>
<p>Kropinyeri jokes that some Aboriginal people see prison as a holiday camp where they can take a break and “buff themselves up”. Still, in his ability to first laugh at himself and his own community, Kropinyeri makes contentious issues more palatable for non-Indigenous listeners. </p>
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<p>Mickey-taking is a great Australian humour tradition; and self-deprecation allows Indigenous comedians to raise issues that could strike raw nerves with non-Indigenous audiences.</p>
<p>As Indigenous woman Nakkiah Lui says, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[w]hen you laugh with someone there’s a personal connection happening there…[p]eople have no option but to engage with what you’re saying… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>By laughing at themselves, Indigenous comedians demonstrate an insightful pride in their own cultural heritage. Sigmund Freud has said that the “cultural ownership” a joke-teller has creates the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97756.The_Joke_and_Its_Relation_to_the_Unconscious">best type of humour</a> – particular cultural groups know themselves better than any outsider ever could.</p>
<h2>Laughing at the colonisers</h2>
<p>Humour has historically played a significant role in the lives of Aboriginal Australians as they have coped with the repercussions of imposed colonialism.</p>
<p>An early example of Aboriginal mickey-taking of the unequipped British colonists can be found in the writings of First Officer <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tench-watkin-2719">William Tench</a>, who noted that Aboriginal guides made humorous imitations of the British. </p>
<p>In the 1950s, anthropologist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stanner-william-edward-bill-15541">W.E.H Stanner</a> also recognised the mickey-taking he faced amongst his Indigenous friends following a foolish fishing incident where he mistakenly shot a fish that had already been caught and tied to the riverbank. Stanner said from that time onwards, whenever he went fishing, someone in the community was sure to ask him with feigned innocence whether he was taking plenty of bullets with him.</p>
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<p>At the 2017 Deadly Funny show, keep an eye out for last year’s winner Jalen Sutcliffe from Townsville. Sutcliffe’s winning performance established him as a comic who continues the tradition of great physical comedy and self-deprecation. Stripping his “BBL” (Big Brown and Lovely) physique down to a skimpy lap lap, he was unafraid to dance and sing his way across the stage for an appreciative crowd.</p>
<p>Of course, many of these comedy techniques can also be seen in non-Indigenous stand-up comedy too. But what is most distinguishable about Indigenous comedy is the tendency for so much of it to address socio-political topics. Aboriginal stand-up comedians regularly discuss issues of history, injustice, inequality and dysfunction relevant to their lives and their communities. </p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Deadly Funny 2017 will be held on the 8th of April at Melbourne’s Arts Centre, hosted by Sean Choolburra, Kevin Kropinyeri, Andy Saunders and Shiralee Hood.</em></p>
<p><em>Past Deadly Funny finalists, Dane Simpson and Matt Ford, who both toured the country with the 2016 Aboriginal Comedy Allstars, also have their own show in ‘Aborigi-LOL 100% Aussie Laughs’ from 11-23 April at Melbourne’s Coopers Malthouse.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Austin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Aboriginal stand-up comedy is thriving and no topic, it seems, is off limits. As the Melbourne International Comedy Festival opens, here’s the lowdown on Indigenous humour.Karen Austin, PhD Student, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/565682016-03-22T19:38:18Z2016-03-22T19:38:18ZThe lowdown on laughter: from boosting immunity to releasing tension<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115916/original/image-20160321-30949-1rd97la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Laughter doesn’t actually cure anything – it’s used as an addition to standard health care, not a replacement.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com">killerturnip</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Laughter is supposedly the best medicine – which is lucky because I’m planning on staying up late, drinking, smoking and eating like mad throughout the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.</p>
<p>I’d better choose my shows wisely though, because I’m aiming for a net neutral health effect by the end. If a comedian lets me down, it could take years off my life.</p>
<p>Laughter has been claimed to do <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762283/">pretty much everything</a>, from reducing stress to helping cure cancer. Most major children’s hospitals have <a href="http://www.humourfoundation.com.au/about-us-7/the-humour-foundation.html">clown doctors</a> cheering up kids. There is a special brand of yoga – Hasyayoga – that incorporates laughter. We have <a href="http://laughterclubsvic.org/">laughter clubs</a> that espouse the health benefits of laughing as an exercise – no jokes, just spontaneous mirth.</p>
<p>Australia even has a <a href="http://www.humourfoundation.com.au/">humour foundation</a> to promote the health benefits of laughter. Oh, and there’s a World Laughter Day: the first Sunday of May.</p>
<h2>Laughter and health</h2>
<p>Gelatology is the study of laughter. Laughter health fanatics have run studies on dozens of medical conditions. Overall, the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762283/">evidence</a> is pretty slim. Laughter can probably reduce the experience of pain. It can probably boost immunity. It may help relieve depression and stress, and it seems to ease the challenges of being sick, especially when in hospital. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t actually cure anything – in every case it’s used an addition to standard care, not a replacement. Still, the good news is that laughter doesn’t seem to have any side effects (except maybe mild incontinence when over-indulging).</p>
<h2>Why do we laugh?</h2>
<p>No one knows. Laughter is assumed to have some sort of evolutionary benefit. It’s a form of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/naturally-selected/201210/laughter-really-is-the-best-medicine">social communication</a>, especially in romantic situations.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115920/original/image-20160321-30917-lberl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women are more likely to look for a sense of humour in dating ads.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/">MollySVH</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Women <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/the-science-laughter">laugh the most</a> and men tell the most jokes. In dating ads, women are more likely to say they seek a good sense of humour and men more likely to claim they have one. We also feel good when we laugh, and this seems to help learning, especially for kids. Laughter also plays a role in bringing people together and making groups bond.</p>
<p>Laughter is contagious – we laugh 30 times more in social situations than when alone. This is why TV has laugh tracks. </p>
<p>Hogan’s Heroes was originally tested before it aired in 1965 with and without laugh tracks. The version without laughter bombed, and laugh tracks became the norm thereafter.</p>
<h2>What makes us laugh?</h2>
<p>We laugh the most at our own jokes and gags – on average the speaker laughs 50 per cent more than their audience in everyday conversations. 80 per cent of laughter comes from wise cracks and comments; only 20 per cent from full-blown jokes.</p>
<p>The elements of a good joke have been debated for centuries. Jokes seem to include surprise and shock; they lead us down a familiar path and then take an unexpected turn. Taste is an important factor – we all laugh at slightly different things. So is culture: the Brits like the dry and absurd, the Yanks seem to prefer slightly aggressive humour, and as for Aussies, ours is <a href="http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-humour">dry, full of extremes, anti-authoritarian, self-mocking and ironic</a> (that last bit is a direct quote from an Australian government website.)</p>
<p>Books have been written on the mysteries of a good joke, but if you’re really curious watch the 2005 movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436078/">The Aristocrats</a> – in which 100 comedians tell and discuss the same joke. </p>
<h2>Who laughs?</h2>
<p>Apparently we all do. We start to smile within a few weeks of being born, initially just with the lower part of our face. This gradually extends to the whole face, and we start to laugh at around 3 or 4 months old. We continue until we die.</p>
<p>We’re not alone in laughing – other primates do it too – chimps, gorillas and orangutans, although theirs has different vocal qualities. There is some evidence <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2014/the_humor_code/do_animals_have_a_sense_of_humor_new_evidence_suggests_that_all_mammals.html">they crack jokes too</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bonobos, like other primates, start laughing as babies.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How do we laugh?</h2>
<p>We laugh in various ways according to the situation and the gag. There are different intensities – we chuckle, titter, cackle, chortle and belly laugh. Sometimes we’re open about our laughter and sometimes we snicker more privately.</p>
<p>Laughter isn’t only about expressing joy. Sometimes we laugh out of embarrassment, sometimes from confusion, sometimes out of courtesy, and sometimes from nervousness. </p>
<p>In the evil laugh, we celebrate the misfortune of others. Laughter can also express our personality – the frivolous laugh, or the laugh of the loud and in-your-face extrovert versus the shy, withdrawn laugh of the introvert. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115925/original/image-20160321-32291-ytwe2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Laughter seems to help learning, especially for children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos">Big Eyed Sol</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>Some people have a particular skill for the superior laugh. Does he who laughs last, laugh loudest?</p>
<h2>Is there a wrong time to laugh?</h2>
<p>We’re often tempted to laugh in serious situations or at inappropriate times. I once cracked a joke minutes after reviewing a dying patient, not realising his grieving family we’re standing right behind me. </p>
<p>I still cringe at the memory. Fortunately the family were gracious and understood I was relieving my tension. I’ve rarely felt so foolish.</p>
<p>In the end, laughter is an enigma best enjoyed rather than studied. It might be good for our health, but that’s not the best reason to do it. It’s fun and sexy and brings people together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Ellen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We start laughing at around 3 months of age. Women laugh more than men, but blokes tell more jokes. As the Melbourne International Comedy Festival begins, here’s the latest on mirth.Steve Ellen, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/252032014-04-07T19:58:54Z2014-04-07T19:58:54ZWhat’s so funny about right-leaning politicians, said the Abbott to the Bishop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45730/original/qf9fvc7k-1396839025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Back in 2003 as Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott was already providing comedy gold.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/ Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><strong>Spoiler alert:</strong> This article is not very funny.</em></p>
<p>At first glance, Australian PM Tony Abbott is God’s gift to political comedy. Like George Bush Jr he gives at the personal level: his swimmers and his vocal fry, malapropisms and political doublespeak (a feminist! Classic Abbott!), and his unreconstructed young fogey demeanour provide satirists a wealth of material to draw upon.</p>
<p>Abbott’s government is similarly comedy gold: his rise has let the reactionary right off the hook with some entertaining results (Australian Human Rights Commissioner <a href="http://www.timwilson.com.au/">Tim Wilson</a> <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/human-rights-commissioner-tim-wilson-believes-race-hate-laws-are-bizarre-and-unequal/story-fnj3rq0y-1226868911981">apparently complaining</a> he’s subject to discrimination because only black people can call each other the n-word, what a crack up), while his idiosyncratic style of decision-making permits for genuine ridicule of policy thought bubbles such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/knights-dames-be-honest-australia-you-love-it-24875">reintroduction of knights and dames.</a></p>
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<span class="caption">Tom Ballard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MICF</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This year’s <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/">Melbourne</a> (until April 20) and <a href="http://www.sydneycomedyfest.com.au/">Sydney</a> (April 22 - May 17) comedy festivals are overrun with comics such as <a href="http://www.sydneycomedyfest.com.au/single-event?show_id=614">Ronny Chieng</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/unaustralian-ish-tom-ballard">Tom Ballard</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/peak-a-boo-rod-quantock">Rod Quantock</a> and the <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/late-night-riot-political-asylum">Political Asylum</a> troupe whose material is inspired by today’s political climate. </p>
<p>Despite our reputation as the jesters of the academy, political scientists are sceptical of the democratic role of humour, emotion in politics being commonly associated with manipulation and propaganda.</p>
<h2>Political humour promotes cynicism</h2>
<p>Sydney University political scientist <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/government_international_relations/staff/academic_staff/michael_hogan.shtml">Michael Hogan</a>’s <a href="http://www.australianreview.net/journal/v2/n1/hogan.html">analysis</a> of political cartoons in New South Wales is illustrative. Through historical analysis Hogan demonstrated the tendency for politicians to be represented as corrupt, self-interested and elitist, our institutions as insular, self-indulgent and wasteful, elections as pointless and boring, and voters as irrational idiots.</p>
<p>The risk is clear: political humour promotes cynicism. Similar arguments have been made of political comedy on TV, with Monash political scientist <a href="http://www.monash.edu.au/research/people/profiles/profile.html?sid=2647&pid=3255">Simon Cooper</a> <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=200809695;res=IELAPA">taking</a> Rudd-era satire <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242819/">The Hollowmen</a> (2008-) to task for its focus on the shallowness of the political class and lack of policy substance.</p>
<p>In these readings of comedy, cynicism is seen as caustic to participation, undermining important rituals and institutions, and therein reducing political legitimacy and governability. Even the normally whimsical Slovenian philosopher <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/slavojzizek">Slavoj Zizek</a> is down on cynicism, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sublime-Object-Ideology-Essential-Zizek/dp/1844673006">arguing</a> it’s a contemporary malaise that serves elite interests because of its inherent acceptance of the status quo: we roll our eyes, but do nothing.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Colbert roasts Bush.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But cynicism is at the heart of comedy’s power to hijack the memes of political speech. Its deliberately critical gaze permits alternative readings of bald-faced political nonsense, such as <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-18/abbott-announces-support-package-for-holden-workers/5163950">representing</a> massive job losses in the car industry as “liberation” for the to-be-retrenched.</p>
<p>Faux-ultraconservative American political satirist <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0170306/">Stephen Colbert</a> famously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FTF4Oz4dI">roasted a vacuous president</a> and the journalists that soft-balled his drumbeat to war in the first significant pushback against the “War On Terror”. It was dark, cynical and uncomfortable for those in attendance, but also deadly accurate, breaking a stultifying uniformity in the public sphere.</p>
<p>University of New South Wales social scientist <a href="https://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/about-us/people/mark-rolfe/">Mark Rolfe</a> <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058.2010.498334#.U0IqqK2SxiY">argues</a> a degree of public cynicism serves to ground aspirants to high office. Thus, the Australian Executive has resisted the pomp and deference of the US Presidency because our leaders know they shouldn’t be “better than they are”. </p>
<p>The result of this is that policies such as Operation Sovereign Borders never receive the type of universal fawning coverage that Bush’s military adventurism received.</p>
<h2>A natural bias</h2>
<p>A second set of concerns about the democratic impact of political humour is that it might be biased towards one side of politics. This view argues we should pay serious attention to comedy’s substance, in the same way our national media policy ensures an equality of political voices in mainstream political news (…only joking!).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45749/original/7ctwvsft-1396848747.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tina Fey & Sarah Palin side-by-side on SNL.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">TaraLivesOn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the US, the rise of “soft news” comedy programs such as Jon Stewart’s <a href="http://thedailyshow.cc.com/">The Daily Show</a> has prompted questions about ideological diversity in comedy. American comedian <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0275486/">Tina Fey</a>’s <a href="https://screen.yahoo.com/couric-palin-open-000000480.html">defining parody</a> of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/09/palin-katie-couric-tina-f_n_156506.html">attacked</a> by conservatives of evidence of liberal (progressive) bias in mainstream media. </p>
<p>While conservative American humourist <a href="http://www.pjorourke.com/">PJ O'Rourke</a> can be seen as a counterweight to this claim, no other conservative comedians spring to mind when listing the most influential voices in American comedy.</p>
<p>To some extent, this bias is a natural one. As University of New England humanities lecturer <a href="https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/mbranag3">Marty Branagan</a> <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=200708019;res=IELAPA">observes</a>, political comedy tends towards anti-establishmentarianism because of humour’s role as social critique. Humour permits the expression of the kinds of ideas society normally sanctions, allowing the smug centre the possibility of self-critique in a healthy way. Branagan also suggests comedy can also serve as a cultural glue for social movements and political fellow travellers.</p>
<p>But humour can also reinforce the dominant. The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-12/restaurant-owner-says-he-wrote-sexist-gillard-menu/4750226">sexist menu</a> for Liberal politician Mal Brough’s fundraiser in June 2013 fits into this category: aggressive, system-maintaining humour. “Hey, the PM has not only a vagina but a large one!” Basic rule: if you are forced to add “just joking” after your punch lines, you’re not very funny. See what I did there? Self-referential irony, textbook comedy.</p>
<h2>Political comedy in Australia</h2>
<p>A second source of comedic bias is structural. Live comedy tends to be comparatively expensive and therefore the preserve of the middle classes. It’s distinct from the British tradition that, in addition to the Cambridge University alumni such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000092/">John Cleese</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000410/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Stephen Fry</a>, also produced many great working-class club comics (of whom Scot <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0175262/">Billy Connolly</a> would probably be the best well-known in Australia). </p>
<p>In Australia, our political comedians are more likely to be products of university and the review system.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45732/original/zcy2fjc6-1396843667.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chaser comedian Craig Reucassel attempts to ask a question of Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image Penny Bradfield</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A quick survey shows this is the case, from comedic pioneers such as <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/peak-a-boo-rod-quantock">Rod Quantock</a> (who studied architecture at Melbourne University), through to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0803203/">Rob Sitch</a> (Medicine, Melbourne University) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0322467/">Tom Gleisner</a> (Law, Melbourne University) of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108780/">Frontline</a> (1994-97) and The Hollowmen fame, <a href="http://www.judithlucy.com.au/judithlucy/">Judith Lucy</a> (Theatre Studies, Curtin University), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0584017/">Shaun Micallef</a> (Law, Adelaide University), <a href="http://www.chaser.com.au/">The Chaser</a> team (Sydney University), to newcomers such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3428148/">Tom Glasson</a> of ABC’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/roast/">The Roast</a> (Law, Sydney University). </p>
<p>Not only do educated people <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/the-australian-voter_50-years-of-change/">tend to be more left-wing</a>, thereby shaping the marketplace for comedy in Australia, one of the reasons why these comics are often so insightful is that they share the education and background of their targets (law and humanity degrees). Possibly, therefore, the only divide between comics and politicians is the societies they joined as freshers.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45751/original/phhbjztv-1396848889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rod Quantock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MICF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For television humour, the ABC dominates political comedy (assuming that Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt is not Australia’s Stephen Colbert). This stems from economic pressure on free-to-air commercial broadcasters who have shifted production towards reality formats over expensive scripted material.</p>
<p>The ABC, liberated from the same economic realities, has tended to retain a greater mix of comedy in its domestic content. This choice is, in turn, supported by its more educated audience.</p>
<p>Does this matter? To some extent the anti-establishment bent of comedy ensures that both sides get their licks when in government. From comedian <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1537207/">Amanda Bishop</a>’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1995552/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_5">At Home with Julia</a> (2011) to the advertising panel discussion <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/gruen-nation/">Gruen Nation</a> (2008 onwards), comedy will continue to poke fun at our political tall poppies. </p>
<p>If the PM feels hard done by by a plethora of left-wing comedians, he can be comforted that it’s a natural expression of supply and demand.</p>
<p><br>
<em>The <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</a> runs until April 20. The <a href="http://www.sydneycomedyfest.com.au/">Sydney Comedy Festival</a> runs from April 22 to May 17.</em></p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/funny-how-where-women-and-stand-up-meet-for-laughs-25013">Funny how? Where women and stand-up meet for laughs</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-rape-and-role-models-how-women-in-comedy-perform-24965">Sex, rape and role models – how women in comedy perform</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Chen holds two tickets to the Sydney Comedy Festival.</span></em></p>Spoiler alert: This article is not very funny. At first glance, Australian PM Tony Abbott is God’s gift to political comedy. Like George Bush Jr he gives at the personal level: his swimmers and his vocal…Peter John Chen, Senior Lecturer in Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/249652014-04-03T02:30:08Z2014-04-03T02:30:08ZSex, rape and role models – how women in comedy perform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45223/original/34swynz2-1396313435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The topic of "women in comedy" is endlessly controversial – as Adrienne Truscott seems to know. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MICF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two performance artists in this year’s <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</a> (MICF) – the UK’s <a href="http://www.bryonykimmings.com/biog.html">Bryony Kimmings</a> and American <a href="http://www.adriennetruscott.com/Pages/at_bio.html">Adrienne Truscott</a> – have a certain flavour of humour: it’s the knowing, self-deprecating humour of the culturally dispossessed, of survivors and victims. And yes, they’re both women. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/asking-for-it-a-one-lady-rape-about-comedy-starring-her-pussy-and-little-else-adrienne-truscott-s">Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!</a> is Adrienne Truscott’s stand-up show about rape. In it, Truscott counters the stated prerogative of male comedians to tell rape jokes with a confronting routine in which she relentlessly does the same. </p>
<p>Her wit spares neither them, nor hip-hop artists rapping about date rape, nor Republican politicians expounding on “legitimate rape”, nor men in the audience. </p>
<p>Truscott also gets to explain why animal analogies are inadequate through progeny-eating gerbils. It is a bracing, uncomfortable, rewarding show. Is it funny, though? That depends on how you look at it.</p>
<p>The topic of “women in comedy” is endlessly controversial. Where are the women? Are there enough of them? Are women even funny? </p>
<p>The latter is apparently such a valid question that it has been regularly asked, with a straight face, by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/04/are-women-funny-you-already-know-the-answer">The Guardian</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/women-arent-funny-bonnie-mcfarlane_n_2591915.html">Huffington Post</a>, <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/04/funnygirls200804">Vanity Fair</a>, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_friend">The New Yorker</a> and possibly every other major media publication.</p>
<p>British-American author Christopher Hitchens famously <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701">stated</a> in Vanity Fair in 2007: they are not. Those that were funny, he conceded, were mostly “hefty or dykey or Jewish,” therefore practically men themselves.</p>
<p>Coming to this question from a performance studies viewpoint – as opposed to being an expert in stand-up comedy like Hitchens – the question seems almost otherworldly. Let me explain.</p>
<h2>Origins of performance art</h2>
<p>In the second half of the 20th century, artists’ interest in real time, real space, real human bodies, real human presence and real human experience resulted in the development of what we call “performance art”: art inextricably linked to the artist physically producing it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45229/original/45dv42bp-1396316741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Russeth</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The practice originated in the visual arts scene of 1950s and 1960s America. In Europe, slightly later, it became known simply as “performance”, while in the UK, once it reached theatre artists in the 1980s and 1990s, it became known as “live art” (from art historian RoseLee Goldberg’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Performance-Live-Art-Since-60s/dp/0500282196">seminal history</a> of performance art).</p>
<p>Performance art encompasses a wide range of practices but the two people that defined the term, almost to the point of cliche, are Japanese artist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Ono">Yoko Ono</a> and Serbian-born artist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87">Marina Abramović</a>. In the 1960s and 1970s, they let the presence of their own body make the artistic statement: Ono letting the spectators cut up her clothing in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CutPieceOno.jpeg">Cut Piece</a> (1965); Ono and Lennon protesting the Vietnam War in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/may/31/john-lennon-yoko-ono-elizabethan-age">a bed-in</a> (1969); Abramović letting gallery visitors use various sharp objects, knives and a gun on her body in <a href="https://vimeo.com/71952791">Rhythm 0</a> (1974); or leaning into a bow and arrow in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tz-K4EC8hw">Rest Energy</a> (1980).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45242/original/n6sffrhb-1396322021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yoko Ono.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Alfredo Aldai</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Performance art allowed feminist female artists to effectively challenge that standard object of representation in art – the female body. A living, breathing, talking, reacting woman could subvert, challenge, deconstruct the idealised notion of women as passive objects of beauty and desire. She could challenge the audience with her realness, and raise such taboo issues as menstruation, ageing, or sexual identity. The history of female art and the history of performance art are inextricably intertwined.</p>
<p>The vocabulary of performance developed by female artists emphasised solo performance, a strong element of autobiography or personal experience, veiled social critique, and interaction with the audience. Sort of like comedy, you see, apart from not being funny.</p>
<p>Except that it often is. It is no wonder that many women in this year’s MICF are performance artists, not career comediennes – the impulse behind these two forms is similar, and so is their flavour of humour. As Bryony Kimmings <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/comedy/bryony-kimmings-interview-lets-talk-about-sex-8888583.html">said</a> last year in the London Evening Standard:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women are funnier because we suffer more.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Consider Marina Abramović’s video work, in which she manically brushes her hair for 50 minutes, repeating the titular phrase, “Art must be beautiful. Artist must be beautiful”. If you don’t hear the sarcasm, you’re missing the point of the work. It is the same flavour of barbed sarcasm that Adrienne Truscott uses when she opens her comedy show with a <em>bone fide</em> rape joke, and stands in front of us naked from the waist down. </p>
<p>The vulnerability of their bodies is an angry statement, but this angry vulnerability is almost defining of women’s life. It does not preclude humour.</p>
<h2>Bryony Kimmings</h2>
<p>This strategy of escalating the sexualisation of the female body until it is funny also appears in Bryony Kimmings’ <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/sex-idiot-bryony-kimmings">Sex Idiot</a> at MICF where she performs a long interpretive dance sequence that mimics sexual intercourse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45243/original/g4kjmbp7-1396322069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bryonny Kimmings in Sex Idiot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MICF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sex Idiot is an autobiographical journey through Kimmings’ relationship history while she is trying to inform previous partners of her positive STI test. It has that familiar emotional tone of self-deprecation, melancholy and wise acceptance – again, tone less akin to a mating call than to cotton-picking songs of American slaves. </p>
<p>It is also funny, outrageously so. But it is an emotionally complex humour: as Kimmings creates ever more hilarious performance artworks to honour each one of her previous relationships, we laugh at her disappointments, her poor choices, her wasted opportunities, her misapplied bravado. It is a journey that ends rewardingly, in rich introspection.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45230/original/rfkjjknb-1396316941.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bryony Kimmings’ Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">FOLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the most extraordinary feminist performance currently showing in Melbourne is <a href="http://fola.com.au/program/credible-likeable-superstar-role-model/">Credible Likeable Superstar Rolemodel</a>, also created by Kimmings. Not officially a part of the Comedy Festival, but showing at Theatre Works as part of <a href="http://fola.com.au/">Festival of Live Art</a> (FOLA). </p>
<p>It is a joint endeavour between Kimmings and her 11-year-old niece Taylor, in which they try to develop an appropriate role-model for tween girls. The show is emotionally hard-hitting in unexpected ways. It juxtaposes Taylor’s innocent preteen imagination with Kimmings’ adult protectiveness and cynicism, and it is sometimes very funny, and sometimes heart-wrenching. </p>
<p>Nothing like a dry treatise in sexualisation of children, it left everyone in the audience sobbing quite unashamedly. It is a powerful example of how the emotional nuance of feminist performance can deliver a deeply felt social analysis.</p>
<p>Australian academic Germaine Greer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/artblog/2008/jan/28/theconnectionbetweenartand">famously accused</a> female artists of exhibitionism and narcissism. This is not so different from accusing women comics of only talking about vaginas and men. Vanity Fair may be right to <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/04/funnygirls200804">say</a> that, until very recently, all female comedy could be divided into two camps: self-deprecating or men-hating. But, to some extent, this should be a self-resolving problem. </p>
<p>As Gloria Steinem <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/11/gloria-steinem-makers-conference-jennifer-aniston_n_4764866.html">pointed out</a>, feminism is inextricably related to telling stories women can recognise as being about themselves. </p>
<p>When talking about rape, promiscuous women and the sexualisation of children stops being a rebellious act, feminist performance will naturally move on.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/sex-idiot-bryony-kimmings">Bryony Kimmings Sex Idiot</a> runs until April 5.</em><br>
<em><a href="http://fola.com.au/program/credible-likeable-superstar-role-model/">Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model</a> runs until April 6.</em><br>
<em><a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/asking-for-it-a-one-lady-rape-about-comedy-starring-her-pussy-and-little-else-adrienne-truscott-s">Adrienne Truscott’s Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!</a> runs until April 20.</em></p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/funny-how-where-women-and-stand-up-meet-for-laughs-25013">Funny how? Where women and stand-up meet for laughs</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Perkovic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two performance artists in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) – the UK’s Bryony Kimmings and American Adrienne Truscott – have a certain flavour of humour: it’s the knowing, self-deprecating…Jana Perkovic, Sessional lecturer and researcher, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/250132014-04-01T19:48:23Z2014-04-01T19:48:23ZFunny how? Where women and stand-up meet for laughs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45115/original/4kywzdyz-1396235112.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We're primed first to see women as objects of desire and to listen to their voices second.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anne Edmonds, Melbourne International Comedy Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is it about stand-up comedy that makes it a more difficult space for a funny woman to conquer?</p>
<p>A bunch of seasoned female stand-ups return to the <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</a> (MICF) this year, which runs until April 20, including <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/my-brilliant-career-fiona-o-loughlin">Fiona O’Loughlin</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/the-exhibitionist-hannah-gadsby">Hannah Gadsby</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/let-me-know-how-it-all-works-out-celia-pacquola">Celia Pacquola</a>, and <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/mother-bare-denise-scott">Denise Scott</a>. There are Australia’s “rising stars” too, such as <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/it-s-eddo-anne-edmonds">Anne Edmonds</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/tales-from-the-crip-stella-young-in">Stella Young</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/bring-a-plate-mel-buttle">Mel Buttle</a>, <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/the-duck-s-nuts-kate-mclennan">Kate McLennan</a> and <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/feminazi-kirsty-mac">Kirsty Mac</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45118/original/dhdxcpf6-1396235701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fiona O’Loughlin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They will join a strong legacy of Australian women comics – Noelene Brown, Denise Drysdale, Wendy Harmer, Jean Kittson, Maryanne Fahey, Lynda Gibson, Magda Szubanski, Jane Turner and Gina Riley, to name a few. But despite these distinguished alumni, stand-up comedy in particular has been a long-contested performance site for female performers. </p>
<p>For many of these successful women comedians, the genesis and mainstay of their performing careers was in sketch and character comedy. My own performance history began in a similar fashion with work in sketch comedy groups in the 1990s, experimenting with stand-up. A key motivation for testing the genre in this manner is the reception new female comics can receive in a comedy club. Often women walk on stage to cat-calls and gender-based comments that aren’t necessarily faced by their male counterparts. </p>
<p>The act of standing on a stage alone, in charge of a microphone and having the power to direct what occurs in the room, is not something easily given over to just anybody in our culture. It takes a particular personality type to have the courage to step out into the spotlight and take charge of an audience. </p>
<p>Not only must that person have the right personality type but, by definition, they must be “funny” – a loose social construct and highly dependent on the listeners’ perspectives and interpretations of what they are seeing and hearing.</p>
<h2>What women bring to stand-up</h2>
<p>The nature of a stand-up performance requires a strategy different from that of acting or putting on a character. Stand-up draws on the intensely personal comic persona of the performer – each persona is closely aligned but not precisely the same as the performer’s actual personality. </p>
<p>During the performance, elements of that self are heightened and made more pronounced. You may recognise this phenomenon if you’ve ever met one of your comedy idols and they weren’t as funny in real life, or at least not in the same way they were when you saw them on stage.</p>
<p>Male performers can draw on Australia’s long cultural and social history of the male larrikin telling jokes in a social environment. There is an easy socio-cultural space for any man to be “a good bloke” and take charge of amusing the crowd. </p>
<p>From historical studies, an argument can be made that in Australia, this is the genesis of the modern stand-up performer rather than the British music-hall tradition.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45119/original/tv2dxstq-1396235831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hannah Gadsby.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stand-up has certainly been adopted as a performance style by many emerging male comedians in Anglo-Saxon cultures. Even with the trend to “metro-sexualised” male performance (a non-traditional, 21st century version of maleness), the element of manliness inherent in “owning” the stage serves to retain the gendered nature of the performance space.</p>
<p>For women, it works quite differently. There is no socio-cultural space for women to play the larrikin and then translate that to stage performance in the same way. The reasons for this are complex, but one way to understand it is to see gender itself as a performance – the very act of performing femininity in everyday life precludes the opportunity to behave as a masculinised larrikin.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45125/original/vzc2pk6w-1396236100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kirsty Mac.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the visually obsessed online culture of the 21st century, young women are to my mind in a more challenging position than before. In cultures where the female body is more clearly an object for visual consumption, and a sexualised object at that, there is even less space for a woman to perform stand-up comedy. </p>
<p>Sex and laughter do not in fact easily co-exist. While audiences are primed first to see women as objects of desire and to listen to their voices second, desire/ admiration can override the laughter. </p>
<p>Of course women can occupy the stand-up performance space, but there are delicate negotiations that need to take place between the performer and the audience in order for that occupation to succeed.</p>
<p>Women are watched for aggression, for anger and for overtly challenging social norms in a way that is not authentic to their performed female selves. This creates an inherent limitation on female performance that is dependent on any particular audience’s collective world view. </p>
<p>That makes challenging social mores via humour more difficult for women – but perhaps also more important. When it succeeds it carries important messages both overtly and subliminally to both genders about women’s perspectives and their significance. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45126/original/hfrnkgmz-1396236257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adrienne Truscott.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The women’s comedy forum <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/this-is-what-a-comedian-looks-like-jeez-louise">Jeez Louise</a> is running again at this year’s MICF, providing a space for female comedians to discuss the challenges of being a woman in this art form. This year American performance artist <a href="http://www.adriennetruscott.com/Pages/at_bio.html">Adrienne Truscott</a> (of <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/asking-for-it-a-one-lady-rape-about-comedy-starring-her-pussy-and-little-else-adrienne-truscott-s">Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!</a> notoreity) is on the panel discussing “the potential and prejudice, frustrations and friendships that define the professional world of female comics”. </p>
<p>The success and recurrence of Jeez Louise says much about how the limits on the social progress female comedians have been able to make over the last 15 or more years. </p>
<p>Women are certainly represented as part of the collective comic voice of Australia and there are many (such as those mentioned earlier) who have transgressed cultural boundaries to allow their genuinely funny take on the world to reach us. </p>
<p>But there is a long way to go before we see equality on the stand-up stage.</p>
<p><br>
<em>The <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</a> runs until April 20.</em></p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-rape-and-role-models-how-women-in-comedy-perform-24965">Sex, rape and role models – how women in comedy perform</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25013/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What is it about stand-up comedy that makes it a more difficult space for a funny woman to conquer? A bunch of seasoned female stand-ups return to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) this…Barbara Joseph, Member of Australasian Humour Studies Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.